Leaked documents show strong business support for raising the minimum wage - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/04/leaked-documents-show-strong-business-support-for-raising-the-minimum-wage/ <comment><USER2> That actually makes sense in a perverse way. From the poll, one can see that most business owners would like to pay more wages. Well, they own the business, so they could just raise wages if they wanted to, without a legal minimum wage. Then why don't they? Competition. A business owner won't raise wages because his neighboring business will have lower costs and be more competitive. However, by forcing all business owners to give raises, competitive pressure is lost. Raising the minimum wage still defies economic sense, however, in that it distorts the marketplace and causes job loss.

<comment><USER3> If everybody raises wages, and consequently prices (that is assumed since that's the only way you could have lost competitive edge after raising wages) - then what's the point of it? Of course, employees would be paid more numerically, but they could not buy more with this. Unless, of course, some production would be moved overseas, where prices are not affected by wage raise. So in essence, these people are betting on more goods manufactured out of the country - no doubt decrying "job loss to foreign countries" at the same time.

<comment><USER4> People who make minimum wage aren't the only ones who buy stuff. When prices go up to cover the wage increase the cost will be spread out over all consumers, not just minimum wage earners.

You can argue that those at the very top spend far, far less of a percent of their income on consumer goods and services provided by minimum wage earners and that's totally fair. But it's not credible to claim that a minimum wage increase will do nothing at all for people after a price increase.

<comment><USER5> Keep in mind that a wage increase affects not only one business's profit margins and pricing, but also the prices of all of their goods from suppliers too. Consider that fast food needs to pay 30% to labor, mostly at minimum wage. Another 30% or so usually goes to food costs. Those food supplies are the product of farm labor and food processing plant labor, both of which pay close to minimum wage as well. If minimum wage doubles, that means the fast food business now has a labor cost of 60% of his original pricing, plus the increases in food costs he is going to see as well. Those food cost increases could be 30-40%, meaning he will likely need to raise prices significantly to keep the lights on. For a company like McDonald's, who do you think is their target market when they try to keep prices as low as possible? The rich? They're trying to make food affordable for everyone, including minimum wage earners. When McDonald's costs nearly double, what do you think is going to happen to their prices?

<comment><USER6> If you're curious to see what American McDonalds' would look like where workers have higher spending power and McDonalds has higher costs, take a look at an Australian McDonalds where they already reacted to exactly that.

This is pretty much what the future of fast food restaurants is like when you raise the minimum wage:

[http://www.businessinsider.com.au/mcdonalds-australias- upsca...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/mcdonalds-australias-upscale- burgers-2014-10)

McDonalds is usually able to adapt better to changing market conditions than other restaurants.

Many restaurants do go out of business when their prices rise, which is why they hate the idea of raising the minimum wage so much. However, those restaurants are quickly replaced by other restaurants, which is why employment is never affected.

<comment><USER5> Right, so you can now buy a burger off of the dollar menu, which costs approximately 1/7.25 hrs of your labor. When you earn $15/hr, you now have to work 19.5/15 hrs to earn a burger. Yes, it's a higher quality burger, but you can get a higher quality burger for the same amount of labor at minimum wage in the US, and still have the $1 option for those who want it.

<comment><USER6> >Right, so you can now buy a burger off of the dollar menu, which costs approximately 1/7.25 hrs of your labor.

Yeah, I've tried those they're pretty gross. You can also buy a Big Mac for the same price as in the US.

>When you earn $15/hr, you now have to work 19.5/15 hrs to earn a burger.

A much, much better burger.

And you've got more disposable income too.

<comment><USER3> You are essentially arguing that there should be no cheap burgers, since there are much, much better expensive burgers. What you seem to be forgetting is that some people won't be able (or not want) to afford much, much better burgers and that's the reason cheap burgers exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Had liberals (or north-american libertarians) been able to win the battle for words, we would be discussing "making it illegal for low skill workers to get jobs", not "minimum wage".

<comment><USER8> They did win battle for words! Libertarians call any exchange of work for money, no matter how small, a "job". But normal people, when they want "a job", don't seek to have an economic exchange for miniscule amount of money that cannot pay their bills. That can be called either a "gig" or "slavery", depending on circumstances, but hardly a "job". A "job", in normal speech, is something that can actually economically support you.

So what is being outlawed by minimum wage are "jobs" that cannot feed people, which, I am sure you will agree, are simply not worth existing.

And in fact I think popularity of libertarianism is half of the cause why minimum wage is still being discussed, because people and businesses who actually know economic stuff support minimum wage, as they understand that flow of money in economic systems starts from the demand. The other half of the cause are possibly some rich people, who are a different type of political actor than businesses.

<comment><USER9> That's a silly argument, Denmark for instance, doesn't even have a minimum wage, nor Iceland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Norway, or Singapore..and technically neither does Switzerland. I'd hardly call those "libertarian" societies. Then again, I have a hard time taking someone seriously when they equate general labor with literal slavery. If you have mobility of labor through your own free will, you are not a slave. It's disgracefully offensive to those that actually do, to this day, work as slaves. Working for $8.50/hr at McDonald's is not slavery.

As was debated in prior threads, minimum wages are nonsensical from an economic (and welfare) standpoint. Negative income taxes or living wages make a lot more economic sense.

<comment><USER10> FYI, the Nordic countries do not have national minimum wage, but they have strong government protected unions who negotiate a minimum wage per industry. It's a much better solution, and frankly the loss of industry unions is a tragedy for the US and the only reason people think they need a national minimum wage - which is really a dumb solution.

The conspiracist in me likes to think that corporations there push for minimum wage as one of many ways of stripping unions of power, and to argue that they're not necessary

<comment><USER11> Minimum wages proposed by unions are designed to destroy the job prospects of non-union workers. It is pure self-interest on the part of the union.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't make sense. A business wants to have as few union workers as possible. If they only give raises to union members then everyone will want to join a union further putting the business during negotiations in a even worse position than just raising the wages for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just to widen the context. From New Yorker (1)

Walmart and Target earn between three and four cents on the dollar; a typical McDonald's franchise restaurant earns around six cents on the dollar before taxes, according to an analysis from Janney Capital Markets.

In fact, the combined profits of all the major retailers, restaurant chains, and supermarkets in the Fortune 500 are smaller than the profits of Apple alone.

Yet Apple employs just seventy-six thousand people, while the retailers, supermarkets, and restaurant chains employ 5.6 million.

The grim truth of those numbers is that low wages are a big part of why these companies are able to stay profitable while offering low prices.

(1) [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/the-pay-is- too-...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/the-pay-is-too-damn-low)

<comment><USER14> > Walmart and Target earn between three and four cents on the dollar; a > typical McDonald's franchise restaurant earns around six cents on the dollar > before taxes, according to an analysis from Janney Capital Markets.

Those numbers say nothing about how many cents on the dollar their retail employees currently cost. A cashier can easily check out thousands of dollars of merchandise an hour.

I can virtually guarantee retailers pay more in credit card processing fees than they do for their retail employees. Of course, Target reflects this with their 5% Red Card. And many smaller retailers reflect this by either (a) not taking credit cards or (b) only taking certain cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Economic 101. Minimum wage does nothing except hinder the disadvantaged. But yes, may also be good to get rid of your competition. Useless debate, because people, even engineers, don't think about it economically but only politically. If you believe it works, let's just make it $50 an hour.

<comment><USER16> And economics has EVERYTHING figured out? At least towards an oligarchical fascist police state dystopia with monopoly or cartel control over most "free markets" and can't predict basic things like the housing mortgage crash, overexuberance in tech stocks, and the like.

It can't even fucking figure out how to fundamentally avert global disaster or total ecological destruction. It basically can see three months into the future.

So I hate to tell you, your supply/demand curves may look second-nature, and the pirates dilemma may let you sleep at night with the current distribution of wealth, but it doesn't represent chaotic, nonlinear, fly-off-the-rails reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Of course. Demand is necessary for business. If lots of people are barely scrapping by (which has been true for a _long_ time), only a tiny handful of businesses will make any money.

The 80% supporting an increase are just stating the obvious: you need demand if you want to sell anything.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'll vote on the minimum wage law increase provided we finally do away with tipping.

<comment><USER19> Tipping is a cultural aspect, not a legal one. Tipping was written into the law because people were already tipping, not the other way around.

<comment><USER20> I actually do wonder. How is tipping in Europe v.s the US where we always do %10 or so

<comment><USER21> Sometimes it exists, other times it doesn't.

Tipping just about doesn't in Australia, where we pay a reasonable minimum wage ($17.29 per hour for adults in full-time employment). You occasionally find people will tip a taxi driver or bartender, but by and large it's just not done.

<comment><USER20> Interesting. Some states in the U.S just raised the wage to $14 dollars but nationally it's pretty low

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If one increase the minimum wage the business employing people have 3 choices: 1\. Have less profit, but this is not in the business owners interest 2\. Increase the prices, this might be possible. This would normally lead to less customers since the cost increased 3\. Become more effecient, reduce the number of people employed

I would guess mostly and sometimes 2 would be the normal response. Nobody wants to decrease their profit and the profit can not be lower than 0 over time.

</comment><comment><USER23> Raising minimum wage will boost aggregate demand. What's not to like? It's a consumer economy, not an export economy. You want consumers with money.

</comment><comment><USER24> Minimum wage is fine but it does not solve the actual problem of technology decreasing the value of each worker in most of those fields.

A better solution would be UBI since it actually deals with the issue that MW is claiming to solve (but doesn't)

<comment><USER25> Technology, by increasing per-worker productivity, should _increase_ labour value.

(Mind: I said "labour _value_ ", not "labour _compensation_ ". There's a difference.)

Technology that decreases value of workers isn't technology, at least in the economic term (Solow) which sees it as an increase in productivity not accounted for by capital or labour directly (the Solow Residual).

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

<comment><USER26> There is certainly technology that substitutes many cheap (low-skill) workers for a few individually more expensive ones. The value to the business of the labor would increase, and on average "labor value" would be higher, but it would be different people's labor having more value.

At the same time, all else equal this would reduce the relative demand for the low-skilled worker, leading to a fall in the competitive wage they could get.

So, yes, "technology" should increase productivity and thus mean "labor value", but individuals can definitely lose out.

<comment><USER25> Note what you just referenced. You're replacing _low cost_ labour for _high cost_ labour, but _increasing_ the _value_ of that labour.

 _Cost_ is what you give up for something.

 _Value_ is what you get for it.

 _Price_ is what you _pay_ on the market.

They're three distinct concepts. Much economic confusion results from it.

(And yes, there are some who describe "value" as "market value", which I refer to as _price_. See though "economic value.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Never run a business that relies on paying minimium wage.

<comment><USER28> This is the real answer. The minimum wage is only an issue because so many companies rely on it to bolster their business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand this. The federal minimum wage (7.25 USD) in US is higher than Czech average wage (~6.78 USD), yet things generally aren't any cheaper here. Taxing crippling. I thought the minimum wage at its current height is unsustainable, and they want to raise it even more?

By the way, what are the "leaked documents" in the title? The public survey and the public research?

</comment><comment><USER30> If there is such widespread support why is it that comments on various social media give a completely different perspective when the topic comes up?

<comment><USER25> Several possibilities come to mind.

Ignorance. Poor education. Disinformation. Astroturfing.

<comment><USER31> Or people that have a different opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I haven't read all the comments but I think there is a large sector of the workforce being ignored in the discussion. I live in a rural area and most manufacturing jobs here start in the $10/hr range. All the companies starting less than the new minimum will have to increase wages as well. This will include all experienced people who will now want to be earning more because the floor has now risen by x dollars.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's a vicious circle. Increased wages will result in increased consumption and contribute to making the rich richer while flooding the poor with goods with built-in obsolescence. It would be much better to learn living with much less than we do now and teach the one who try to deprive our workforce that they are dependent form us.

<comment><USER34> First off, most Americans are already in a borderline financial crisis, and you're saying that it's better they stay this way than get more money to "increase consumption"?

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant- handle-a-500...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant- handle-a-500-surprise-bill/)

Obviously if you have more money, you will increase consumption, but the more money you make, there will be diminishing consumption. It's not like people making $30 million a year spend 95% of it at Walmart. The more money you make the more you either invest or save (as a percentage of your income), even if the _total_ consumption increases as well. In other words, having more people with more money is not a "bad thing" for the economy (or their personal lives). Quite the opposite.

Second, if there's a stronger middle class, it means the money paid to businesses will be much more distributed. When people have little money, then they can only afford to spend on "necessities", which by _default_ shrinks the market to a handful of business categories, which means only a few will be able to get "richer".

It's also likely that only the biggest such businesses will survive thanks to better economies of scale and people's price sensitivity due to the very low incomes, which means there will be higher inequality and less competition in the market.

When more people have more money, they buy all sorts of stuff, giving life to all sorts of new businesses and because consumers aren't as price sensitive, competition will be higher as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> As always, lots of opinion from people who have never taken a risk, used their own money, launched a non-trivial business, ran it for a decade and lived the reality of a competitive imternational marketplace while trying to survive govenrment fucking shit up all around you.

Nah, forcing a 50% hike in minimum wage will only have one effect. And anyone who has operated a non-trivial business for a while knows what that will be. What was Ross Perot's famous line about a huge sucking sound?

Do you non-business folks want me to spell it out? Well, I don't have the time to describe all that will happen. I'll just pick one consequence. This one highhlights the economic tsunami this will be:

You only need one, or a handful, of people at minimum wage to destroy jobs and even the very viability of a business.

So, you have 50 people earning $15 to $20 per hour today. Maybe you have another ten earning $25 to $50. And you have, say, five, earning minimum wage.

In five years your minimum wage folks go to $15 per hour. An incredible 50% raise.

The folks making $15 to $20 know this. They don't want to be at minimum wage or thereabouts. Their wages are likely to have to go up. What do we do? One group just got a 50% raise. Do we give everyone a 50% raise? No, let's try $5 per hour.

We now go from $15 and $20 to $20 to $25. In other words, 25% to %33% hike in wages for mid-range employees.

Of course, those making $25 to $50 now want their cut. Let's give them $5. So, $30 and $55 it becomes.

On the aggregate, mid-range employees probably represent the bulk of your labor expenses. Your real costs just went up somewhere around 33%.

Can we raise our prices? Probably not.

What we now have is a hit in profitability AND a cashflow squeeze. And we know we can't survive them.

Well, fuck it! Let's fire the minimum wage earners and problem solved. We only have five of them and they triggered this mess.

Will that solve the problem? No. Your employees know about this new scale out there. They don't think it is fair that they earn anywhere close to what a 14 year old kid can get at Del Taco.

Well, shit! We didn't solve the problem.

Oh, wait a minute. A Chinese competitor who understands the math just lowered their prices by 10%, forcing us to follow suit and causing a further squeeze to our finances.

We need to take drastic measures.

We need to lay-off enough people to remain viable. We migt even have to shift some of the remaining people to part-time work.

The trouble is that we were straining to keep up as it was. We really can't produce enough goods with 25% less man-power.

Only one choice remains. We contract to have our goods and services made and performed in China and India. We shrink dow to a management and marketing team in the US, get out of the lease for our 50,000 square foor facilty and move into a 1,500 square foot office space.

And there you go: The huge sucking sound you'll hear is that of millions of jobs leaving the US.

Thanks everyone! Good job! We are really good at destroying ourselves from the inside. They are laughing their asses off in China right now.

<comment><USER36> Except that numerous studies have shown that your scenario isn't what really happens when the minimum wage is raised. Numerous states have raised the minimum wage in the past while surrounding states haven't, giving us a lot of actual comparison data (check out the Berkeley paper linked below). Quotes from an article from NYTimes[1]:

" The weight of the evidence shows that increases in the minimum wage have lifted pay without hurting employment, a point that was driven home in a recent letter[2] to Mr. Obama and congressional leaders, signed by more than 600 economists, among them Nobel laureates and past presidents of the American Economic Association.

That economic conclusion dovetails with a recent comprehensive study[3], which found that minimum wage increases resulted in "strong earnings effects" — that is, higher pay — "and no employment effects" — that is, zero job loss. "

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/the-case- fo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/the-case-for-a-higher- minimum-wage.html)

[2] [http://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-statement/](http://www.epi.org/minimum- wage-statement/)

[3] [http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/157-07.pdf](http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/157-07.pdf)

<comment><USER35> The links you provide are for articles that are totally biased and carry an agenda.

Look, this isn't about politics or research papers. It's about math. As an engineer who founded and ran multiple companies over the last 30 years I can tell you math is a fucking bitch to face. It don't lie and it does not care if you like Obama or Trump. And simple math, in this case, tells the cold hard truth: These kinds of changes have consequences.

Even if you don't have a business you ought to be able to understand this. If gasoline went up 50% you would be forced to make some spending changes. Some won't care. Others would have to stop going out, buy a smaller car, sell their SUV, etc. If we also raised your rent or mortgage by 25 to 50 percent via mandate and your income did not increase at all. Well, extrapolate from there.

High minimum wage will screw the poor and middle class in more ways than one.

For example, if I have to pay someone $15 per hour rather than %10 (50% more just because some politician pulled the number out of their ass) I am likely to be far less tolerant of lack of experience or performance. There are whole layers of people who might have a very difficult time finding work for these reasons.

Nah, it's a bad idea. So sorry to see that populism and pandering is destroying this country.</comment></comment></comment>


IBNIZ - A hardcore audiovisual VM - <AUTHOR> http://countercomplex.blogspot.com/2011/12/ibniz-hardcore-audiovisual-virtual.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> A good demonstration of how stack architectures can produce stunningly concise code. I'm definitely going to poke around with the documentation and examples.

I have a Forth VM of my own[1] that also has graphical capabilities, but it's designed for creating NES/SNES style games from tiles and sprites- interesting to compare some of the design decisions. I notice that IBNIZ has support for handling keyboard and mouse input- I wonder how hard it would be to write some simple games for this VM?

[1]<https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako>

<comment><USER3> Have you taken a look at the Ngaro VM over at <http://retroforth.org/docs/html/Implementations.html> ?

Beautiful abstractions in Mako btw. I like it. Did you see the recent discussion on the VM used in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_World_(video_game)>

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/no0dy/another_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/no0dy/another_world_code_review/)

From what I can tell IBNIZ is meant as an ultra minimal target for demos. Not necessarily end user games. I think it is probably overly constrained. Much like a <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipogram>

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I encountered Ngaro shortly after I started designing Mako. Aside from I/O functionality they are fairly similar, but I think storing the stacks and registers in addressable memory is a more flexible design than keeping them separate as Ngaro does. For one thing it means it's possible to remap the stacks at runtime and easily implement cooperative multitasking.[1] Games of the type I'm writing don't really need Ngaro's file I/O capabilities, but they could be very useful if I wanted to make a bootstrapped version of my Forth compiler.

Trying to recompile Ngaro bytecode to run on Mako could be an interesting weekend project...

[1] [https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/examples/Thr...](https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/examples/Threads.fs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is making your own demo platform going to be the new hipster coder equivalent of rolling your own framework? I hope so. I like ibniz and mako- I like the ideas here. The javascript ibniz does some extremely silly things though that are hurting its performance by a significant amount. I've tinkered with it a bit and was able to squeeze a couple more FPS out of the rotozoomer, but the problem is really with the way the interpreter is structured- Evaluating a huge switch statement per pixel is not going to be very fast in javascript no matter what you do. I would perhaps consider instead compiling the ibniz script into a GLSL shader.

<comment><USER4> After tinkering with the source for a bit longer, I can see that it will be very difficult to make ibniz go fast because of an inherent inter-pixel dependency in the stack. The semantics of the language seem to imply that the pixel kernel can pass information on to the next pixel via the stack. To be able to split up the rendering work that dependency needs to be eliminated such that each pixel depends only on x,y,t- and values pushed by the last run are implicitly cleared in single thread implementations. What sort of impact will that have on existing demo programs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The roto-zoomer example, so you can copy/paste into the javascript demo[1] (typing it in doesn't seem to work)(edit: later version which doesn't keep zooming out):

      v8rdsx.6+s4X3)Lx~2Xv*vv*+i!L1@2@^

I'll happily admit I have no f^@!in clue why it does what it does. Nifty, though.

[1]: <http://ibniz.asiekierka.pl/ibniz.html>

<comment><USER6> Copy-pasting what you have works, but I found that whenever I type 'v' in the Javascript version, it freezes up.

From the documentation, 'v' is supposed to rotate the top 3 items on the stack. If you're in TYX-video mode, there should be 3 items by default. The documentation also mentions that it's supposed to use T-video mode if it detects that, where there is only one item on the stack. Perhaps it's incorrectly detecting T-video mode and then running into problems when it tries to do the v-rotate past the end of the stack?

<comment><USER4> when the program parses the ibniz string, it seems to look for a character AFTER v. if v is the last character in the string, then when it does this , it gets undefined, attempts to get the char code for it, and thus throws an error since undefined isn't a string with a charCodeAt method. This is easily fixed by guarding that section of code to make sure that it always returns a string and never returns undefined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome. The aesthetics of this make me really wish I owned a hardware implementation I could plug into a busted old television.

</comment><comment><USER8> Heh, I started watching the video and after about a minute of so was thinking "this sounds like COH" (aka Ivan Pavlov).

More to the point, this environment looks fun (for those of us that class our fun as being of the TV noise variety :) ).

Thanks for posting this!</comment>


Updates to Contacts and a (slightly) new look for Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/updates-to-contacts-and-slightly-new.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not completely happy with the list view. The only blocking problem is that the person I email near every day does not even appear under the My Contacts subsection. I've actually found out the reason while writing - apparently My Contacts is a group and not all users are added. Is there no all contacts view?

Cosmetically, I don't really like a list as I can't tell from a glance who is who. I'd quite like a small magazine-style avatar+name+email block - on a grid 3/4 wide and 4 down for example.

I can't drag groups onto users as I do with labels which is a little counter- intuitive. All-in-all though it's not a _bad_ addition, just not a complete one.

Finally I'd like an option to remove the Tasks link, rather than choosing one of three to show. Mostly small things but things I'd like.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a power user who uses keyboard shortcuts all the time the new layout is awesome.

One thing I have noticed from a few minutes of use is contact groups should work completely like labels. Right now you can add and remove them well but there is no filtering based on group.

</comment><comment><USER4> Been playing with it.. I'd call this a very marginal improvement at best.

Looks like there's still plenty of space left for companies like Etacts and Rapportive to play with.

</comment><comment><USER5> Using the API, you could now build a decent CRM that integrates directly with your contacts, no? Or perhaps just sync existing data.

<comment><USER6> I think that's what <http://rapportive.com/> is trying to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Force-refreshing my (non-Apps) inbox shows nothing. You'd think they would mention a rollout strategy in the announcement.

<comment><AUTHOR> "So, by popular request, we're happy to announce that an overhauled version of Gmail Contacts will be rolling out today."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it just me or does it feel like the "Compose Mail" button is now in an awkward place?</comment>


Panoramic, high resolution picture of London - <AUTHOR> http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html

<comment><USER3> Hi,

Creator of the image here. First of all, thank you for all the attention, it's a real honor to be on the front page oF HN for almost a whole day now.

I am the founder of 360cities.net and creator of previous world record images such as "Prague 18 gigapixels", "Strahov Library 40 gigapixels" and "London 80 Gigapixels". This newest image was commissioned by BT as a kind of closing "Thank you London" gesture of the Olympic year. Of course, they didn't want "just" a jaw-droppingly enormous image, they wanted a _world record_ image! Unfortunately, these things are getting a lot harder to accomplish, and we're starting to go up against some constrainsts of optics, air density, and so on.

So, to create this image, we needed 4 cameras shooting simultaneously in order to get all the images in a reasonable length of time. We needed the very best optics out there, and CMOS sensors with the smallest pixels (somewhat unfortunately this meant the 3 year old Canon 7D). We needed the fasted and most precise panoramic robots to mount the cameras on. We needed gigantic memory cards, 128GB, to store a full run of images on one card. We needed 4 laptops to copy the cards quick enough to shoot again (buying more cards wasn't in the budget). In short, we needed a ridiculous amount of gear - <USER2> took 2 days to set up.

We spent 3 days shooting. The first day it was raining, but we shot anyway to learn the gear and see what mistakes we might make. The second day there were 50km/h winds which, 150 meters up, is very cold and a little bit dangerous. We made sure the gear was triple secured, and we shot anyway. One of the three photographers threatened to leave the project. It was unpleasant. But we uncovered more issues which we were able to solve. Keep in mind the cameras were moving continuously, and focusing, and shooting - they never stopped to take a shot. 12600 shots while moving and focusing each time? This required some very exacting work, knowing the gear, and maybe even a bit of luck.

Day 3 was clear, and not windy. We got 2 sets of images shot. All cameras got the shots they needed in 2 sets. That is 96000 images with not a shot missed. This to me is a huge technological achievement that i'm proud of, and I will sing the praises of Canon anytime someone asks me to :-)

Now, on to stitching. Normally I have no problem stitching 2 or 4 thousand images. But this is an order of magnitude more. As gabriel weinberg noted recently, you find out what breaks when you increase things by an order of magnitude.

Basically, the stitching software, Kolor Autopano Giga, was basically inoperable with this size data set. They scolded me for not having told them about this shoot beforehand. They told me that they know about the issues but other things are taking precedence in the development of the software. Stitching a world record amount of images is, by definition, an edge case. So they weren't really able to help me.

Stitching ended up taking nearly 4 months when we thought it would take about 4 weeks. These 4 months were spent working until 3 or 4am many nights of the week. Deadlines slipped. I suffered. My family suffered. After 6 weeks of work I had accomplished nearly nothing and started to panic. I just had to keep on pushing....

In the end, we had to set a delivery date for the client. This required me to leave a few mistakes in the image that I would have liked to fix. However keep in mind that some areas of bad alignment on a normal image might take 30 minutes to fix, but with this size project in the software, it took A WEEK to fix. This kind of work is extremely demoralizing and there isn't much to be learned from it either.

In the end, the image is finished. As they say "you never finish, you only stop!". I'll probably make a few more fixes, later. For right now I need to decompress for a while.

So that is some background on how the image was created. It's not perfect, but overall it is much better than I expected. Shipping it was a terrible, brutal grind that I hope to never experience again. But it's done now and that feels pretty sweet.

I'm typing this on the bus home from the airport after being in London for a tv show where they announced the image. That was fun. But the best feeling is knowing that the thing is finished and shipped, and if I ever have to do a similar job again I will hopefully learn from the mistakes made on this one and not have such a terrible grind again.

I'm happy to answer any questions about the image that I didn't answer here. thank you!

<comment><USER4> Very interesting! Sounds like a monumental effort! Though if it was only the stitching that took the vast majority of time and effort, no doubt you or others should be able to break this record yet again in time as software progresses?

How long (and when - start date and time) did it take to get all those 96,000 images on Day 3, please?

<comment><USER3> It took 90 minutes to shoot one set of images and 60 minutes to copy those images off the memory card.

Note: USB 3 card readers (that we were able to buy) are not really "usb 3" :-(

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the info! And ouch, regarding USB 3.0 SDHC card readers...

Separately, did you consider trying other stitching software, like PTGui Pro - or have done for smaller shoots? It seems, at least in the past, that PTGui used to be an order of magnitude faster with similar feature support and results as Autopano Giga.

That said, Autopano Giga directly supports graphics processor acceleration, which I am not sure PTGui can on Mac. Did you take advantage of this feature?

<comment><USER3> Hi,

I have used PtGui since 2004, It is great software. But it is not suitable for stitching panoramas containing thousands of images for various reasons.

I did try it with a set of 12600 images and it failed to detect control points on a few hundred images, so this was a no-go.

Autopano Giga supports GPU to some extent, but not for much, really. Mostly for some display stuff, but not for rendering or any other really heavy stuff (AFAIK).

Both Autopano and PTGui are really amazing programs, I like them both!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Compiled a short list of the more famous sights for those of you not familiar with the city (I'll add more later):

1\. The Shard (Tate Modern in the foreground) - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-33.1601...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-33.1601&view.vlookat=2.2475&view.fov=4.8933&imarkerath=-33.1601&imarkeratv=2.2475)

2\. London Eye - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-3.8135&...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-3.8135&view.vlookat=3.0432&view.fov=3.5602&imarkerath=-3.8135&imarkeratv=3.0432)

3\. Tower Bridge - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-38.7356...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-38.7356&view.vlookat=2.2507&view.fov=2.7320&imarkerath=-38.7356&imarkeratv=2.2507)

4\. Wembley Stadium - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=140.7253...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=140.7253&view.vlookat=0.8721&view.fov=11.6507&imarkerath=140.7253&imarkeratv=0.8721)

5\. Battersea Power Station - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=35.2192&...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=35.2192&view.vlookat=2.9160&view.fov=2.8203&imarkerath=35.2192&imarkeratv=2.9160%20#BTTowerView)

6\. Olympic Park - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-73.9268...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-73.9268&view.vlookat=1.1407&view.fov=2.7782&imarkerath=-73.9268&imarkeratv=1.1407)

7\. Big Ben & Houses of Parliament - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=6.4768&...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=6.4768&view.vlookat=2.4614&view.fov=3.3866&imarkerath=6.4768&imarkeratv=2.4614)

8\. MI6 Building - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=14.9167&...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=14.9167&view.vlookat=2.5274&view.fov=1.9034&imarkerath=14.9167&imarkeratv=2.5274)

9\. St Pauls Cathedral - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-43.8561...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-43.8561&view.vlookat=2.4828&view.fov=2.9417&imarkerath=-43.8561&imarkeratv=2.4828)

10\. Nelsons Column - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=13.4841&...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=13.4841&view.vlookat=5.1344&view.fov=1.4156&imarkerath=13.4841&imarkeratv=5.1344)

11\. Behind the iconic billboards in Picadilly Circus - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=16.9026&...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=16.9026&view.vlookat=6.5854&view.fov=1.2770&imarkerath=16.9026&imarkeratv=6.5854)

12\. Harrods Department Store - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=64.6214&...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=64.6214&view.vlookat=3.4378&view.fov=1.0196&imarkerath=64.6214&imarkeratv=3.4378)

13\. The British Museum - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-45.7275...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-45.7275&view.vlookat=7.9743&view.fov=8.5317&imarkerath=-45.7275&imarkeratv=7.9743)

<comment><USER6> There's a good view of Alexandra Palace, about 6 miles away: [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-146.3290&#...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I found the portal to Cthulhu's plane: [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-97.0026...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-97.0026&view.vlookat=6.1219&view.fov=3.7128&imarkerath=-97.0026&imarkeratv=6.1219)

</comment><comment><USER8> These things always feel like they pan the reverse way than they should...

<comment><USER3> Sorry, this panorama uses the original "qtvr" style navigation. Google streetview, maps, and Earth use "click and drag" navigation. There is currently a religious war going on in the pano community about which one is better. I tend to agree that the "click and drag" has become the standard.

<comment><USER9> I guess I don't get what's so horrible about giving people a choice. This is just a Quake-style mlook implementation at the end of the day, and gamers are used to being able to select the mlook polarity.

But no, there has to be a jihad, and somebody has to "win."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-164.6520&#...
Interesting to see a shot capturing the progress of a car which helps determine the rate at which the images were taken.

<comment><USER11> Wouldn't you have to know its speed?

<comment><USER10> Of course! I walk past that road everyday so could make an educated guess at 40km/hr. Mind you, my maths skills are poor so I won't be about to start delving any deeper into the calculation!

<comment><USER3> It was more than one image per second, I can tell you that much. I forgot exactly how quick it was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found buzby. :) The image is clickable, which brings up a sweepstakes competition. Cute Easter Egg.

[http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=168.9705...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=168.9705&view.vlookat=42.9767&view.fov=1.2811&imarkerath=168.9705&imarkeratv=42.9767)

<comment><USER5> Busby #2 was a bit harder to find:

[http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=174.1983...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=174.1983&view.vlookat=3.1216&view.fov=0.2259&imarkerath=174.1983&imarkeratv=3.1216)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's massive! I couldn't find my bedroom window but I've stumbled upon this guy instead : [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=172.0456...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=172.0456&view.vlookat=40.5469&view.fov=0.9885&imarkerath=172.0456&imarkeratv=40.5469)

EDIT: I'm wondering - if Google has to anonymise faces and registration plates on street view, shouldn't BT be doing it too with this high-res panoramic image?

<comment><USER14> That looks like a setup, the One Show is a simple early evening show.

<comment><USER15> next to him is an easter egg if you zoom out slightly [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=169.0923...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=169.0923&view.vlookat=42.7815&view.fov=12.0664&imarkerath=169.0923&imarkeratv=42.7815)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something funky going on here... [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-96.8554...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-96.8554&view.vlookat=6.3616&view.fov=3.0874&imarkerath=-96.8554&imarkeratv=6.3616)

I don't remember architecture like this! :P

edit: Wrong link. -_- Intended to post upside-down building...

edit2: Corrected link.

<comment><USER17> Hmm, if you zoom out there are trees blocking the window. How did they done this?!

<comment><USER16> Oops. I appear to have paste the wrong link. I intended to post an upside-down building...!

<comment><USER18> You have now twice posted what I posted.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5256830>

I should thank you for your promotion of it! ;)

<comment><USER16> Yes it was an accident, heh. :) I meant to paste a link of an upside-down building, but I paste yours (having just looked at it) instead. I can't find the original link I was trying to paste any more! I feel kinda stupid now. >.<

edit: I found it! [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-96.8554...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-96.8554&view.vlookat=6.3616&view.fov=3.0874&imarkerath=-96.8554&imarkeratv=6.3616)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very cool. I wish there wasn't as much HDR-like post processing in these images. It kind of has an "uncanny valley" thing going on.

<comment><USER20> This was likely a necessity to make the zoomed out view look better. If they didn't do that, it'd have all kinds of different lighting from being taken at different times of the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a surprising lack of people and candid shots compared to the last 10,000-shot panaroma by 360 Cities several years ago!

I assume that has to do with the timing of the shots. These seem to have been taken very early in the morning and towards the beginning of autumn (based on clothing).

Unlike the 360 Cities panaroma, there are far less discontinuities this time, though I have already found a significant one [1]. I guess the almost 5-fold increase in shots is the source of the improvement.

Also, the depth of view in this panaroma is ridiculous! You can actually clearly see individual people playing soccer or walking through very distant parks...

[1] [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-96.8425...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-96.8425&view.vlookat=5.7463&view.fov=9.9230&imarkerath=-96.8425&imarkeratv=5.7463)

<comment><USER21> According to a tower clock I found, this picture was taken at 1:40.

Edit: In the "low resolution" image, the clock reads 1:38. In the second level of zoom, the clock reads closer to 1:41.

<comment><USER4> _According to a tower clock I found, this picture was taken at 1:40._

A tower clock I found shows approx. 09h10.

[http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=161.5165...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=161.5165&view.vlookat=14.6570&view.fov=1.3723&imarkerath=161.5165&imarkeratv=14.6570)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wish it had google maps type navigation, wish the images weren't HDRd in post.

Other than that it's pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER23> If anyone's interested, the multicolored group of buildings you see when first opening this page is one of Google's offices at Central St Giles. I've been there many times for training/meetings/the free lunch and it's amazing.

They have a 360 degree gym at the very top, along with multiple roof terraces, a huge cafeteria (of course) and soundproofed meeting rooms with funny names.

One of the office floors is styled like a submarine, complete with big metal doors with valves on them. They share the space with multiple Media Agencies and other companies, so you would never know it was there. It's quite surreal and invokes a ton of envy.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yikes! I live about 2 miles away and I can make out the garden tools on my balcony.

<comment><USER25> I was able to find my old flat, which was about two miles from BT Tower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you look into the black mark under its feet and let it zoom far enough so it snaps into the level of another photo type, you can see the construction it possibly stands on.

[http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-53.1605...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-53.1605&view.vlookat=70.8474&view.fov=0.9926&imarkerath=-53.1605&imarkeratv=70.8474)

(move a little to the left I guess... it's not working 100% properly)

</comment><comment><USER27> It strikes me that in such a densely populated environment there is so much under utilised space on the roof tops. Lots of opportunities for sheds and roof gardens.

<comment><USER5> I think this guy has done a pretty sweet job: [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=171.2592...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=171.2592&view.vlookat=19.2424&view.fov=2.6562&imarkerath=171.2592&imarkeratv=19.2424)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It strikes me how insignificant the River Thames is from there, I imagine most folks not familiar with London would struggle to find it(!)

</comment><comment><USER29> A friend of mine Henry Stuart has done some amazing GigaPixel shots of London: <http://www.sphericalimages.com/panoramas> if you like this kind of thing!

(Including some 360 degree video: <http://www.sphericalimages.com/videos> )

</comment><comment><USER18> Someone's going to have a nice meal for two or be ringing two incredibly large attention bells: [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-56.2662...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-56.2662&view.vlookat=25.7578&view.fov=0.2132&imarkerath=-56.2662&imarkeratv=25.7578)

<comment><USER30> That's Heal's department store on Tottenham Court Road. So neither, it's just a display of wares for sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can't wait for someone to find a couple going at it on a tower block window. Brandon style [1]

[1] [http://www.evilbeetgossip.com/2011/03/03/want-to-see- michael...](http://www.evilbeetgossip.com/2011/03/03/want-to-see-michael- fassbender-banging-a-girl-against-a-glass-window/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't know how this guy is still standing.

[http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-46.1228...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-46.1228&view.vlookat=23.3764&view.fov=0.5148&imarkerath=-46.1228&imarkeratv=23.3764)

</comment><comment><USER33> I hope no passwords on PostIt notes - [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-92.6367...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-92.6367&view.vlookat=34.5444&view.fov=0.6409&imarkerath=-92.6367&imarkeratv=34.5444)

</comment><comment><USER34> This guy's boots look huge: [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=194.6209...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=194.6209&view.vlookat=68.8504&view.fov=0.4807&imarkerath=194.6209&imarkeratv=68.8504)

</comment><comment><USER35> Interesting ... [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-96.8192...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-96.8192&view.vlookat=5.9197&view.fov=4.6055&imarkerath=-96.8192&imarkeratv=5.9197)

</comment><comment><USER36> Found a Buzby: [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=174.0788...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=174.0788&view.vlookat=2.8315&view.fov=2.0906&imarkerath=174.0788&imarkeratv=2.8315)

</comment><comment><USER37> Busy man?

[http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-64.2875...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-64.2875&view.vlookat=17.4529&view.fov=0.2919&imarkerath=-64.2875&imarkeratv=17.4529)

<comment><USER37> Im guessing they mechanical turk (<https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome>) the crud out of these images, taking 3 or 4 photos at the same time of day and if there is a person in the first image then replacing it with the second, i came to this conclusion based on the fact the whole damn city looks like its apocalyptically empty once you get off the ground. None of the office buildings have meetings on and very few windows have people in.

<comment><USER38> It's on a Sunday, and central London is always genuinely quiet. If you want to find lots of people, look at more touristy places like the Southbank [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-33.2466...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-33.2466&view.vlookat=3.5997&view.fov=0.8469&imarkerath=-33.2466&imarkeratv=3.5997)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Or from the Shard: [http://static.guim.co.uk/interactivestore/2013/2/1/135968391...](http://static.guim.co.uk/interactivestore/2013/2/1/1359683910917/471154/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> Can you imagine if google acquired this company for street view?

<comment><USER41> BT = "British Telecom", it's not a small start up.

<comment><USER42> company != BT company == 360cities.net They already work with google blog.360cities.net/360-panorama-photos-google-earth/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Oh I see, when you zoom in enough, it transitions to an ultra-close shot. A little jarring, but you can see things much nicer that way.

</comment><comment><USER44> This would be the ultimate "Where's Waldo?"

<comment><USER45> Found him!

[http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=171.9737...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=171.9737&view.vlookat=40.5571&view.fov=0.4789&imarkerath=171.9737&imarkeratv=40.5571)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> there's a half guy here: [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-46.0400...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=-46.0400&view.vlookat=23.7366&view.fov=0.7804&imarkerath=-46.0400&imarkeratv=23.7366) #BTTowerView

<comment><USER47> Seems like he can't keep up with his own self!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I found it rather creepy (yet cool) that I could easily read a number plate miles away.

</comment><comment><USER49> is it just me? or can you actually spot a human being in this photo? It's an incredible image though!

<comment><USER16> I found some human beings pretty quickly. :)

<comment><USER50> Great, great image. Cool technology. But one question kept popping into my head: What if someone was sleeping naked in his/her bedroom?

Would it be blurred?

<comment><USER51> champagne ? :) [http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=92.3363&...](http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html?view.hlookat=92.3363&view.vlookat=35.1979&view.fov=0.4070&imarkerath=92.3363&imarkeratv=35.1979)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Look kids! Big Ben! Parliament!

<comment><USER53> Kids aren't really a recognised London .... ohh sorry I see what you did there. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> where are the people ? No one seems to be living in any apartments.

</comment><comment><USER55> Found a very poorly photoshopped seam right off the bat. Kind of sad for something claiming to be of such quality to go in and botch it like that. I'm sure it's covering something to keep people happy, but did you have to do it in such an ugly and obvious way?

<comment><USER56> This is to be expected from giant images like this that are assembled by automatically stitching together hundreds of smaller images. You'll see the similar artifacts or errors on sites like Google Maps, for example [http://www.moillusions.com/2006/04/google-maps-haunted- road....](http://www.moillusions.com/2006/04/google-maps-haunted-road.html)</comment></comment>


Cyberpunk 2077 Can Come to Google Stadia - <AUTHOR> http://gamekatana.com/cyberpunk-2077-can-come-to-google-stadia/ <comment><USER2> That would be good, since it can enable eventually proper desktop Linux release.</comment>


The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found - <AUTHOR> https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/10/04/the-apple-ii-source-code-for-the-logo-language-found/ <comment><USER2> This is wonderful!

My first paid programming job was writing a Logo Adventure program for C64 Terrapin Logo. They wanted a simple non-graphical game that showed off Logo's list processing capabilities, and I just used Logo's top level interpreter as the parser! That saved a lot of coding, but it did let you cheat (aka "learn to understand and program and debug Logo").

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/logo-adventure- for-c64-terrap...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/logo-adventure- for-c64-terrapin-logo-4c684a240b53)

Here is the source code to LLogo in MACLISP, which I stashed from the MIT-AI ITS system. It's a fascinating historical document, 12,480 lines of beautiful practical lisp code, defining where the rubber meets the road, with drivers for hardware like pots, plotters, robotic turtles, TV turtles, graphical displays, XGP laser printers, music devices, and lots of other interesting code and comments.

[http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp)

<comment><USER3> Diving into that MACLISP file, I found this variable and explanatory comment:

> SYNSTAX ... A STACK OF SYNTAX PROPERTIES

If there were a "stupid-clever variable names" hall of fame, that one would certainly make the cut.

<comment><USER2> It also mentions BIBOP LISP: BIg Bag Of Pages

        (OR (BOUNDP 'BIBOP) (SETQ BIBOP ITS))

        ;;THE TURTLE PACKAGE IS GOING TO EAT LOTS OF FLONUM SPACE, SO IN BIBOP LISP, ASSURE
        ;;THAT ENOUGH WILL BE AVAILABLE.

        (AND (MEMQ 'BIBOP (STATUS FEATURES))
             (ALLOC '(FLONUM (2000. 4000. NIL) FLPDL 2000.)))

[https://www.saildart.org/BIBOP.RPG[UP,DOC]4](https://www.saildart.org/BIBOP.RPG\[UP,DOC\]4)

BIBOP is the dynamically expandable version of MACLISP, the SAIL standard MACLISP. Essentially, the main advantage of BIBOP is that whenever one of the expandable spaces runs out of space, BIBOP requests a larger core allocation from the monitor and the delinquent space grows in the allocated memory.

December 1973; updated March 1974

The (in)famous "Bibop" (pronounced "bee-bop") LISP scheme has been available for some time now and seems to be more or less reliable. Bibop means "BIg Bag Of Pages", a reference to the method of memory management used to take advantage of the memory paging features of ITS. The average LISP user should not be greatly affected in converting to this new LISP (which very eventually will become the standard LISP, say in a few months).

[https://ml.cddddr.org/lispnews/lispnews-19740213.html](https://ml.cddddr.org/lispnews/lispnews-19740213.html)

WEDNESDAY FEB 13,1974 FM+7D.3H.28M.38S. LISP 746 - GLS -

AS OF VERSION 746, LISP SYSTEMS OF THE SAME VERSION WILL SHARE PAGES AMONG THEMSELVES; I.E. A LISP, MACSYMA, AND CONNIVER CAN ALL SHARE PAGES COMMON TO THE LISP SYSTEM. BIBOP LISP HAS BEEN GREATLY RESTRUCTURED; I WILL RE-EDIT THE BIBOP DOCUMENT AS SOON AS I CAN (SAY WITHIN THE NEXT WEEK). -- GLS

[https://github.com/PDP-10/its/search?q=BIBOP&unscoped_q=BIBO...](https://github.com/PDP-10/its/search?q=BIBOP&unscoped_q=BIBOP)

There's nothing easier on the eyes than some good old fashioned PDP-10 Midas assembler MacLisp source code!

<comment><USER4> Franz Lisp used BiBOP too, but not in any way that worked with the paging system of the host machine, it was just for determining the type of an object.

<comment><USER2> And Hanson Lisp uses MMMBOP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I looked into this a bit and zeroed in on the implementation of sine/cosine computation, which is pretty critical for turtle graphics.

I didn't follow every last instruction, but it looks like it used a 91 (or maybe 92)-element LUT of 4-byte floats, split into 2 halves. This allows direct look-up of the SIN of every angle in the first quadrant, that is 0 to 90 degrees, plus the value for the next 1-degree angle.

It looks like after looking up the two precalculated values, linear interpolation is then performed between them.

(Also, the FP numbers are in a format that must have been easy to do software arithmetic on. Leading byte is exponent, with bias of 126; next 3 bytes are sign and mantissa, with no implied 1-bit. This has just a hair less precision than a modern 32-bit 'float'. 7A 47 7C 2D is the entry for SIN(1), and is equal to 0.017452407... while double precision SIN(1) is 0.0174524064372835...)

Next, I bodged together a version of what I assume the linear interpolation step does. In both double precision and simulated LOGO precision, the maximum relative error is about .00005 and the maximum absolute error is about .000045, which would be awful hard to detect when plotting to an entire display with about as many pixels as an application icon on your modern high- dpi telephone. On the other hand, that's only 4 correct digits.

This is an interesting contrast to the Commodore BASIC implementation of sin/cos that I'm familiar with. It used a fairly high degree polynomial, which might have gotten a few more accurate digits (5 digits for sin(1.5 degrees)!) but is sure to be quite a bit slower than 2 table lookups, a multiply, and a few add/subtracts. (plus range reduction)

        0.0261759515         Estimated Apple LOGO SIN(1.5 degrees)
               ^
        0.026176948307873153 Modern Double Precision SIN(1.5 degrees)
        0.0261769483         Commodore 64 BASIC SIN(1.5 degrees)
                    ^

<comment><USER6> The only time anyone would notice slight errors in turtle position was trying to do animation by drawing over a previous drawing with an XOR or ERASE or background color pen. It might be necessary to explicitly reset the turtle position to the original start. I do remember having to be careful with the anti-aliasing so that when pointing in any random direction FD 100 RT 180 FD 100 would draw the same pixels in either direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember my very first program, from the book "Programmeren voor kinderen" ("Programming for kids" in Dutch)

        repeat 4
          forward 100
          right 90

It drew a square on the screen and my mind was blown. I haven't recovered yet :)

<comment> jake-low If you don't mind me asking, did the book do any explaining of why the magic computer words were in a foreign language (English)? Had you been exposed to much English already when you picked up the book?

As a native English speaker I feel fairly ignorant of how programming is taught in other (human) languages. I recall a quote [1] by Eric S. Raymond commenting (or perhaps speculating?) that Linus commented his kernel code in English because it never occurred to him to do otherwise. But I'm curious for your perspective as I imagine the experience of a child learning from a book is quite different from that of an adult who is immersed in the English- dominated "hacker culture" on the internet.

[1]: [http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker- howto.html#skills4](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills4)

<comment><USER8> I always wondered how non-english speaking developers from other countries who were first adopters of HTTP (or any new tech) reacted to words like "GET" and "Content-Type" and other things that were clearly invented by westerners. What would we think if we had to implement something new and use words we didn't understand?

<comment><USER9> The way I learned programming as a kid, while also simultaneously learning English, involved looking at the new weird term, grabbing a dictionary, and trying to figure out why it's named the way it is. Sometimes it was obvious, sometimes it wasn't, but generally it wasn't difficult - after all, this is just vocabulary. Single words. Pretty much the easiest part of learning a language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note there were two versions of Logo for the Apple II. The other was developed by Logo Computer Systems Inc. (I was one of the staff). Our version was written first in Lisp (on Lisp Machines) then manually compiled to assembler. The Lisp development environment included a full 6502 emulator, allowing the developers to execute Logo either at the Lisp level (fast) or to drop down into the instruction level (slow). The emulator also emulated the Apple II's graphics.

<comment><USER11> What does "manually compiled to assembler" even mean? How is that different from "rewriting it in assembler"?

<comment><USER6> There is a gray area there. But we are talking about translating an existing model program and algorithms, not looking at the program as a black box and recreating its behavior.

As the person who translated the Pascal Logo model to TI9900 assembler it was definitely the case that at the beginning of the project I translated every line of Pascal to a few instructions of assembler. By the end I was just looking at the gist of what a routine would do (its "contract" as they say) and writing it in assembler as you would new code.

It's much like translating a literary work. There's a famous quotation (which I'm not comfortable relating in full) about translations being either faithful or beautiful but not both.

Essentially maybe I became a fluent native speaker of 9900 assembler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, what a blast from the past. My introduction to programming was on an old Apple II with BASIC and LOGO. I was in the 6th grade at the time, and never did anything as complex as looping to draw spirals - I basically used LOGO like an etch-a-sketch.

<comment><USER13> Me too. I really liked Logo. I worked as "child volunteer" at and art museums "festival of the future" making logo spirographs for interested visitors. It was the early 80s and the apple ][+ 's 7 colors (2 white and 2 black..) was pretty bad compared till today, but we didn't care because not much was better.

Basic was built in so I ended up going back to that. I learned logo, pascal and basic, but being built in and not having access to pascal at home made my choice.

I did return to logo in high school on macs for some neat fractal and equation graphing programs.

<comment><USER14> Hey! Hey! Stop bad-mouthing the Apple II's graphics capabilities. I'll have you know the computer has not 7 but 8 high-resolution colors (of which two are white and two are black, but who cares about being a little wasteful when you have so many colors to choose from?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The source code is 213 KB of ASCII, assembled on 1980-8-6.

A souped-up Apple II at that time would have had 64 KB of RAM, and 140 KB of storage per floppy disk.

I guess you needed a PDP-11 to do any real work in those days.

<comment><USER16> A PDP-11/45 or 11/70 would have much more memory, but being a 16 bit machine would still have been unable to handle this file in a conventional editor. Honestly I don't know if there were paging editors available for common environments. Certainly nothing on Unix would have worked.

Per the link, the file was editted and built on a PDP-10 running ITS, which was a 36 bit machine with an 18 bit address space.

Interestingly, almost everything else I've seen from ITS uses the 6 bit upper- case-only encoding. This is pretty clearly ASCII.

<comment><USER17> ITS text files use 7-bit ASCII. Five characters packed per word. Some things like file names use a 6-bit ASCII subset (the range 32-95).

What have you seen from ITS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To save others time who want to actually use this,

Here's the disk image: [https://github.com/pneubauer/ptp2bin/raw/master/LOGO.dsk](https://github.com/pneubauer/ptp2bin/raw/master/LOGO.dsk)

Here's a web-based emulator to run said disk image: [https://www.scullinsteel.com/apple2/](https://www.scullinsteel.com/apple2/)

Here's the manual: [https://archive.org/details/Apple_Logo_II_Reference_Manual/p...](https://archive.org/details/Apple_Logo_II_Reference_Manual/page/n0)

<comment><USER17> That's the manual for LCSI Logo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Summer 1981, 11 years old, learning logo on a ][. It sure beat the hell out of trying to draw a straight line in HIRES mode in assembly: goddamn skipping every six horizontal lines made no sense to my pre-teen brain that couldn't grok modulus.

<comment><USER20> TBH that HIRES mode still bothers me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> 6502 assembly is so nice, I wrote some apps in the early 80's. You can learn the language in a few minutes. But all sorts of interesting clever things were possible.

<comment><USER22> 6502 assembler on C64 is basically what taught me how to program. It was just as important to learn the memory map so that you could access low-level features by reading and writing at special memory addresses. The Compute! books were especially useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's so cool to look at that 6502 assembly. I had an atari 400 computer, and I had this cool book that taught assembler for 6502 and I hand compiled my programs into bytes and put them in a data program and I could call them from basic. I had this great book called "De Re Atari". Those were fun times. I was in high school and the future was unlimited!

</comment><comment> ur-whale Oh, it is so nice to see this again.

This is the tool that introduced me to the notions of recursion and fractals when I was 11.

I remember spending two weeks cobbling up a Logo program to draw the dragon curve on my Apple IIe

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

</comment><comment><USER24> Hot diggity dog! Like lots of folks, LOGO on the Apple II was my first exposure to computer -- thanks to one Mr. Milligan in Westbrook, ME -- some of the other kids in my class did some pretty amazing graphics with it -- the one that is particularly clear in my mind was a well-proportioned and '3D-type' rendering of the brandmark of the band 'Foreigner' \-- I had no idea at the time how to even pronounce that word, but the fact he'd done it with the turtle sure made an impression on me

</comment><comment><USER25> Logo was my first programming language! I recently rewrote my own version of it so that I could draw a time-proportional train map. I wrote "fd 5" for 5 minutes, for example.

[http://peterburk.github.io/tra/](http://peterburk.github.io/tra/)

The version I wrote can read values from a spreadsheet, so could be used in other applications too. I think this kind of thing could be a great way for a young person to go from a homework project to the front of Hacker News. If any of you have kids, I'd be happy to help gather the data for some other subway networks!

Also, where should I contribute old Apple II software? I recently used ADTPro to copy a lot of old programs onto my MacBook Pro as DSK images.

5.25 floppies:

[https://mega.nz/#!yDITXIZC!8fREZdAruk2yYLv859jKABGSWeG4UkRoC...](https://mega.nz/#!yDITXIZC!8fREZdAruk2yYLv859jKABGSWeG4UkRoCN4_feKnmIM)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672562...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672562505858)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672589...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672589613188)

I've also got a larger selection of DD floppies, HD floppies, JAZ disks, SCSI disks, IDE disks, MacFormat and other CDs. Please tell me if you want the links!

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember (quite clearly) the day I was introduced to the Apple II+ and shown Logo. It was way over my (middle school) head- functions? recursion? so I went with BASIC and later Machine Language, but the ideas stuck and percolated and later helped me understand Emacs LISP and functional programming. I thought the integration with the turtle so that you could make graphics really was slick (compared to direct explicit mode in BASIC).

I'd love to get my hands on an actual physical Logo turtle.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder what they mean by this:

        APOUT:      AND #$7F	;eat Apple idiot char codes, type Ascii
                    JMP COUT

did the Apple II not use ASCII?

<comment><USER27> Apple II did use ASCII. But ASCII defines 128 code-points. The other 128 code- points are specific to the character encoding or "codepage".

They don't like Apple's "idiot" character encoding (which is custom, Apple II specific), so they throw away the top bit with the AND leaving only ASCII characters.

<comment><USER28> > But ASCII defines 128 code-points. The other 128 code-points are specific to > the character encoding or "codepage".

ASCII is a character encoding, and it's a 7-bit encoding. It has no code pages.

There are many 8-bit encodings / code pages that are ASCII supersets (including the Apple II one), however.

<comment><USER27> Yes. I meant to the "8-bit character encoding" but I think it's clear from the context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Logo was critical in my understanding of sub routines and got me away from the dreaded GOTO command in BASIC, can't say I did much more than use it as an expensive Spirograph but it is certainly responsible for my ability to understand function calls and libraries and how use them in modern object orientated laguages. Just instinct for new programmers now a days, but in the 80s and early 90s it was a difficult concept for many to grasp.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love 6502 - so clean and simple. Even after 35 years I still remember the opcodes in hex.

<comment><USER31> A9418D0004

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Never seen anybody initialize the stack pointer to $00 before. The 6502's stack pointer is postdecrement, so an initial value of $ff is more usual.

<comment><USER33> Could this be a trick to use the top of stack like another register and use all of the one byte stack instructions on it? If it is using the top of stack as a register, where then would be the real stack?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Terrapin Logo for the Apple ][ and C64 came with a 6502 assembler written in Logo by Leigh Klotz, that they used to write Logo primitives (for controlling the turtle, etc).

It would be ambitious to make a self hosting 6502 Logo meta assembler, by porting the entire 6502 assembly language Logo source code to the 6502 Logo Assembler!

</comment><comment><USER34> Before today, was this version of MIT Logo for the Apple II _EVER_ released?

I'm asking because of reaperducer's comment from just a week ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18086566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18086566)

<comment><USER17> No, this version was never released. People with fond memories of Logo on an Apple II would probably have used a later version licensed to Terrapin. Or the Krell version. Or the completely separately implemented LCSI Logo mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Good old 6 character identifier names. That really required some creativity, both to keep some descriptive value as well as to not generate identical identifiers by accident.

</comment><comment><USER36> I remember "programming" (copying from graph paper) in LOGO on Unisys/Burroughs ICON computers back in school in Ontario, Canada.

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone know where/how the guy found it?

<comment><USER17> I found it in backups from ITS. ITS is the MIT operating system for the PDP-10, which was the workhorse around the AI Lab, Logo Lab, Lab for Computer Science, Mathlab, Dynamic Modeling group, etc.

<comment><USER6> Hmmm, I'm vaguely remembering uploading the TI-Logo source to the MIT ITS PDP-10 for backup purposes too. If so it might be there also. You'd want to be careful about the copyright on that. Though I'd love to see it again

<comment><USER17> That's why I try to run most of the finds by the original authors. I sent you an email with some more details; or at least I tried and it didn't bounce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> That Turtle!

<comment><USER17> General Turtle, anyone?</comment></comment>


The Best VPNs To Use With Torrents - <AUTHOR> http://greycoder.com/the-best-vpns-for-torrents/

<comment><USER2> Useful article, thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: How to create a single email field like on basecamp.com - <AUTHOR> I tried to implement a single email field on my saas website for free trial signups. But I got bombarded by spam. Using google invisible recaptcha make the user experience very bad. Is there are any other work around? Given the spam rate I decided to remove it for now. But I am curios about how basecamp is doing it. I have seen it on other websites as well but some of them do no post the data anywhere. They just capture the email and auto fill it in the final form. But basecamp is using the email to create a trial account right away. Any help? <comment><USER2> Have you tried using Cloudflare?

[https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170066-W...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170066-Will-activating-Cloudflare-stop-all-spammers-or- attackers-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cloudflare will provide some protection. But is there anything specific to this problem? Captcha is one solution but how are websites like basecamp and intercomm are doing it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Did you send a confirmation link before granting access. Using an email is one way to do passwordless login, by sending them a link to login.

Maybe consider OAuth?

<comment><AUTHOR> If I send email to spam bots won't that decrease my domain score?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use a honeypot field.

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't work. I added several variations of hidden fields like hidden email field, hidden url field, hidden name. But nothing worked.</comment></comment>


The Other Side of the Fence: Working at IBM Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.blueboxcloud.com/insight/blog-article/you-work-at-ibm

<comment><USER2> _Big Blue has really empowered Blue Box to stay true to who we are and that's a huge relief to all of us._

Can't tell you how many times I heard that same line when we got bought by IBM. You guys got picked up in June? From experience, you're in for a rude awakening in a couple of months.

P.S. - Yup...the integration team folks are great. They don't stay forever.</comment>


I didn't fall in love with coding - <AUTHOR> https://the-pastry-box-project.net/garann-means/2014-july-16

<comment><USER2> To provide a bit of a counterpoint to this post, I would say that coding is a creative pursuit, and we wouldn't expect an artist or a woodworker to say they weren't in love with their craft. The only difference is that programming happens to pay better.

Yes, there are jobs for the rough carpenters of the programming world who just know how to cut and nail and follow a plan, but the best jobs are always going to go to the fine craftsmen who devote some significant chunk of their lives to the pursuit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most definitely. Those that are passionate about their craft will put more pride & spend more time doing it.

I also find it really helpful to maintain friendships with developers outside of the Silicon Valley/startup world who are basically programming to live (as opposed to living to program). They provide me with a counter-balance to the echo-chamber-ish view I sometimes fall into. I have colleagues who will hack out an awesome weekend project just because they love to code. And I have colleagues who are admittedly pretty good at programming, but would rather be building a house or working in their garden. They sometimes encourage me take a step back and understand the things that truly bring me joy.

<comment><USER3> > They sometimes encourage me take a step back and understand the things that > truly bring me joy.

Not only that, most businesses (certainly most startups) would be far better served early on by having someone who was a good programmer but not in love with it, but was in love with the business. I'd bet on that setup vs. a brilliant engineer who doesn't understand (or want to understand) the biz every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read this as an attempt to de-mystify programming as work. You don't have to be a stereotypical geek to enjoy it. You don't have to dream about code in your sleep. It doesn't take a genus to do it and it doesn't require more passion than say dentistry.

Many are turned away from programming because of its geek allure. They think it isn't for them because they didn't care for Star Trek. It's time to rectify the impression. Programming can be a pragmatic career choice, just as law or architecture or medicine can. No more, no less.

<comment><USER5> Ha! I do dream about code when I sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know a computer science PhD in his early to mid 30s who wished that, if he could go back to uni would instead study industrial design, but alas he states that programming pays more and is more stable.

I mean, sure you could some other craft or industry that you don't love or god forbid dislike (banking, nursing, building homes) so that it can pay the bills and enable you to buy a house. You don't need to get into programming to do that. BUT programming enables you to live a certain lifestyle because of its unique attributes that is part and parcel of the job. The end game here is - do we live to work OR do we work to live?

</comment><comment><USER7> >You don't go around telling people you only code for the money while you still need a coding job, that's suicide. You have to say you code for the challenge at minimum, or the beauty of naked logic or the unlimited power to create, if you want to really sell it. [...] I am not a sociologist, but I believe pretty firmly that this is the most fundamental thing keeping tech from being more diverse. It asks us to fundamentally change how we portray ourselves, to be programmers first and everything else merely in the last twenty characters of our twitter bio.

Two observations...

First, I'm not sure why this was submitted to HN since I presume that HN's demographic _genuinely_ likes/loves to program and they do not wear a fake mask pretending they do. HN is the wrong audience for this message.

Second, whenever a topic about companies expressing a preference for " _passionate programmers who also do it as a hobby_ ", many forum posters will emphatically push back with " _it 's enough I code for 8 hours a day_". What's unknown is what % of programmers worldwide express that sentiment publicly among their coworkers (and possibly managers) as opposed to keeping it a secret.

<comment><USER8> Then I'm one of the few that hate it. I have no idea how people bang out another CRUD app in the latest fad language/framework/pattern du jour. I don't get excited when someone announces a new language. I know C, I know enough python to get by, but I sure as hell can rip apart a stack down the logic level if you want me to.

What I do love to do is solve problems. Sometimes the problem is to come up with a clever algorithm, sometimes it's to fix a piece of broken software, usually it's figure out how the hell something works. In the end I despise any time that I actually have to write code.

I know that I'll never get a job because of my programming. I'll never have any wiz bang open source project to show someone. But in the end I have plenty of opportunities because I solve problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would think that if you pursued any job just with an attitude of "get yours and get out" where you were "entirely motivated by having a good paying job" you'd be... kind of miserable.

Sure, a girl who loves working at bakery might be struggling to make ends meet; but if she's also genuinely happy with her career then what does it matter? Work is where the average person will spend most of their time, so I just don't think it's worth it to go into a field you hate in the hope that you can retire early.

<comment><USER10> _" Sure, a girl who loves working at bakery might be struggling to make ends meet; if she's also genuinely happy with her career then what does it matter?"_

It matters because "struggling to make ends meet" is a lot of stress and can get in the way of a lot of things. It still might have been a better choice for her than taking an alternative path that would have exchanged that for a career she was miserable in, but it still _matters_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's only recently that I've found (a few) programmers who talk about the beauty of the work - I think the "get money get out" folks are the vast majority at the zillions of non-buzzworthy companies.

I smirk a little at the slightly oblivious people who put a ton of gravitas on throwaway apps, but to me it feels like down to earth people along with people working on truly exciting things greatly outnumber them.

</comment><comment><USER12> An interesting point of comparison is with finance. Most people going into IB/private equity/etc. make no bones about the fact that they just want to make money (and "win"). Wanting to just make money is a _positive_ trait. There are lots of people going into finance (non-quants) that have the mentality of just getting in, earning millions, then leaving the field in their thirties.

</comment><comment><USER13> > People concerned with collecting a paycheck have excellent work ethics, and > the industry would benefit from more of them in it.

Typically, no they do not. They may have excellent "butt in seat" metrics, but that means very little for quality of work.

> If you can fake it for interviews and in order to advance your career, > you'll definitely go further, but never feel bad about either faking it or > not being able to.

If by faking it you mean a little embellishment or studying up before an interview then that's fine. But I have a good knack for catching phonies. And once I find you've been dishonest about your experience or knowledge I throw that resume out and interview is over. Be prepared, honest, and enthusiastic.

Basically with any profession you need to be motivated to excel. I wouldn't hire a medical assistant who just wanted a paycheck. I'd want someone who wants to help people, learn and grow.

</comment><comment><USER5> Coding as a practice, I love. It's a continuous process of learning while trying to solve problems.

But work is work. It can be a job. However, as a career, it's easier to move from one job/environment to another.

</comment><comment><USER14> A technical debt generator's confession.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I worked with Garann at Etsy, and she's great. In fact I can think of numerous occasions in which she paid down organizational technical debt.

She says this in the article:

> I made a very successful career of programming while entirely motivated by > having a good paying job, and at the risk of being a braggart, I was a good > programmer.

and she is right.

<comment><USER14> No offense, but it means either you are both indeed great or none of you are, which one is true I will never know.

<comment><USER3> How about this: instead of flat out accusing the author of causing technical debt (essentially an ad-hominem attack), why not disagree with the substance of her argument. That is: that one does not truly need to be passionate about this industry to be both successful and good at your job, and that the assumption that one does is keeping qualified people out of our industry. That way you don't need to worry about whether or not we are great. It's truly immaterial.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Washington Post creating 'Launcher' section dedicated to gaming and esports - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2019/10/09/washington-post-releases-launcher-new-section-dedicated-video-gaming-esports/ <comment><AUTHOR> related first staff announcement [https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2019/10/09/washington- post...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2019/10/09/washington-post-names- staff-launcher-new-section-dedicated-video-gaming-esports/)</comment>


Hand Ciphers - <AUTHOR> http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/handciphers.htm

<comment><USER2> If you like this kind of stuff, definitely check out the book "Cryptanalysis - a study of ciphers and their solution" by Helen Fouche Gaines. It has loads of interesting hand ciphers of historical interest, going approximately through WWII. It also has tips for how to break them, and how to approach unknown hand ciphers for cryptanalysis (pretty fun stuff; I'm using it as a fun way to teach my daughter math and programming).</comment>


Ask HN: Why Linux succeeded and Hurd didn't? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> 1\. Worse is Better: Linux was at first a very simple implementation and famously eschewed excessively modular micro-kernel designs that were popular in academia at the time in favor of a pragmatic monolithic architecture.

[http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html](http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html)

2\. Cathedral vs. Bazaar: Linux was very successful in attracting a large and diverse developer community, whereas the rather top-down management approach of many GNU projects at the time ended up not attracting many HURD contributors.

[http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral- bazaar/cathedral...](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral- bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Linux shipped.

</comment><comment><USER4> Linux was useful to enough people to gain the momentum necessary to get better and keep up with developments. Also, it mostly cares if stuff works, not if it is the theoretical perfect thing.

Hurd didn't get to the starting level of usefulness and had no other motivator to gain the necessary momentum. The project also seems to aim for the "perfect OS" instead of getting something working out the door. And now there is this other open-source OS called Linux around which is better by nearly every measure...

<comment><USER5> That kinda reminds me of an old xkcd cartoon: [https://xkcd.com/844/](https://xkcd.com/844/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's because Hurd is too ambitious. Overly ambitious project almost always fail. By the time Hurd was done, everybody has already forgotten what Hurd is.</comment>


Men Are Harassed More Than Women Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/04/men-are-harassed-more-than-women-online.html

<comment><USER2> I've been saying this for a long time. Women are not actually being singled out, they are now equal with men. But for some reason, they feel they should have special treatment. We need to find ways of combating all harassment..not just for women.

About 10 years ago, I had a programming blog that talked about topics such as Mysql VS Postgres and other topics I was interested in discussing. I got death threats, harassed, and emails telling me some of the worst things in the world (including the rape of me and my family members). I never really took it seriously, but it still happened on a constant basis.

<comment><USER3> > I've been saying this for a long time. I'm sure you have, as have many > others. What is less clear is how founded this perception is.

> About 10 years ago, I had a programming blog that talked about topics such > as Mysql VS Postgres and other topics I was interested in discussing. I got > death threats, harassed, and emails telling me some of the worst things in > the world (including the rape of me and my family members). I never really > took it seriously, but it still happened on a constant basis.

There's no question that trolling happens to everyone, and trolls can often strike without the foggiest clue about someone's gender. It's not like the Y chromosome gets you a free pass.

However, did you, for comparison, try setting up a similar blog, masquerading as a woman, in order to compare the experience? While this study didn't find it, I believe the evidence from other studies has pretty regularly found that at the very least women get more vicious attacks and are more likely to be stalked. Sentiment analysis on very large datasets has been pretty conclusive in this regard.

It could be there was something critically different about this study that was, until now, ignored, but I don't see much reason for it to be an outlier beyond that it is so narrowly targeted (small sample population, UK only, etc.), or reason to think your perspective is more well informed than anyone else's.

<comment><USER2> "However, did you, for comparison, try setting up a similar blog, masquerading as a woman, in order to compare the experience? While this study didn't find it, I believe the evidence from other studies has pretty regularly found that at the very least women get more vicious attacks and are more likely to be stalked. Sentiment analysis on very large datasets has been pretty conclusive in this regard."

So if a women gets 10 threatening messages and I get 8, does it really matter? Who cares who gets more threats..threats are threats and they need to stop.

"It could be there was something critically different about this study that was, until now, ignored, but I don't see much reason for it to be an outlier beyond that it is so narrowly targeted (small sample population, UK only, etc.), or reason to think your perspective is more well informed than anyone else's."

The same thing happens on other Internet forums and on social media. If you have any kind of opinion that someone doesn't like, you will get threats. Even more so on Twitter where it's really easy to fire off a shitty @ reply.

If I was a woman, I don't think you would be trying to explain away my personal experiences. This is what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER3> > So if a women gets 10 threatening messages and I get 8, does it really > matter?

I think you are minimizing the differences, and of course, there can be differences in credibility of threats as well.

> Who cares who gets more threats..threats are threats and they need to stop.

Absolutely.

> If I was a woman, I don't think you would be trying to explain away my > personal experiences. This is what I'm talking about.

I'm not trying to explain your personal experiences away. However, I think you are mistaken about what the experience is for women. Mansplaining wasn't made up for no reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A Very Small Sample of Selected (Celebrity/Public) British Men are harassed more than Selected (Celebrity/Public) British Women.

Watch #gamergate on twitter for just a minute and you'll get the opposite impression. By far.

*Edited to emphasize the celebrity/public status, as I think that might attract harassing a bit.

<comment><USER5> I was wondering how this study got this result, since other studies have come up with very different numbers.

<comment><USER4> Yup, they even mention other studies in the article but could obviously not find one to support their headline. So they write stuff like:

        While Hess's Pacific Standard article drew on that
        survey to note that "5 percent of women who used the
        Internet said 'something happened online' that led them
        into 'physical danger,'" it made no mention of the fact
        that 3 percent of the men also reported such an experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worth noting that the article is generalizing from a very limited study among British celebrities and journalists. It's entirely possible that abuse and threats happen differently in different countries, and you certainly can't assume that celebrities are treated the same as non-famous people. Furthermore, the article explicitly mentions that their sample size was so small that classifying a single famous, controversial journalist as either celebrity or journalist had a dramatic impact on the results.

What also matters is the nature of the abuse. Is the abuse aimed at men just as sexual/rape oriented as that aimed at women? It doesn't say.

All in all, my impression is that the article selects and presents the data in a way convenient for the point it's trying to make.

(That doesn't change the fact that of course all harassment and threats are bad, and they all need to be fought.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, yeah. As much as anonymity is necessary for political dissent, whistleblowing, etc, it does come with the cost that it promotes douchebaggery. Which means the internet is hostile to everyone.</comment>


Thinking of Buying a Microsoft Surface Device? - <AUTHOR> It is a beautifully engineered device. As a tablet it is near perfect for reading. As a portable laptop-like device it works amazingly well. It is an almost perfect bit of design.
But it has two fatal flaws.
The first is the "Microsoft Attitude". If you're "just a consumer" Microsoft feels you don't own your computer. Your "so-called work" has NO value. Trying to read using your app? Are you an artist trying to draw? Are you keeping a budget on your spreadsheet? Well, Microsoft NEEDS to reboot your machine. So suddenly all of your work is gone. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. But, hey, look at your pretty new login picture!
If you value your work do not buy a Microsoft Surface product.
The second flaw is the "Microsoft Attitude". The Surface product is designed to be trashed. The hard drive is soldered in. The case cannot be opened so the battery cannot be changed. So when your Surface fails you now have a very expensive piece of trash. Could it be engineered to enable fixes? Sure! Is it hard to make an access panel? Nope! But Microsoft decided you don't matter.
Mine failed in less than 9 months. Microsoft has "discontinued" repairs because, you know, the "Microsoft Attitude" ensures that you, your work, and your hard-earned cash don't matter.
DO NOT BUY A MICROSOFT SURFACE. <comment><USER2> I've owned a Surface RT, a Surface Pro 3, and a Surface Book 2 ... but I will never buy a Microsoft Surface again. The RT failed to start one day and both the Pro and Book have suffered from screen cracks with only regular wear and tear. I suspect the body of the Surface devices are too rigid and transfer impact directly to the screens. Although the screens or both still functioned (although the touch failed on the Pro) the Book's keyboard battery pack was trashed, and I had to pay for out of warranty repair.

I've never had any hardware issues with any other laptop.

The Surface devices are beautiful but too fragile in my opinion to be worth the money spent on them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Timely warning! I was looking at Surface at the store waiting for the New Year sales.

Now I'll just stick with a ChromeBook.

<comment><USER4> right, that would be equivalent replacement...</comment></comment>