Somebody Stole 7 Milliseconds From the Federal Reserve - <AUTHOR> http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/09/25/1955220/somebody-stole-7-milliseconds-from-the-federal-reserve

<comment><USER2> this was discussed here weeks ago, but theres no search so i wont give links.

<comment><USER3> You can search on [http://hnsearch.com](http://hnsearch.com)</comment></comment>


Nimblebit Responds to Zynga's New Game - <AUTHOR> https://s3.amazonaws.com/nbpromo/dearzynga.jpg

<comment><USER2> eh, it's close, and probably on some level derived from, but certainly different enough. Congrats on being game of the year?

</comment><comment><USER3> By the way, it's surprising and welcome to see how much people like games which are based on construction and crafting.</comment>


Is the Oculus Rift sexist? - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/192874/is-the-oculus-rift-designed-to-be-sexist/

<comment><USER2> This is a very interesting article about differences between the sexes causing differences in 3D perception and the implications for making technology that works well for men and women.

Unfortunately, the title and last paragraph are horrible. There's just no good reason (other than link bait) to use the word 'sexist' in this context.

<comment><USER3> I had the exact same experience. Eye-rolled at the title but clicked anyway and was pleasantly surprised to find a really interesting bit of research in the actual article.

Semi-related, I've lost my ability to flag things on HN. Did something about karma levels needed change or did I just lose it at the whim of some mod? (I have a tendency to flag items with headlines like this, although this article is HN worthy).

<comment> atom-morgan Same response here but the article title is still misleading. There may be differences in experience between two genders but it's not _sexist_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating read. In summary, the author's research seems to show that males tend to rely more on motion parallax to judge depth, while females have a greater reliance on 'shape from shading' \- the minute difference in shading that occurs when you move your head about.

Since current systems rely on the former, and shape from shading is damn tricky to handle with real-time head movements, women on average are more likely to feel sick in contemporary simulators.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. It suggests an opportunity: a startup making an immersive 3D system optimized for the female visual system. Perhaps these folks will nail it: [http://technicalillusions.com/](http://technicalillusions.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link-baity title, but article makes some interesting points. More accurate title would've been: Is the Oculus Tailored to Male Visual Processing.</comment>


Youtube published nearly 1000 videos of people killing snails for fun - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=snail+crush

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently, it is some kind of sexual fetish. I flagged many of these videos as Violent and repulsive content > animal abuse, but without any reaction from Youtube. Some (but very few) of these videos are empty snail shells or imitations of snails.

If you feel empathy with snails please, flag these.

</comment><comment><USER2> What is wrong with these people? I just don't get it and want to know more about this. Oww: <http://www.crush-fetish.net/>

</comment><comment><USER3> WTF</comment>


Meet the Average American Family (Infographic) - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/04/meet_the_averag.html

<comment><USER2> I love how when you click the image, it takes you to a _smaller_ version!

Here is a link to a much bigger and more readable version: [http://c1334262.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/average- am...](http://c1334262.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/average-american- family.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe this is a content-free presentation. It seems obvious that many of the facts presented are meaningless or are not provided in a proper context.

"$117,951 average debt" includes home mortgage. The poster states 95k of this is in mortgage and 2.2k in credit cards, but not where the other 20k is located.

"25% of people have no savings", while over 25% of the population is children.

"40% of working Americans are not saving for retirement", taking into account that working Americans include those between 18 and 35, I would say that is in line with expectation. We are not told if this counts those with pension funds payments from their employer.

"24% workers who have postponed their retirement age in the past year," which population is this a sample of? Are they only counting those whose retirement is imminent?

<comment><USER4> I agree the "average debt" is a silly, but I assumed "25% have no savings at all" (note: it does not say "25% of people") meant "25% of working Americans," a continuation of the line item right above it.

<comment><USER3> You may be correct, the lack of conjunction and my reading left to right, top to bottom conspired to introduce ambiguity in my interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just for your information, this might not bear much meaning to people outside USA.

I'm a Russian guy and it is mostly gibberish to me. No saving for retirement? No mutual funds, stock or bonds? Is it supposed to be striking or what?

Also: less than 4/10 of American adults have an emergency fund to fall back on. This is still pretty big fraction of prudent people if you ask me, isn't it?

<comment><USER6> What happens to Russians who retire?

<comment><USER5> They get pension, which is funded from the taxes they presumably paid while they were working (if they were not working, they will still get some). Just like it is in other countries, I suppose.

<comment><USER6> And nobody ever considers to save any money on the side? Or which parts of the "infographic" were confusing to you?

<comment><USER5> I guess some do consider; don't know how many. But if you say that 40% don't save for retirement I just have no idea if it is supposed to be unusual or perfectly normal. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised with any number up to 80%; I suspect most people are reckless and not forward-thinking (judging by myself maybe - I am reckless young man) And - is it supposed to be some special kind of saving scheme that you use for retirement?

The same goes for mutual funds, stock, bonds and. Are all people supposed to have them? Or bank accounts, even. Sure, most people have them now, but some don't. 7% or 16% looks ok to me.

I wanted to communicate that I (and probably many other people) have no frame of reference to relate the information in this infographic to, while the it implies that anyone does. Well, maybe this is not a good infographic after all.

<comment><USER6> Not saying it is a good infographic, but I suppose it also provides it's own frame of reference. If it states that 40% don't save for retirement, it almost implies that for at least 40%, it is not a normal thing to do. Of course it is open how may don't do it because they don't care, and how many because they can't afford to.

One weird aspect: where I live, buying a house would count as "saving for retirement". Not sure how they counted it in that infographic.

As for being reckless: just wait, thinking about retirement might become more prevalent for you the older you get...

Incidentally I think this is why many young people accept bad salaries: they have no idea yet how much money real life really costs.

As for (private) saving for retirement: where I live every now and then there are big campaigns for it. But it also is big business, so it is questionable how much of that campaigning is for the benefit for the people, and how much is for the benefits of the banks. Ie is owning stocks and bonds and stuff good for you, or for the banks and funds?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good, now let's meet the Median American Family.

<comment><USER8> Hear hear. Also, these statistics are nowhere near the average income tax statistics I saw when I finished my tax returns on Turbo Tax this year. The average income is much, much higher as are some of the other categories (capital gains, etc). I guess there's a big difference between the tax-filing average American family and the overall average?

<comment><USER9> Is Turbo Tax's data from all Americans, or just their customer base?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does the household debt include the debt to the bank on the house?

I can't stand infographics btw.

<comment><USER11> From what I gathered it does, which whilst is technically a debt it shouldn't be classified nearly the same as an outstanding balance on a credit card.

That's like treating a fresh steak the same as a can of corned beef. Yes it's beef, but one will last a few hours sat on the counter and the other will last god only knows how long (I've yet to see a can with a best before date).

In general a mortgage is a pro, it's going to cost you but in the long run you've got a good chance of breaking even or even profiting. I know my parents bought their house for 75,000GBP and sold it for 250,000GBP in the space of 15 years, because of their mortgage agreement they were paying low rates for the longest of times.

Right now is the ideal time for mortgages when the banks are offering lower rates, but the house values have little choice but to go up from now, giving you a major boost to your equity at the reevaluation and possibly giving you a rate drop due to the added collateral with no effort.

Edit: It's worth noting that a $1000 mortgage is a shitload better than $1000 in rent.

<comment><USER3> _Edit: It's worth noting that a $1000 mortgage is a shitload better than $1000 in rent._

Not necessarily, as there is a marginal utility involved with owning a home versus renting that this statement does not account for. For instance in a rental there is no lawn maintenance required, no responsibility for repairs or upgrades to either major appliances nor infrastructure, rental incurs decreased liability, and the availability by location and public features is often greater.

I am a home-owner, but the belief that rental payments are a waste of capitol is a myth.

<comment><USER12> Also, the renter doesn't pay property taxes (directly, anyway), while the homeowner does.

<comment><USER10> That depends on the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow. This is kinda... woah. I recently began an overhaul of my financial situation, because I thought I could be doing better. I am way better off then the best possible combination from this sheet -- I can't imagine being in that situation. :-/

</comment><comment><USER14> The average American has one breast and one testicle.

<comment><USER15> Actually, 0.97 testicle, 1.0 breast.

<http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/sex_ratio.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool but not as informative as it might appear in some ways. From what I can gather (by Googling a bit to find the stats he's using) he seems to be using a mix of means and medians and they're coming from different sources and different years. This isn't the best idea, but might be unavoidable.

Despite being the most prosperous nation in history, that chart would make us look destitute. Using different forms of averages hides an extremely significant factor: our income gap.

While good by world standards, it's poor-to-mediocre by developed nation standards and getting worse. I'd argue it's the biggest threat to our long- term stability because it compounds all of the others, but I suppose that's getting off-topic.

</comment><comment><USER17> Original source: [http://www.visualeconomics.com/the-american-familys- financia...](http://www.visualeconomics.com/the-american-familys-financial- turmoil_2010-04-29/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Small detail but neverthless annoying while comparing a stock & a flow. "2 Trillion of Debt is more than GDP of England"

Its like I am saying I am worth more than 1 year of your income.

More here: [http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/11/is- mar...](http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/11/is-martin- wolf-.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> They seem to think the United Kingdom is called "England".

<comment><USER20> If you look at the GDPs, it seems that they area actually talking about England-Google tells me $2.67T for UK, $2.13T for England alone. Its more like they seem to think that England's flag is the UK's flag-But honestly, most Americans probably wouldnt be able to tell you what England's flag looks like anyways (they would say the UK flag)

<comment><USER21> _But honestly, most Americans probably wouldnt be able to tell you what England's flag looks like anyways (they would say the UK flag)_

I suspect most English people would struggle with it too if it wasn't hijacked by xenophobes and soccer nuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> that is down right sad, how does a country like the US end up like that? i would love to see stats like this for europe or places like china

<comment><USER14> China famously (among economists) has the highest national savings rate in the world - about 40-50% of GDP, compared to 10-15% for the US, 20% for Europe, and 25% for Japan. China has very different cultural expectations related to saving and spending.

On the other hand, the US spends a higher percentage of GDP on education than most countries, which is a different form of investment in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not a very attractive infographic. For relief, see <http://feltron.com>.

<comment><USER24> True. An infographic is bad, if the information it contains is more easily perceived in text form. Which is the case here.

<comment><USER25> Incorrect use of apostrophe as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Micro XP v0.82: Microsoft, EXPerience - <AUTHOR> http://archive.org/details/MicroXPv082 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a stripped down version of WindowsXP with a bunch of services, programs and other XP features removed. Boots up in 7 seconds on an SSD</comment>


Tagging Seals in Antarctica - <AUTHOR> http://www.aspiringecologist.com/2010/10/tagging-seal.html

<comment><AUTHOR> My friend is in Antarctica doing research and the pictures and video in this post blew me away.

It reminded me how important it is to do things that you are passionate about. If you're not working on important, interesting, exciting projects you need to ask yourself why not?</comment>


Single-Line vs. Multi-Line CSS: A Tool to End the Debate - <AUTHOR> http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/single-line-vs-multi-line-css-a-tool-to-end-the-debate

<comment><USER2> Multi-line wins hands down if you use any sort of source control and need to diff between revisions. Using the single line method makes it nearly impossible.

Though, this tool is quite helpful.</comment>


How Banks Could Control Gun Sales If Washington Won't - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/business/banks-gun-sales.html <comment><USER2> Cash purchases are already pretty common for gun sales. All gun retailers accept cash, obviously, and many of the smaller ones offer discounts for purchasing with cash (usually framed as an extra 3% or so fee for purchasing with a credit card). The tinfoil-hat crowd is also fond of purchasing with cash, and many person-to-person gun sales are done on either a cash basis or as a miscategorized PayPal transfer.

<comment><USER3> Well firstly let's not disregard a proposal that could greatly diminish bad gun sales simply because it doesn't eliminate them completely.

This mechanism is more than just stopping an individual sale. If a store sells a certain class of products, they won't be able to accept credit cards at all. As you say, plenty of people will be able to just go get cash out, but how many people will just go down to the store down the road which will accept Amex? 5%? 10%? 30%?

How many stores can afford to lose that business to their competitors?

The result is that you'll likely end up with all large gun stores not stocking these items. You'll have a few boutique stores that can't take card, but do have a wide selection of more powerful weapons and then they can explain when 99% of school shooters get their guns from these 1-2% of gun shops.

<comment><USER4> > How many stores can afford to lose that business to their competitors?

I'm confident that dropping credit cards would result in less business lost than dropping standard-capacity magazines.

> The result is that you'll likely end up with all large gun stores not > stocking these items.

Can you name some "large gun stores"? I know of a couple online, but I also know that the sets "customer who buy 'assault weapons'" and "customers who buy from large retailers" are very nearly disjoint.

> You'll have a few boutique stores that can't take card, but do have a wide > selection of more powerful weapons and then they can explain when 99% of > school shooters get their guns from these 1-2% of gun shops.

There are already _at least_ ten million AR variants in the US. They don't expire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or, you know, voters could just vote people out of office for supporting the gun lobby. But I think the author realizes it's a lot easier to use public pressure by liberal backers to force a subset of private entities who aren't beholden to the entire public to force their will on everyone.

This idea of using corporations to legislate the nation's woes is not a good idea. It subverts and undermines the democratic process and makes corporations the leaders of a plutocracy.

I think people just realize that mass shootings are a small problem nationally and would take a large amount of effort to solve, and just choose to whine rather than fix anything.

461 people were killed in mass shootings last year in the U.S. But only 650 were killed in Chicago alone in "regular old murder". When it's poor black people getting killed, meh, business as usual. But kids? And especially large numbers of white kids? _Now_ we need to get rid of guns.

Give me a break.

<comment><USER6> > 461 people were killed in mass shootings last year in the U.S.

For context, over a hundred people are killed by cars _every day_. [http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road- safet...](http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety- facts/road-crash-statistics)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be more of a thought exercise than an actual suggestion, and wouldn't actually slow down/stop the sale of guns. If anything, it'd give the NRA/gun lobby more power, in that they'd just open a payment processor/bank/digital coin to conduct the sale of firearms themselves.

<comment><USER7> You would think that but there are several larger industries (i.e. porn) that are attacked in a similar fashion that have not done such things.

<comment><USER8> Somewhat weakens your argument the fact that we have more porn at our disposal than ever in the history of mankind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do not want my credit card to offer moral guidance, I want it to buy stuff were it is convenient. Where will it end, my bank telling me I have bought too much alcohol this month?

<comment><USER10> My thought exactly. My bank should not push their moral compass onto me. I'm paying them for a service.

<comment><USER11> Devil's advocate: are you really paying them for a service? I guess it depends on if you pay your bill in full each month, but for those that do pay in full, credit cards provide so many "free" benefits (travel perks, cash back, loss protection, extended warranties, so on). So for those, credit cards provide excellent services requiring no payment at all--it could almost be seen as a club with benefits that one joins, and if that's the case why not impose their moral compass onto its members (like most clubs do)?

That said, I generally agree with you.

<comment><USER12> None of those things are free to me. It's something in the range of %1-%3 of all I spend. Despite the fact that a lot of the time those charges are hidden in the price of the items I purchase, I pay them even if I use cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always like when op-ed writers point out the main criticism of their argument before their critics have a chance to:

> The most troubling aspect of having the finance industry try to restrict gun > sales is that it would push the most dangerous guns into an untraceable > world where sales would depend on cash. That's true. All things considered, > though, it would make it considerably harder to even find such guns.

I have no especially strong evidence to either support or refute the last sentence, but my gut reaction is that "considerably harder" is stretching it.

<comment><USER14> I don't think that's the biggest criticism of their argument. The real problem is that if banks are allowed to stop people from buying guns, they'll happily turn around and use that power to stop people from buying _other_ things, too. Behind on your mortgage? You probably don't need that bottle of whisky, so let's deny your purchases at liquor stores...

<comment><USER15> But don't corporations have a moral responsibility to limit our purchases on these things? _wink_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Folks give me a funny look when I exclusively use cash. This is yet another reason why.

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't this a bit disturbing? I mean, do you want a bunch of credit card companies making a decision about what you can and can't buy? What if it's something other then guns?

</comment><comment><USER18> Banks will always work in their best interests. Until blocking gun sales is profitable for them, they won't do anything. This is a pipe dream.

<comment><USER19> Yep. They block Bitcoin purchases on credit cards (read: short term loans from the bank) because they don't want to be left holding the bag when Bitcoin prices drop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this could work to limit sales, and I'm actually okay with private citizens using their leverage to not support something, and I think it could help with harm reduction.

We've been doing it with cannabis for so long, it has very little likelihood of political blowback.

I could see this being used and tweaked for a variety of ways. For instance, those 1-2% shops that will still. Maybe we give them an out where they have a huge merchant fee for each of those weapons sold, limiting desirability for those weapons, and if the bank wanted to be really good, use those funds to work on gun legislation or support groups for victims.

</comment><comment><USER21> And the legal pot business is cash based because banks won't allow legal pot purchases on a credit card!

If we start requiring credit card companies to judge the morals of our purchases, we'll start loosing faith in our credit cards.

<comment><USER22> except its not legal in the eyes of the federal government and hence bank regulators, so not apples to apples.

<comment><USER21> I used to buy pot from CA dispensaries in 2010 on my credit card.

The bigger problem is that the gun debate is too dysfunctional. The whole premise of this article is an attempt to bypass an important discussion.

Frankly, if we kept the NRA and the "ban the guns" crowd out of the discussion, we'd solve the problem overnight. Those two parties drown out the reasonable debate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmmm...can one imagine that New York Times op-ed if a bank said they would stop processing transactions for some other perfectly legal but perhaps morally objectionable activities like say abortion clinics?

<comment><USER24> I was wondering if the slippery-slope argument really held. There's a fairly simply public-interest argument that could be made against gun ownership (see: dead schoolchildren all over the US), and this argument has been successful in many other countries (UK and Australia have both made firearms illegal in most circumstances).

I don't think you can make the public-interest case against abortion: a very small number of people would argue that mass shootings are a good thing, but it is not clear that a large proportion of people (in the UK at least, the US is a bit of a mystery to me) would argue that the act of abortion does any damage (or at least, nothing like killing someone).

<comment><USER25> There are a large number of people in the US who argue that abortion is _exactly_ killing someone.

<comment><USER24> This is true, but I think there are two factors which qualify this argument:

1) leverage / scale (a person with a gun can kill more people in a shorter space of time) 2) it is contended whether or not this is killing someone, whereas noone (probably, almost) contends whether a school shooting is killing anyone

Even with large numbers of people thinking abortion is murder, this is overwhelmed by the number of people thinking that shooting someone is murder. Since murder is considered (probably) by a similarly large majority, and a gun can create more murder than an abortion, you could make a far stronger public interest case for CC companies to apply pressure to one rather than the other.

<comment><USER26> There are 664,435 reported abortions in 2013, compared to about 33760 firearms homicides. There is a scale difference but not in the direction you anticipated.

<comment><USER24> While that's surprising, that doesn't quite contradict my point: a firearm has greater leverage.

The main point is that while almost everyone will agree that murder of humans is undesirable, not everyone will agree that abortion is murder (_even_ in the United States), which means that it is not categorically clear that the outcome of abortion is a negative one, while it is clear that the outcome of a shooting is a negative one, and therefore there is a stronger public interest case in applying commercial pressure to sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If only there were a means of processing a transaction with little pieces of paper that hold value.

<comment><USER28> I wouldn't expect that to even last in our lifetimes - as a practical matter at least.

The war on cash is real, and if you pay attention on HN and other places the social zeitgeist sees this as a good thing.

<comment><USER29> This may be hard to believe, but there are people out there who have never heard of HN or similar forums and still love cash.

<comment><USER30> People I don't think inherently 'love' cash... I mean think of all the germs on the money you get from a convenience store or McDonalds? I guess a cc can still have germs, but it's also more convenient to not have to step foot near a bank to get it.

I know plenty of people who've never heard of HN who use CC and Debit Cards religiously. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to someday completely move away from physical cash. From a waste standpoint it makes sense, why waste money/physical resources just to create fiat currency when it can all be digitized?

<comment><USER29> Cash is harder to hack (but perhaps easier to steal?). Each person will have their own level of comfort with such risks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has already been done, at the urging of the fedgov, through "Operation Choke Point"

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

</comment><comment><USER31> I do think this would drive more purchases to Bitcoin and other crypto currencies.

Which would be even harder to track.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's fine, the Dread Pirate Roberts will accept my crypto currency...

/s

</comment><comment><USER33> Paywalled to death, can't get near the article.

<comment><USER15> [http://archive.is/uZczA](http://archive.is/uZczA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seems like a really good idea. Can't hurt.

<comment><USER31> Curious why down vote?

<comment><USER34> Your post didn't say anything.</comment></comment></comment>


Proposal to Put a Park and Affordable Housing on Top of Seattle Highway - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3056362/what-if-seattle-put-a-park-and-affordable-housing-on-top-of-this-highway <comment><USER2> Munich has covered most of its inner city beltway: [http://www.muenchen.de/sehenswuerdigkeiten/orte/120326.html](http://www.muenchen.de/sehenswuerdigkeiten/orte/120326.html)

The article is in german, see before-after visualizations at the bottom of the article under "So soll es bald aussehen: Vorher - Nachher".

Current status is that traffic runs through the tunnel. Above ground, work is in progress to make things look like in the visualization. I might go and take some photos of what it currently looks like if anyone's interested.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seoul did a similar thing. [http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul- korea-tears...](http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul-korea-tears- down-an-urban-highway-life-goes-on/)

<comment><USER4> Unless I'm misreading it, Seoul simply removed the freeway

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here in Melbourne Australia they're looking to do the reverse, raise rail 30 feet above ground and put shared public areas below.

Initially some of these crossings were scheduled to be run below ground but have been reconsidered due to cost.

<comment><USER6> That sounds fine. There are several 19th century versions of this in London, where a railway line was built next to or through a park [0]. Depending on the elevation, the park may continue underneath all the viaduct arches, or just some.

But, rail noise is considered much less annoying than road noise (British noise pollution regulations recognise this, and allow for more rail noise before sound barriers etc are required). I used to live on the 3rd floor overlooking a major line in London, and the students on that side of the building complained far less than the ones on the other side, overlooking a middle-sized road.

A highway is a different matter though. There will be fumes from pollution, and noise and vibration from vehicles. It's no wonder it's "affordable housing", no-one who can afford better will want to live there.

Zoom out a couple of steps from [1] and decide if you'd want to live next to a highway. Or, to a lesser extent, a railway with diesel trains, which have faint lines compared to many roads, but electric railways don't show up at all. (I can't find an equivalent map for Seattle.)

[0] [http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4062888](http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4062888)

[1] [http://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/annualmaps.asp](http://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/annualmaps.asp)

<comment><USER5> Interesting, I would have guessed trains were worst for noise but highways could be as bad if not worse. Maybe it's that people living next to highways is so common that we don't think twice about it.

<comment><USER7> I believe noise trains make is more regular than car and trucks accelerating discontinuously. And they come and go less than cars. Highways have this characteristic permanent low humming with permanent « wheezing ».

<comment><USER8> Right it varies all over the map. We lived on 'Triangle Place' which was a triangle because of the railroad tracks cutting across the neighborhood in a ditch behind the house. First night, 2AM, the train came through with that huge searchlight panning through the trees, then the steam horn "Waaaa, Waaaa, Wa, Waaaaaaa!"

We both sat up in bed like the dead rising, stiff as boards. After a moment I said "Oh, Train." She said "Oh." We lay back down and went instantly back to sleep.

Strange thing is, we never heard that train again. OR rather, it never woke us again. It went by every night for the next year that we lived there, but it never bothered us.

<comment><USER6> I woke up twice at night when I lived next to the railway in London.

The first time was at 06:01, when there was a deep rumbling. I assumed a freight train had stopped outside for some reason, and was now accelerating hard.

The second time was a short while later, when my bedroom smelled like a bus depot and the sky had turned purple.

It turned out a fuel storage depot had exploded: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire)

I fled, to my university library in central London, which fortunately wasn't covered in smoke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> pretty certain that they're tearing this part of the highway down already? the wired article doesn't actually say _where_ the proposal is for.

i used to jump off its other end (probably 40 feet to the water?) near the arboreteum. which was dope! but having an additional north-south highway would probably be better. seattle desperately needs to resolve the transportation issue.

<comment><USER10> Does it have to be a highway? It might be better to add high-speed rail between Sea-Tac and Everett. Otherwise we just end up building more garages until our new highway is full again.

<comment><USER9> on a larger scale if you can convince companies to move outside seattle, then sure - but seattle was planned with 3 north-south highways in the city, and the commuter-based congestion is a result

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dallas recently built a park over part of a major street (which was actually built below street level). It worked quite well. It also attracted a lot of food trucks, which means several smaller businesses got a quick boost of publicity and customers. Everyone wins!

</comment><comment><USER12> How about getting a police force and law enforcement infrastructure that actually works you bums.

<comment><USER13> Please don't comment like this here. There's no substantive view that can't be expressed civilly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So they want to undertake a massive and expensive engineering challenge in the middle of a busy city and then specifically not generate revenue with the results?</comment>


Multi-Master Replication in MySQL - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/alfiejohn/mysqlreplication-perl-mongers-201107

<comment><AUTHOR> A talk I gave at Melbourne Perl Mongers last night...

"Pre-release" code can be found at:

<http://h4c.kr/mysql-replication-0.0.0.tar.gz>

It will be up on GitHub and CPAN hopefully this weekend.</comment>


Show HN: C++ Editor for Teaching How to Code - <AUTHOR> http://emun.ro/workspace <comment><USER2> It fails to compile the program

        #include <iostream>

        int main() {
            int x = 23;
            std::cout << x;
            return 0;
        }

It seems like it can't handle namespaces.

When I write

        #include <vector>

it complains, "cannot find library: vector".

I think this isn't going to be very useful for people unless you get a C++ evaluator that works correctly. There is a demo of Clang running in the browser using webassembly here: >> [https://tbfleming.github.io/cib/](https://tbfleming.github.io/cib/) << but it doesn't actually work for me on Firefox. Maybe I need to use Chrome. That is probably a better option for getting C++ running in the browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> The repo of the original interpreter: [https://github.com/felixhao28/JSCPP](https://github.com/felixhao28/JSCPP)

Which notable features are not implemented yet?

        Goto statements
        Object-oriented features
        Namespaces
        Multiple files support

The target audience would consists in students trying simple algorithms. By the end of the high school, students are only using very basic C-syntax: variables, arrays, functions, and a couple of functions from the standard library.

Some partial implementations: iostream (only cin and cout and endl) cmath cctype cstring cstdio (partial) cstdlib (partial)

Other includes could be added too.

What I am trying to highlight is if there is any possibility to increase the visual feedback for students heading first to programming.

Something more like an interpretor would be more suitable in this case, but the wasm compilation doesn't seem too slow though. Thanks for this demo!

<comment><USER3> > By the end of the high school, students are only using very basic C-syntax: > variables, arrays, functions, and a couple of functions from the standard > library.

if the goal is to have them writing C-style C++ code, why not just use C? or if the goal is to teach C++, why start with only the features available in C?

I've been a TA for classes in both C and C++, and I think we ultimately do a disservice to these students by not treating these languages more separately.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. However, the goal of the computer science classes is to teach basic algorithms and data structures, and not focusing on the language particularly. For instance, in the national exam (written) you may use any printing function (printf / cout), but you are limited to use C-style string functions. No vectors, no additional containers C++. Pointers are being studied too, but there are no exercises which involve coding in exams for memory allocations, so you never get to choose between new/malloc. I don't like this situation but this is the problem I am trying to address, any idea is well appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kinda neat but it looks extremely limited in ways that I think would frustrate a beginner:

E.g. the following doesn't do anything

      #include <iostream>
      using namespace std;
      int get7() { return 7; }
      int main() { return get7(); }

but if you manually inline the get7() it displays 7, so returning the value from another function doesn't work which seems quite odd and I think would preclude playing with recursion. (You can assign the get7() return value to a local var and return that and it works so there is a workaround but it's awkward.)

Similarly, if there are compiler errors it gives no indication as to what the error might be. C++ compiler errors are always pretty terrible but not showing anything about where even a parse went wrong could really get in the way of fixing typos etc that can really get in the way of learning the concepts.

<comment><AUTHOR> In this case there are no variables updated so the editor is not very useful indeed. The parsing erros for this interpreter are very limited, however there is internal access to the location of the failure (line, column) so there could be added a red underline to suggest the errors. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

I was thinking at a solution to teach code easier for the beginners. C++ is the only available language for computer science classes in my country.

The project is aimed to teach coding for students as the next step after Scratch.

The language implementation is just a subset of C++, it relies on JSCPP interpreter.

I am looking for feedback and suggestions.

Thanks!

<comment><USER5> I'm curious as to which country it is that only teaches C++ for all programming?

And why that is, sounds very particular. I started programming in C and C++. Back then it was the knly languages I could find books for in the library and I had managed to get my hands on a Borland compiler via an older cousin, but I wouldn't have picked it as a newcomer language today.

<comment><AUTHOR> In Romania. There are computer science classes starting 11 years old students in every school but Pascal and C/C++ are the only options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the definitely the best implementation of a C++ code visualization i've seen yet, kudos to the developers for this

That said, its a bit sad that this is in C++, which I think is an atrocious language for coding beginners to learn. Sure, a lot of people here might have learned C++ to start with (me included), but there are much, much better alternatives available today (pretty much any modern interpreted language for example).

I've noticed that people who are new to coding get the biggest boost to learn more about programming if they are in an environment where they can cause some kind of interesting visual output. In this regard, many languages that have good visual tooling integration (like Javascript's integration with HTML, python integrating with a GUI toolkit like pygame) really kicks it out of the park when it comes to motivating newcomers.

If the devs are reading this, could I suggest adding a 2D graphical component to this tool? unfortunately I can't think of any good, easy-to-use graphics APIs in C++ (a la the canvas API in JavaScript), but SFML and CairoMM come to mind.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good work, pleasing UI (when it works). Please also compare with the excellent pythontutor.com website (it works with C++ too: [http://pythontutor.com/cpp.html](http://pythontutor.com/cpp.html) ).

Examples of differences I can see:

* pythontutor requires a backend and does not run entirely in the browser.

* pythontutor supports much more of C++ (i.e., has fewer limitations)

* shows pointers, heap and stack better.

But there are probably many more differences; would like to see a comparison among similar resources. Anyway, I think this sort of live visualization is indeed very useful; great work and please continue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Python Tututor is the first project in this category that I totally loved it. The dream would be to have all the options Python Tutor has and also speed and user experience, but technically there is not very easy to achieve. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very Nice ! But it should be stated that this is not C++ but just C++ syntax.

</comment><comment><USER9> This code, which is clearly undefined behavior (because of dangling pointer), outputs the number 2, which is very worrisome.

        #include <iostream>
        using namespace std;

        int* foo() {
            int y = 2;
            return &y;
        }
        int main() {
            int* x = foo();
            cout << *x << endl;
            return 0;
        }

I would recommend not using this for educational purposes yet; it could mislead students about pointer usage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point, I will definetly try to use a different compiler next time. Thanks for pointing this out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you create a variable as int and later change it to unsigned long long, it doesn't work anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, indeed. The live panel displays only basic types (long, char, int, floats and basic arrays). Thanks for noticing!

<comment><USER10> Great idea and implementation, btw!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea. For some reason it kept removing my semicolon after I used the time-traveling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't noticed that, could you please describe more your context, including the browser version and OS? Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's beautiful!</comment>


Transforms – Tool for web developers - <AUTHOR> http://westciv.com/tools/transforms/index.html <comment><USER2> Why not use input[type='range'] rather than these horrible unusable sliders? Also, why aren't your numbers input[type='number']? Then you could press up and down to change them. If you provided a step value that matches the unit (e.g. 0.1, 1 or 10), then this would be much more browsable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand, the sliders are doing nothing (Firefox 31), is that suppose to do anything ?

By the way the contrast is really bad on the top menu and I have to hover everything to have an idea of the text.

</comment><comment><USER4> Note: sliders are not working for me Win 7 x64 Firefox 31.0

</comment><comment><USER5> Similarly, I recently built a real-time animation tester. It accepts the full range of CSS properties:

[http://codepen.io/julianshapiro/full/oHaCy/](http://codepen.io/julianshapiro/full/oHaCy/)

Useful for understanding the difference between properties and for testing out motion design concepts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nifty little tool. I would make the sliders much wider, since 70% of the space in the property window is unused anyway, and it's easier and more fun to drag sliders and watch the result real-time than changing text values.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sliders almost work in Chrome but it's not a pleasant experience.

</comment><comment><USER8> This tool is ancient. I remember using it in 2010. I see a lot of people complaining that it's not working. It's not surprising, it probably hasn't been updated since then.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice tools. To be adopted better, it would be nice to make the demos more attractive. They look somewhat dated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sliders don't work for me on Safari 7.0.6 & FF 31, Mac OS X 10.9.4

</comment><comment><USER11> perfect for punch the monkey 2.0</comment>


FilterStack: Customizable WebGL/Webcam effects. - <AUTHOR> https://sketch.io/filterstack <comment><USER2> This is cool. I'd recommend adding some social sharing options for those who'd like to do that but still, pretty fun to make filters.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note: Webcams apparently need a fair amount of light! This app is definitely in the time waster category but well-made.</comment>


Show HN: Sitemeer - <AUTHOR> http://sitemeer.com

<comment><USER2> It seems like you simply ping the relevant site to see if it is alive. You could do this for all sites and see which are alive or dead, but that's a lot of work and information. Assuming that people check websites that are not loading for themselves, this allows you to much more efficiently comb the internet for sites that are down. Still, why would you want this information? Also, what benefit do you provide the user that they can't get from their own browser?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is more than a simple ping, it actually issues a full request according to the given URL scheme.

Sitemeer is not supposed to collect vast uptime information from the entire Internet but only to provide realtime snapshots. This mostly comes in handy when you cannot reach a site but are not sure whether the site is really unavailable or there is merely a routing problem.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: My Solution for Securing Paywalled Videos with AWS - <AUTHOR> Problem: Serve a video to a client if and only if the client has signed up and paid the price for the video.
Constraints: Minimize theft and sharing of videos to any client which has not paid. Prevent videos from being downloaded(?).
Worst Case: Video is bought by a user, screen-captured, and redistributed. Alternatively, paying user decides to share their username/password with other users.
Solution:
1. Implement a basic user accounts system.
2. Dynamically watermark/brand all videos to mitigate screen-capture theft.
3. Store encrypted/restricted videos on S3, restrict access via CloudFront.
4. Use Braintree/Stripe/Cryptocurrency to capture payments for a given video. Upon payment by client, mark the user as having access to the corresponding video.
5. Use a short-lived/one-time token[0] to grant access to CloudFront endpoint for any paid client. Upon accessing the video after token expiration, a new token will be issued. This prevents users from sharing URLs with friends who haven't signed up and paid. The user would be forced to share their sign-in token or username/password, which is not preferable. Mitigating this with IP restrictions may not be worth the implementation time.
Are there any other major steps that need to be taken here, or have I covered all my bases?
With the above solution, generalizing to recurrent (subscription-based) payments or paying for a set of videos shouldn't be hard. Are there any additional steps required for these generalizations, or are they relatively straightforward alterations to the solution above?
[0] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/private-content-signed-urls.html <comment><USER2> Just know that no matter how hard you try to prevent it, if someone wants to "steal" your videos bad enough, well, they will.

In fact, attempting to make it as difficult as possible (which might lead to usability issues for the "honest" folks) might be seen as a "challenge". In other words, you may inadvertantly cause some people to try to acquire and/or distribute your videos just to see if they can.

Finally, after a certain point, you are likely just wasting time and effort (and possibly money). If your videos are of any value at all, they _will_ be "stolen".

<comment><AUTHOR> The attack vector that you're speaking of requires a malicious actor to be competent enough to rip the video content, remove visual and audial watermarks, and then re-host it elsewhere for redistribution. You're right; this can and _will_ happen, and isn't worth mitigating.

However, I think there are attack vectors which are worth mitigating. The biggest one would be preventing signed URLs from being shared from an authenticated, paying client to a non-paying or unauthenticated client.

Do you know of any illegitimate sources for paid Coursera videos? Do you think the majority of Coursera users are being funneled through this illegitimate channel? I think not; the majority of users would rather pay a small amount for information from the source than some third-hand, sketchy website or server.

Edit: Unfortunately, it is pretty trivial to download content from a signed CloudFront URL (see, for example this[0] demonstration). I am wondering if there is some way to at least mitigate this...

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAGc8cxdiVM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAGc8cxdiVM)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> With a custom access policy, it would be pretty easy to specify the IP address allowed for a specific signed URL[0]. This would help to mitigate the risk factor mentioned in point 5 above.

[0] [http://improve.dk/how-to-set-up-and-serve-private-content- us...](http://improve.dk/how-to-set-up-and-serve-private-content-using-s3/)</comment>


Show HN: Launch your very own subscription site like dollarshaveclub - <AUTHOR> http://JoinTheBox.com <comment><USER2> I'm confused. What are you providing? Design & hosting? Or a whole management platform down to shipping? Actual shipping?

Doesn't seem very clear.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'd like to second that. Your site and this title don't match up.

<comment><AUTHOR> we are not self serve like other sites you get a fully custom website a custom site on cratejoy is 2,500 we are doing it for half the cost and in 7 days</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Points, Halftone Image Generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/borud/points <comment><USER2> Is the circle area or diameter proportional to the pixel darkness? (The readme says diameter but hopefully you're scaling the area and not the diameter to match the darkness)

<comment><AUTHOR> The diameter, but what you are saying makes sense so I'll have a look at either changing it or adding support for it.</comment></comment>


An Epic One-Day Erlang Conference in Washington, DC - <AUTHOR> http://erlangdc.com/

<comment><USER2> I added it to Lanyrd (with 3 other upcoming Erlang conferences): <http://lanyrd.com/topics/erlang/> \- anyone know of any we're missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for doing this, Simon.

Erlang Factory (www.erlang-factory.com/) keeps a pretty decent list of Erlang goings on. Info about ErlangDC 2011 should be posted there, too, shortly.</comment></comment>


Lufthansa to Gray Powell: Drinks are on us - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20003219-501465.html

<comment><USER2> Here's the irony. In a previous thread I debated with people about Gizmodo revealing this man's name. My point was that journalists have a responsibility not to filter the news because their profession needs to hold truth as its highest value and not censor details based on their own subjective judgment of what is relevant.

(I got downvoted as far as each comment could go during that debate thank you very much)

But this offer makes me realize an important point I didn't make in that debate: If he is fired this guy's best chance at getting a new job is BECAUSE Gizmodo revealed his name. Just like with this beer offer sympathy for him actually creates benefits. Had Gizmodo not revealed his name he'd just be a guy who was fired for incompetence which doesn't look good on the resume. Now at least his story has been told.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not arguing that the good will outweigh the bad for him because I simply don't know. What I am arguing is that it's a reporters job to report the truth and the reason they shouldn't start censoring details based on their own preferences is because they can't foresee what the consequences of such an action would be (good or bad)

<comment><USER3> News organisations are nothing but filters - a lot of stuff happens, and they're supposed to be a lens on to what's important ("people died!")... Which unfortunately has to include what people want to know ("Paris Hilton got a dog!").

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't think of a better way to make him feel better about the situation than allowing him to personally cash in on it.</sarcasm>

This guy is working hard to earn back the trust and respect of his peers, whom he undoubtedly feels he let down in a big way. Lufthansa will never hear from him.

<comment><USER5> I think you absolutely have a point, but it would be better stated that "So long as he remains employed at Apple, Lufthansa will never hear from him."

<comment><AUTHOR> *if he didn't "lose" that prototype on directions of his employer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now that's a PR stunt if I ever saw one...blogging!

</comment><comment><USER7> AWESOME.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1\. hack your iPhone's case

2\. sell it to some blog

3\. ?????

4\. PROFIT!!!!</comment>


Bank of Canada: The New $100 Note - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7chpllnU-To <comment><USER2> Odd video, but since we're on the topic...

After a trip to the US last year it was easy to see the US currency is awful. Coming from Aus where we have polymer banknotes, the paper was just terrible, and I wondered why they hadn't changed it yet.

And don't get me started on having $1 notes and 1c coins. Immediately found them (the coins at least) entirely pointless and just ignored them.

<comment><USER3> I actually really like US currency. Most other currencies I've handled seem to be almost entirely paper, too large, occasionally different sizes... I really like uniformly sized bills that fit easily into a wallet, and the fabric in the bill seems to improve durability and lend a nicer texture.

Other currency just feels... cheap. No offense.

Agreed on pennies though. They had their place back when they were useful, but they are almost pointless now.

<comment><USER4> Pennies do have their place though. As much as I dislike carrying them around, imagine not being able to divide up money past the 5 cent barrier. Every store would have to change their prices to the exact point at which the price of the item + sales tax equaled a multiple of 5 cents. Or they would keep the item prices the same, at which point customers might not like they are being charged, at the maximum, 4 cents more than they should. Those pennies add up.

<comment><USER5> If you simply round to the nearest penny (3,4,5,6,7=5, and 8,9,0,1,2=0)on all transactions, then it evens out.

Those pennies really don't add up. See if you can find a store that won't add in the extra pennies to round you up, seriously - they certainly don't care.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure the IRS cares though. GAAP don't allow you to just adjust numbers.

<comment><USER7> The IRS generally allows rounding to the nearest dollar on tax forms (at least individual and small business; not sure if large corporate are allowed to round even more). In fact, all the common tax software does so automatically; the only way to file a return to the cent is to do so by hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Skip to 1m 42s to see a clear double Eurion along the bottom edge: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurion>

<comment><USER9> That's damned cool. Presumably only commercial software would be affected? That is, I assume GIMP works fine for scanning bills.

<comment><USER10> Implementing it is voluntary, there is no law requiring it, so there are probably many commercial software which lack this modul. But yes, GIMP doesn't have it too.

[http://www.rulesforuse.org/pub/index.php?currency_lang=-1...](http://www.rulesforuse.org/pub/index.php?currency_lang=-1&country=-1&region=-1&lang=en&page=-1)

"The CDS has been voluntarily adopted by hardware and software manufacturers, and prevents personal computers and digital imaging tools from capturing or reproducing the image of a protected banknote."

<comment><USER9> Hmm. I wonder what the impetus for adoption is. If governments aren't making it mandatory, then there has to be something in it for canon, xerox, adobe, et al to go through the trouble of adding that functionality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Being from Canada, I for one welcome our new plastic overlords. I'm curious about the actual hand feel but the durability will certainly be welcome. Also curious to see how these affect counting machines, etc. I do a lot of work at large cash events so I'll quickly get feedback from the cashiers and cash managers on if they like them or not.

<comment><USER12> Feedback here. It sucks!

There are 300 pieces of equipment with bill acceptance devices that have to be upgraded where I work but I've been transferred to a different section at work, my current job plus the out in the field, where there are 7000 more devices which have to be upgraded. That's just the hardware.

When the $100 polymer banknote is physically made the Bank of Canada sends the data to device vendors who use the data to create firmware to send to their clients, but they can only make the firmware once the Bank of Canada sends them the specs of each new poly banknote.

After the $100 note the least used by the general public then will be $50 the next least used. Then the last three which I would say will be released also from least to most used so: $10, $5 then finally the most commonly used is $20 bill.

Each time the notes are releases the device vendors get it first and make the firmware so that means five different firmware changes spread out over two years.

Add to that some bill acceptor devices have limited memory which means they may be able to hold data for one or two types of banknotes, different series version of the same denomination, other may be able to retain ten of each note.

It sucks but it's expected and it will improve security, I hear bill acceptance devices for Australia's poly money has nearly 100% acceptance rate of valid banknotes (100% rejection of fake notes).

I'm guessing since the notes are not paper there will be less bacteria (especially impetigo) contamination and shedding of paper dust which is a big problem if you work with currency.

<comment><USER5> Two recommendations - first, manufacturers of bill acceptance devices need to optimize their Firmware Upgrade process, while I realize not everything can be OTA (Over the air), no bill acceptance device manufacturer, can, with a straight face, make the claim that they didn't know that there would be new currency formats coming out.

Second, they should separate the core functionality of their devices (Scanning, pulling in the bills) from the identification process (Which Bill is this?) - LUA is a pretty traditional implementation language to do this.

<comment><USER12> Funny you should mention OTA I was speaking with a vendor just last Monday after some testing and he said there are plans to have our central system be able to push new firmware directly to the device, no humans involved. It's still in development from what I could tell more OAW (over-a-wire) than OTA. But as I said a lot of devices are old with limited memory and a lot still use EPROMs for storage rather than flash so the EPROM has to be removed to be flashed using a EPROM read/write tool.

But still the Bank of Canada or any bank or institution which makes a country's currency has to give the physical currency to someone to scan and input the data into an application which all takes time.

The vendors are certainly aware of new formats (series) but as I said they can't do anything until the actual bill is in their hands, I don't know the exact process but I know the vendors of the bill acceptance devices have to wait like everyone else. I'm sure a lot of it is due to security, giving some company a $100 bill and risking it being counterfeited.

The vending/casino business is not known to play nice so I don't think LUA or any sort of cooperation would go over well, I'm surprised IGT even allowed SAS to be licensed but I guess money was made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like it'd be bitch to counterfeit, but I think this just throws in the gauntlet for those interested in the challenge. Interested in what the processes they used to build the different features mentioned, at scale.

<comment><USER14> That's a good point, but I think it's a similar issue to computer security. Yeah, changing your SSH port to a custom one isn't going to keep out someone who scans your ports, but it will keep out the millions of losers who are looking for easy prey and not bothering with a portscan. With each security measure that is potentially crackable, but harder, the pool of crackers that are going to put in the effort gets smaller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a change for Australia to export something that hasn't simply been fed grass or dug out of the ground. Hopefully we'll make lots of money making money :-) And btw, the notes work really well, can't imagine using tatty bits of green paper after 20 years with the new technology.

</comment><comment><USER16> Secure. Durable. Innovative.

Sounds like a bad powerpoint presentation.

<comment><USER17> Well, the Reserve Bank of Australia's subsidiary used to just offer hookers, coke, and offshore bank accounts to their clients; but was told it wasn't an appropriate sales technique for a government owned entity.

Duckduckgo "RBA corruption".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The bills have one more security feature that /you/ can check_

And how many more that I _can't_ check?

</comment><comment><USER19> My first job was in a plastics plant and one thing I noticed was that when you deform clear plastic, it tends to become cloudy. I wonder how these will fight that, seeing as almost every one will be folded at some time in it's lifecycle.

<comment><USER20> Australian currency, which is made of the same polymer and has transparent windows as well, seems to handle it just fine. No matter how strongly I bend and abuse it at the window, it doesn't lose transparency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what is costs to produce each one.

<comment><USER22> .19c vs .10c for the old one but they will last 2.5 times longer. And the polymer and is from Australia. source [http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110620/boc-...](http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110620/boc- money-unveiling-110620/20110620/?hub=CalgaryHome)

<comment><USER23> Because I had to check the link myself... The costs are 19c and 10c respectively, or $0.19 and $0.10. 0.10c would be pretty cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This things are damn durable. As far as i know, if you fold them they get back to their original shape.

[Most] People don't use cash these days anyway.

<comment><USER25> are you from Canada? I do notice and almost half of transactions at bars, restaurants, buses, coffee shops, bakeries etc. are made with cash

<comment><USER26> Are you from Canada? I am, and the only time I ever have a need to carry cash is when I'm in the US. Debit transactions are ubiquitous here; I really miss that when I'm in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's an 'eye in the pyramid' in the building under the large transparent window.

<comment><USER28> It's a conspiracy, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if using DNA markers in currency might be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER30> Do these physical notes contain chemical tracers?

</comment><comment><USER31> these new bills will be quite similar to the bills in Hong Kong.

</comment><comment><USER30> I want one dozen.

</comment><comment><USER32> The new $100 bill... which costs $105 to make! jk ;P

<comment><USER33> Never fear! It costs $105 in US dollars - by next week, that'll be about 15 cents anywhere else.</comment></comment>


I'm constantly thinking about my life. I'm really tired. what do i do? - <AUTHOR>

I've plan to go to the US to do some businesses. I currently living in Indonesia I cant start a offline business here cause it demands high budget; very low internet penetration, paypal did not support in my country(or any online payment) and bitcoin is hard to withdraw. So now, i need a job(no tech job here) but i've no money to go to college. i'm really tired, thinking about this everyday. is it possible or do you know any website/way that make me to get to the USA with self-taught web design,programming etc etc??? thanks! <comment><USER2> I'm sorry to see that you might be in quite a tough situation... I'm assuming that you are proficient in software engineering. That being said, if I were to place myself in your shoes, I would use that skill set as an independent contractor. Pick up as many deals, local or over seas to earn and save money that way. When you have established enough clean work with clients who will be willing to provide a good referral thats when you can try to apply for some of the bigger tech companies. I know a few people who have also taken this route and it has worked for them! Best of luck!</comment>


Academic researchers fire latest shots in adblocking arms race - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/academic-researchers-fire-latest-shots-in-ad-blocking-arms-race/ <comment><USER2> previous:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16012403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16012403)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16025255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16025255)</comment>


A Neat Bitwise Trick for Swapping Even and Odd Bits - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/blog/neat-bitwise-trick/ <comment><USER2> 8 bit input? Use a pre-generated lookup table. Store it in ROM.

The table deference will take 1 or 2 operations instead of the AND/SHIFT/PUSH/AND/SHIFT/POP/OR described in the answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, 8 bits is small enough to just store in a table.

This trick will work for any number of bits though. You might not want to use 2^64 entries in your table.

<comment><USER2> The question was an unsigned 8-bit input, not an arbitrary number.

And the "trick" given in the answer still depends on a fixed number of input bits, no matter if it's 8, 32, or 10^100.</comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates on His Foundation's Health and Education Campaigns - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-08/bill-gates-on-his-foundations-health-and-education-campaigns

<comment><USER2> Given the question asked, it's a reasonably fair swipe, though. I don't think there is much to argue against: Vaccination and eradication of diseases has a more direct effect than access to broadband on health. The secondary effect of fighting disease broadband is a reduction of poverty which will both lead to better health.

So not sure why the swipe part is added to the title here on HN.

<comment><USER3> This seems like an obvious point, but when you are dealing with complex systems second-order effects often result in totally perverse outcomes. Often the result of pushing the system in one direction is an outcome in the opposite direction.

In this case, providing medical services results in more children living, which [often] means larger populations, which means more pressure on food and infrastructure, and more unemployment.

So providing medical care can make people worse off.

The book "An End to Alms" points to an interesting example of this phenomenon. Hygiene standards in England were far worse in earlier times than in China [read Samuel Pepys's diaries if you don't believe me]. As a result, more people died from infections in England at a given level of nutrition than in China. As a result, per person calorie intake in China fell until the lower food intake balanced out the higher standards of hygiene.

More in any book on Systems Theory, or "Poor Charlie's Almanack".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > When we get into a field, we do take a point of view, and raising > controversy is a symptom. Fortunately, there is what's called the charter > school format that lets you try new things. The system is good at shutting > down the ones that don't work and replicating the ones that do. The big > actor is government. If somebody says somebody is too big, it would be > strange to point to us.

What a load of shit. What Gates is trying to do isn't using a small number of charter schools as a laboratory for discovering news approaches to education that are more effective, which was the original idea of charter schools. Rather, he is trying to replace most of the public schools for low-income minorities with privatized charter schools, and he wants to be the one person who gets to create the criteria that determine whether a given school is doing well or not.

Here are the actual criticisms of his agenda that the article is likely referring to (with an added quote on his malaria work to illustrate the point):

[http://pastebin.com/XUxCmdiN](http://pastebin.com/XUxCmdiN)

</comment><comment><USER3> His foundation makes great play of the claim that they are evidence based and totally, totally use metrics and quantitative feedback to guide their work.

So I go onto their site and look for such metrics, feedback, evidence that they have change their policies and practices based on data.

Nothing.

</comment><comment><USER5> > In the U.S., if we have an education system where the inner-city kid and the > suburban kid have equal opportunity, that would be a huge contribution.

I feel like this isn't the best metric and could have unintended consequences.

</comment><comment><USER6> Even though I don't really agree with him, his slam here was great:

> Everybody's got their own priorities. In terms of improving the state of > humanity, I don't see the direct connection. I guess it's fun, because you > shoot rockets up in the air. But it's not an area that I'll be putting money > into.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really don't understand how that comment section could come from typical _BusinessWeek_ readers.

</comment><comment><USER8> When BillG ran Microsoft, he was a total asshole. Now he's trying to be remembered in a positive light, but he's still thin skinned when it comes to competition.

<comment><USER9> I really doubt that he's doing that to create a better legacy. It's just that people at his level can do whatever they like, _absolutely anything_. So some are buying Hawaii islands and others try and help other people. Gates is one of the latter.

<comment><USER10> His family sort of has a history of doing this kind of thing.</comment></comment></comment>


Pop OS 20.04 LTS - <AUTHOR> https://pop.system76.com/ <comment><USER2> I got sick of waiting for Apple to fix their keyboards and built myself a custom Ryzen-based desktop. I chose to install PopOS 19.10 on it and it has been great. I plan on waiting a few weeks to upgrade to 20.04 and will then probably stay on that version until the next LTS release.

I never used Ubuntu as my daily driver so it is hard to say what is better, but PopOS has been great and has good defaults. It was not hard to adjust despite having used OSX for the previous 12 years. I work from home 95% of the time so working on a desktop was an option and I still have my old 15" Macbook from work around when I need to travel to the office. I will probably just get it upgraded when Apple refreshes the 13" Pro.

Anyway, +1 for PopOS and you do not have to run System76 hardware to use it.

<comment><USER3> Did the graphics you chose have quality, easy to install drivers? Been thinking of doing something similar.

<comment><USER4> If you have Intel or AMD graphics work perfectly under Linux. You don't even need to install drivers because they are shipped in the Kernel.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, do people have issues with Nvidia in Linux? I've seen similar sentiment in the past but I've never really noticed any issues with the nouveau (open source) driver. Due to CUDA work, I primarily use the proprietary drivers which work well too (other than an annoying suspend bug introduced in 18.04 and seemingly unfixed in 20.04)

<comment><USER6> Nvidia is supposed the be the big advantage of PopOS: you can download the Nvidia version of PopOS and it takes care of everything for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After being disappointed with Ubuntu's move towards snapification of apt packages (apt-get install chromium installs the snap, lxd is snap only now) along with my growing unhappiness with Canonical way of doing things I have been thinking about another distro. I would prefer to stay on a Debian based distro so PopOS looks promising.

Can anyone answer the following?

Does Pop inherit Ubuntus snapifictation with 20.04?

Do they release newer kernels for the LTS releases like Canonical does with Ubuntu LTS?

Do they pack ZFS in the kernel like Ubuntu?

<comment><USER8> > I would prefer to stay on a Debian based distro so PopOS looks promising.

Have you considered using Debian?

Personally, I prefer to run regular updates often and full-system upgrades rarely/never, but I also want to use software that isn't ancient. The LTS model gives me half of those things.

I don't know if that's what you're hinting at with your comment about newer kernels, but I've found the testing and unstable branches of Debian to be a far more pleasant experience overall than Ubuntu (either the LTS or the full- upgrade-every-six-months variants).

They're both rolling releases. Don't let the names fool you... If you follow a small handful of best-practices (e.g. enabling apt-listbugs) they can be quite stable. The system on my old laptop has been running without major issues for almost a decade.

<comment><USER9> Any other tips besides apt-listbugs? I've long eschewed Debian because the stable branch is painfully so, I had some bad experiences with testing years ago, and I've felt that unstable was too risky to use as a daily driver.

The other sticking point is ZFS. Guess I'll have to spin up a VM and play around a bit before I switch to Pop! or straight Debian.

Canonical's obsession with snap is about to push me away from *buntu, and I'm ready to bail out. I had misgivings about snap from the first I'd heard about it, and my misgivings are turning out to be well-founded.

<comment><USER8> Here are the official suggestions:

[https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_pr...](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_practices_for_testing.2Fsid_users.3F)

apt-listbugs is really the main one for me.

When I upgrade, I pay close attention to the package change lists. If packages are set to be removed, especially a lot of important looking packages, I cancel the upgrade and investigate. Usually this means that something has gone wonky with dependencies, or not all of the packages that need to be upgraded in lock-step are available yet. Usually this resolves itself after a few days, but sometimes you can coax a partial upgrade if you find the culprit package and hold it.

Speaking of holding, apt-mark hold/unhold (or equivalent - I think there might be a better way to do this now) is your friend. I usually end up holding packages like the ones mentioned above that erroneously want to remove half the system, as well as any packages that apt-listbugs complains about, unless I've reviewed the bug report and am okay with it. I'll periodically unhold everything (apt-mark showhold | xargs sudo apt-mark unhold), then retry an upgrade to see which bugs or dependencies have been fixed, and then hold any remaining offenders again. Usually this will end up "releasing" package upgrades in chunks depending on the dependency graph.

Apt should probably be louder when big parts of the system get marked for removal. I think this the primary way testing/unstable systems end up breaking, and it's completely avoidable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Pop!_OS offers the most solid experience of Linux on desktops today. Apart from the lack of proprietary codecs by default (I know there are licensing issues, still I missed it), the default settings are pretty good. I reserved a whole day to set it up when I decided to install it, but right after the installation it felt ready to work, just needed to install some things and transfer my stuff.

Their decision to support Flatpak by default, to create a recovery partition which allows the user to reinstall the system without losing data (in a no- brainer way), and their overall attention to detail won me over. Kudos to the team for creating this distro and making it available for other computer brands.

Edit: typo.

<comment><USER11> There's a sentiment of flatpak being a community thing whereas snap being a case of Ubuntu NIH, but isn't flatpak as much a RedHat lock-in? Is there a technical reason to prefer flatpak over snap, or is the number/up-to-dateness of available apps a reason to prefer one over the other? The info at [http://flatkill.org/](http://flatkill.org/) certainly is sobering with respect to actual security gained by application sandboxing.

I'd really hate into being drawn into another energy-consuming VHS-vs-Betamax or BD-vs-HDDVD drama. I'd much prefer a single statically linked binary if at all possible (though it may not be given that browsers or browser runtimes on which many modern "apps"/packages are based have accumulated way too much crap over the years, which I think is the actual problem).

<comment><USER12> There is a one big reason. Snaps are only designed to use one central repository and the only production one is from Canonical. The server is proprietary.

Flatpak allows anyone to run a repo and for users to track updates from several repos. The server is open source.

<comment><USER13> Exactly the perfect recipe to keep a system secure, as proven by Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neat, on the bottom of the page there is a switch that changes all screenshots to Dark Mode (to demonstrate the OS's feature).

But the neat part is that in the "Gaming" card, it swaps Firewatch (a game/movie-with-buttons notorious for its gorgeous daylight scenes) to Elite: Dangerous (a game set in space, which is pretty visually dark).

If the same attention to detail is present in the OS design itself, it's bound to be some good.

</comment><comment><USER15> And FYI they just released a new version of the Lemur Pro 14 laptop with a gigantic 74 Wh battery. I pre-ordered one and got it a few weeks ago and am on it now with 40 GB of RAM. I had been waiting for the high-RAM Dell XPS 13 with linux but got sick of waiting and then this popped up. It's astoundingly light and performant for its class. I absolutely love it.

[https://system76.com/laptops/lemur](https://system76.com/laptops/lemur)

<comment><USER16> That looks like it might be a decent quality build instead of a plastic piece of junk build quality I experienced 5 years ago. I have been using Dell with pre-installed Ubuntu since, but it is a little underwhelming and of course my audio isn't working now. I was looking towards a ThinkPad with Fedora for my next machine.

<comment><USER17> I've been doing the ThinkPad + Fedora now for a few years, and it's by far the best Linux experience I've ever had. I've had a system76 laptop (quite a few years ago now), Dell XPS/Precision, and some Acer, HP, etc. Unless/until Lenovo ruins the Thinkpad, that's what I'll continue to do. Current model Thinkpad T580 i7-8650U, 32GB RAM Fedora 31. Intel graphics.

<comment><USER18> I have Pop OS on my Thinkpad now, but the latest Fedora release has me thinking about switching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish there was a straightforward way to take the diff of all the Ubuntu variants. Ostensibly one could take Ubuntu and run a few shell scripts (I am grossly oversimplifying) and boom you are now running Pop.

So much time and effort goes into building an _entire_ distribution when, at the core, 90% or more of the thing is identical to Ubuntu LTS. Am I missing something?

Also... the name with the exclamation and the underscores is one of the most user hostile and nonsensical things I have ever seen in open source, since brainfuck the language.

<comment><USER20> A heavy criticism of a lot of these ubuntu-based distros is "ubuntu + a custom PPA", but system76 does actually put in a lot of work into a custom kernel and some neat UI tweaks that make the OS on their hardware really well. They also have a firmware updater for their systems built into the settings program. The whole experience is a lot more refined than Ubuntu, I believe. It's a great OS for their machines, as well as any laptop with hybrid Intel/Nvidia graphics.

<comment><USER21> I have been a heavy Ubuntu user for awhile now and currently I have a Dell Precision 55 __with Ubuntu 18.04 (came with it) for work and a Lenovo X1 Extreme with PopOS (18.04) that I installed on my personal machine. I think I would install PopOS over vanilla Ubuntu in the future...and I have not had a similar feeling for various alternate distributions like Mint, KDE, or even distros outside of Debian /Ubuntu (e.g. Manjaro). PopOS is the first distribution that I feel like adds a layer of polish and user-friendliness that I find worth it.

I have high hopes for future Ubuntu (desktop) release which seem to be making moves in the right general direction, but at the moment PopOS is probably where I am going to hang my hat.

<comment><USER22> I run PopOS 18.04 on a Lenovo P1 (sister machine to the X1 Extreme). It works flawlessly and is quite beautiful. I've had issues with Thunderbolt docks, but then again, I had the same with a MacBook Pro 2018.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like what System76 is doing by catering to power users and developers. However I think that long-term Ubuntu is not an ideal base, and I would prefer a rolling-release distribution with minimal packages, a good ports system and the latest kernel. I know a lot of people have experience with debian based distributions, but Debian is really not the best distro if you want to customize things or have a relatively rare toolchain (common for developers). All the debian specific changes are akin to small papercuts that really make for an unpleasant experience over time.

When you think about it, most developers use Mac OS with a ports system (brew), combined with Flatpack-like packaging for some big apps. I think this is what the Linux Desktop needs to emulate to get more market share. Linux definitely has a huge advantage by being able to run docker containers natively.

<comment><USER23> I would love to see a DE/distro that more closely emulates macOS. A lot of people will point to Gnome and especially elementary OS for this, but they're really only Mac-like in that they're not Win9x-inspired like most other DEs and take a few design cues from various Apple software (Gnome reminds me more of iOS, and elementaryOS feels distantly related to Mavericks-era macOS).

Of course one can always cobble something together for their own use, whether that be so amalgamation of WM+associated utilities or hammering on KDE or XFCE until it kinda takes on the desired shape, but nothing can replace a purposefully designed, opinionated DE.

<comment><USER24> A purposefully designed and opinionated DE cannot really exist without a purposefully designed and opinionated GUI framework, which is probably why Gtk is nowadays often called the "Gnome Tool Kit".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been pleasantly surpised with Pop OS. I'd been a Xubuntu user for nearly 10 years but have switched to Pop because of all the work they've put into hybrid graphics. I like XFCE more but Pop just has so many other good things going for it: auto-tiling, flatpak, hardware support, etc. In fact, my next laptop will probably be System76 Lemur Pro instead of my usual Thinkpad.

<comment><USER26> As a Lemur 2012 and 2016 owner-I think you will be quite happy with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So glad that they're bringing tiling features, keyboard shortcuts and workspaces front and center!

Quick glance and looks like it's bringing together the best of tiling WMs with the polish of Pop!_OS.

<comment><USER28> As a long time i3 user, I'll admit the tiling looks pretty appealing. Trying to figure out what i3 gives me that the Pop OS tiling wouldn't. There are definitely a few things, but probably 95% of my workflow is there.

I recently installed Ubuntu 18.04 and set up i3 via Regolith, and I'm trying to figure out if it's giving me anything other than a new set of keyboard shortcuts. But something about it seems a lot slower than a week ago before I upgraded from bare i3 on 18.04.

<comment><USER29> > Trying to figure out what i3 gives me that the Pop OS tiling wouldn't

I don't know how other people use i3, but I didn't see anything about stacked / tabbed layouts. They've become so baked into my workflow that I can't use anything without them for my personal laptop, at least- work forces me to use macOS :(

<comment><USER30> We will be working on stacking support soon

<comment><USER29> That is wonderful news! I look forward to trying it out

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you have a discrete nvidia card and don't want to deal with extra scripts and configurations, this is the way to go, everything works out of the box, or even if don't it's a quality distro

<comment><USER32> thats what i thought and was true for a while but ive found that always having the bleeding edge driver has led to a fair bit of instability. im back to debian and its solid. just add contrib and non free repos and nvidia-driver is there

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I downloaded the beta a week ago, and was very impressed. I love the auto- tiling. I've been trying to get into that for a while, but never found it polished enough. This is a fantastic implementation, that doesn't require you to memorize all of the keyboard combos to get started.

I'm very torn about flatpack versus snaps versus debian. This fragmentation is awful.

I'd like to see a ZFS (with encryption) default soon as well.

</comment><comment><USER34> I am tempted to get their new lemur pro as my next machine, but I don't have enough impression of the build quality.

I am used to mac and thinkpads, and one thing I used to enjoy was the x200 keyboard along with the trackpoint and 3 mousebuttons in reach from the thumb, does lenovo hold a patent for this, or is there any reason this type of cursor input is so rarely seen?

I'd gladly pay a premium for the option to get a more ergonomic keyboard.

<comment><USER35> [https://gadgetboy.org/review-system76-lemur- pro/](https://gadgetboy.org/review-system76-lemur-pro/)

<comment><USER34> Great and useful review!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So excited, PopOS is by far my favorite distribution. It all started with getting a Darter Pro from work, but now I run it on my personal laptop too.

I'll be upgrading from 18.04, so I hope to see a lot of new stuff. Finger crossesed, without much hiccups.

</comment><comment><USER37> I am new to Pop, just installed over top Ubuntu (uptime 61d, I shed a tear).

Pop is great. The mouse feels better (but I can't increase scroll rate?), the window manager keys are so sane. I just realized you can turn on Emacs input for the keyboard, so C-a always means home (like os x!?).

I went to the Pop website [1] to get codecs working (Twitch), super easy.

A Ryzen + Pop!_OS is my new "Mac Pro", to replace my 2010 5,1 model. I recommend it, having used distros from Red Hat 9 to Mint/Ubuntu to Gentoo to Slackware.

[1] [https://support.system76.com/articles/codecs/](https://support.system76.com/articles/codecs/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Just watched their tiling window managed demo: neat! I am going to steal some ideas from it for my tiling WM for Windows (hope they don't mind!).

<comment><USER35> If we minded, it wouldn't be open source. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hahaha, just this morning I'd made a 19.10 live USB to re-install PopOS on my desktop. If only I had procrastinated a little longer...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For my own reference and for anybody who just Googled it, the SHA256 hash of pop-os_20.04_amd64_intel_5.iso is 5478241142930dbd95143773d53be079087024d3112614a901edc2829040f996, verified using GPG key 63C46DF0140D738961429F4E204DD8AEC33A7AFF.

Do your own verification as well!

</comment><comment><USER40> I upgraded last night and it feels like the fonts are better. My screen seems to be more clear and easier to read.

Hopefully they've also fixed the problem where Firefox causes massive periodic disk I/O which freezes my whole computer for minutes on end.

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow, took me all of 3 minutes to break it. Windows share browsing is completely broken :(

I even got the OS to get stuck with modal requestors that you can't dismiss.

SMB browsing is the first thing I try on a new distribution, because it's almost always broken.

</comment><comment><USER42> Is the ZFS root partition support there?

</comment><comment><USER43> If only I could get my crappy USB Realtek Wifi to work with this I would switch. I tried for a few days to no luck. I definitely appreciate that they ship Nvidia drivers.

<comment><USER44> Might be easier to switch usb wifi adapters... I'm half surprised it doesn't work out of the box.

<comment><USER43> I'll probably get one of the PCI-e ones that they recommend. This is one of those $10 Amazon ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> System76 if you're reading this, please hire a new design team that is on par with Apple, Google, IBM, etc. and a new industrial design team that has competence at the level of Bang & Olufsen, Apple, Braun, etc. System76 has such a huge potential but their marketing and design is lacking severely.

You guys need to realize that great companies such as Apple have a certain design ethos(some people resonate with it and some don't, but they have a very strong design language) and it comes from the top-down. Steve Jobs had a deep sense of appreciation for Japanese architecture, IBM in the 60's had hired Elliot Noyes, and Braun was aesthetically lead by Dieter Rams. IBM Thinkpads had hired IDEO design and bunch of high class firms to design their products. Nikon hired Pinin Ferrina. Study the history of hardware companies and what made them great.

System76 has the potential to be the most amazing linux-based computer company in the world - but they don't have the right type of leadership. Leadership needs to have good "taste".

<comment><USER46> I'll be the first in line to say that, in general, Linux/OSS-centric companies never get this right.

But this is just such a strange thing to say:

"System76 if you're reading this, please hire a new design team that is on par with Apple, Google, IBM, etc. and a new industrial design team that has competence at the level of Bang & Olufsen, Apple, Braun, etc."

That is not only absurdly expensive, it disregards the actual situation: open source work in general suffers from a lack of designers willing to be involved. If this was a simple thing to do, I'd wager System76 would have already done it.

On a personal note, I'd much rather they get to a point where they're fashioning their own hardware... otherwise I'm staying on a Macbook, because I'm not going back to plastic shells. The software design can wait, it's not like it hasn't already done so for years.

<comment><USER47> > because I'm not going back to plastic shells

I'm intensely curious about this stance. Apple popularized the aluminum case in laptops, and having owned a dozen each of aluminum and plastic/carbon fiber notebooks, aluminum is just... worse. It's heavier, more expensive, and every substantial impact is a permanent mar on the finish. Why is non-plastic so necessary? What advantage is there?

<comment><USER46> Plastic feels cheap and shoddy. Macbooks (and such laptops) feel premium, and I want a premium product. I don't care about the price for a device I live with and work on daily.

The weight doesn't bother me, and in fact I _prefer_ it having some body to it.

Regarding impact... my 2015MBP doesn't look a day old. It's tanked hits that would break other laptops.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


No Job Is Too Small for Compact Geostationary Satellites - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/satellites/no-job-is-too-small-for-compact-geostationary-satellites <comment><USER2> Isn't it more expensive to launch a geostationary satellite? If their big thing is communication how are they going to compete with Starlink (which isn't geostationary btw)? How is it profitable for anyone to dream of competing with Starlink at this point. I am a layperson but it seems like game over unless Rocket Lab finds a way to compete.

The article only mentioned communications satelites and I don't think anyone is going able to beat Starlink in that area in the next 5-10 years.

<comment><USER3> You can't compete with Starlink from GEO, the latency to GEO is just too high - around 250ms - which is ok for some purposes but pretty crap compared to ground fiber or Starlink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People add garbage to the orbit before thinking how to remove it. As with anything new actually. Do first and think how to undo later

<comment><USER5> My belief is that (within limits) the rule about smallsats and LEO is different: you don't need planned de-orbit because they have short persistence due to drag and almost no significant hit-the-ground risk because they burn up.

GEO has to have de-orbit burns or parking orbit. Different. And it is governed by law, within the limits.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, junk in LEO can still remain for dozens or even hundreds of years.

Most satellites also don't burn up completely. At least in the US, the current standard is that the odds of a casualty in case of uncontrolled reentry are less than 1 in 10,000. I think that as we see a proliferation of LEO constellations with tens of thousands of smallsats (some of which are almost surely going to be operated by companies that go bankrupt), that standard is going to bite someone in the ass.

<comment><USER7> I think 1 in 10,000 is high, there's a lot of land out there, and sea.

<comment><USER8> It almost seems like you would have to try really hard if you want a 0.0001 chance of hitting a person on deorbit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I definitely felt that before at my previous work</comment>