OpenMusic - <AUTHOR> http://repmus.ircam.fr/openmusic/home <comment><USER2> Other interesting things include Faust and ingen.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAUST_%28programming_language%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAUST_%28programming_language%29)

[http://drobilla.net/software/ingen/](http://drobilla.net/software/ingen/)

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/bgribble/mfp](https://github.com/bgribble/mfp) could also be another similar option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking at the screen shot brought puredata to mind.

Appears to provide a visual metaphor with code backend. Thanks for posting.

<comment><USER5> Max was invented in mid 80 by Miller Puckette at the same institute, IRCAM. He created the open version, puredata, only in mid 90.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Last time I tried OM, good 5 years back, it required some stupid commercial implementation of Common Lisp. Is it still there?

<comment><USER7> Hello, yes, it required a commercial implementation of Common Lisp, of which a license at that time (and still today!) can be purchased cheaply, of which you could have downloaded the "Personal Edition", which has very few limitations, none of which concerning the language itself. And if you have asked for an evaluation version, you would certainly have received a time constrained full version of that in your eyes stupid commercial implementation called LispWorks. So - ignorance while using the words "stupid commercial" may be your fault, but by far not the one of either OM or LispWorks. This is of course not the point.

Calling the LispWorks implementation of Common Lisp "stupid", a result of decades of man hours of work of actually not only pretty intelligent, but also very knowledgeable men, who managed to produce a fine product, provided it for a real bargain and surrounded it by a stellar (take my word for it) support for their customers, is sad. Fundamentally. Not in the way of, like if your or mine team wins the 2014 WM of FIFA. Sad in the sense like if I see someone literary pissing at the musicians of the London Philharmonic Orchestra because he doesn't like the sound of violines or just doesn't like Dvořák and especially doesn't like the fact, that he needs to buy a ticket to experience them, one who seems never tried to master any instrument to, if not to understand, then at least to get a feeling about the matter (otherwise he would have already developed some respect), but still he talks about it with words like "stupid commercial".

I hope you don't see an insult in my words, but an inspiration to read more, to learn more. There are intelligent people around you, believe me. And this is rewarding. Finally a lot of them provide their output for bargain (if we talk about Lisp then like LispWorks, but you can take any area) or for nothing monetary (like the authors/maintainers of SBCL).

Regards

<comment><USER8> Your points are all good, but you seem to fail to understand the reason why gp posted this comment. When seeing the Open prefix in the name of some software or platform, people usually except free things, because they've been used to it.

Calling LispWorks stupid might not have been the brightest move around, but the concern was somehow valid.

<comment><USER9> The current version is free in several senses, though not all at the same time. The sources to OpenMusic itself are _libre_ (GPL), and the OpenMusic binaries made available for download are _gratis_ (they are self-contained and don't require your own copy of LispWorks). But you do need a copy of LispWorks to build your own binaries. It's free software, but depends on a proprietary compiler.

I believe the main LispWorks dependency is on the GUI toolkit. There have been some porting efforts to SBCL/GTK in the past, but afaik none have been completed.

<comment><USER4> To summarise: I can download and use OpenMusic the source code of which is issued under the GPL. But to exercise my free software style rights to hack on OpenMusic and recompile the changed software I need to buy a licence for a closed commercial product.

Have I got that right?

<comment><USER9> Depends entirely on what kind of hacking you want to do. If you want to pull out parts that are portable Common Lisp and use those, you're free to do so. If you want to hack the code so the whole thing compiles on SBCL, you're free to do that too. Similar situation to free-software apps whose developer targets OSX: no legal barrier to using the code on Linux, but may take some work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Everything Is Booming Except for Wages - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-23/u-s-economic-growth-isn-t-translating-into-bigger-paychecks <comment><USER2> Unemployment is so low and companies continue to complain that they can't find anyone. The unspoken end of that sentence is they can't find anyone _at the wage they are offering_. It's only a matter of time before companies will be forced to start increasing wages just so they can find people.

<comment><USER3> > It's only a matter of time before companies will be forced to start > increasing wages just so they can find people.

It's been like 30+ years. When does the trickle begin?

<comment><USER4> It has begun, just not in America. American unskilled labor isn't competitive except for jobs that are difficult or impossible to offshore (e.g. construction, landscaping, agriculture), so American capital trickled into emerging markets instead. China, for example, has experienced a massive trickle-down of Western capital.

<comment><USER5> _China, for example, has experienced a massive trickle-down of Western capital_

This is not the effect that the term "trickle-down", or "supply-side" economics refers to. Trickle-down economics is a fallacious concept that says if you make rich people or corporations even richer, they will in turn re- invest their riches in things that employ wage-earners. There is no empirical support for this concept, and much empirical evidence that the reverse is true - a vibrant economy requires most of the economic activity to be enriching the lower/middle class wage earners.

The massive flow of capital to e.g. China is simply wage arbitrage combined with structural disadvantage, e.g., no worker safety protection, environmental protection, etc costs.

<comment><USER4> What empirical evidence are you referring to that says rich people aren't investing their money? And if it is the case that they are indeed investing, where do you suppose China's investment-centric economy is getting capital from? Who do you suppose is paying Chinese workers manufacturing goods for American corporations?

If you leave out unskilled workers (whose share of capital went offshore), wage growth among skilled American laborers has been very high... which is also what you'd expect from trickle-down.

<comment><USER5> > _where do you suppose China 's investment-centric economy is getting capital > from?_

From the Chinese central bank, which has massively expanded the economy through low interest rates and easy credit.

Wealthy people are are investing their windfalls, but not in production, but rather in rent-seeking FIRE assets. Those assets do not create middle- and lower-class wage jobs, in fact they suck income out of those classes.

> _wage growth among skilled American laborers has been very high_

You will have to support this with more than just an assertion. The wages for skilled trades, for instance, have not nearly kept up with inflation. Skilled manufacturing, same. Some of the professional categories, like software development, have seen some growth - but the outliers in SF/NY are outliers, not the median nationwide. Doctors net less, lawyers are mostly destitute unless they are in the 10% who make it in biglaw, and so on and so on.

<comment><USER6> Can you cite the Chinese low interest rates? The BLR is 4.3% according to this[0] is there something else going on?

[0] [https://tradingeconomics.com/china/bank-lending- rate](https://tradingeconomics.com/china/bank-lending-rate)

<comment><USER5> China started to rein in the massive debt economy earlier this year. Current rates are not indicative of the past, and official rates don't reflect the enormous "shadow banking" industry that has been at the heart of the debt boom.[1]

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/45bd8052-59dc-11e8-bdb7-f6677d2e1...](https://www.ft.com/content/45bd8052-59dc-11e8-bdb7-f6677d2e1ce8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why are all of these articles so clueless as to what's actually happening, and how to solve it? Just ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ every time.

Unions are the obvious easy fix [1]. Give the workers some real bargaining power and ability to stand up for themselves.

[https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines- inequalit...](https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequality- rises/)

<comment><USER8> A union would deny me the freedom to negotiate my own wages.

<comment><USER7> For the majority of America there's no such thing as negotiating wages. Do you think McDonalds or Walmart are going to let you negotiate more than a few cents here and there? Nope. The union would be more beneficial to them.

<comment><USER9> > For the majority of America there's no such thing as negotiating wages.

What makes you say that?

According to the first report I found via Google [1], workers who earn minimum wage make up about 2.3% of the labor force. Wouldn't that imply that almost all employees have at least _some_ bargaining power?

Note: the report seems to only talk about workers paid hourly, I assume the statistic is no worse for full-time employees.

[1]: [https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum- wage/2017/home.htm](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum- wage/2017/home.htm)

<comment><USER10> That's the federal minimum wage...a lot of states and cities have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Jesus christ, bloomberg does not fuck around.

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<comment><USER12> Call them up and tell them you will not be changing your browser configuration.

Additionally I would probably add "shove your tos where the sun doesn't shine"

<comment><USER13> Why? Value your time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think the most parsimonious explanation is too much supply of labor and not enough demand, so this means employers still have the upper hand. Low unemployment hides the low labor force participation rate. A lot of middle- aged and older men want to work but cannot. Many low and medium skill jobs still have too many applicants relative to open slots.

<comment><USER5> There is no reason to think that's the simplest explanation.

An equally simple explanation is that for the majority of jobs there is essentially a wage monopoly/cartel keeping wages low, and workers have significant barriers to moving to different areas. [1][2][3][4]

[1] [https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/6/17204808/wages- emp...](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/6/17204808/wages-employers- workers-monopsony-growth-stagnation-inequality)

[2] [https://www.thenation.com/article/does-monopoly-power- explai...](https://www.thenation.com/article/does-monopoly-power-explain- workers-stagnant-wages/)

[3] [https://ilsr.org/monopsony-labor-blp- episode-42/](https://ilsr.org/monopsony-labor-blp-episode-42/)

[4] [https://www.epi.org/publication/its-not-just-monopoly-and- mo...](https://www.epi.org/publication/its-not-just-monopoly-and-monopsony- how-market-power-has-affected-american-wages/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wages are _always_ booming -- if you have the right skills. Generic "wage booms" aren't a thing that exists in a normal economy. There are a number of fields right now where there is an absolute shortage i.e. the number of qualified people at any price point is smaller than the number of jobs.

The point people often overlook is that, by and large, people cannot be easily trained into most kinds of roles that are experiencing strong wage growth. There is no easy way to satisfy a labor shortage that requires several years of training and experience to gain competency. But that is the reality.

Consequently, you have large numbers of $300k jobs that no one can fill and large numbers of people that can't find a job at $50k. These are separate markets.

<comment><USER10> There are probably a couple of orders of magnitude less $300K jobs than $50K jobs. A "there exists" quantifier is useless when talking about the health of the entire US economy.

EDIT: thanks for the correction.

<comment><USER15> Are you saying the number of $300k jobs is not only greater than the number of $50k jobs but that there are several orders of magnitude more $300k jobs than $50k jobs? If you've accidentally reversed your numbers here then I totally agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Increasing the size of the pie doesn't mean anything unless you also increase the sizes of the slices people get.

Current inequality involves a larger pie, but with an ever smaller number of people getting the majority of the cake, so that others get the same old portions or less (despite working even harder than a company-man or union worker in the 50s and 60s).

</comment><comment><USER17> Join a union. Join the IWW if you can't find one. America has a massively tilted playing field towards bosses and it needs to be tilted back.

</comment><comment><USER18> Roughly 11-12% of the working age population is veterans (Using google for the rough figures and math)

It is far more fruitful to game the disability system than to pursue an actual productive career. \- Anecdote: 2 personal fitness instructors with 100% disability. That is $3000 non-taxable dollars a month. For life. \-- It is far more fruitful to game a bureaucratic machine than to put your mind and imagination towards fruitful work ~ This is not the same as saying "Throw them out in the street and let God sort 'em out". This is saying that a great and fruitful strategy for future vets is to rape the VA's disability system

: Temporary observations on dynamics that could be gamed to sustainability and ruin by over 10% of the possible working population ~ This is not a mere case of the ruin of commons. This is (at least) partially a manipulation by war planners to grossly underestimate the costs of constant war and constant operations. The costs of the VA are either not calculated in or are grossly distorted/underestimated by planners. It is not an organization for vets. It is an organization to cover the DoD's ass by bribing the living casualties of bureaucratic malfeasance and the normal living casualties in even the most competently executed wars.

<comment><USER19> Think of it as a form of positive income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't help when the public is practically excited to perform tasks like getting groceries and picking up dry cleaning for $7/hr.

</comment><comment><USER21> So, many possible reasons, and one way or another it's the relative power of employer vs. labor, but one possible factor: the longer the downturn/slowdown, the longer after it ends before wages go up. The recovery from the Great Recession was by far the slowest in living memory, so it takes longer before employers stop thinking "people will take this job soon, I just know it", and instead think "I'd better raise the pay or I'll lose the people I've got". And maybe they think that, because it's true, and you have to have a good labor market for a longer period of time before people start to hop jobs more, if they experienced a longer wait before they got the job they have.

</comment><comment><USER22> Too much supply (employees) is a problem we should examine. Part of the reason why this is he case is because small business are having an increasingly difficult time competing with the resources of larger companies. Why have 6 accounts each at a small business of their own when a company 6 times the size can get by with 2?

I think part of the blame is the regulation around employees. It's hard to run a small business. Even trying to do something like offer reasonable health insurance can destroy huge amounts of profit. You need to make _a lot_ per employee for it to work.

</comment><comment><USER23> This article is many months old. More recent data is showing solid wage growth. Nevertheless, many of the comments on underlying economic challenges for workers are still valid.

</comment><comment><USER24> On a related note:

How do you negotiate for a pay increase when the pay increase is controlled centrally? Every year my increase is not negotiable because it has been handed down to my boss from central HR 5-6 layers of management away.

This has to be a common issue; and the solution is not to simply change companies.

<comment><USER25> You misunderstand the fundamental reason why you are getting a 2% salary increase every year. Because when you joined the company, 5 years ago, you were happy with $XX,000. You were ok with that salary one year ago. What changed? Why would you suddenly want a lot more?

PS: the answer is "because the market has moved and values me at that higher price now", which needs to be backed up with something such as a job offer (dangerous), or better, evidence (my friends with similar resumes are getting offers at that price).

<comment><USER26> The evidence gets you nothing. Only an actual job offer could work, anything else is unsafe in the extreme and might get you big unwanted notice. Trying to negotiate from weak no fallback position is bad.

(In other words, it can get you shortlisted and potentially flagged as a troublemaker. Say bye to references. Employers talk sometimes.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am going to take a contrary position and say this is a positive. The reason why is employers are responding by bring in more of the marginal into the workforce. If wages start to rise the underclass will remain unemployed and excluded.

<comment><USER28> This kind of argument is less of a rationalization and more of public relations spin. It ignores the increase in consumer spending that comes with raising wages. In fact, it completely depends on skating over that fact.

<comment><USER27> It is neither a rationalisation nor PR spin. Until everyone who wants a job has a job then wages rises will limited the participation of the marginal in the job market. It is a value call if greater participation or greater income of those who already have a job is more important.

What is more of an issue is that the fed will kill the economy to ensure wages don't rise. As soon as there is the slightest sign that wages are rising interest rates will be jacked up - it is only inflation when wages rise, not asset prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The problem seems to be that people are willing to work for low wages. At the last company I worked for, college graduate engineers were paid about $75k starting and they had an incredibly hard time hiring. So they raised the amount that they offered. But in low wage industries people take any job they can get at whatever wage is offered.

<comment><USER30> How is the problem that _workers_ accept lower wages, rather than _employers_ proposing them?

<comment><USER31> Because if workers did not accept those wages their companies would not function

That's what strikes and things like that are for

<comment><USER32> If workers didn't accept those wages they would be destitute. Companies (capital) hold all of the power in our current economic system, it hasn't always been like this in the US and isn't in many other countries.

<comment><USER29> If I could only find work at $8/hr that is my fault. I could get a student loan and go to a trade school or study CS and make $80k+ in 3 years. Any adult that requires to care for a family and chooses to work for $8/hr is harming themselves.

<comment><USER32> Unless you already have a family to care for, or can't afford to stop working for 3 years to take classes, or can't afford health insurance, or any of a million other reasons that life may not be as simple as you make it out.

If everyone joined the trades, the supply of trade workers would increase and their hourly wages would go down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Purchasing power through consumer debt is at an all-time high.

Whereas workers needed wage increases to buy TVs, cars, and homes... today just about everything can be financed.

The long-term impact of this is lower savings and delayed retirement (if retiring at all).

<comment><USER34> Isn't the lack of wage growth the reason that most large purchases are financed?

<comment><USER33> The Internet and IT skills have greatly optimized the credit scoring and underwriting process.

It was not possible 20 years to get instantly approved for most credit lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This article is from February—could a fourth possible reason be that local variance is a normal phenomenon and this is not indicative of a wider trend? I say this because the sudden and drastic dip in median weekly earnings in the last quarter of last year has already recovered 75% in the first two quarters this year according to [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm)

Went from $353 -> $345 -> $351 at end of second quarter this year.

The overall trend is still very much up. That being said, even if wages do continue to increase, the fact that only half of real growth is making it to workers is still problematic and could be related to other reasons mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER5> It is a 30-year trend. Here's [1] the chart since 2000.

[1] [https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/corporate-...](https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/corporate- profits-and-wages.jpg)

<comment><USER35> Right, but that's the trend of capital becoming more valuable than labor, which is related, but not the same thing as looking at real-wage growth. Workers portion of total production can be going down yet still be gaining an overall increase in real wages and purchasing power if it's made-up for by overall growth.

From the perspective of creating a better society, that long term trend of capital increasingly consolidating and rentiering is still dangerous and likely has a breaking point, but so long as real-wages rise for people, it's not as immediately or obviously devastating. Yet, the evidence presented in the article seemed to be pointing to real-wages not increasing, and I'm not sure that's true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So... Buy real estate, buy equity...?

<comment><USER37> Just don't make your money by working.

<comment><USER38> "Work" \-- clearly, a dirty four letter word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> 1\. CPI is a wrong deflator to use when comparing to GDP growth

2\. Wages != Compensation

</comment><comment><USER40> Is this change happening despite Trump's tariffs or because of them?

<comment><USER41> considering the article and data is from February neither.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Why would you expect any different in 2018?

Now that low hanging economic fruit has been picked, and almost all land has been found and developed to some level, it's technology that drives growth.

Technology is developed by a small minority of the population with special skills and high intelligence. The median human is not developing technology, and therefore not significantly contributing to growth. You can only capture some amount of the new value that you are creating.

EDIT - why the downvotes? This isn't a political statement, it's an observation.

<comment><USER7> >The median human is not developing technology, and therefore not significantly contributing to growth.

Those jobs __still need to be done __. Someone needs to stock your shelves, someone still needs to pick up your garbage, someone still needs to flip your burgers.

<comment><USER42> Sure. But why should the wages of these tasks grow, when they are not providing more or differentiated value as opposed to say 40 years ago?

<comment><USER43> To keep the knives of the poor away from your throat.

<comment><USER42> Real mature and practical there buddy.

What's more likely is the continued political push towards socialism that we're seeing in North America. Whether or not it will alleviate the situation as I see it, I can't say.

<comment><USER44> > Real mature and practical there buddy.

You think that's a joke? Or trolling?

History says no, time and time again.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Building a tea discovery and coupons site, would like to hear opinions - <AUTHOR> http://puretea.co <comment><AUTHOR> The goal of the site is to let people play a questions game and recommend teas based on the choices, and in the future provide better ranking for tea on the web. There is also a Deals & Coupons section where discounts are featured (only a few online coupon codes for now), and a Tea Of The Day section (largely a work in progress) which suggests a tea and rates its existing online reviews.</comment>


Ex-Solus Dev Is Creating a Truly Modern Linux Distribution - <AUTHOR> https://itsfoss.com/serpent-os-announcement/ <comment><USER2> So this "truly modern distribution" won't have accelerated graphics for my "modern" RTX graphics card? And if it's "Seriously optimised for serious workloads", then why use musl, which is considerably less optimized than glibc?

</comment><comment><USER3> Ambitious. I wonder if they'll have enough momentum to actually pull off something usable without a large, interested user base.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Serpent Linux is not Serpent GNU/Linux because it is not going to be > dependent on a GNU toolchain or runtime.

I wonder if they have GNU coreutils replacement? or bash? or ncurses?

Is it going to be all busybox based, rewritten from scratch, or ported from BSD?

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome goals, though I don't love the name. But of course that's just my opinion.

<comment><USER6> Yea, and the headline of the article also gave me low expectations.

But the dev does seem to have a proven track record, and the feature plan seems somewhat appealing while not being over ambitious.

It is similar to a lot of distros already though like Arch, Alpine, Void, etc.

Not radical or ambitious like Silverblue, Nix, or Guix.

Seems practical and desktop focused. Ubuntu started that way, so it is possible to succeed with that approach but Ubuntu had millions of dollars at the start and their focus on usability was almost the opposite of this purity focus.</comment></comment>


Tipsy Fish: When Anti-Anxiety Meds Get Into Rivers - <AUTHOR> http://science.time.com/2013/02/15/tipsy-fish-when-anti-anxiety-meds-get-into-rivers/?hpt=hp_t3

<comment><USER2> The presence of pharma in our water supplies is a huge problem. None of the U.S. clean water rules address this. We don't even really know the extent of the problem, because there is no testing regime. Here on the upper Potomac my town dumps all sorts of pharma and endocrine disruptors into the water that communities downstream drink from. Our town considered improving our wastewater treatment but because of the cost, won't stop until the law requires it.

<comment><USER3> Let me give some more information on that: It is true that pharmaceuticals, personal care products and endocrine disruptors are not really addressed by clean water rules, but that doesn't mean that they are ignored. The reason that they aren't regulated is, to quote EPA: "To date, scientists have found no evidence of adverse human health effects from PPCPs in the environment."

Of course there are a lot of substances in the water, their concentrations are rising and it is difficult to assess their effects on humans. However, there is also a lot of dilution in the water system and the concentrations found in drinking water are still far from the concentrations where we would expect any adverse effects on human health. In fact, one of the reasons that PPCPs have become an issue is that improved measurement technologies make it possible to detect them at the small concentrations (some parts per trillion) that they are at.

Some PPCPs have now entered the EPA contaminant candidate list (CCL), which means that they are evaluated in more detail and a maximum contaminant level (MCL) might be enforced in the future. The issue is not as simple as adding more regulation, doing a bit more treatment and be safe. There are hundreds of different substances and most of them are difficult to remove. The most effective treatment method, reverse osmosis, is extremely energy intensive and thus very expensive. It is also important to know that "removal" doesn't mean that we pick the molecules out of the water and disassemble them into their atoms, it usually means that we transfer them from one medium into another. They still have to go somewhere and likely they still end up in the environment.

So, to sum it up: PPCPs are found in water at low concentrations which are a problem for aquatic life and this problem cannot be solved easily. There is not a lot of evidence pointing to human health problems at the moment, so expensive, somewhat effective treatment methods aren't enforced at the moment. The problem is not ignored however, the EPA regularly reevaluates the issue and research is being done on possible health effects.

<comment><USER4> If we know it affects animals, why do we wait until it starts affecting people to change our actions?

<comment><USER3> The impact on aquatic life and on humans can't be compared directly. First of all, toxicity is often related to body mass, i.e. the lethal dose is approximately proportional to the weight. This means, that a lot more of a substance is needed to have the same effect on a human than for a tiny fish. Second, and perhaps more importantly, aquatic animals are immersed in water and they are so from the very beginning. While we drink for water intake, fish "breathe water", i.e. they constantly have water flowing into and out of their body. This makes them more susceptible to contaminants in water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's surprising that such a low dose of drugs can have such a noticeable impact on fish.

</comment><comment><USER6> Totally reminded me of Sad Shark: <http://bit.ly/14WZrIN></comment>


Post Claims Hacker News is Fixed - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/Whgxd

<comment><USER2> ... and the Greys killed Kennedy because under his presidency mankind would finally unite and get to the stars. The Greys had to stop this at all costs - they wanted to trap mankind on Earth.

This drivel was posted here a while ago and, oddly enough, it ended up being killed. I have a radical theory as to why: _it's off topic._

Take your conspiracy theories elsewhere, or be prepared to offer proof. Preferably while not wearing your tinfoil hat.

<comment><USER3> You beat me to revealing the Kennedy truth to the masses. Good to know I'm not the only one who knows the real story. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Diverting investors' capital from the startup they picked into another startup providing B2B services would be a legitimate concern. But is this actually happening enough to even move the needle for YC? Their past or most likely successes off the top of my head have been Reddit, Dropbox, and the AirBnB spammers, all of which are primarily B2C and don't have other YC startups as major clients. I also wouldn't expect any viable startup to live or die by their prominence on HN; this audience is still small and mostly frugal, more likely than anyone else to conclude (sometimes falsely) "I don't need to pay for that, I can build it myself". This isn't very convincing even before the 20 IQ point penalty for encoding a page of text as a 72 KB image.

 _Edit:_ there's a longer greatest-hits list at <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/y-combinator>, and none of those look like major money sinks for other YC startups either.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess my first question is where is the proof? This looks like utter bullshit, but I would be much more interested in it if there were sources to serious compiled raw data that proved this in any form.

Don't listen to claims and made up facts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Much of this (the use of scores of adjacent stories to suggest anomalies) can be explained by the karma system. It seems like the author doesn't realize that points are weighted by the user's karma.

<comment><USER7> What, an upvote from a 5000 karma user is worth more than an upvote from a 100 karma user? I've never before heard that that's the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> so

</comment><comment><USER9> Haha whos says that google isn't doing this either?</comment>


Is Computer Science Dying? - <AUTHOR> http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1083188&rl=1 <comment><USER2> Now that computer scientists have discovered that the statistics and probability research of the past few decades completely applies to any interesting problems, there should be at least a few more good years left.

Regardless, computer science would never actually die. It would just deadlock or attempt to solve the halting problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> The biggest problem in the field is still that most universities don't offer separate Computer Science and Software Engineering majors. While there is substantial overlap, those are two distinct fields. It's much like the relationship between Physics and Mechanical Engineering. The IEEE is doing some good work to establish a standard curriculum for Software Engineering and get it implemented at more schools. That would provide a more attractive option to students who want to create software but don't enjoy the theoretical and mathematical side as much.

</comment><comment><USER4> > One solution proposed for this lack of vision is that of renaming the > subject to "informatics."

Renaming doesn't create visions but it should be noted that this is the usual term in French, German, Italian, Norwegian etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's amazing that computer scientists never consider the possibility that they are wrong -- it's always students who are misguided.

In my view, computer scientists are wrong. They have limited the scope of the field to exclude application-level creativity. And in so doing, they have severely restricted the potential of the greatest invention of all time.

<comment><USER6> Nothing wrong with understanding computer architecture/algorithms/os/etc before you exercise your application-level creativity.

Anyone learning a sport has to master basic things before they go on to the advanced (eg in volleyball, you learn how to bump/set/spike before you learn how to run offensive plays). I think the same applies to CS.

<comment><USER7> But at least you do get to learn how to run offensive plays while still learning volleyball.

Personally speaking, in my 5 years of college (Drexel University from 1996-2001), most classes were 80-100% theory and 0-20% programming. None of it was application-level programming until the Software Engineering track in senior year. And you didn't have to have a full working program to pass either; it was enough to just show you made an effort.

I'd rather see a university that promoted the idea of letting self-motivated students do their own thing instead of just turning education into a checklist of required classes and credits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope not. The mathematical aspects are about to get a whole lot more important to us.

</comment><comment><USER9> Only like the phoenix.</comment>


Forget real iOS encryption – all Encryption Apps need U.S. Export Compliance - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/Chapters/SubmittingTheApp.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40011225-CH33-SW6

<comment><USER2> Hardly news is it?

This rule has been around since the cold war era when crypto was classified as munitions.</comment>


Can we call Mono a failed platform yet? - <AUTHOR>

It has been seven and a half years now.
Mono has come a long way but who cares?
Does anyone use cocoa-sharp, gtk-sharp, or Moonlight for anything mission critical?
Has a book been written on Mono in the last four years?
Why was there no "Mono Summit" this year?
I was at Miguel de Icaza's talk at the PDC and would sware on a stack of bibles that he was on some sort of drug.  It was borderline nonsensical, I had to walk out after less than thirty minutes.
MDB is still terrible.
Their GC is still terrible.
f-spot is slow. banshee is terrible. What's all the hub-bub over tomboy?  Its a post-it app? gnome-do <eh> whatever.
Their community seems to be becoming ever more cloistered as time goes on.
I'd hate to say it but I think Mono is circling the drain.
I contend that Mono is a failed platform and will never be able to sustain a stable user / developer base on Linux or Windows.
Discuss. <comment><USER2> Do you think no one notices your 1 karma and your freshly created account?

If you want us to have any faith in what you're saying, you may want to (a) spend some time with this community first and (b) post material that actually backs up your accusations against the Mono project.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your attacks on mono-based apps are shallow and pointless. They afford your argument against the platform nothing.

</comment><comment><USER4> No platform fails until it stops being supported. Mono may not have succeeded though.

That's like saying that Basque is a failed language, it was never intended as an international language, it's still used by those in the small province where it originated.</comment>


The CuBox Pro: for $160, a tiny, open PC with 2GB of RAM | PCWorld - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2023758/the-cubox-pro-for-160-a-tiny-open-pc-with-2gb-of-ram.html <comment><USER2> Hmmm, $160 for a cubox or $35 for a RPi model B.

Given one can get a Windows 8 laptop on sale at Fry's for $260 I don't see what market this is aimed at.

[http://images.frys.com/art/ads/020113_0pH1uChus/images/P1_FR...](http://images.frys.com/art/ads/020113_0pH1uChus/images/P1_FRI_020113_02.jpg)</comment>


America in grave danger from terrorists? The numbers tell a different story - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2017/nov/05/america-terrorism-risk-global-data-new-york <comment><USER2> I don't think there's any question as to whether or not mainstream media outlets across the Western world have been capitilizing on the "War on Terror" for decades, but one that has remained unanswered is how effective have the Western world's anti-terrorist measures been?

There are some measures, like TSA in America, that appear to be more focused around the illusion of security than actually preventing acts of terrorism. But what about some of the surveillance efforts conducted by intelligence organizations within the Five Eyes?

Maybe this merely a display of my own ignorance, but I don't understand why the efficacy of surveillance measures (both domestic and non-domestic) isn't discussed more often. If governments were more open about all the terrorist attacks they were able to prevent ahead of time, maybe the general public wouldn't have such a negative opinion of them when one terrorist slips through the cracks.

This paper ([https://www.cepol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/26-reinhard-...](https://www.cepol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/26-reinhard- kreissl.pdf)) has some interesting insights into the matter. While admittedly a slightly biased source, this ProPublica article also has some interesting things to say about mass surveillance ([https://www.propublica.org/article/whats-the-evidence- mass-s...](https://www.propublica.org/article/whats-the-evidence-mass- surveillance-works-not-much))

<comment><USER3> The U.K. regularly jails people for planning terrorism - but it receives very little publicity. I couldn't name any.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing! I did some quick Googling and found this BBC article that seems to back up what you're saying ([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39176110](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39176110)). I really do wonder why they wouldn't talk more about it? I think it would be a fair compromise to say "hey we stopped X amount of terrorist attacks, but we can't tell you everything about how we stopped them because that's classified."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another question I would like to ask what HN thinks, or perhaps if it is known or statistically reported some where.

What's the risk of death or injury in the Middle East or in any theater of action at the hands of the West? Both from unintended collateral damage or from negligence/mistakes (e.g. drone attacks or similar)? How does that compare to the risks that the West face from terrorists?

There was an element of truth to the narrative projected by media at specific events such as the terrorist attacks in London (15/9) and New York (11/9). But largely, the narrative we're accepting as truth doesn't hold merit.

The amount of exposure we receive for death or injury on a day to day basis across the West is not an accurate reflection of the danger or risk of being injured or hurt my terrorist fringe elements. Your husband, brother or other male member is a bigger threat to your health when comparing domestic and sexual violence with terrorism.

I don't know if I'd put this down to the success of our anti-terrorist programs (even if it was which in probability is likely, no such credit would ever be sought and this is obviously by design).

Or whether we as a region (i.e The West) have always overstated risks associated to terrorism because of the potential for financial gain from fear mongering by the media?

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been holding my breath ever since 9/11 and the anthrax attacks that followed shortly thereafter, dreading more attacks on that scale or larger. Not to jinx us, but surprisingly they haven't.

It's like the existing terrorists aren't smart enough to think of such attacks, aren't skilled enough to execute them, or aren't interested and are content with relatively minor (though still very tragic and media attention- grabbing) attacks.

It could also be that the agencies charged with keeping us safe are actually doing a good job at preventing those larger scale attacks, which makes sense for attacks like the 9/11 ones, which required a lot of coordination and cooperation between the participants and are therefore vulnerable to being spied upon and/or infiltrated, but not so much for other "lone-wolf" sort of attacks, many of which really don't require much skill and no cooperation or coordination with anyone else.

So I'm not sure how to explain not seeing any large-scale attacks by lone- wolves or even small terrorist cells except as lack of interest or knowledge on the part of the terrorists.

<comment><USER6> Actually I think it's the focus on large scale attacks that keeps us safe. From a psychological perspective, a series of seemingly random small scale attacks drawn out over several months would be far more devastating and fear inducing than one big attack (baring use of a chemical or nuclear weapon). Imagine a mass shooting every week in various locations (a mall, a hospital, a sporting event, a rural location). People would be afraid to go outside even though the overall damage and risk to them at a population level would be relatively minimal.

Why don't people do this? My guess is because it's not sexy. People want to participate in a high profile huge attack, not a small random shooting which by itself doesn't do much.

Large scale attacks are inherently watched for, planned for, and guarded against. Small scale attacks are almost impossible to guard against and stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to be opinionated about the middle east first read these articles:

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone)

The most recent stuff you may be more familiar with.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know what to take away from this. What is the different story? That there's nothing to fear... because the West's terrorist prevention efforts work? Terrorists don't really care about the West? The West is not very vulnerable? It's all about location? I can interpret the author's data in different ways.

I'm interested in also seeing the data on attempts and credible threats.

<comment><USER2> While this is definitely a personal opinion, my takeaway is that the image of terrorism that is commonly painted on the nightly news in the US is vastly different from what terrorism is in the rest of the world.

Reading this article made me reflect on my understanding on the goals of counter-terrorist measures of the United States and how they (somewhat hypocritically) revolve entirely around a consequentialist point of view.

Maybe I have my tin foil hat a little to snug on my head, but I can't seem to find a way in which the mentality of the U.S. government's perception of "terrorism" has evolved from the days of COINTELPRO. To the US government, the only difference between MLK and Kim Jong Un is that only one of those was a threat to the state in 60's while the other is a threat now.

While I'm admittedly not really well versed in stoicism, I believe that an individual's oikeiôsis ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikei%C3%B4sis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikei%C3%B4sis)) of something or someone else is the guiding factor of how they act or behave towards something. However, is it really fair to hold people to the same standard as a government?

<comment><USER5> _" To the US government, the only difference between MLK and Kim Jong Un is that only one of those was a threat to the state in 60's while the other is a threat now."_

I'm not seeing the analogy. Did MLK have some secret stash of nuclear weapons I'm not aware of? Was he threatening to attack the US or its allies with them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's an interesting thing to plot, but these numbers need more context.

Deaths per person (ok, that number is always exactly 1, but hopefully you know what I mean...) seems like it would be a much more useful number to see, for example.

Another stats comparison that is made quite often in the UK is deaths due to the past two decades of Islamic terrorism versus deaths due to terrorism in Northern Ireland.

</comment><comment><USER3> Due to a deliberate blind spot , mass shootings like the one that just killed 27+ people in Texas aren't counted as terrorism. If they were America would appear much more at risk.

<comment><USER10> The homicide rate is much higher than the random mass shooter homicide rate.

So most proposed regulation of firearms wouldn't make us a whole lot safer, because it wouldn't address people getting angry and getting their licensed pistol.

(the point being that addressing mass random homicides won't actually make us a whole lot safer...)

<comment><USER11> If you remove gang related violence the homicide rates are not that high.

2/3rds of deaths due to firearms are suicides this ratio is even higher when you adjust for the accidental discharge which is quite often used when there is no suicide note or a clinical history.

Mass shootings are indeed a drop in the ocean as far as gun related deaths go in the US.

<comment><USER10> This is written with an obvious POV but cites the BJS in claiming that gang related violence is not behind a majority of homicides in the US:

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-defilippis/do-we- have-a-...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-defilippis/do-we-have-a-gang- problem_b_5071639.html)

I live in a region with a real low rate and most of the cases in the news involve people that know each other. I've thought about trying to gather a profile of each incident, working back through time, to try to get a picture of the statistics rather than just relying on my impression. Of course, on top of being a fair amount of work, there are also issues with what sorts of information is ethical to consolidate like that (and especially, names of accused; my driving interest is the relationship statistics, so that is a core issue).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Daily resolution makes these graphs very hard to read. Aggregating weekwise would make it much clearer.</comment>


Tel Aviv Meetup? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen that the last HN meetup was about 2 years ago. Any interest in something informal in Tel Aviv? <comment><USER2> I'm in too! @idangazit

Shame, we had a meetup group until exactly last week—which shut down for lack of use.

<comment><USER3> Ah! didn't know about it. Was there a mailing list/fb group?

EDIT: what did you do for place?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think that a Facebook group is better for all discussions:

<https://www.facebook.com/groups/278515712253665/>

If anyone are in, I suggest Sep. 13 which is Thursday and it's great for a toast for Rosh Hashana.

</comment><comment><USER4> Count me in!

I'm @adambn on twitter or adam (at) binpress (dot) com

p.s: I can help with organizing it

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd definitely be interested :-) Let me know if I can help. I'm @joelgascoigne on Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, didn't know so many of you were near by... Count me in. @ShayAcrich <http://computedscience.cloudfoundry.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll be in Tel Aviv (or close to it) starting from the end of this week & would be interested!

@tametick <http://tametick.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds great. Assuming I'm in the country (I'm abroad for the holidays in September), I'm definitely in.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd be interested. @apparentsoft on Twitter or app.net.

</comment><comment><USER10> We are in and can help. founders [at] smore [dot] com

</comment><comment><USER11> I live and work in TLV and would be interested.

</comment><comment><USER12> Likewise, I'd be interested as well @shirzor

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm in! too,where it will be located? my mail is email@example.com please send me a word,thanks!

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm in. And so's my office mate.

</comment><comment><USER15> @shiraabel - I wanna know too.

</comment><comment><USER16> @klarnail will be happy to host the event at our new Tel Aviv office @yuvalsamet

<comment><USER4> where are your new offices?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm in.

@benln on twitter

</comment><comment><USER3> In. Will try to see if I can help secure a space.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm in as well (in TA for another month or so).

</comment><comment><USER19> +2 from the IDF

<comment><USER17> Same, also IDF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sounds great.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sounds good.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm in :-)

</comment><comment><USER23> sounds great - @rozovr

</comment><comment><USER24> eugenes and catamunt, it seems you are both hellbanned.

<comment><USER24> Yes might be a mistake... as far as I know there's not much you can do about it except e-mail pg or simply create a new account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> @yuvalo count me in

</comment><comment><USER26> I'am in

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds good to me!

</comment><comment><USER28> +1 for Tel-Aviv

</comment><comment><USER29> +1 @emikil

</comment><comment><USER30> +1 @nivs

</comment><comment><USER31> Me, too!

</comment><comment><USER32> +1

</comment><comment><USER33> Im in

</comment><comment><USER34> +1

</comment><comment><USER35> +1

</comment><comment><USER36> +1

</comment><comment><USER37> +1

</comment><comment><USER38> +1</comment>


Annual Escalating Patent Fee Proposal - <AUTHOR> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2010/02/annual-escalating-patent-fee-proposal.html <comment><USER2> I like the spirit of this but not the implementation.

Currently, if you pay 10k or whatever, you get at a patent for ~20 years. If your idea is valuable, others will (hopefully) be willing to pay royalties. If not, you'll be discouraged from filing fluff patents in the future.

If fees start low and escalate every year, there's much more of a game theory aspect. On the inventor side, you have an incentive to apply for 10 silly patents and play the lottery on each for a year instead of filing for 1 good patent that is actually valuable. On the other side, someone considering paying to use a patent might think "Gee, if we make a deal now, we have to pay royalties, but if we wait a year, then there's a good chance Joe Patentholder will not be able to pay the required fees, and then we can use his idea for free!" This doesn't mean Joe's idea is not valuable, but the incentive to wait a few months makes a patent's value too unpredicatable.

Also, what if you're negotiating with someone after 2 years and 11 months, and they decide to stall for a month to apply negotiating pressure?

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing the patent system wishes to hold up as a possibility that it allows is that of the lone inventor who solve the world's problems with a single patent. The patent that leads them to 'the good life'. (Never mind that it rarely happens.) This escalating patent fee proposal eliminates this mythical lone inventor.

A different angle that I've wondered about is of compulsory licensing. In copyrights and songwriting, there is a trio of copyright judges that determine the going rate for music in $/minute, and anyone can then reproduce music by paying that price without any negotiation. Of course, better deals can be worked out between parties, but that option is always there. Would it be possible to apply the same sort of thing to patents, to effect a positive change where one is desperately needed?

<comment><USER4> This is a very interesting idea, but I think it would be virtually unlegislateable with patents because, among other reasons, you can (and people do) patent things that do not have a consistent unit you charge for (and that don't even go into the final product). For a cheap example, take two pharmaceutical compounds, one that works better in 1mg doses and another that works better on 100mg doses. Should the second be a hundred times as expensive as the first or not? Or suppose someone devises a new way of manufacturing battery cells that are exactly equal to current batteries except the process is a lot cheaper. The fee would apply one-time to the company that used this patented process or would it apply to all products built with this process? And how would, say, the fees of a 9volt and an AAA battery be balanced?

So I guess the patent system is too broad for its own good.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand your comment. The fee would apply to the patent _holder_ , for retaining the patent. The licensing fees could be whatever the patent holder wants, if they decide to license it. That's no different from today.

If the new way of manufacturing battery cells is of no commercial value and that you don't make any money off of it, then what's the point of holding the patent?

<comment><USER4> I was responding to the $/minute equivalent to song licensing earlier in the thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> great way to screw over the small patent holders. A big corporation can afford to pay 100,000 to keep a patent, a small time inventor would go broke by year 3

<comment><USER5> If the revenue they get from the patent makes the patent worth holding, then they wouldn't. And if they don't make 100k off of it, then maybe it's not worth holding the patent for longer?

The example rises a bit steeper and starts lower than I would have suggested, but it seems reasonable to me. After all, the supposed point of patents is to make it commercially valuable to invest in research by giving you a guaranteed return if the research pays off. If you're not getting any money from your patent, then you're no worse off releasing it than sitting on it for nothing. But society will be better off if patents that aren't used are eliminated.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Decline and fall of major internet players in our lifetime? - <AUTHOR> Do you think we will see the decline and fall of Google, Facebook, Amazon (and the like) in our lifetime? <comment><USER2> Decline? Most definitely. Fall? Who knows.

Of course, it depends on your age as well: I've seen the rise and decline of CompuServe, AOL, AltaVista, MySpace, Compaq, Gateway, Siemens-Nixdorf and so on. Not to name Nokia, RIM/Blackberry, Atari, Commodore, Sinclair and many, many others. Many of them could be seens as "major players" in their fields at a time. We used Mosaic & Netscape as web browsers and MSIE was pure evil ... there was no Chrome, there wasn't even Google. Or look at the changes IBM & Microsoft have gone through.

Maybe Google, FB & AMZ are bigger and will stay on top longer, but 30 or 50 years from now, the world will have changed.</comment>


Responsive Design:  The Only Mobile Strategy That Scales - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitefinity.com/mobile/responsive-design-graph

<comment><AUTHOR> A nice looking info graphic about responsive design that is responsive.</comment>


How to make roguelike games in Rust - <AUTHOR> http://bfnightly.bracketproductions.com/rustbook/ <comment><USER4> I said this in a previous comment on a different story, so I'm going to copy- paste the content of that comment with some minor edits:

The bfnightly tutorial is a very good tutorial, but I do want to warn that it's not always terribly idiomatic Rust: Herbert was using the writing of the tutorial as a way of practicing Rust, so there are places where the explanations aren't quite correct and other places where the code isn't what an experienced Rust programmer would write. An example that jumped out at me (this from Chapter 1.7) was the use of

        &s.to_string()

which is an expression that could be shortened to just s. (Specifically, s has type &str, calling to_string() on it converts it to a String, and borrowing it allows it to be coerced back to a &str but now with unnecessary copying.) Elsewhere (this from Chapter 1.2) it has explanations like

> Copy and Clone allow this [type] to be used as a "value" type (that is, it > just passes around the value instead of pointers)

which is also not a correct explanation, or at least is a misleading one: things can still be passed by value even without Copy and Clone and without any pointers at all. (Arguably, he meant, "You can share the value without using borrows," but that's not what the explanation said.)

That said, all this is nitpicky (and I suspect that Herbert would be receptive to feedback along these lines—I just haven't had a chance yet to provide it!) because the tutorial's explanation of roguelike-writing is still very good, and in fact I've been following it as a rough guide for writing a tutorial on top of a different Rust library myself! But I do want to warn about using it as a model for learning Rust specifically.

<comment><USER5> > > "value" type

They mean a nonlinear (or nonaffine) type, as opposed to a affine type - <USER2> can only be passed by reference if you don't want to get rid of it yet - <USER3> they would presumably call a "reference" (or "by-reference") type. It's a correct explanation, but ambiguous (not misleading, but perhaps confusing) terminology.

<comment><USER6> Clone doesn't have anything to do with that though. Copy types are passed 'by value' without a move (so are not affine). But a Clone type doesn't change anything except to add the clone() method.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the explanation. I'll get that clarified/cleaned up in the tutorial soon. Tracking it on the associated Github as issue #73, so I don't forget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> kris-s Are there commercially successful roguelikes that use ascii art only? Dwarf Fortress is the only one I know of and it's getting an official makeover for the Steam release.

<comment><USER8> I don't know about roguelikes success (Cogmind comes to mind), but I can tell you that ASCII games can be successful if you have a good idea. For example, I spent about 2 months making Rogue Bit just over a year ago:

[https://roguebit.bigosaur.com/](https://roguebit.bigosaur.com/)

And it sold over 25000 copies so far.

<comment><USER9> Just to add on to the "not a roguelike" list (it's an adventure game), Stone Story RPG ([https://store.steampowered.com/app/603390/Stone_Story_RPG/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/603390/Stone_Story_RPG/)).

<comment><USER10> That's not really ASCII art. I mean it is, but iirc it's custom shader code in Unity made to _look_ like retro style ASCII art. So it's actually way more difficult to make than a grid of ASCII characters.

<comment><USER11> Although I get where you're coming from, I disagree with the assertion that this makes it "not really ASCII art". At the end of the day modern terminal emulators use a graphics API at one point to render characters on the screen. You wouldn't say that iTerm2 isn't a "real tty" because it has a metal backend (in this case, iTerm2 is also using a custom shader to render ASCII/unicode — more complex than this game of course). Where do we even draw the line? Is ASCII art only legit if it can render natively in a traditional terminal? How about only one without hardware acceleration? POSIX compliant? Further down the rabbit hole we could draw a line in the sand at tty's with no window manager.

It would still be trivial for the developer to add an "textshot" feature to export a frame to .txt, so I'd still qualify it as fitting the ASCII art aesthetic.

<comment><USER12> _isn't a "real tty" because it has a metal backend_

I was at first confused. Of course "real ttys" have some metal in their back end! (I'm too young and my default mental image of a "real tty" contains a CRT, but there's probably even more metal in a teletype.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I recently made one in Rust [1] with Tomas Sedovic's tutorial with libtcod and he suggested this one as a good next step!

I'm also excited to see that this one looks wasm compatible.

1) [https://youtu.be/UKpDNnfiId0](https://youtu.be/UKpDNnfiId0)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is great, thanks for sharing it. I started a Rust project awhile ago to do something similar but based on a boardgame. It was fun but I didn't keep up with it. I'll try to get back at it using this as inspiration!

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I agree - this is a terrific read, and seems like a nice way to jump into Rust, a language I am eager to explore .. lots of strange new idioms, and from the perspective of a rogue-like, nicely done .. will give me a bit of Rust chops anyway! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ask HN: are there any roguelike games that can be played (collaboratively) by two players on remote connection?

Mac OS would be a plus because both me and my friend use mostly Apple stuff at home.

<comment><USER17> Not exactly roguelikes, but MUDs [1] are multiplayer games with a roguelike feel, but they are more like the ancestors of MMORPGs, TBH.

A telnet program should basically be enough to start playing. There are some "MUD client" programs that enhance the interface (dunno about MAC OS), and some sites offer enhanced web interfaces as well.

One of the most popular, Aardwolf [2] is very newbie-friendly.

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

[2] [https://www.aardwolf.com/](https://www.aardwolf.com/)

<comment><USER18> Aardwolf has always been more like an infinite farming noobland (where you could also spend some real cash). Although, yea, very noob-friendly.

For serious pvp+rp, Carrion Fields.

For non-ROM based RP MUDs, Achaea or the like (although these days you'd likely have to spend real cash there as well).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are there any AAA studios using rust yet? I personally think it's not going to happen any time soon, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

My theory that it won't happen without some form of inheritance-like structure. Games, like many forms of simulation, are inherently stateful and tends to fall hard on the OO-side of the Expression Problem spectrum. Traits tend to give you the best of both worlds, but in very important aspect it falls short: the traits themselves do not have data members. I saw a proposal where you could link object data members explicitly to data members that the trait required, which would probably fill that gap...but I don't think it has gone anywhere. Anybody know what I'm talking about so I can look up the progress?

<comment><USER20> [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/78bowa/hey_this_is_ky...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/78bowa/hey_this_is_kyren_from_chucklefish_we_make_and/)

<comment><USER21> Chucklefish is no longer using Rust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> About roguelike game (not in Rust), Komodo developped a decentralized blockchain based one, and give developers lots of tool to develop their own decentralized game - roguelike or not [https://docs.komodoplatform.com/basic- docs/antara/antara-tut...](https://docs.komodoplatform.com/basic- docs/antara/antara-tutorials/rogue-module-tutorial.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> I want to praise the design of this webpage, not only its content.

It's clean, fast, readable, it supports themes.

I now want a LaTeX to HTML converter to this HTML.

<comment><USER7> It's the standard "mdbook" that ships with Rust, also used for the Rust documentation. I pretty much suck at HTML, so I went with the easy markdown option and am enjoying the benefits!</comment></comment>


How Israel Hid Its Secret Nuclear Weapons Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/israel-nuclear-weapons-117014_full.html

<comment><USER2> Oh, so that's how that "threat to strategic stability in the Middle East and a nuclear proliferation threat" got started. Oh, but its okay "in a bargain with Prime Minister Golda Meir, Nixon accepted the Israel's de facto nuclear status as long as it stayed secret—a controversial and unacknowledged deal that remains in place effectively through the current day."</comment>


Federated Byzantine Agreement – An Absolutely STELLAR Consensus Protocol - <AUTHOR> https://achainofblocks.com/2018/12/13/what-is-stellar-consensus-protocol-federated-byzantine-agreement/ <comment><USER2> Decent article the article briefly tackled the protocols governing BTC(POW), ETH(FBA) XLM(SCP)

Biggest takeaway( Most know this)

Stellar Consensus Protocol values safety over liveliness thus is poised for Banking adoption when it comes to remittances. The article didn't address some of the perceived negatives and was not valuably objective. However it does not come of as a shill article. The article paints XLM and Stellar Network in a positive light. Good place for people who are curious about Stellar. Even mentioned current price. Good read on train to work.</comment>


Mens' Wardrobe Essentials - <AUTHOR> http://www.deliberatism.com/blog/mens-wardrobe-essentials/

<comment><USER2> This should be called "How To Dress Like Mark Zuckerberg." This is the standard college student/wannabe entrepreneur uniform, but you will find a lot of contexts where a t-shirt, hoodie (!) and hemp Vans aren't going to cut it. Unless you are Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.

Jeans and t-shirts are OK in a lot more places than they used to be but on the East Coast or in many other countries dressing so far down is disrespectful. If you are under 25 a hoodie is not out of place but for anyone older a hoodie looks juvenile. So do Vans. And try getting into some of the nicer restaurants in New York or San Francisco wearing a t-shirt and hoodie. Unless you're Mark Zuckerberg.

If you are going to wear jeans in a professional context you should dress them up with nice shoes, a dress shirt or button-down, and a blazer or sport jacket. And not gray. Gray jackets are for car salesmen and floor managers at Car Toys. If you only have one jacket it should be navy. Think Richard Branson, but if you're not Richard Branson don't expect to be taken seriously dressed like you don't give a shit.

Clothes don't make a lot of difference if you look dirty or poorly-groomed. The dirty hipster look is fine for watching an indie band at a faux working man bar swilling a PBR, but not at many other places. And go easy on the tattoos and piercings and big rings in your ears. Err on the side of caution when you only get one chance to make a good impression. Your business plan and elevator pitch count for nothing if you immediately offend your audience or distract them with your affectations.

You might think it doesn't really matter, but you won't know when you're not being taken seriously or laughed at because people who have manners won't say anything.

<comment><USER3> _you will find a lot of contexts where a t-shirt, hoodie (!) and hemp Vans aren't going to cut it_

Those however may be disproportionately contexts to avoid.

<comment><USER4> You get at an importent point. However, it is important to add Richard Hamming's orthogonal idea: "I wasn't dressing properly. I had to make the decision - was I going to assert my ego and dress the way I wanted to and have it steadily drain my effort from my professional life, or was I going to appear to conform better? I decided I would make an effort to appear to conform properly. The moment I did, I got much better service."

Contexts in which dress matters may disproportionally be contexts to avoid, but there _are_ contexts that are worthwhile in which dress is very important.

<comment><AUTHOR> It can go the other way, though, too.

I'm a partner in a digital agency and used to think that if I dressed better, we'd sell more work.

The inverse turned out to be the case. We actually lost one potential job for looking "too corporate" (their words). Recently, our largest client noted something similar: that they sort of expected to see me in a hoodie, and would feel weird if I showed up in a suit.

The point isn't to look sloppy. Instead, it's to make the clothing something that they don't even think about.

<comment><USER4> Your comment is subsumed by Hamming's point. Dressing properly does not always mean dressing "up".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> When I posted the precursor to this post on HN, yesterday, some asked whether it belonged here. That's a fair question, but I think they do.

When we started our company, I spent a lot of time thinking about clothing and worrying about whether we were dressed right for meetings with (seemingly) important folks. With time, I realized that it really didn't matter much, so long as we didn't look sloppy.

The suggestions in this post can save you a great deal of time/money, without having any negative impact on the growth of your business. It certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I wish I would have read something like this when our company was starting out.

</comment><comment><USER5> _"Unless you work in a really dirty setting, I suggest only washing [jeans] once every three to four months, in cold water, hanging to dry. Doing so will leave them looking new for years."_

If that's the schedule for jeans, I'd hate to hear what the schedule is for shirts and underwear. Seriously, you need to have a _little_ bit better hygiene than that. And yes, clean clothes are part of your personal hygiene.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me, t-shirts are every three days. Underwear and socks are daily.

As for your comment, I responded the same way as you, initially. Someone challenged me on my thinking, though, and I've come to the conclusion that they were right.

First off, how often do you have a leather jacket cleaned? Right. It just doesn't warrant this, given the nature of the material and the use.

Socks and underwear smell by the end of the day. Try wearing a pair of jeans for a few weeks and see what they smell like. You might be surprised that they're generally fine (barring any spills, etc.)

Raw denim manufacturers often suggest a 6 month wash schedule, as it helps the denim wear in naturally. Meanwhile, research states that there aren't any health risks for doing so: [http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/01/19/not- washing-jeans-fo...](http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/01/19/not-washing- jeans-for-15-months-ok-healthwise-at-least-study/)</comment></comment>


Greenwald: "The Sunday Times' Snowden Story Is Journalism at Its Worst" - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/ <comment><AUTHOR> Meanwhile, Greenwald in a tweetstorm:

"Dear pro-govt BBC journalists: even NSA admits it has no idea how many docs Snowden took. Is this too complicated?"

"Could the journalists who a) attacked Sy Hersh for using anon sources but b) accepted this Sunday Times report please identify yourselves?"

"Next in the Sunday Times RT @DieZauberer Next they'll be telling us he has chemical weapons that could reach Britain in 45 minutes."

<comment><USER2> The second tweet [Could the journos...identify yourselves?] is my question. In fact, wouldn't it be slick to have a simple table of journalists/publications, major world events, and a simple list of check boxes whether they were for, against, or indifferent/agnostic? Maybe even some indicator of when they change their initial position. Might be useful to see which organizations consistently have to/chose to switch their positions over time...

<comment><USER3> This is an interesting idea. An information management tool like git could accomplish this, but it would be really interesting to see this automated or self-reported or something like that. Although... the kind of company that you would use a tool like this to "discover" is not the kind of company that would self-report this data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meanwhile: [http://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy- deb...](http://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy-debacle/)

Anyone else think this is meant to distract from the Office of Personnel Management breach and hacked SF-86 documents?

<comment><USER5> It's not a distraction in the "hey look over there!" kind of sense. It's more like "it's totally Snowden's fault all our spies are exposed now...like a week after the OPM and SF-86 hacks."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mixing up Berlin/Laura Poitras with Moscow/Snowden is so incredibly sloppy, especially when it's being misused in an attempt to make a point. It's really basic stuff for anyone following this case, especially a British journalist who would have been aware of the court case involving Miranda.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The Sunday Times has now quietly deleted the key lie about Greenwald's husband (which the whole article depended on) from the online article, with no note.

It will still be in the print edition, which means it needs a retraction.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just out of interest, why did this just submission just plunge in the news ranking? I assume due to flagging for being too controversial?

<comment><USER7> Yes, there are lots of user flags, and also a moderation downweight—not for being controversial but for being a quasi-duplicate.

Since front page space is the scarcest resource on HN, we try not to have more than one major thread about a story unless there's significant new information. In this case there had already been three: one on the original report [1] and two debunking it [2,3]. To prevent multiple incarnations of the same story from dominating the front page (a common complaint about HN in the past), we sometimes penalize these, though never as much as actual dupes.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714072)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714321)

3\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715062)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A userscript replacing all paragraphs containing the phrases "sources familiar with the matter", "officials speaking on the condition of anonymity" and "anonymous government sources" with a lorem ipsum of the same length might help.

<comment><USER9> I'm reminded of the current s/millenials/snake people/ fad. How about "according to snake people"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At first my lighter side responds by thinking these newspapers are just shooting themselves in the foot. But then I realise that there really is a market for this kind of trashpaper. Fortunately, there is also a market for movies [1], that expose the slime behind these publications.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/03/george- clooney-f...](http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/03/george-clooney-film- phone-hacking-scandal)

</comment><comment><USER11> One question though: If Snowden had everything stored on USB "thumb drives" rather than laptops, why did he lug 4 laptops to Hong Kong?

<comment><USER12> In his situation finding a "safe" laptop that hasn't been backdoored or vulnerable to known (to spies) vulnerabilities is difficult. He has a much higher risk than the average person.

It is likely that he brought as many laptops as he could because sourcing new ones (should one get compromised) is difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Greenwald just printed the US gov propaganda playbook.

<comment><USER2> Is there a government that does not use propaganda to forward their own agenda?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, which is why these "journalists" should know better.

<comment><USER2> agreed.it is almost to the point that we as citizens might be better served by software that gathers data and outputs it in article form instead of counting on journalism majors with mortgages to assemble and relate the facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A bit of useful background here: The Guardian scooped The Sunday Times for one of the most impactful news stories of the decade, and I'm sure some of the Sunday Times article is just a somewhat bitter attempt at retribution.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone else feel like this is too angry?

I want to like GG, but this sort of reporting turns me off, even if I agree with his substance. I feel like you cede a substantial portion of the journalistic high ground when you rant and call people names like this.

</comment><comment><USER16> As I noticed many years ago, it's easy to notice that journalism commonly, correction, nearly always, is a long way short of the commonly taught high school term paper writing standards of using primary sources, identifying sources, quoting accurately, etc.

So, we can ask, why is that? Journalism has too few college graduates who majored in the humanities and wrote stacks of term papers? Nope.

So, why? Sure: "Follow the money". The media is ad supported. They are in the ad business. For that they want smelly bait for the ad hook.

Okay, how to get lots of smelly bait, easily? Sure: Have one newspaper write a smelly story, and then do two things:

First, have other newspapers write much the same story with much the same smelly content and, for _credibility_ , maybe quoting the first newspaper.

Second, with such a good thing, so much smelly bait all on just one or two days, of course, sure, keep it going! So, write more such stories. Then with so many stories, maybe the readers will conclude that with so much _smoke_ there has to be at least a little _fire_ in there somewhere. So, all the media just does a _gang up_ , _pile on_ , get on the _band wagon_ , have a case of some _implicit collusion_ , get on the _big wave_ and ride it, and, better to _fit in_ with the _gang_ and, thus, get the security from being _one of the gang_ , don't tell the truth, contradict, or _rock the boat_ and, instead, just to along with the gang \-- mob.

So, create lots of smelly bait across lots of newspapers for lots of days.

Now that ad revenue is really adding up. All from a seed of nothing, zip, zilch, zero, nichts, nil, nada. Easy money!

There is a lot in common between the OP and the movie _Absence of Malice_ (1981) written by knowledgeable newspaper guy Kurt Luedtke. To paraphrase from the movie, "If we only published stuff we really knew, then we'd publish monthly" and nearly all of that would less important than Mrs. Murphy's cat Fluffy crying high in an oak tree.

There really is a lot of important information the newspapers could publish, but they won't consider doing that, apparently because it is just not part of their traditions. Or, really, in the grand new standards of _intellectual safety, efficacy, and relevance_ of the ascent of man from mathematics and science, the newspapers are still back in the days of superstition, phlogiston, Chaucer, and the techniques of formula fiction.

E.g., what is the definition of GDP? Okay, now, to be more relevant, how is it actually measured? Are there some critiques of that measurement technique? If we are going to pay any attention at all to GDP, then we at least should discuss how the heck it gets measured.

Yesterday Hillary claimed that some of the best paid 25 hedge fund guys pay a lower tax rate than kindergarten teachers. Okay, address that issue: Give us some solid answers. True or false? If true, then how do they do that? I.e., what parts of the tax law are they using?

I can toss off such questions faster than I can type, and so can nearly anyone interested in government, but such will nearly never be addressed in the _mainstream media_.

One of the points in common in the OP and the movie is the defense by the newspaper that "We have no evidence that the story is false". Of course, neither did they have any "evidence" the story was true!

It's old stuff, e.g., back at least to the movie _Citizen Kane_.

That's just what the newsies -- newspapers, news magazines, TV news, news Web sites, etc. -- do. It's a very old story.

Greenwald's point is solid: Can't believe what you read in the newspapers. Indeed, that remark is so common and so readily believed by the public that it is in an old Andy Hardy movie from the 1930s. Did I mention "old"?

Some years ago, I really, really wanted to be a _well informed citizen_ and subscribed to more and more news publications trying to know more. One day I added up I was receiving 22 publications a month. Earlier, I spent a summer with my parents in DC and each day read _The Washington Post_ fairly carefully. Net, I finally concluded I wasn't learning much. Now I subscribe to nothing on paper and very little on the Internet.

I still want to be _informed_ , but the _media_ is junk. Maybe I'd take _The New York Times_ , but I (A) have no dead fish trimmings to wrap, (B) need no packing materials (besides, all that ink creates a mess), (C) have no need for kitty litter, (D) for my fireplace already have plenty of fire starter paper from all the phone books that are left, etc.

So, _media_? Sure, light entertainment following the rules of formula fiction with good guys, a problem, bad guys, etc. Any connection with actual reality is thin and incidental.

The media would be less harmful if people would just ignore it, and I'm getting good at that.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm glad Greenwald called then put for using the term "boyfriend" for his 10-year old spouse. Something didn't sit well with me about that term, but I couldn't have vocalized it. It seems meant to evoke sexual connotations, when they played no part in the story.

<comment><USER18> Well ... he is his boyfriend and due to his relationship with Glen was more potent tool for putting pressure. So it is relevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is, if he were married to a woman, they would probably have called her "his wife", and not "his girlfriend".

<comment><USER19> Are they married though? Gay marriage is legal and if they aren't, boyfriend isn't "gross" here.

<comment><USER20> "After two years of living together, they became common-law husbands."

David Miranda: "I never met anyone like Glenn — he's my husband and I don't know where either of us would be without each other."

Greenwald: "They [the goons who detained Miranda at Heathrow airport] humanized the story, and they gave a platform for my charming and admirable husband to speak out."

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/natashavc/david-miranda-is- nobodys-e...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/natashavc/david-miranda-is-nobodys- errand-boy)

Regardless of whether they are technically, legally married according to a particular definition, they consider themselves to have been married for 10+ years, and actually do seem to have some legal basis for that view.

BTW, I can think of other minority populations that historically have been named by the majority with diminutive words -- language that intuitively sees that population as less legitimate. Perhaps a good rule of thumb is to call people what they want to be called, and default to the respectful choice if we don't know.

(Full disclosure: I am a man married to a man.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NASA Observes That Uranus Smells of Rotten Eggs - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/what-uranus-cloud-tops-have-in-common-with-rotten-eggs <comment><USER2> > ...in the negative 200 degrees Celsius [392 degrees Fahrenheit] > atmosphere...

I wonder if this mistake was made by a human or a computer.

</comment><comment><USER3> This should prove an interesting thread</comment>


"Nexus 4 just became available" (notificationcanibuyanexus4.info) - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_16gb

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I received email from email@example.com regarding the availability of Nexus 4. Although, it's still not available for my country (Malaysia) :(</comment>


NSA warns of ongoing Russian hacking campaign against U.S. systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-usa-russia-idUSKBN2342RE <comment><USER2> And yet fraud from voting by mail is all what concerns the executive branch. Any supporters of this being more important than those in TFA want to explain that away?

<comment><USER3> Deflecting is like in the 101 Politics class I think</comment></comment>


Get Your ZumoCast T-Shirt - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zumodrive.com/get-your-zumocast-t-shirt

<comment><USER2> Wow, what a bad way to try to get good reviews. Bribing people.</comment>


Tell HN: Aldous Huxley died on this day in 1963 - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley) gives a capsule biography. He died 22 November 1963. He lead an interesting life.

</comment><comment><USER3> RIP</comment>


Why investors need data - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lambrianidesg/why-investors-need-startup-data-8ee9495b35e6#.ml4blrv2d <comment><USER2> Seems like this piece of content is overloaded with SEO phrase "traction" which is making it harder to read.</comment>


Dell/Alienware release Ubuntu gaming desktop - <AUTHOR> http://alienware.com/ubuntu/ <comment><USER2> This seems like the sort of thing where they don't really care whether they sell any or not. Gaming on Ubuntu is a hot blog topic right now, so they took an existing product and put Ubuntu on it. Probably cost a couple thousand to do all the paperwork surrounding a new SKU, and they'll probably sell enough of these to make cover that. Boom, Free marketing and some cred with the indie gaming & Linux community. And if Steam on Linux does take off, they've already got their foot in the door.

It's kind of awesome that we're at a place where releasing a Ubuntu desktop is a matter of "why not?" Rather than "why?"

<comment><USER3> Agreed, this probably was a minimal cost compared to the positive publicity among the tech crowd. I hope Dell is going to be more innovative in the future and tries a few things as they are no public company anymore, i guess this can only help in the long term.

<comment><USER4> In my oppinion Ubuntu give Dell the opportunity to differentiate from the market. A good idea would be exklusive Ubuntu machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surely it would make sense to at least offer a dual boot option?

I can't really think of a solid reason for buying this, Steam on Linux is great and all but when your marketing is saying "With over 25 gaming titles available"..

<comment><USER6> Wine can run most popular games surprisingly well these days. Many even run better than they do under Windows.

<comment><USER7> That's interesting, I didn't know that! That makes the option of using an HTPC as a 'true' gaming platform (in addition to being a media center) a lot more likely.

Do most of the recent games (Need for Speed, Counter Strike : Source, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 3) run well, or is it mostly older games?

<comment><USER5> CS:S has a native Linux version that runs very well! Assassins creed 3 has "garbage" rating on WineHQ (<http://appdb.winehq.org/>) and Far Cry 3 has "silver". So the answer for those is probably no.

Not sure about NFS, guess it depends which one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is interesting, but not compelling.

I want:

1) Better video drivers.

2) An option to Dual-boot with another OS.

3) To remove the painful Unity interface.

4) More titles to play.

And then I would buy this without a second thought.

With just Ubuntu, with very little games with mediocre Graphic card drivers and a painful interface like unity (try hiding/unhiding/switching between hidden windows for example) it's hard to convince myself to buy this..

<comment><USER5> Unity is probably the most intuitive system for somebody switching from Win7.

What else would you install by default? Gnome2/MATE/Xfce are showing their age. Gnome3 is even stranger. The only other plausible choice would be KDE.

Unity is actually pretty good as an entertainment oriented interface. The ability to search games, apps, music and movies all from the main menu is very nice.

<comment><USER9> I have tried getting used to Unity, but I just can't.

It all comes down to the fact that the Unity launcher is forcibly placed on the right hand side and I always accidentally click on it when trying to click somewhere in the region. No other OS I use forces such a thing, which is why I will never get used to it.

I tried changing my mouse sensitivity to compensate for the bar, but it makes everything else harder. There used to be a hack that would let you move the bar to the bottom of the screen, but it has not worked in the 12.x versions.

I use KDE these days. The worse thing they force their users to look at is the Cashew, which can be made transparent by installing a third party widget.

<comment><USER10> " _It all comes down to the fact that the Unity launcher is forcibly placed on the right hand side and I always accidentally click on it when trying to click somewhere in the region._ "

Just hide the thing and press the Windows key and type? I used dwm/dmenu for a year or so and never missed having a panel at all!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice to see a big name company is doing this. It will surely help Linux adoption by a wider array of users.

On another note, anyone else get that floating ad? Horribly placed and very annoying.

</comment><comment><USER12> Window 8 has really gotten the OEMs running scared.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not my usecase at all, but really awesome for this to exist IMO.

<comment><USER14> like help get better video drivers to linux faster

<comment><USER13> I just hope they don't partner too closely with canonical.

<comment><USER15> Your concern is touching but unnecessary, Canonical has a rich history of interoperability and openness with the community.

<comment><USER13> like with mir, and amazon search... I get it, thanks.

<comment><USER16> Okay, I very much dislike them too, but being afraid of a partnership with a hardware monopoly based on two mistakes is a bit of a stretch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know anything about gaming. But I assume that means it has a great GPU as well as a solid CPU... in which case this might be a good option for those of us doing scientific computing.

<comment><USER18> Well, the "Featured Systems" tab conveniently lists the GPU. It happens to be a GeForce GTX 645 on the cheap end and a GTX 660 on the high end. A 660 costs roughly $200. In addition, if your 'scientific computing' includes hashing or any of a number of other things, it will be orders of magnitude slower than an AMD card.

Overall, it's slightly overpriced. In addition, OEM hardware is invariably uncustomizable (no extra PCI-E slots, lowest end power supply possible). If you wanted to do scientific computing then there would be _much_ more efficient options. This is no better an option (and probably worse) than other run of the mill OEM hardware. I especially like how your comment began with "I don't know anything about <related topic>. But...".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have a hard time believing these will have much of a market.

Maybe Dell's just trying to get the jump on Valve's own Steambox?

</comment><comment><USER20> I think it looks promising if you have an external monitor and considering to buy the box alone for your dev/day-to-day purpose, more like an alternative to desktop. You get 1 TB additional for 50 bucks as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's a nifty form factor and a reasonable graphics card, I would consider getting one as a portable VR station for use with the Oculus Rift (whenever, uh, you know, Oculus release the linux SDK).

</comment><comment><USER22> Too bad the hardware is overpriced... Reflects bad on Ubuntu.

<comment><USER13> It's actually pretty expensive to build that powerful of a system in that format.

<comment><USER23> This is the crucial point. For the performance specs, the X51 is somewhat overpriced, even if you take into the account usual cut of a distributor. However, given it's form factor (it's basically the size of a game console), it's actually amazingly priced.

<comment><USER13> My thoughts exactly. I don't think it's even possible to beat this by yourself, and I'm certainly the demographic that would try.

<comment><USER24> I spent about the price of the low end to upgrade my desktop to a AMD's current top 8-core... that doesn't include re-using my video card, case and hard drives. It's not a bad option at all. May actually get a couple of the lower end ones, as both my grandmothers are due for an update, and one of them needs to get away from windows (too much crapware gets installed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> High price/low spec. No thanks.

The $300 Windows RT 32GB tab offer cracks me up, though.

</comment><comment><USER26> <http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-x51/pd.aspx>

> _Equipped with the new NVIDIA® GTX 645 graphics card_

Don't bother. They want you to use proprietary driver blobs without any source code for them.

<comment><USER27> What stops you from using nouveau drivers?

<comment><USER26> To do hardware accelerated 3D with nouveau, you need the to use the experimental nouveau mesa driver. It kind of works for some situations, but it still unstable and incomplete. You can find details here:

<http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MesaDrivers>

At present, nouveau is only working in a handful of linux distributions (with or without experimental hardware accelerated 3D support). All of the other UNIX-like systems are presently unable to run nouveau (e.g. all of the BSD's)

The most important issue is actually the wasted developer time. Countless hours of developer time have been wasted in the attempt to reverse engineer the proprietary binary nVidia drivers for the sake of recreating their functionality in the open source nouveau driver. If nVidia wants the business and support of open source developers and users, then they should provide all of the required specs and documentation for their hardware needed to write open source drivers.

<comment><USER27> In the meantime, is there any ideologically better proposition suitable for gaming?

<comment><USER26> Whether open source is a use-case or an ideology really depends on the requirements of the individual or organization. Some work in a world where security auditing of all source code is required, or source code is required to maintain compatibility, but of course, others are free from these restrictions and are willing to closed source binaries.

If you're under no requirement restrictions, then calling the insistence on open source code an ideology or preference is entirely fair.

If your only goal is to just play as many different games as possible, then using linux is a bad choice from the start, and you're obviously intending on running closed source code, so requirements and preferences make no difference to you.

If you hope to run as much open source as possible, then buying hardware from friendly vendors is your best bet. Your choices for both modern and supported graphics hardware with open source support are pretty much limited to Intel and AMD/ATI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how loud it'll be.

<comment><USER29> I own an alienware in that config and it's dead quiet.</comment></comment>