Why Steve Jobs Won't Return to Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2281453/

<comment><USER2> In summary - The author has a feeling that Steve Jobs isn't going to return to Apple because he's been successful.

History tells me that Steve Jobs' past successes inspire him even more. I believe, if he can physically return to Apple, he will.

</comment><comment><USER3> Jobs' health issues aside, I think if he is able to he will definitely be back to Apple. Simple reason, he enjoys it too much. Perhaps it is true he has accomplished what he wanted to, but there is nothing in Jobs that makes me think he would be content to stop there.

<comment><USER4> I can't retype the whole thing here so I'm just going to give you a link to a post I made which makes the argument that Steve Jobs does enjoy it too much and that's exactly why he won't be back. See here: [http://tomstechblog.com/post/Ie28099m-Not-Sure-Steve-Jobs- Is...](http://tomstechblog.com/post/Ie28099m-Not-Sure-Steve-Jobs-Is-All-That- Sicke280a6But-That-Might-Mean-He-Isne28099t-Fully-Coming-Back.aspx)

<comment><USER5> The less-sick Jobs is, the more likely he is to have left for other reasons and thus for him not to return for those same reasons (assume those other reasons are more permanent - things like wanting it life, having accomplished "his task" or whatever).

That said, cancer has many complexities and variations. It's possible to have very worrisome test results but be completely a-symptomatic. That the cancer and treatment were obvious in 2004 doesn't mean that they would be today.

Also, repeated bouts of uncertainly are certainly bad for Apple's stock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And so begins the rash of articles and stories chasing eyeballs and pageviews and speculating about whether or not Steve will return to Apple...

If history is any sort of bellweather for this, he definitely will if he's at all able to. He loves Apple and he loves what he does.

There have been many moments these past few years where one could've said that Steve's "accomplished everything he ever wanted to accomplish."

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh, please. What milarcky. People who are motivated by product do it for the kicks. This is love for Jobs, not money. If his health stays, he will be back. He doesn't know anything else.

</comment><comment><USER8> He'll be back if he can. I find it hard to believe that entrepreneurs have fixed goals.

</comment><comment><USER9> another "Steve Jobs is God" articles, yay!!! I wonder if he ever gets tired of hearing how much the world loves him, and how his poo must smell like flowers...

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm skeptical about this guy's argument. It leaves out one critical fact: Jobs' personality. He lives for his work. When he was kicked out of Apple (in the '80s) it was the most miserable time of his life. He doesn't want to be a VC or a playboy. He wants to feel like he's part of something really big.

<comment><USER4> Ummm...do you have a reference for that first claim? Jobs founded NeXT right after he left Apple and in interviews I've seen he's praised his time at NeXT</comment></comment>


Water treatment plant hacked, chemical mix changed for tap supplies - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/24/water_utility_hacked/ <comment><USER2> The article deems as 'hacktivist' a group that 'changed the levels of chemicals being used to treat tap water.' This doesn't sound much like activism, defined by google as 'the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change' or 'hacktivism' as described on wikipedia which focuses on distribution of information, defacing websites, etc.

There is no mention of what chemical changes were made, but if malicious it sounds more like warfare or terrorism potentially targeting civilians. The subtitle is "Well, that's just a little scary", also quite an understatement.

<comment><USER3> > This doesn't sound much like activism

Yes it does; it's a perfect example of how "activist" (and by extension "hactivist") is being used in modern propaganda. Jacob Appelbaum very recently gave a rather... _intense_ talk[1] that is about[2] this type of propaganda. As he explains:

        Let us address this concept of "activism", and it works like this.
        "Activism" is used as a pejorative term in order to suggest that
        participation in a democratic society is somehow outside of
        normal behavior.

> There is no mention

Stenographers publishing propaganda are not in the business of revealing facts.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78) (note: Jacob doesn't pull his punches, so this contains some strong language)

[2] It also has some _disturbing_ new information about how The Guardian treated him, Poitras, Greenwald, and others.

<comment><USER4> Wow, now that's what I call Scorched Earth.

Personally, I'm one for trying to keep the personal attacks out of a rational discussion, but I recognize that sometimes going with emotion can work as well or better, depending on the audience. I'm also sure he views quite a bit of what he's talking about as personal attacks on himself as well.

I'm sad now that I didn't see it when you posted it a few days ago, and couldn't do my small bit to nudge it to the front page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It really boggles my mind that we don't air-gap every single one of these types of critical systems.

Can someone help me understand why this isn't more popular? Is it because they requirement controls from outside resources? Or maybe there's central places that rely on telemetry?

Another option: outgoing UDP packets only. Outgoing telemetry but nothing comes back in.

<comment><USER6> Management wants it done, done cheaply, with cheap support, and sometimes plugging into their dashboards. Clive Robinson, who did SCADA, said those things combine to make security nonexistent to afterthought in most installations.

I'll add a lesson from software world that it also pays to contract steady fixes over time instead of near-perfect the first time. That might partly be because people in such industries only make sacrifices after shit hits the fan publicly. See Target for example. ;)

<comment><USER7> Of course.. you /expect/ that to happen, which is why you establish an internal auditing process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For what it's worth, the pseudonym Kemuri is Japanese for smoke.

There was a recent incident in the UK where too much chlorine was added to the water supply, leaving it unsafe even for washing. I wonder if it's connected?

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- derbyshire-35786378](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-35786378)

<comment><USER9> I don't think so. That does look like a rather good fit, especially as the BBC article states quite clearly that the chlorine overdose was spotted due to monitoring alarms, just like the Verizon article states.

But Verizon claims the valves were manipulated to "no particular effect" which doesn't seem credible if it required a full system flush and a do-not-use to be posted.

Also Severn Trent has 4.6 million customers, not 2.5 million.

<comment><USER8> Not the same incident, no, but could it be connected?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Fortunately, based on alert functionality, KWC was able to quickly identify and reverse the chemical and flow changes, largely minimising the impact on customers._

The affected only lost _most_ of their hair.

</comment><comment><USER11> I call BS. There are no facts revealed here other than some boogie man story telling about, none other than a Syrian hacking group (during the Cold War, this would have been the USSR instead of implying ISIL).

The whole thing reads like an advertisement for Verizon Security and Splunk.

</comment><comment><USER12> So possibly a state actor doing reconnaissance? They get in, they verify they have control by making a change they think won't be noticed, and they add it to their list of nasty things to do when the war starts...

Remember the recent Ukrainian power outage hack? [http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/hackers-did- indeed-c...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/hackers-did-indeed-cause- ukrainian-power-outage-us-report-concludes/)

</comment><comment><USER13> > It seems the activists lacked either the knowledge of SCADA systems or the > intent to do any harm.

So it's a kid, not a state.

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily, if you were probing you would do so in a way that didn't indicate your true intentions.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like it started with a pretty simple SQL injection attack, any script kiddie could have done that. Then poking around they found something like control_system_passwords.txt somewhere on the web server and went from there. Not exactly state-actor skilz required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Guys this is why we need backdoors, so it happens more often, oh wait

</comment><comment><USER17> I genuinely believe that where software has the direct ability to cause physical harm, there ought to be revocable professional accreditation for at least one programmer on the development team. Likewise for systems security on-site.

Actually, I'd be interested to know if things like ISO27001 are mandatory for these sorts of facilities. And who gets in trouble if the system fails.

<comment><USER18> I'm afraid ISO27001 guarantees very little. Specifically, in my (limited) experience these kinds of programs/accreditations only look at a few data points in the company where reality covers hundreds of data points, and only in a brief period. Nothing stops people inside the organization from not complying with the rules, and nobody actually verifies that the right people in the organization actually know the rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Every time I hear a story like this I am amazed. The cause of this is not complex or difficult. It's basic stuff.

</comment><comment><USER20> Any idea where this happened, even what country it happened in? I can't make sense of that from the article. I'm guessing we're talking the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER21> As long as it only affects people who didn't vote for the governor, it's not the government's problem.

</comment><comment><USER22> Take all utility like infrastructure control systems off the internet (Gas, Water, etc...)

<comment><USER23> The developer machines are still (by necessity) connected to the Internet.

<comment><USER6> It's not necessary: it's just convenient or more profitable. There's guards, link encryptors, authenticated networking, and OSS knockoffs of above to either reduce risk of or probably prevent malice from hitting on-site computers.

They're just not applied by most because people paying don't give a shit. Any high-security engineer doing SCADA or site-to-site for big companies will probably tell you so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py the best part is that this is somehow verizon's fault.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hope they stopped the flow of fluoride. Forced medication isn't ethical and it's been shown to have no effect on dental health.

<comment><USER25> And naturally you've based your understanding of such things on studies and have references to share?</comment></comment>


Minix3 project is looking to hire a programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/job/

<comment><USER2> I wonder how they can hire programmers out of a research grant?

<comment><USER3> Easy. In the grant you say "portions of this grant will go towards funding a full-time position for 3 years", along with an estimate of how much that would cost.

Why does this make you wonder? It happens often.

<comment><USER2> So my boss just forgot that or thought it would not be valuable when writing the proposal. Most computer science research would benefit from having a programmer. Usually all code is written by students and researchers and (as expected) it is thrown away afterwards. Research and graduating leaves little time to polish code for publication.

<comment><USER3> Not all projects are that way. Minix, after all, is several decades old and does not fit the "is thrown away afterwards" category.

More specifically, in its early days it was designed as an educational tool. The source code and accompanying text book taught operating systems theory and practice to a lot of people in the 1990s. That sort of code must be stable.

Another example is LLVM. The center of development is at the University of Illinois. Here's the home page for one of the research programmers at UIUC who works on LLVM development: <http://www.bigw.org/~jcriswel/resume.html> .</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I stopped drinking coffee - <AUTHOR> https://bcaccinolo.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/how-i-stopped-coffee/ <comment><USER2> Interesting read.

I used to drink enormous amount of coffee at my previous work (5-6 cups a day) and the overall anxiety just became part of my daily life. Then I decided to go on cold turkey which lasted for about 3-4 months. First weeks were rough, imposter syndrome kicked in like crazy and I wasn't able to focus at all.

Now I have my morning cup of coffee with L-Theanine and that's it for the day. It lasts, the anxiety is gone and overall effect is magnificent.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I talk about stopping coffee to friends they advice my to switch to tea. But the strange thing is that, in the morning, I don't feel like drinking a hot beverage. Just a freshly pressed orange while reading the news on my iPhone and I'm good to go!

<comment><USER2> They probably think of Yerba mate or green tea in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sure, try taking with coffee first but most likely the reason you can't sleep is not coffee but your body acting out due to stress. Do you sit down a lot (i'm assuming so since you mentioned 'office')? If so do you do any exercise to counteract the effects of sitting? Have you tried doing some Yoga?

</comment><comment><USER4> What could work is to drink water with your old cup of coffee. That might sounds bullshit but, but your body is accustomed to have the coffee cup in hands. It like a smokers that have to have somthing between his fingers, and that's why they end up by eating some junk food (not all of them of course)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi piocho, I haven't tried but it sounds like a nice tips! Have you stopped drinking coffee?</comment></comment>


Robotics Development Environment with ROS in C++ and Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Ly0n/awesome-robotic-tooling <comment><USER2> ROS is really great for getting started with robotics, but from my experience (and from others who I've talked to) tends to buckle under its own weight in larger projects. This isn't to say you shouldn't use it, just be careful with it. It has some really questionable design decisions and implementation details that can bite you later.

<comment><USER3> Isn't this the case with any Python development in general? Once you start building at scale you'll be forced to use Cython extensions and other non- native python code.

<comment><USER4> _Isn 't this the case with any Python development in general?_

No this isn't generally true for Python, and I'm not sure why you'd be forced to use Cython for things at scale. Unless you have some particular type of software in mind perhaps?

<comment><USER3> >Unless you have some particular type of software in mind perhaps?

Webservices. May be its fine for couple of hundred users, but when there are thousands of concurrent users with heavy I/O I've been forced to replace asyncio with uvloop, replacing coroutine with gevent, implementing pre-fork worker models etc. to get decent performance.

I've since then moved any webservices development to Golang and has been perfect.

I understand there are large scale companies like Instagram which supposedly use Python and I don't detest it. It's just there are better tools for job now, especially for a lean startup and of-course Python has it's advantages like being a good first programming language and large library ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want to really enjoy the ingenuity of people that otherwise might be considered "simple", check out the ROS for Agriculture group and slack channels. People converting 70s and 80s era farm equipment to be automated, and it's pure gold.

<comment><USER6> any specific links to these groups??

<comment><USER5> Website: [http://rosagriculture.org/](http://rosagriculture.org/) Slack: [http://rosagriculture.slack.com/](http://rosagriculture.slack.com/) GitHub: [https://github.com/ros-agriculture](https://github.com/ros-agriculture) Twitter: @ROSAgriculture YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnr6AObsHnHSGPge0HVlBpA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnr6AObsHnHSGPge0HVlBpA)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was reading up on ROS the other day when the thought occurred that Erlang is, in many ways, similar to some of the core functionality of ROS, and might be a good substitute for [parts of] it.

<comment><USER8> It's true, the reason for choosing C++ and Python as first class languages is because of their strength in numerical computing and AI capabilities (for python anyway), which erlang mostly lacks. It would definitely be cool to be able to use erlang though.

<comment><USER9> No offense (I use Python all the time), but Python seems almost like the worst of all worlds, except for ease of use in the first month of using it -- with its only advantage being library inertia (which is a massive advantage in practice though).

As eg: here's an excellent talk on the cruft in Python internals by Armin Ronacher: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGofLIzX6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGofLIzX6g)

For more discussion on why Python is slow: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025309)

There is, after all, a graveyard littered with big-money attempts to speed up (mutually incompatible) subsets of Python.

But lack of inertia not something that should deter someone seriously invested (after all, Google/FB created Tensorflow/Pytorch respectively, and now Google might be getting behind Swift). It's a judgement call on whether one feels that most of the work/innovation still needs to be done, or is already done. If it is yet to be done, building on top of a better platform is almost a no- brainer.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. I think that the use of Python in ROS is the best of both worlds. ROS makes it easy to do sane-ish IPC even for folks new to programming and enables them to offload heavy numerical processing or real time tasks out to C++ or even other boards on your robot.

Python sits by handling state machines (decision making) and similar logic. It's also great in experimental code that folks want to change often (opencv prototyping).

I don't like the lack of a type system and have run into easily preventable bugs with python but in my case the trade off with developer productivity was worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I brought ROS to FIRST robotics back when I was in high school and I still think it continues to change the game for how people work with robots [1, 2] The modularity / plug-n-play nature of the system makes swapping sensors (which often have ROS driver) or algorithms that much easier.

[1] [https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc](https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc) [2] [https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/paper-team-900-presents- zebrav...](https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/paper-team-900-presents- zebravision-5-0-ros-for-frc/160468)

</comment><comment><USER12> I kind of feel ROS rebuilt a ton of Google tech before it was open sourced. rosbuild is bazel, Ros messages are protobuffers/flatbuffers, orchistration is k8s. I feel we could do a better job these days with the newer tools rather than ROS's less maintained, less interesting to researchers, reimplementation of infra tech.

<comment><USER13> I've seen IPC tools be built from scratch or on top of more popular stuff in several companies I worked in, unfortunately.

ROS2 is building on DDS, which is a standardized protocol and has implementations from multiple vendors as well as open source implementations, with QoS built in etc.

<comment><USER12> yeah that looks cool but DDS is a technology designed for air gapped factories. AFAIK most ROS teams are still using ROS1 due to the lack of cross language tooling in ROS2. Again, bazel + gRPC* could solve this.

* or perhaps better is flatbuffers see tensorflow-lite

<comment><USER13> gRPC, ZeroMQ, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, there's a whole bunch of them. The decision to use DDS is explained here in [https://design.ros2.org/articles/ros_on_dds.html](https://design.ros2.org/articles/ros_on_dds.html)

<comment><USER12> yes I read it at the time. However, HTTP3 + QUIC config [1] of gRPC _also_ runs over UDP with more fallbacks to make it work over commodity hardware. DDR is a pain for random labs to work with as you have to have admin control over the network and bridges to make it work. This basically means it can't be used in the cloud or most corporate environments. It has huge deployment friction. Given the bad uptake of ROS2, I think the market agrees with me.

Note QUIC and HTTP3 were not really a thing when ROS2 was conceived, but the problem of head of line blocking was known and ROS2 was just a bit too ahead of the curve.

[1] [https://www.fastly.com/blog/why-fastly-loves-quic- http3](https://www.fastly.com/blog/why-fastly-loves-quic-http3)

<comment><USER13> I think the market is pretty into ROS2 actually, its just the PhDs and grad students that will be on ROS1 for a longer time because they don't have the resources to make any switch. Amazon and a lot of other companies are big on ROS2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using ROS for some 8+ years now, for university projects, competitions like RoboCup@Home and for work on robots operating in the wild, on water, land and among people in malls etc.

I've seen many RoboCup teams convert from their custom stuff to ROS because it allows to profit for so much other great work. In my own team, we replaced most custom stuff implemented in the early days of ROS and with ROS with the now de-facto standard ROS stuff for the same task so we can focus more on the stuff that made us win the competition this year :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> Well, yes, that's what ROS does. This "Awesome robotic tooling" GitHub repository adds what? A package index?

<comment><AUTHOR> ROS has already a package index: [https://index.ros.org/packages/](https://index.ros.org/packages/)

The list is more intendet to find the gems of modules, resources and tools for an professional robotic development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can this be easily setup on Windows?

Was my biggest obstacle to using ROS in the past.

<comment><USER16> I've never tried it, so I don't know how easy it is, but there has been a lot of work recently to improve ROS on Windows: [https://microsoft.github.io/Win- RoS-Landing-Page/](https://microsoft.github.io/Win-RoS-Landing-Page/)

<comment><USER17> Why?

<comment><USER16> Why haven't I tried ROS on Windows? I never really had the need to, I primarily use Linux at home and work.

I did briefly evaluate ROS 2 (ardent) on Windows at my previous job. It seemed to work fairly well, I built it natively, ran the demos and did some latency/throughput comparisons between DDS implementations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google makes Quickoffice for Android and iOS free for all - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/09/19/google-makes-quickoffice-for-android-and-ios-free-for-all-bringing-microsoft-office-editing-to-the-masses/ <comment><USER2> After Apple began offering its office suite for free with all new iOS devices, Google's decision makes sense. However I now have both Google Drive and Quickoffice on my Android smart phone and tablet. These two products overlap a bit too much. They really ought to be a single app.

<comment><USER3> If you press the Google Drive button in QuickOffice, it will basically show you what you have in Google Drive, just like the Google Drive app. But yeah, not sure why they're keeping the Drive app around then.

<comment><USER4> Er, well, Google Drive is ... storage.

I don't think of it as an "office app" at all, and it would frankly kind of bizarre to have to use QuickOffice to get at the various tar files, html files, image files, etc, that I've put into G.D....

If anything they should really just share components, with Google Drive invoking Q.O. document editors as appropriate, and maybe a Q.O. app remaining as a thin "office-oriented" frontend (whatever that means).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Quickoffice used to allow signing in from multiple services? I remember using an older version of Quickoffice that allowed logging in with Dropbox, SkyDrive, etc. while this new version appear to only work with Google accounts.

<comment><USER6> You're correct, Quickoffice did allow login from multiple sources in the past.

Obviously Google would remove that feature as they now own Quickoffice, I would have been FAR more surprised if they kept it in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> After reading about the Quickoffice acquisition I was waiting for this moment. Google Drive has more features in the web than as a native application on iOS and Android.

Edit: it's me or Quickoffice is complete crap? I tried opening a document in Google Docs and it opens as PDF! then I created a new document and it doesn't have headings, just like the Google Drive application.

<comment><USER6> What kind of document did you open? A PDF???

It's working fine for me, .doc/.docx extensions open in QuickWord as expected.

<comment><USER7> A Google Drive document.

<comment><USER8> If you read the app description, its for working with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Anything else is outside its domain. Its not a replacement for Google Docs for working with Google Docs native formats.

<comment><USER9> > If you read the app description, its for working with Microsoft Word, Excel, > and PowerPoint files.

Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of- choice.

"No no no, if it's a Word file you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue- and-green _circle_ to edit it, if it's a native google document you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green _hexagon_ to edit it."

"You don't know what type of document it is? No problem, you can tell by... Open it up in one of the two apps and tell me what the file extension is. The file extension. The three of four letters at the end. Wait a sec, forget that, native google docs documents don't have file extensions."

["Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square." \- _I was wrong about this, word files do have a different icon_ ]

"Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one."

"Hold on, I'll drive over..."

<comment><USER8> > Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of- > choice.

"If you need to edit things in Drive, use the Drive app."

There _are_ some use cases where the QO app makes sense, but its solving a fairly narrow problem that doesn't apply to most users.

> Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for > both, four white lines in a blue square

What are you talking about? The icon for Word files in both the QO UI and the Drive app UI is a big blue W on a white square, and is nothing like the 3-long-1-short white lines on a blue square icon for Google Documents.

> Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the > other one.

The Drive edits Doc/Docx files; if for some reason you don't like using the Drive App to do that, you can switch to QO from the document opened in Drive by using the "Open in..." menu from Drive to open a document in QO.

<comment><USER9> > The Drive edits Doc/Docx files

I've just tried it, and no, it can't. On the webapp, editing is done by converting to google docs format; that option doesn't seem to be available on mobile. It can't even view them natively, if QO isn't installed it appears to show them in a web viewer. Only quickoffice can edit .doc/.docx's. But you're right you can open a .doc in QO from drive (assuming it's installed, it'll register an intent), which does alleviate the problem.

But it's still silly, and confusing for non-technical users, to have two similarly-designed office apps, published by the same company, which can each edit a mutually-exclusive set of document formats. And that using intents to edit works one way but not the other. I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.

On the other hand you're right about the icon. My mistake, I'll correct my post.

<comment><USER8> > I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.

I would be too; it worth noting that doing separate things in overlapping-but- not-identical domains and then merging them over time ( _especially_ when one is an acquisition, like QO) isn't really unusual for Google (and increasing the overlap on the way to merger isn't unusual, either.)

QO's been around for quite a long time, and is a fairly recent acquisition. Its not a new offering, the news here is that its just been made _free_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> does it works with ODF files? is it fully compatible with libreoffice or are we getting boxed on closed formats again?

</comment><comment><USER11> Whatever i see things like this, it reminds me the way the greeks used to see the gods.. as jokers messing around with humans, much like politicians do to us nowadays.. (cause this must be a joke from the gods)

in the eighties the allmighty IBM get crushed by the rookie microsoft because it didnt see the new software wave comming.. and from this new market its arch-enemy was born

now microsoft is falling into pieces, because microsoft in the nineties, didnt see the internet revolution comming (or was afraid to ask), and its killer born from it.

google its not only taking what once was a market dominated by microsoft, but are dominating also in the internet arena.. and if you guys see well .. they have created a "internet as a platform", buying and acquiring all over the ones who create little niches in this BIG massive platform..

my question is.. it will have internet life outside of the google internet platform? and worst yet..

it will have life outside of the corporate internet the took all over? (the people who knew the internet in the beggining of times know what im talking about)

before us all were considered products and advert targets?

<comment><USER6> You question is whether the internet will consist of anything other than Google? Yes, it will.

The internet remains the internet; Google is not creating "the internet as a platform".

Fractured English is usually quite tolerable as long as it's somewhat coherent, but when it comes in the form of a nonsensical rant I find it exponentially less so.

<comment><USER11> Im not telling, that they ARE already "the platform" im saying that they are trying, that they are slowly becoming.. and if you try to measure in what proportion google services, servers, softwares and platforms make part of the internet, and all the things, software and services you have installed in your machines that are, or consume things from google, will you still think this is a triviality?

Also, there are the inner mechanics of capitalism, with its acquisitions and fusions.. and quickoffice its a example of that..

on the other side, the small companies wont stand against delicious buying offers of billions of dollars..

Capitalism its all about monopoly, isnt? so.. 2 + 2 = ..

Eric schimidt maybe is a small guy, but what a appetite.. :)

<comment><USER6> My interpretation of your point:

>"I'm not saying that they are ALREADY "the" platform, I'm saying that they are trying to be, and are slowly becoming just that.

>If you try and measure what portion of the internet is made up of Google's services/products/infrastructure and what portion of your own personal device usage depends on those services, would you still think this isn't something to worry about?

> Also, something about capitalism, words that have little to do with it... > and quickoffice is an example of that.

> On the other hand small companies will accept large buyouts.

> Capitalism is all about monopolies isn't it? So 2+2 = 'obvious point you > should be getting'

> Schmidt Quip

I understand your point, and to some degree I agree that it's worth thinking about, but certainly not worth lamenting over. Expanding infrastructure and buying up companies in areas of interest are obvious choices for a successful company.

Capitalism is about competition, not monopolies, and as long as Google has competition in the form of Amazon/Microsoft/etc. there's no point wasting time worrying about a potential future monopoly on "the internet".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the age of HTML5 Touch events and websockets, I was hoping to see a web- based office suite. I guess google settled on the native app route.

<comment><USER13> Latency on mobile for editing would be kind of sketchy much of the time I would think. Maybe not so bad on wifi, but elsewhere you're lucky to get pings that are sub 200ms on 3G networks.

Also, the stock browser on Android (the non Chrome one) and also the one built into Android Webviews in apps has no websocket support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Trying hard to counter-PR the NSA partnership :)

<comment><USER3> More like it was bound to happen just about now, and a year after they purchased it.</comment></comment>


What third-party libraries do you use for iOS development? - <AUTHOR> http://roadfiresoftware.com/2014/10/what-third-party-libraries-do-you-use-for-ios-development/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are some of my favorites - what others do you like?</comment>


"Dig Once" rule requiring fiber deployment is finally set to become US law - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/dig-once-rule-requiring-fiber-deployment-is-finally-set-to-become-us-law/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know how these conduits will be allocated to telcos? Can multiple networks fit in each of these?

This has the potential to be a perfect natural extension of the function of public roads: shared infrastructure to facilitate commerce. But, unless I'm missing something, it seems like it could just as easily end up as a subsidy for monopolies.</comment>


Yanis Varoufakis: Marx predicted our present crisis – and points the way out - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/20/yanis-varoufakis-marx-crisis-communist-manifesto <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the bit that resonates with issues often discussed on HN:

"In the manifesto's unforgettable words: "A society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."

The sorcerer will always imagine that their apps, search engines, robots and genetically engineered seeds will bring wealth and happiness to all. But, once released into societies divided between wage labourers and owners, these technological marvels will push wages and prices to levels that create low profits for most businesses. It is only big tech, big pharma and the few corporations that command exceptionally large political and economic power over us that truly benefit. If we continue to subscribe to labour contracts between employer and employee, then private property rights will govern and drive capital to inhuman ends. Only by abolishing private ownership of the instruments of mass production and replacing it with a new type of common ownership that works in sync with new technologies, will we lessen inequality and find collective happiness."

<comment><USER2> So in order to prevent these evil capitalists from ... (god forbid) fulfilling people's wishes ... we should give full power over everything ("the economy" which is everything) to person/committee X (Marx and Engels both saw that democracy and communism are incompatible) who will then "make everyone happy".

Ok ... that sounds like an excellent idea, so long of course, as your wishes and happiness are perfectly served by X.

Also: no thank you.

<comment><USER3> That ironic feeling when crony statist capitalists already have complete and total control over the economy

It's just socialism by another name, and with different recipients (namely corporate execs instead of the median human being)

<comment><USER2> Corporate execs organize companies that deliver value to society ... or they won't be execs for long.

Socialist bureaucrats ... they "justify" their place in society the way the people at the DMV do.

<comment><USER4> On the contrary, such companies don't deliver value. Their sole purpose is to extract value.

<comment><USER3> Right? Like Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen, Comcast, Raytheon, just deliver soooooooo much value to the American taxpayer!

Those executive bonuses are hard-earned!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One has to be really in thrall to an ideology to write " (a manifesto) ... needs to have the power of a Beethoven symphony, urging us to become agents of a future that ends unnecessary mass suffering and to inspire humanity to realise its potential for authentic freedom. No manifesto has better succeeded in doing all this than the one published in February 1848 at 46 Liverpool Street, London."

How about an evidence-based cost/benefit analysis?

<comment><USER6> Do you really think politics is just a matter of technical analysis? Really?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with these common ownership ideas is that hierarchy is inherent in human structures.

Whether it's labeled 'for the people' or not, you end up with the same distribution of decision makers and benefactors concentrated at the top.

It's not a problem in capitalism but one of humanity or maybe even natural law.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea that everything can be bought and sold, for example your feudal estate, is quite new. I think Varoufakis is a somewhat of a disciple of Karl Polanyi on these matters.

But I agree that the notion of "a new type of common ownership that works in sync with new technologies" needs much more spelling out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think I saw the article a few minutes ago on the first or the second page, and now it's already on the 13th, the last one, the last item. Wow. That's fast. Correction: it's gone from the pages completely as I posted this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here is an interesting related tedx talk about the proportion of rich people in Nordic socialist countries [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU)

</comment><comment><USER10> Here's the bit that resonates with issues often discussed on HN:

"I believe that Marx and Engels would have regretted not anticipating the manifesto's impact on the communist parties it foreshadowed. They would be kicking themselves that they overlooked the kind of dialectic they loved to analyse: how workers' states would become increasingly totalitarian in their response to capitalist state aggression, and how, in their response to the fear of communism, these capitalist states would grow increasingly civilized."

<comment><USER2> I know socialists see this as a critical component to their theories, and I understand why. But the truth is that the Soviet union, and China, both became very extreme totalitarian states ... not because of external aggression, but because they feared the civil war they themselves had used to get to power, before any capitalist aggression really began (long before WWII, and even during). They saw their own power (and with it, communism, at least in their minds) mortally threatened by the very mechanism that gave it birth, and therefore saw extreme measures as justified to prevent that.

I will agree that later on "capitalist" aggression made it worse. Although a significant (and the most complained about) part of capitalist "aggression" by far was accepting refugees from communism, and so perhaps aggression is not always the correct term. Other things weren't nearly so benign.

I would also like to see socialists explain why communist societies became so incredibly more aggressive after communes in the West (which were allowed to exist, in large numbers, where they weren't outright abusive) ... failed of their own accord. I mean, my idea is that they failed because they proved the truth of socialist fears : given free choice of it's members, every society will eliminate communism. Of course, I see history following the Soviet collapse as further reinforcing this idea.

<comment><USER11> > I know socialists see this as a critical component to their theories, and I > understand why. But the truth is that the Soviet union, and China, both > became very extreme totalitarian states ... not because of external > aggression, but because they feared the civil war they themselves had used > to get to power, before any capitalist aggression really began (long before > WWII, and even during).

Foreign powers involved themselves in the civil wars in both places, which complicates this claim.

China's civil war in any case took place after World War II (the Nationalist- ruled China could fairly be described as an authoritarian state but I don't know that that helps the case)`.</comment></comment></comment>


Google App Engine SDK version 1.7.1 released. - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/appengine/downloads?1.7.1

<comment><AUTHOR> The download page has not been updated. Just use version 1.7.1 in place of 1.7.0. E.g., Use [http://googleappengine.googlecode.com/files/appengine- java-s...](http://googleappengine.googlecode.com/files/appengine-java- sdk-1.7.1.zip) to download the Java SDK.</comment>


Google's multitouch dilemma - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/19/editorial-googles-multitouch-dilemma/ <comment><AUTHOR> While there may be some intercorporate chicanery going on, I think that the "blame Andy Rubin" explanation makes the most sense.

The original Sidekick team designed Android originally before being bought by Google, and their intensely odd ideas show up all over the place in the product:

      * It makes really poor use of the Linux kernel, basically using it as a bootloader,
        hardcoding random shit, implementing its own power management by exposing a few
        low-level hardware-specific bits directly to their JVM

      * Bizarro JIT-less register-based alt-JVM. Aren't native apps supposed to be faster
        than web apps? WTF did they spend effort writing V8 when Squirrelfish was doing
        great, and then not bother about performance for the part that makes phone calls?

      * Odd decomposed 'Activity' model for applications

      * No house style or easy defaults for basic shit like buttons and forms

      * Huge holes in the API, sound is fucked to the point where you can't do decent
        games, much less the kind of musical apps you see on the iPhone

      * Hidden functionality via long-touches and double-clicks everywhere

      * 5 hardware buttons in different orders on random phones
        with different functionality in every app (back is completely fucked!)

Multitouch gestures in the default apps are just one of the lesser oddities.

<comment><USER2> Squirrelfish wasn't anywhere near ready when they started.

The button arrangement is likely something they don't have control over. If you're going to release an open-source phone platform, you're not going to sign up many OEMs to use it if you dictate the details of where the buttons go. For better or worse, that's the kind of thing that the marketing people at the OEMs want to f*#& with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it's a patent issue. Too many other companies are using multi- touch in their products and it's a weak patent to start off with. I would guess that Eric Schmidt's involvement as a member of Apple's boar of directors and Google's involvement providing services for the iPhone starting in 2007, presumably as one of the first outside parties to see it, are the real problem here. Google must have realized how far ahead Apple was. They looked at the other companies in that space and figured Apple was a company they were ideologically compatible with. They were happy to offer search/maps on a product they could see was going to be a game changer. As a result they may have signed some non-competes to get on the iPhone early, or at least fear that Eric Schmidt's past involvement at Apple is a major legal risk and are playing it safe. It _is_ a bit evil to be on the board of directors of one company, have a partnership with them, and turn around and use all the same technologies in your own product a year later. I imagine there are some sunsets on whatever arrangement Apple & Google have or Google, out of their own sense of fairness, is simply not pushing the issue yet. I wouldn't be surprised if the Google Voice/iPhone issue isn't related here somehow.

My guess is neither company is all that unhappy about the prospects of being the two dominant players in the SmartPhone industry in the future. They _are_ very ideologically compatible companies. Apple poses no real threat to Google's core business, Google poses no real threat to Apple's core business. It's certainly a better arrangement than competing against Microsoft who is known to play dirty and is a more direct competitor to both companies in more ways.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like Apple has big plans for maps [http://www.tuaw.com/2009/11/30/apple- taking-their-maps-app-t...](http://www.tuaw.com/2009/11/30/apple-taking-their- maps-app-to-the-next-level/)

Google probably wants to keep their role as the mapping service for iphone maps. This may be part of a way to keep a temporary balance between the mapping ambitions of the 2 companies.

</comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps Apple has the patent on those particular multi-touch gestures.

<comment><USER6> This reason was dismissed in the article:

 _You say it's a patent issue? Nothing's changed since the last time I walked that lonely road: I still have yet to see an Apple patent that covers the pinch-to-zoom gesture, and Palm, Microsoft, and a laundry list of other companies are all now using the move without consequence. Besides, it's freaking Google -- the same company that up and decided copyright law was broken and started scanning out of print books because it wanted to try something new. Even if there is some mythical Apple patent on pinch-to-zoom, Google is one of the few companies that has the financial and legal resources to get it invalidated -- and there's plenty of prior art out there that'll help it along the way._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Transparency is not part of the "Don't be evil" motto.</comment>


OpenFlights - <AUTHOR> http://www.openflights.org/data.html

<comment><USER2> Creator of the site here: wow, did not expect to see this on Hacker News, especially since it's been _years_ since I made any significant changes. But if you have any questions, ask away!

Server's buckling under the load, so if you just want the data, you can get it straight off SourceForge: [https://sourceforge.net/p/openflights/code/HEAD/tree/openfli...](https://sourceforge.net/p/openflights/code/HEAD/tree/openflights/data/) (yes, I'm planning to finally migrate to GitHub, thank you for asking)

The blog has a lot of background about what this is and how it came to be: [http://openflights.org/blog/](http://openflights.org/blog/)

And if you'd like to see airline schedule data, especially to the point of being willing to pay money for it, I'd be much obliged if you could fill out this form: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KadfmOED90LHtUEOxA2oYW9nrN9...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KadfmOED90LHtUEOxA2oYW9nrN9ibqkz0oRVVogxM8A/viewform)

<comment><USER3> Hello Jani,

if you are interested not only in schedule, but also availability and pricing data for 55+ European and Middle-Eastern low-cost airlines, let me know.

At [http://www.azair.com](http://www.azair.com), we use it to allow our users (for free) to: a) combine different carriers (up to 3 changes en route) search by region (from: Scandinavia, to: Mediterranean, or: Anywhere) b) query long time spans (August-March) c) use very specific queries (only week-ends, depart after 9am, etc.) d) search 55+ carriers (European and Middle-eastern) e) get replies really fast

We also have a B2B XML/JSON API for both flight search and real-time availability+pricing, alas that is not for free.

Also, we tweet daily tips for return flights under €50 at [http://www.twitter.com/AZairBot](http://www.twitter.com/AZairBot)

Let me know what you think

Tom

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The data is ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) encoded, with no special characters."

This should not happen in 2014.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't 'no special characters' mean that the data is really simple ASCII?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another source for aviation data: [http://ourairports.com/data/](http://ourairports.com/data/)

<comment><USER2> This is one of the sources for the airport data on OpenFlights, although OF's data set is (intentionally) heavily filtered to formally recognized airports with IATA/ICAO codes. OurAirports is _very_ inclusive and has all sorts of helipads, bush landing strips etc that are of use to pilots, but not so much for our audience of commercial flight passengers and crew.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Smart renters disrupting real estate - The Addressory - <AUTHOR>

Hi Fellow hackers,
I wanted to share my latest project to disrupt the real estate rental market, The Addressory.
Imagine a renters network where future and current tenants of a building can ask each other questions publicly, share experiences, and even upload their own content. Visit addressory.org. Be one of the first to tell the truth about your building.
At the moment we are trying to get traction in the large metro markets but welcome input from anyone with an address :)
http://www.addressory.org <comment><USER2> What's your plan for getting users?

(I'm about to generalize here) The problem I see with this idea is that only people who had bad experiences are going to sign up and post reviews/comments etc. just to spite their housing. This happens on ratemyprofessor all the time.

What are the incentives for people to join? I would assume that your target audience is for people who are looking for new housing and new move-ins. How are you going to get current tenants to come back and answer questions once they are living there already and knowledgable about everything (since this is what creates all your content and draws people to your site I think...)?

Speaking from experience my own personal opinion, when I am satisfied with my living situation, I won't go out of my way to find and join a renters network to ask questions/share experiences. Hope this helps!

<comment><AUTHOR> That is the million dollar question.

Our main strategy is community development around Addressory. Let's build a community of renters and tenants, by renters and tenants. Let's talk about quality of life issues, like the ones discussed in the comment above.

Continuing user engagement is a problem that we are working on. Maybe it is as simple as emailing them when a new questions appears on a property they have flagged.

To your last point, I agree -- when I am happy I do not tell anyone. But would you share if I asked you to, just to pay it forward for the next person moving in?

<comment><USER2> I would question how many people would be willing to 'flag' to receive emails (unless it's the original poster). Secondly, I wouldn't share unless I got something out of it. If I'm too lazy to fill out surveys that give store credit, I probably wouldn't share for this.

I think a good strategy might be to get landlords/owners as some of the first users. They have incentive to respond to questions and comments from potential renters so that might be a good starting point for content.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the first version of the site we had a model for renters, brokers, and landlords. We tried to service everyone through on place. However, after we built it I realized that I would never use that site. I wanted to build a site for tenants and no one else.

I agree that there are a lot of people who are too lazy or unwilling to contribute. Our challenge is to convince them it is a good idea, and do it without some awful gamification-skinner-box methodology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I thought about building a site like this 10 years ago when I was living in an apartment. While I think free-form Yelp-style comments are useful, in most cases, they are going to be rants. As the saying goes in marketing, when they love you, they'll tell 1 friend. When they hate you, they'll tell 10. My idea for a site involved a more structured review process, like a survey. How much was your rent, deposit, etc,? How fast were maintenance requests completed? What percent of your deposit was returned? Rate the cleanliness of the building, friendliness of management, etc. Was there plenty of parking available on the street? That sort of thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed -- people love to complain and rarely share kudos. But there is also a lot of middle ground. First and foemost, The Addressory is not a review site. We offer no quantitative ratings. Rather, we are a forum where people can share information.

The goal of Addressory is to give you more data so that you can make an informed decision. If a property were to have many negative comments, it at least provides a datapoint that would prompt you to ask questions to the realtor or landlord prior to moving in.

Those questions asked above are all relevant and, we hope, become topics of conversation.

Lastly, those looking for a shot-in-the-arm answer may not find the Addressory very useful. Those who perform due diligence prior to renting or buying will find this data valuable.

<comment><USER3> I guess your site is more useful for the person who has a particular apartment in mind, and wants to know more before making the decision. My idea for a site was to help people find an apartment in the first place (hence the quantitative questions). I would love to know what apartment has the fastest maintenance response and the highest percent of deposit returned, while avoiding the ones with the least amount of street parking and the noisiest neighbors.

<comment><AUTHOR> You nailed it. Our value comes after someone has found a few places and is looking for more information.

We have discussed building a listing engine into the site, which would aid in the search for properties. However, that is complicated and does not fit with our strategy at the moment. Right now it is all about traction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Opt Out of a Body Scan? Then Brace Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Opt-Out-of-a-Body-Scan-Then-nytimes-3016411705.html?x=0 <comment><USER2> The repeated "Opt out!" yelling tactic is obviously a way to intimidate and humiliate the participant, and dissuade anyone else who would otherwise choose to opt out.

I have not had the opportunity to opt out yet. But when I do, I will gladly join in the opt out screaming session, and add some other choice words of my own.

I refuse to quietly be a part of some absurd bureaucratic plot that slowly and steadily strips away my civil rights.

<comment><USER3> The whole invasive pat-down is just a way to intimidate and humiliate people away from that choice.

This is the last straw for me, personally. I'll just be vacationing closer to home now or working old-school road trips into my plans. Maybe if the outraged take a few less flights a year, the vacation, airline and union lobbies will take up the cause.

<comment><USER4> For whom on HN are pat downs intimidating and/or humiliating? I personally don't mind it at all, but I can understand that they could be a problem for somebody.

I'm much more worried about CCTV's everywhere, cell phone tracking, internet usage tracking, tracking cars with cameras on highways that read number plates, etc. All these tools are extremely well suited for keeping a dictator in place. I'm afraid that if we get one, then we're not getting rid of him any time soon.

<comment><USER5> Me. It's insane. It serves no purpose other than to intimidate and harasses normal citizens just trying to get from point A to point B. The fact that I'm assumed to be that stupid, plus the 1984-esqe overtones really, really gets to me.

<comment><USER4> Right. So it's not so much the physical aspects of pat downs, but the reasons behind the pat downs?

<comment><USER5> I mean, I was raised Catholic, so I'm not exactly the model of immodesty, but yes, its not the 'omg they'll touch my junk' part as it is the infringement on basic human rights part.

And being reminded that some people think this is okay. And that most people accept it.

I have slightly unusual polititcal views, so such a visible reminder that I'm 'the only person who cares' really riles me up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I went through O'Hare recently, where they've installed a battery of these devices. The way they had it set up, it was used as the secondary screener for people who got called out for random searches.

Guess who got called for "random" searches in the machine? Pretty much every hot chick in line. Now, this observation was purely anecdotal, so take it for what it is. But the coincidence was not lost on me, or on anyone else in the line. It was disgusting behavior on the TSA workers' part.

<comment> mike-cardwell I thought only women operated the machinery where women were scanned and only men, where the men are scanned?

<comment><USER7> Gender doesn't necessarily determine sexual orientation; the machines are _required_ to have facilities to store and transmit images; and besides, the mere power of forcefully suggesting someone submit to a strip search is titillation in itself, quite apart from viewing any resulting imagery.

<comment> mike-cardwell I never said it did.

The implication of the comment I was replying to was that it was a bunch of men wanting to look at naked women. I just didn't see how that could be if you were only allowed to observe someone of the same sex...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just passed through the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The back-scatter scanner is right next to the metal detector and the procedure was that they would "offer" you the choice to walk through the new scanner and said if you turned it down that they would have to perform a physical search. I told them I did not wish to go through the scanner, at which point they walked me past the metal detector (not through) to the pat-down area. While standing there for a few moments for the TSA personel, several people went through the metal detector with no further search. Further, the notification that the machine is still in testing phase is posted after you have already passed through it. It was abundantly clear at that point, the new policy of intimidation and humiliation has nothing to do with my personal safety.

The unilateral and unpublished changes in screening procedure are blatant abuses of authority and undermine the principles of our society. The argument that I have given implicit consent to being searched just by buying an airplane ticket is completely voided when the search procedures are constantly changing without detailed public knowledge or immediate explanation.

I have no fears about flying in general or those caused by the threat of terrorism. I am much more likely to die in a small plane crash with one of my pilot friends at the controls. What terrifies me the most is this blatant disregard of civil liberties and the apparent complacency with which the public submits to the draconian policies being put in place without consent of the people.

</comment><comment><USER9> Every story about the TSA always seems to end with something like this article did:

"Mr. Delahorne said he was perfectly willing to comply with all procedures to ensure good security."

There's always a quote about how someone is willing to do what must be done to ensure our safety. It makes me think that news agencies are required to do this or get paid to do this.

<comment><USER10> I just view it as a sort of standard disclaimer to preempt the usual criticism that dissenters are somehow ignorant, unreasonable, or un-American.

Basically: "I'm an otherwise reasonable person in full possession of my faculties."

<comment><USER9> That's possible but the impression that I have is that by always including such remarks it has the effect of making people who disagree with security measures as wanting something bad to happen. It's sort like the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Instead of focusing on whether or not the measures are appropriate the debate is about whether or not you want to be safe. I think it makes dissenters look bad by making them against being safe.

<comment><USER5> Yep, this is an old PR trick. It's why you'll see organizations that are preparing to be involved in a political demonstration agree to a 'points of unity' that always have a clause about 'respecting a diversity of tactics.'

If you start asking one group, "What do you think of those guys smashing windows?", it changes the dialogue from "What's your message," to "Aren't those guys bad?" And it's not like you're able to properly discuss such a subtle point as "this is a false dichotomy," when talking to news outlets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We have always been at war with Eastasia.

<comment><USER12> I came here to post this, there's nothing more to say. This is all very sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My guess is the option of opting out is likely going to be removed in a year or so. The most effective way to remove freedom and privacy is incrementally.

</comment><comment><USER14> What happens when a parent has their children opt-out of the full-body scanner? Can the TSA be sued for child abuse or can the parent press for criminal charges for touching?

<comment> DifE-Q I have curtailed my domestic flying personally or with my family due to these asinine security theater exhibitions. In all it amounts to about $5000.00 in lost revenue to the airline industry every year. So if enough people do this then hopefully that will send a message to these people.

Now there may be a time when I or my family have to fly and for sure I will be opting out my entire family. When they go to feel-up my children I will ask the person doing it if he/she has a history of child molestation...since they are getting all personal with me and my children I plan on getting personal with them.

I will try and remember to report back when with the results...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> To me this is just another reason (of many) that travelers should consider general aviation (charter, etc.) as an alternative to commercial airline travel.

The straight financial cost _may_ be higher but avoiding all of this sort of nonsense has its rewards, and remember that most GA operators are locally- owned smallish businesses that appreciate your support and treat their passengers like customers and not like prisoners (or worse).

<comment><USER16> I echo tocomment - for someone who has only ever flown commercial, how would one go about finding and hiring a GA operator? What's kind of premium would you expect pay for a regional (eg Chicago to Detroit) flight or a longer flight (eg Chicago to LA)?

<comment><USER17> I'm also curious. Do you use a national charter company or do you have to contract directly with owner/pilots? How much does it cost? How fast is it compared to regular commercial travel?

<comment><USER18> A little over a decade ago, my company used a local charter company when Northwest's pilots went on strike. We were able to get a five-seat turboprop with two pilots for $2000 for 70 minute flight (about 400 miles.) A full-fare ticket on Northwest cost about $540 at the time. Our total travel time was cut in half--no ticketing, no security screening, no baggage claim. We even convinced the rental car companies to run our cars over to the charter office. All we had to do was say hello at the charter office and head on to the plane. This particular company also had seven- and ten-seaters which were slightly cheaper per person per hour. I assume the prices would be more expensive now. Anybody have experience with netjet or similar fractional ownership?

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the same flight on Northwest was 50 minutes in the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Baltimore Washington Intl. airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport both recently got body scanners. They both changed their process to close all lanes not equipped with a body-scanner and funnel everyone through the one or two scanners they had.

At BWI they would make every 15th or so person go through the scanner, or anyone who volunteered by walking up to it instead of the metal detector.

At Atlanta the scanners weren't even operational yet and they still only opened the metal detectors with scanners beside them and had an army of TSA screeners standing around doing nothing while a huge crowd of travelers waited in a very long line.

The processes have indeed changed.

<comment><USER19> Additionally I would feel perfectly safe flying without any security screening at the airports.

No "terrorists" have been attacking schools, churches, malls, buses, trains, bridges, theaters, libraries, office buildings, etc. Either they only attack planes (not even the airports themselves) or there aren't enough terrorists to justify this amount of "security".

<comment><USER20> I've always been baffled by the lack of those sorts of attacks. One can imagine the economic damage if everyone was terrified to go to malls, grocery stores, schools, etc.

Amazon.com would be about the only company to come out okay.

<comment><USER21> I hate to keep making a point of this, but it has happened in the past and the solution wasn't pretty. Wikipedia says:

The Troubles' impact on the ordinary people of Northern Ireland produced such psychological trauma that the city of Belfast had been compared to London during the Blitz. [104] The stress resulting from bomb attacks, street disturbances, security checkpoints, and the constant military presence had the strongest effect on children and young adults. [105] In addition to the violence and intimidation, there was chronic unemployment and a severe housing shortage. Vandalism was also a major problem. In the 1970s there were 10,000 vandalised empty houses in Belfast alone. Most of the vandals were aged between eight and thirteen. [106] Activities for young people were limited, with pubs fortified and cinemas closed. Just to go shopping in the city centre required passing through security gates and being subjected to body searches.

In addition, some statistics from the same page:

Injuries 47,541

Shootings 36,923

Armed robberies 22,539

People charged with paramilitary offences 19,605

Bombings and attempted bombings 16,209

Arson 2,225 [citation needed]

I'm constantly amazed that after surviving the Troubles we over-react so massively to a couple of nutjobs lighting their crotches. Al Qaeda are incompetent morons. PIRA were fucking scary.

<comment><USER3> The IRA was a completely different case.

They weren't asking agents to directly murder random individuals or property. They had the tacit support of (or were at least politely ignored by) much of the surrounding populace and social institutions. They didn't stick out in a crowd. They were born and raised there, had history, jobs, families.

Al Qaeda enjoys none of those advantages for planning attacks in the US. Until and unless they can successfully recruit within the US and garner support within the US, an IRA-style campaign is implausible.

That Al Qaeda has to rely on people who consistently can't light a fuse under stress, or keep a bomb-factory under wraps highlights how much harder it is to find people to perform wanton murder, even as compared to finding people willing to destroy property or carry out targeted murders.

<comment><USER21> Besides the fact that most of the Al Qaeda members involved in the London bombings were British citizens, if you stand out then the IRA style attacks are easier to perform. You don't have to get through airport security or pass a background check. You just go shopping. Thousands of immigrants do it without being stopped by the police.

> They weren't asking agents to directly murder random individuals or > property.

From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles>

"In 1972, the Provisional IRA killed approximately 100 soldiers, wounded 500 more and carried out approximately 1,300 bombings,[66] mostly against commercial targets which they considered "the artificial economy".[67][68] The bombing campaign killed many civilians, notably on Bloody Friday on 21 July, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast killing seven civilians and two soldiers. "

But otherwise I agree. The level of competence of Al Qaeda recruits is laughable in comparison to PIRA. Which is exactly my point - we've survived far worse, why are we giving up so much of what we stand for for protection from such incompetent terrorists?

<comment><USER3> Having citizenship doesn't confer the same benefits of having _roots_ like the IRA did. It makes you less suspicious than someone without citizenship, sure. But it's still not sufficient for an IRA-style campaign.

e.g. Attacking a shopping mall or hotel isn't difficult and all but impossible to prevent, I absolutely agree. The difference is, the al qaeda agent won't find refuge a few blocks away. He won't melt into any crowd. He won't have trusted people from the community who will keep quiet or lie to the authorities for him. He won't have a weapon supplier who continues to supply him. And the resource that he _does_ have are far more likely to melt away as it becomes clear that he is out to indiscriminately murder. Ergo the ability of any foreign agent to make subsequent strikes is drastically reduced.

And, unless I'm mistaken, the IRA never _set out_ to murder non-uniformed, uninvolved civilians. Those that were killed, such as on Bloody Friday, were considered among the IRA wholly undesirable collateral damage. While it takes a certain kind of person to be convinced to drop off a bomb designed to strike a military target, or property target of a collaborator, that _might_ kill innocent people, it's far, far more difficult to find people who will execute an attack _designed_ to kill people going about their day.

And I absolutely agree that our response is laughable. But that's how it goes. Authority has no vested interest in proportional or rational response. Its rewards are aligned with over-reaction. If its masters (ostensibly the voters) don't choose to curtail that response or correct the reward structure, we'll only see continued escalation.

<comment><USER21> > But it's still not sufficient for an IRA-style campaign

Sure, you wouldn't be as successful as the IRA, but it would still be a damn sight easier than attacking planes. Consider the hotel attacks in India for an example of how poorly defended most locations are.

> the IRA never set out to murder non-uniformed, uninvolved civilians

They bombed shops and factories that they considered to be part of the 'artificial'' economy of the British rulers. Non-uniformed, uninvolved civilians tend to work in shops and factories, hence the huge number of civilian injuries and casualties.

More stats:

Deaths by status of victim[2]

Status No.

Civilian 1855

Members of security forces (and reserves) 1123

of whom:

British Army (excluding Northern Ireland regiments) 502

Royal Ulster Constabulary 301

Ulster Defence Regiment 196

Northern Ireland Prison Service 24

Garda Síochána 9

Royal Irish Regiment 7

Territorial Army 7

English police forces 6

Royal Air Force 4

Royal Navy 2

Irish Army 1

Members of Republican Paramilitary Groups 394

Members of loyalist Paramilitary Groups 151

> .... property target of a collaborator ...

Whilst the Troubles was nominally a political conflict the lines were drawn across ethnic/religious grounds. Being a Protestant was sufficient to draw fire from PIRA (similary Catholics were persecuted by the loyalists).

<comment><USER3> And all I'm trying to draw a line between, is the way _the shops_ were the target for the IRA as opposed to _the civilians_ , themselves.

It's a lot easier to talk someone into leaving a bomb next to a boiler than to pick up an assault rifle and fire indiscriminately into a crowd of civilians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just got through the airport lastweek and didn't have to deal with this silliness. But I can't wait to go back to the US so I can opt-out. I'm not a perv, but can't wait to see the look on the screener's face while s/he's forced to touch my johnson.

"That's not a roll of quarters my friend" :-)

<comment><USER23> "I was going to guess nickels."

<comment><USER22> Maybe if enough protests come about in this fashion then the screeners will force their bosses to drop this stupid policy. Like, "I didn't take this job to be touching 500 penises a day. And everyone's got snarky comments!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Serious question for the physicists: How feasible would it be to put a faraday cage in one's underpants that wouldn't trigger a metal detector but would mess up the body scanner?

<comment><USER25> A Faraday cage is, by definition, a conductive cage. You'll have a hard time getting a conductive material through a metal detector.

Your best bet would be to construct a garment from a material which is significantly absorbs/attenuates the extremely high frequencies (30GHz to 300GHz) used by these millimeter-wave imaging scanners. Normal clothing passes these waves with minimal attenuation, where they bounce off of your skin and return to the scanner. The scanner then uses these returned signals to reconstruct an image of your naked body for the TSA to examine. If your clothing instead absorbs most of this signal, or at least attenuates it significantly enough to fall below the dynamic range of the imager, the TSA won't be able to see much.

Absorbing millimeter-wave signals to a significant enough degree will require a relatively thick material. I typically use RF foam in the lab when I'm working on EMI compliance issues because it is cheap and easy to cut to size. Attenuation data is scarce for the EHF band, but ARC Technologies has a lossy flexible foam that has 25dB of attenuation at 40GHz ( <http://www.arc- tech.com/lossyflexiblefoam.php> ), which amounts to 50dB of round-trip attenuation from the imager to your skin back to the imager. 50dB loss means only 0.001% of the original signal will bounce back to the scanner.

Even more absorption can be had if you use pyramidal foam, much like you see in a typical antenna chamber. ( <http://www.ets-lindgren.com/pdf/absorber.pdf> ) Of course, this probably won't be the most comfortable garment you've ever worn.

Still, I would imagine wearing such a garment would immediately raise red flags and you would quickly find yourself in a back room with some unfriendly TSA agents. You're much better off opting out.

<comment><USER24> > Even more absorption can be had if you use pyramidal foam

Hell, it would also make the pat-down a lot more interesting!

Thanks for the detailed answer.

Of course my original question was somewhat facetious, but I do think it's farcical that, nine years after 9/11, in order to fly within the "land of the free and home of the brave" one has to be subjected to these humiliating so- called security measures. Military-industrial complex indeed! It would be interesting to trace the political donations given by the companies that make these machines...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just returned from an international trip a couple of weeks ago and am glad I missed this. However the snap on my pants (!) must have set off the metal detector so I was still patted down.

In what other business is a normal, paying customer treated this way? Not quite the golden age of commercial aviation . . .

</comment><comment><USER26> An organization, say like the EFF, should coordinate mass "opt-out" travel at peak travel times.

A little "gridlock" might highlight the absurdity of the situation.

</comment><comment><USER27> _"No, no. The process has always been the same, at every airport."_

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why the hell wasn't this an election issue? I would have gladly voted against any candidate who supported this.

</comment><comment><USER29> If enough would choose opt out (despite the obvious intimidation tactics), then the entire process would become so inefficient that an easy, efficient alternate would be provided (or the scanners removed altogether). It would likely take a majority of people opting out though.

<comment><USER30> I think you overestimate government desire to eliminate inefficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> 'No, no. The process has always been the same, at every airport.'

INGSOC! We should have known, 1984 is long due.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am seriously tempted to find some metal tape for the next time I have to fly, "mark up" my t-shirt with a suggestion as to where the TSA can shove their body-scan machine, and walk through side-ways.

<comment><USER19> Your idea reminds me of this story from 2006.

Milwaukee resident Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag given to passengers by airport security. As a result he claims he was detained and told that the First Amendment did not apply to security checkpoints.

[http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety- security/606142...](http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety- security/606142-i-detained-tsa-checkpoint-about-25-minutes-today.html)

Kip Hawley was the head of TSA at the time.

<comment><USER33> All it reminds me of is the person who actually had that idea, on this site, five days ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1849311>

<comment><USER32> It is a rather obvious hack, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Who is responsible for crafting these procedures, I.E., requiring the body scans or alternative opt-out procedures? Do they have a name besides "Homeland Security"?

<comment><USER35> Perhaps you're thinking of the Transportation Security Administration?

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Original article (not framed by Yahoo):

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/business/02road.html>

</comment><comment><USER37> To the frequent business travelers, might this increase the growing trend of working remotely?

Now that it's trivial to set up video-conferencing on your home workstation, and collaborate via online tools that range the gamut from github to office docs to just about anything you can imagine, might this drive even more people to shift business travel to remote work instead?

</comment><comment><USER38> I heard those body scanners can cause cancer

</comment><comment><USER39> I've been through Cleveland Hopkins Intl' and San Jose Intl' in the last days and there were "opt-out lanes" in which no body scanners were used and you went through the normal metal detectors. No pat down either. Nobody told you into which lane you have to go, so there was absolutely no pressure.

</comment><comment><USER40> They can pat me down in the crotch until they're blue in the face: they'll never find anything.

<comment><USER37> I'm not sure what that means, or if I want to know, or if I'm seeing innuendos where there aren't any, but it made me lol anyway. Have an upvote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It seems that the best way to get around this would be to make life unbearable for the TSA agents. The politicians can't be reached.

While physically assaulting them would be very satisfying, simply freezing them out socially would properly be a better tactic, since it is impossible to arrest people for.

<comment><USER42> "The politicians can't be reached."

Of course they can! Mail, email, they can certainly be reached, and right now they're extra sensitive to issues that upset their constituents.

<comment><USER43> _right now they're extra sensitive to issues that upset their constituents_

Quite the opposite. Right now is the maximum time before the next election. That means they've got the longest time possible for you to forget. Any shenanigans they'd like to engage in would be safest now.

<comment><USER42> It is the maximum time, but issues are not that simple. The long-term members of Congress know the electorate are upset, and want to make nice; the new members are spoiling for a fight; the Dems are in disarray and retreat (I haven't a clue as to why), and the GOP is eagerly taking ground. It's a perfect time to push an issue with your Congress members.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lowering memory usage in Opera and Blink with Heap compaction - <AUTHOR> http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/07/memory-usage-opera-heap-compaction/ <comment><USER2> Impressive work by the Opera team! Savings to cause up to around a third of the memory usage is huge. So it's coming up in Blink in the forthcoming months.

I wondered in the discussion thread of that article whether these changes will also affect extension memory usage? Some are known to balloon quite a bit. I expect this work to not only help those, but be especially useful there because they are pretty much pure Javascript.</comment>


Uber Visa Card - <AUTHOR> https://www.uber.com/newsroom/uber-visa-card/ <comment><USER2> Coming Soon:

Uber Splurge Pricing!

There are times when so many people are using credit cards that there aren't enough payment gateways available to process them all. Birthdays, Black Fridays and even Days of Thanks, for instance, may cause unusually large numbers of people to want to use their Uber Visa card all at the same time. But fear not, learn how splurge pricing quickly helps each person who really wants to spend their money, spend just a little more to complete their purchase. For retailers, splurge means higher earnings potential. When you're open, your store displays areas with high demand customers in shades of red. The deeper the shade of red, the lower that area's average customer patience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am i missing something because this actually looks like a really good cash back card.

Unlimited 4% back on dining and 3% on airfare and hotel are really good. 2% cash back on online purchases matches the best straight up cash back program i know (double cash which is 2% back on everything). The 1% matches most other programs for generic purchases.

I might actually get this as a second card (currently just have chase freedom).

<comment><USER4> Is it cash back, or Uber credit back? I think its the latter, in which case the card is still a good deal assuming you value Uber credit.

<comment><USER3> From the FAQ: Points can be redeemed for Uber credits directly in the Uber app. Points can also be redeemed for cash back or gift cards. All redemptions are at a 1% value.

Not sure what "All redemptions are at a 1% value." means though.

<comment><USER5> > Not sure what "All redemptions are at a 1% value." means though.

1% back if you redeem for cash. 4/3/2/1% only if you redeem for Uber credits. The page feels misleading about that.

<comment><USER3> You sure about that as most other websites are touting it as cash back: [https://thepointsguy.com/2017/10/barclaycard-uber- visa/](https://thepointsguy.com/2017/10/barclaycard-uber-visa/)

<comment><USER5> Not positive, but I pointed out in the comments on TPG that I think they made a mistake in their headline.

The Uber card page doesn't state anywhere that the 4/3/2/1 reward percentages are _cash_ back. In any case, it's something ambiguous for Uber to clarify. I'm hoping my assumption here is incorrect.

Edit: I dug into the terms on Barclaycard's site and you do get the same full percentages for cash back with the caveat that you can only redeem reward balances of $25+ for cash (vs $5+ for Uber credits). See the section "Cash Back Redemptions".

[https://www.barclaycardus.com/apply/action/tncContent?prodid...](https://www.barclaycardus.com/apply/action/tncContent?prodidreq=CCVPS71944).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> But why?

<comment><USER7> In addition to what others have added, the cash-back is only spendable through the Uber app.

<comment><USER8> "Points can be redeemed for Uber credits directly in the Uber app. Points can also be redeemed for cash back or gift cards. All redemptions are at a 1% value."

"Redemptions for Uber credits start at 500 points for $5 and all other redemptions start at 2,500 points for $25."

"Bank deposits will be transferred to your checking or savings account within three to four (3-4) business days and there is a $500 daily limit for cash back rewards deposited into U.S. checking or savings accounts. Statement credits will be posted to your account within one to two (1-2) business days."

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I failed at reading comprehension there. So it's not _only_ spendable there, but it is a good incentive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best examples of "startup journey" blogs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> you should put:

Ask HN:

before the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. First time posting here.</comment></comment>


Smart Grid Vulnerable to Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/20/smartgrid.vulnerability/index.html

<comment><USER2> Hmmm, so the authors are worried about potential vulnerabilities in connected, embedded systems? The electrical grid already has many connected, embedded systems - and I've not heard of any significant hacks, probably because electrical utilities are actually pretty good at securing their devices and networks. I think embedded systems are easier to protect than general purpose PCs. Companies like <http://www.Mocana.com> make security components for embedded systems, which are highly likely to be adopted by smart grid manufacturers (if they haven't been adopted already). Overall, I'd say this is much ado about nothing.</comment>


Truck sales are rising, Hybrid sales are falling - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/22/autos/trucks_back/index.htm

<comment><USER2> This news doesn't fit this forum - that's beside the point ... Did the big three pay $$ to CNN to write that? That's anything but true, I see a lot of trucks on road with 'for sale' sticker, people want to switch, real bad. Only fools will go and buy a gas guzzler thinking this oil price is going to last for long. Gas has as much politics in it as politics has gas!

</comment><comment><USER3> More threads about cars please!</comment>


IPhone Users Sue AT&T For 'Aiding and Abetting' Smartphone Thieves - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/04/12/iphone-users-sue-att-for-aiding-and-abetting-smartphone-thieves/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have to agree that it's ridiculous that they haven't created a database of stolen phones before. This is exactly the type of work the FCC and gov't regulation should focus on. Simple and powerful regulation.</comment>


Windows CoreAudio API in C# - <AUTHOR> http://hardkjarni.blogspot.com/2016/02/windows-coreaudio-api-in-c.html <comment><USER2> The code is well structured and easy to read. Thanks for the example.

Random aside: Why do so many C# coders use #region/#endregion? It really seems like a bad habit that discourages otherwise good coders from splitting their code into logical OOP silos and instead they dump too much code into a single file, and then use regions to regain some kind of order...

Regions are like goto in that they don't within their own right do anything "bad" they just encourage really bad habits, and people start to think about things in terms of regions. Plus finding things in a project which contains tons of really long code files with regions is immensely harder than finding them in a project with a lot of isolated classes and decent inheritance.

<comment><USER3> > discourages ... from splitting their code into logical OOP silos

What you fail to see is those silos can be a prison. One of the worst experiences I consistently have with heavily "OOP-person" code is you come to a new source tree and there are so many little tiny do-nothing classes and interfaces in individually tiny insignificant files that you can't come fresh to the project and tell "where the meat is" by browsing the filesystem. Putting those smaller interfaces and glue in a few mid-sized thematically oriented source files can be a breath of fresh air relative to this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly this. There is a fine line with regions and they have their uses.

As an example, I was working on a project a while back that had StyleCop rules set up so stringently that nothing could live in the same file, no enums, structs, extension methods, nada. The amount of files you had to create when adding new functionality (even a minor one) was mind boggling...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the title, I wondered how to call Mac OS X's _" Core Audio"_ ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Audio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Audio), [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/MusicA...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/MusicAudio/Conceptual/CoreAudioOverview/WhatisCoreAudio/WhatisCoreAudio.html)) from Windows. My best guess was that QuickTime, or iTunes ship with DLLs implementing it for Windows.

Turns out a bit of a disappointment for the hacker in me. Windows has an API with the same name ([https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/dd3...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/dd370802\(v=vs.85\).aspx))

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha, indeed. I didn't realize myself until I started looking into this that MS named the system in Vista the same as the Apple team did in Panther. :) Guess it is the nerd in us all wanting to be working on the "Core" stuff

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Holy shit, thank you. I wrote a tool to mute a game automatically when I backgrounded the window and was extremely annoyed when I found out that I had to work with COM in C++. I knew absolutely 0 COM and had to clobber together example code until I got something that barely worked and crashed randomly. I figured C# had good COM integration and could do it but just couldn't quite figure out how.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're more than welcome, glad that you might find this useful. Hope this HELPS "stabilise" things ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those targeting WinRT, Windows 10 introduced AudioGraph for low latency audio and it is supported for all languages able to use WinRT.

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/hardware/mt...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/hardware/mt298187%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)</comment>


Cau-book-js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/letfly/cau-book-js <comment><USER2> Not even with a short description of what this thing is for, seriously?</comment>


Raspberry Pi's Gertboard expansion board already works (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/raspberry-pis-gertboard-expansion-board-already-works-video-2012019/ <comment><USER2> Using C to call the shell to write a character to a file to drive a motor. Amazing.

<comment><USER3> Why? Why???

The overhead of spawning the shell is going to be _significant_ versus simply opening /sys/class/gpio/... directly.

The PIC attached via SPI sounds cool, though. It'd be cool if they supported USB-capable PICs and brought the USB pins out to a mini-B header in the final or second version of the Gertboard.

<comment><USER4> >Why? Why???

The person who wrote this probably didn't know of a different way of doing it.

<comment><USER5> he knew better, but it's to 'demonstrate ease of use' : <http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/500#comment-7659></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most expressive pattern matching language - <AUTHOR> Which language have you learned and used that has the most expressive pattern matching constructs? <comment><USER2> Ometa: [http://www.tinlizzie.org/ometa/](http://www.tinlizzie.org/ometa/) (article on processing TCP with ometa using the RFC tables as a packet definition [http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law- software...](http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law-software- part-3-of-3.html))

</comment><comment><USER3> From the ones I've used I would say Haskell. I like Elixir too, but Haskell is typed so I guess it makes it more "expressive" (or "safe", not sure what's the right term here).</comment>