Microchips That Shook the World (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/25-microchips-that-shook-the-world <comment><USER2> That's a good overview, and it made me think of a parallel list of chips that got quite a lot of press but did not shake the world much after all.

Off the cuff, Intel would have two solid entries with the iAPX 432 and the Itanium, there's probably some Lisp machine and putative 'Japanese 5th gen computer' silicon to add, and maybe the Transmeta Crusoe could have honors in both lists ...

<comment><USER3> I'd argue that the Itanium did "shake the world" due to the vast hype. In a sense it killed the server RISC processors (MIPS, SPARC, HP-PA) because the competition was so afraid of what Intel could bring to bear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I lost count of how many ARMs I saw doing the job of 555's...

<comment><USER5> To be fair microcontroller price is nowadays mainly influenced by packaging cost and profit margin. You can buy microcontrollers that are cheaper than 555, and its easier to find code monkey than competent EE able to design analog circuits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great selection, great article. The only one I find missing would be the GPU of Nvidia's 8800 graphics card, I belive it was the first GPU that could be used for GPGPU. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

<comment><USER7> Sort of. The Xenos GPU in the Xbox 360 was the first with a unified shader architecture but the 8800 was indeed the first one for PC.

If you want to get a little more pedantic, GPGPU has been around in some form as long as programmable shaders have by (ab)using graphics APIs. But unified shaders made it a lot more flexible/useful/less hacky and were definitely the start of modern GPGPU efforts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Camenzind was working as a consultant to Signetics, a local semiconductor firm. The economy was tanking. He was making less than US $15 000 a year and had a wife and four children at home."

$15,000 in the summer of 1970 is equivalent to about $97,000 today.</comment>


Driving in Circles: The autonomous Google car may never actually happen - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/google_self_driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.html

<comment><USER2> I absolutely agree that autonomous vehicles are not at all ready for primetime right now, but this article doesn't understand the implications of Moore's Law and the rate that AI is improving as a result of this exponentially increasing computing power.

Specifically, this quote: "To be able to handle the everyday stresses and strains of the real driving world, the Google car will require a computer with a level of intelligence that machines won't have for many years, if ever."

If processing power is doubling every 18 months (which is has consistently for the past 100 years and looks poised to continue), then this statement is nonsense.

This article about computer vision gives a good understanding of progress in AI: [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/computer- eyesight-g...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/computer-eyesight- gets-a-lot-more-accurate)

Computer vision is doubling in accuracy almost every years (due in large part to exponentially increasing computing power). Similar trends are occurring in natural language processing, robotics, etc.

I would trust Sergey Brin's ability to forecast how advances in computing power will enable such technologies far more than some non-technical journalist. I think Amara's Law sums this up nicely: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run"

Thus, driverless cars may not be ready in the next couple years. But to then conclude they will never be ready is ridiculous.</comment>


New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene - <AUTHOR> http://www.railsbridgeboston.org/blog/2012_aug_recap

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why the gender of a programmer is relevant to anything. You are concerned that there are no enough women. Why? Why do you want more women? Why is the particular sexual organs that someone has of interest to you?

<comment><USER3> Well, I could talk about social justice and basic fairness, but the tone of your question implies that you don't see it that way. So instead, let's look at the question from a coldly calculating point of view.

Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of 98 men and 2 women. Let's say we work to increase our diversity such that now 50% of our community are women. How big is the community now?

That's right -- 200 people. It's not like adding 50% women _removes_ 50% men... if we increase the number of women in our community, we increase the number of _people_. Now I've got twice as many contributors, twice as many users, twice as much activity, etc. Open source projects live and die on the strength of their communities. Increasing diversity is often actually the easiest way to increase membership, full stop.

[Now, in practice, _I_ work on diversity because _I_ care about basic fairness. But the point is that even if you don't give a shit about those sorts of ideals, there are _still_ coldly calculating economy-of-scale arguments for why diversity is important.]

<comment><USER4> _Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness._

Get down from the ivory tower please. Where do you get off saying that he doesn't believe in fairness? In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter.

At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT. Just to counter any downvotes, when I say it isn't important, I mean the gender debate, not women in general. For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny.

Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].

<comment><USER5> > In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply > stating that gender shouldn't matter.

We don't live in a vacuum, so even if we feel that gender shouldn't matter it already does in fundamental ways.

> At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of > project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT > IMPORTANT.

Actually this is really important. If projects are systematically excluding people of certain races or religions, we have a discrimination problem.

> For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each > time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, > people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, > charging dissenters with misogyny.

Nobody called anyone a misogynist in this discussion.

> Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, > they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply > because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, > race, religion, height, etc].

This is absolutely true. However, why there aren't more women in tech isn't just about project maintainers. Women in general are not going into or are finding spaces in which they can participate as developers and programmers. This is the whole point of this particular RailsBridge workshop.

<comment><USER4> All valid points. I appreciate the response.

This is a minor nitpick, but I'll bite. I realize nobody explicitly called anyone a mysogynist, but neither did I. There is a difference between saying someone is mysogynist the adjective and mysogyny the noun. jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny.

[Edit: I upvoted king_jester because, regardless of whether I agree with him on all points, his reply was concise, helpful and he wasn't being a dick]

<comment><USER3> > jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he > doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with > sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny.

Really it's not. There's a big difference between active discrimination and just not caring. I said that my guess is that icedancer doesn't see lack of diversity as a moral problem, not that s/he is a engaging in discrimination. Accusing me of "jumping out of the bushes" to "attack dissenters" is really unfair. Look, I appreciate that some people don't see lack gender diversity as a problem. I disagree, but I'm never going to convince those people to see the issue in my terms. I hope you'll re-read my comment and try to assume just a tiny bit of good faith on my part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an important effort with a powerful effect on the Boston tech scene. This and similar outreach efforts (like the Python workshops) have increased diversity not just in the Python and Ruby groups, but more broadly in all tech groups. This was most noticeable at BarCamp Boston 2012, which had a lot more women participants than the previous 6 years. It's great to know that the tech community can be welcoming to all sorts of people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Boston Python really led on the diversity outreach front in 2012, and now we (the Boston Ruby community) are very gratefully following their lead. Boston Python is so awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> RailsBridge started its open workshop project in mid-2009 with curriculum and processes that are open source and can be used by anyone to teach any group.

Sarah Mei and I felt that we could change the ratio simply by teaching more women Ruby on Rails, we would have more women in our community, and we were right.

We agreed to make our first workshop open to people with any level of programming experience. (Men could come if they participated in the outreach and found a woman to sign up.)

We thought it would be hard to find women to attend our first workshop. We brainstormed for weeks about how to connect to various women's groups and corporate organizations. Then after two tweets and and one email, we had a waiting list in less than 24 hours. Over the last 3 years the pattern repeats itself, no matter where we have workshops, we consistently have waiting lists of women who want to attend. In SF, we have workshops every month, and routinely have 60 people (mostly women) on the waitlist.

Women do want to write code. We usually have 20% who have never coded before, but typically 50-70% self-identify as non-programmers. Are you a programmer if you just write SQL? does bash count as programming for a sys admin? does it could if you did COBOL 20 years ago, but you can't do any of the modern stuff? maybe you got a CS degree, but have never done more than a toy app? From a teaching perspective, if you answered yes to any of those questions, you are way ahead of the total beginners -- you understand variables and expressing logic in words and symbols.

We have diversity issues in tech, and it isn't just about gender and race. I believe those are just the most visible outward symptom of a problem where we have fairly homogeneous work and communication styles, as well as background and patterns of thinking. If we are going to solve the very real problems we have in this world (and many of those solutions will be facilitated with tech), we need all kinds of people. We need diversity of thought.

If you only have one kind of people on your team by a visible metric, you are likely to have much deeper diversity issues. Just because you have a woman or a person of color on the team doesn't necessarily mean you've solved your diversity problems.

I applaud the Boston folks for their success in their recent workshop. If you think that the language you develop in would be great for anyone/everyone to learn, you should do the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Sarah and Sarah for starting all this & paving the road for us. The workshop team loved doing it, and we feel very proud be to furthering the mission you gave birth to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've heard murmurs of a RailsGirls workshop here in Austin and I know a few of my female friends were very interested in attending when I talked to them about it. I think it's great to try to get more women involved in the industry, and while Rails is complicated enough that you can nearly guarantee most people won't walk away with any true understanding of programming, I think workshops like this can help undo some of the negative misconceptions/stereotypes that surround the programming community. Just like the misconception that "math is hard and/or useless" is under assault, I hope the idea that programming is only done by "geniuses" or "ultra-nerds" can be broken and the barriers for entry and for learning are broken down for the benefit of us all.

I am also a little reminded of my first forays into learning Rails with no prior programming experience. I think one of the biggest turning points for me was when I realized the concepts for massive services like twitter were not only understood by crazy math ph.d geniuses untouchable by the common man. It is really empowering to realize you can create real software that can actually do things people need without decades of experience under your belt. I think workshops like this and RailsGirls which have you create an actual (albeit simple) application are great for just that reason.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminiscent of LLC: <http://ladieslearningcode.com/>

I was a mentor for the Ruby class and absolutely loved the experience, students of all backgrounds were so eager to learn and understand programming.

<comment><USER10> It's a wonderful thing. Folks should make this happen everywhere, in whatever language. It also was a great experience to help out with the event.

In Boston there was a python workshop for women which provided much inspiration for this Ruby one: <http://bostonpythonworkshop.com/>

There was a similar event some years ago also sponsored by the Berkman Center, with some TAs participating in both: [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/genderandtech/2009/10/20/post-w...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/genderandtech/2009/10/20/post- workshop-news/)

And then there is the Ada Initiative, which I think is fantastic: <http://adainitiative.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At our company, we'd love to add more women developers, and our Chief Architect feels the same way. However, it strikes me as... weird... to focus on it. I don't know. Targeting women for the sake of targeting women has never sat well with me, and though I lack the necessary parts to judge from that side of the aisle, it almost seems patronizing/condescending.

Do I want better diversity in our organization? Absolutely. Have most of the women coders I've worked with been above-average? Indeed - actually, now that I think about it, women overall have been better co-workers and employees.

But targeting them directly seems strange, and like I said, patronizing/condescending. I dunno. A weird duality that maybe only exists in my mind.

<comment><USER3> Before 2003, in the entire history of the NFL there had only been seven minority coaches. That year, the league passed the Rooney Rule (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule>), which required that teams interview at least one minority candidate for coaching positions. Note that it didn't require that teams _hire_ minority candidates — just that they consider them. Today, about a quarter of current coaches are non-white. The Rooney Rule took the league from seven — total, all time — to 25% — right now — in a decade.

In my mind, the Rooney Rule is a good policy to model after. Strict affirmative action is complicated, controversial, and... yeah, I'd feel "weird" just like you implementing hiring quotas. But an _interviewing_ quota (or just a rough goal) seems perfectly legit.

The key is to focus on _interviewing_ more women, not _hiring_ more women. Do your best to get more women into the top of your hiring funnel, and you'll likely see more women come out the bottom. And you'll have a wider pool (because this'll force you to interview more candidates, total), which you'll have a better chance that whoever you hire — man or woman — will be awesome.

<comment><USER11> Trust me, we interview everyone who passes a phone screen and has a promising resume. It's just that so, so few of them are actually women.

I actively pursued an acquaintance of mine to try and get her to work for us, as she was just graduating from a top engineering undergraduate school and was an actuary. Sadly, she took a position in NYC (understandable).

We're very strict on hiring, so we do interview many candidates for each position that opens up (we have plenty of open positions now that we can't seem to fill).

If we set an interviewing quota, it could literally take us years to hire someone for a mid-level developer position simply because we would get no applicants or no referrals from recruiters that were women. It's just how it is. Very sad.

<comment><USER3> Well, part of that I'd just file under "hiring is hard" (right now, at least).

I do think you need to start further up in your hiring funnel than the phone screen: were I in your shoes, I'd be trying to get more minorities to submit resumes in the first place. One of the problems identified by those studying diversity in tech is a self-selection bias: minorities, and women especially, seem to send out fewer resumes and less ambitious about the positions they apply to. Perhaps consider reaching out to groups like RailsBridge, Python Boston, PyLadies, Ladies Learning Code, etc., and letting them know you're hiring and want to talk to candidates from their communities? Drop me an email (and let me know where you're located) if you'd like me to try to help make you some connections.

Re-reading the above, I'm hoping it doesn't come across as critical; it's clear you're taking this very seriously, and that's awesome. Just hoping I can help more!

<comment><USER11> Hmm, the idea of reaching out to women-oriented groups sounds promising. Our Chief Architect has made it very clear he wants to interview (and hopefully hire) more women. As for minorities, we probably need more white people, if anything! (Not uncommon in software development / data science, I'd guess - I'm a minority.)

There's a local hackerspace that has women groups, I think. I'll start there. Thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _A good percentage of the attendees had some exposure to HTML/CSS and > several had experience in PHP, Java, C and Python. Two of our students had > worked as developers for mainframe computers, writing PL/I and IBM > assembler._

Cool initiative and I'm all for introducing more programming to everyone...but I wonder whether Rails is the best way to do it. There are many, many moving parts, least of which is the concept of MVC and then the interaction between each part of MVC...nevermind, for those who just know only HTML and CSS, the fundamentals of programming (variables, the difference between "1" and 1, loops, etc), and even how to use the command line.

<comment><AUTHOR> I share those concerns & agree that MVC is a lot to swallow in an introductory workshop. But it's also very motivating! A lot of people want to build real websites instead of toy programs. We're trying to harness that awesome source of motivation & it seems to be working despite the drawbacks.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's a difficult line to walk between teaching what is comprehensible and enabling people, with magic, to do something concrete, even if they know nothing about how anything works. The former bores people because it's too abstract, and the latter...well, I feel there's the risk that when there's too much magic involved, the students feel as if being a "wizard" is an inherent trait, rather than something you eventually build towards after plugging away at the fundamentals.

I've toyed with teaching a workshop that entails: teach enough programming to turn a non-flat-file dataset (maybe a json of their tweets) into a decent visualization (by plugging into Google Charts, perhaps) and uploading a static page, with Twitter Bootstrap, onto a free hosting service, or even a blog service such as Wordpress.

But even that is a lot to teach in a day:

1\. Command line and file system basics 2\. Fundamentals of programming (enough to open a JSON file, parse and aggregate it on some conditions, and spit out HTML) 3\. Basic HTML and DOM, including what you need to know to 4\. Basic webserver/uploading stuff

Most workshops struggle with getting 3 and 4 done. #2 is not easily achievable over even several days.</comment></comment></comment>


Nexus One's slow sales blamed on online-only strategy - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/03/16/nexus-ones-slow-sales-blamed-on-online-only-strategy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29

<comment><USER2> Google was obviously marketing to other people who are like Googlers. We all knew about the Nexus One (because we keep up on new tech), prefer T-Mobile (because they were the only carrier to refuse to cooperate with warrant-less wiretapping), and love to buy stuff online (because we hate going to the mall).

But we're a pretty small portion of the market. If the wanted big commercial success, they had to market to people who _weren't_ like them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure Google even cares. I don't think Google is trying to profit a great deal directly from N1 sales. I think they win in the long run by pushing android to be the best it can be and by making the entire mobile device market more modular. Google's vision is to have your choice of device divorced from your choice of carrier, which is divorced from your choice of phone number, and all of it divorced from your choice of applications to run.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am not sure that this is bad. 200,000 people are walking around with a $600 unlocked Linux phone. This is a major, major change in everything; open software, carrier freedom, etc. Selling that many is quite surprising, in fact.

When Google starts advertising and the price goes down to $99, and it doesn't sell then, then you should be worried. But right now, Google is doing everything possible to prevent people from even knowing about this thing -- and it's still selling well. When Google starts putting Android billboards on every open space in a major city (as Apple does with iPhone advertising), then you can start comparing it to the iPhone. But right now, this is an ultra- niche product that normal people don't even know about.

</comment><comment><USER5> Online-only strategy, lack of traditional advertising, lack of carrier choice, US-only availability.

If you did a real survey asking what 'Android' or 'Nexus One' are, I'd be curious to know how many knew (I'm guessing about 10%)

<comment><USER6> Ask them about Symbian. Symbian is by far the most popular smartphone platform, but it's not a household name. It's just an OS - my mom doesn't even know she needs one on her phone

<comment><USER5> But if you asked them to list cell/smart phone providers, they'd probably list Nokia before Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I blame two things:

a) "Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your contry or region" message at google.com/phone,

and b) when it is available, it is €599 or (€199 + €45/mo for two years). When I saw the ad, my first thought was "great, you get to keep it for yourself". Outside of enthusiasts, no one is going to get phone for 600 euros.

<comment><USER4> _"Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your contry or region" message at google.com/phone_

And the Droid doesn't have this problem?

 _no one is going to get phone for 600 euros_

Except all the people that do? The original iPhone was this expensive and didn't even have 3G. And yet people bought them in droves.

<comment><USER7> > And the Droid doesn't have this problem?

Yes, it does. But it is still more available than N1.

> Except all the people that do? The original iPhone was this expensive and > didn't even have 3G. And yet people bought them in droves.

Original iPhone was $399 and $499. €599 is north of $800, thats more than 1/3 more expensive. And I also remember that the original iPhone was met with collective yawn on this side of pond and almost nobody bought unsubsidized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think Google is in any way in a hurry. They'll just want to see where it's going first, while cumulating momentum. A sudden disruption in the smartphone market wouldn't be feasible nor useful: similarly they kept Gmail invite only until they felt confident enough that they've learned enough from the early users.

<comment><USER9> I agree. This fits in very nicely with their release early and iterate model. If it works for software, why not hardware as well. I'm surprised they didn't call it Nexus Beta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope this is last post regarding Nexus One's slow sales in first 2 months. It doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER11> Another way to look at it is that the Nexus One can be successful if they want it to be a Halo product - ie, it is meant to be a showcase of Android and to get people talking about it, then leaving other companies to move a massive number of units. It also makes sense in that it won't upset their partners very much.

</comment><comment><USER12> How can you blame one thing on the slow sales when there are so many confounding factors?

If a lack of in-store sales is the primary culprit that means that hundreds of thousands of people show up at the store having never heard of the iPhone/Droid/N1 and end up buying it. I highly doubt that's the case. People go to the store to try/buy a smartphone they've already heard of elsewhere. If Google had spent more money marketing the N1 their sales would've been better. Also, their timing was awful.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wanted an N1, but got a Droid instead. I had 30 days to return it to the VWZ store and exchange it _on the spot_ if it was defect or I didn't want the phone.

I could also try the phone in the store before buying it, to make sure I liked it enough to warrant a 30-day trial.

The N1 will never do as well as the in-store phones. Eventually, google will understand this and release it to the stores. Until then, it will sell very slowly.

<comment><USER14> _The N1 will never do as well as the in-store phones._

Right, and they may not care. The main purpose of the N1 may be a warning to carriers that they can't cripple their phones too much because there will always be an open alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google can afford to iterate, or fail. It's actually quite liberating, as some experiments/acquisitions manage to make some respectable headway over time (Android) while the others are left to languish (Knol) or are cut when it's clear the product or the market aren't promising (Lively).

</comment><comment><USER15> Would it not be possible for google to sell this at BestBuy and the like? I bet even WalMart would be willing to sell it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't this all become irrelevant later this month when Verizon starts selling the phone?

</comment><comment><USER17> Does Google advertise Nexus One at all?

<comment><USER18> I believe there's occasional small ads for it on the Google home page.</comment></comment>


Announcing the jQuery Foundation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jquery.com/2012/03/06/announcing-the-jquery-foundation/

<comment><USER2> I remember sitting in a little conference room at the first Boston BarCamp in 2005 with maybe ten other people listening to this kid from RIT give a session about this new Javascript library he wrote. Who new it would get this embedded in the web?

</comment><comment><USER3> hope they will never upgrade their server again without backup it first, i still could not upgrade my jquery due to the for-ever lost plugin site after that upgrade, the new plugin site is still not fully ready.

</comment><comment><USER4> These guys need to get over themselves. JQuery provided a really nice way for designers to copy/paste effects onto web elements. And then they took it way, way too far, to the point where whenever I see a "new JQuery plugin to do X" I just look the other way.

JQuery just gets in the way these days.

$("#element") is an anti-pattern. That code should just return the DOM node, not some silly object with unknown attributes. We're way past the point where you need to abstract the entire document object model, and I argue you should never have done that to begin with.

<comment><USER5> Unknown attributes, what? The reason $('#element') returns a jQuery object is it lets you chain jQuery functions, which allows more efficient code. And the scope inside of anonymous functions in jQuery is the DOM element itself, not the jQuery object:

        $('#element').click(function(){
          this.id;  <- the DOM element
          $(this).attr('id');  <- rewrap required
        }

Also, same result:

        var x = $('#element');
        x.attr('id');  <- jQuery object
        x[0].id;  <- DOM element

Your argument that it's "a silly object with unknown attributes" just means you don't know very much jQuery. And if you're ever curious what attributes it has you can let Developer Tools or Firebug tell you with the auto-suggest dropdown:

        var x = $('#element');
        x.

<comment><USER4>
      it lets you chain jQuery functions,

That's also an anti-pattern. JQuery was designed to hide iteration from designers who can't code. I'm floored that people that actually know how to program still think it's a good idea.

$('DIV').click(..).color()...border()...

It might look fancy, but all it's doing is obscuring the fact that iteration might be occurring on each command which for obvious reasons would be a bad idea. A designer might not care, but a programmer who knows JavaScript will probably write something like this instead:

      var divs = document.getElementsByTagName('DIV');
      divs.forEach(function(div) {
         div.onClick = ..
         div.style....
      });

JQuery provides a nice polyfill for older browsers, but the way the API works just gets in the way for people who know JavaScript and DOM.</comment></comment></comment>


An attempt to build SIRI from scratch in 4h. at the Technological Uni of Athens - <AUTHOR> http://niobiumlabs.com/build-siri-from-scratch/

<comment><USER2> How will you attempt this?</comment>


Curry Saves Java? - code-dog http://nerds-central.blogspot.com/2011/12/is-curry-saviour-of-java.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This programming style is commonly known as applying a "fluent interface" or fluent api. See Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface>.

It is already heavily used by numerous Java frameworks like Hibernate (Criteria API, now part of JPA2), Apache Camel, and various mocking libraries like EasyMock and Mockito.

Concerning the SQL example in the blog post, there are quite a few Java libraries available that provide a fluent interface for building SQL. For an overview see <http://stackoverflow.com/a/6565369>.

<comment> code-dog Nice links thanks. Would you agree that there is at least a similarity in purpose between Currying in functional languages and fluent interfaces? It seems to me that techniques and ideas from partial application and currying are useful in the design and implementation of fluent interfaces.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree there is some similarity. Also other functional concepts like closures (although not available in Java) are useful in building fluent interfaces.</comment></comment></comment>


Why voice-acting in games is bad - <AUTHOR> http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2009/04/voice-for-change.html

<comment><USER2> Another interesting thing to consider: why is Japanese voice acting so much better than dubbing?

The answers:

        - The Japanese have a voice acting tradition going back
          at least as far as the Bunraku puppet theater
        - Voice Acting for Anime is >highly< stylized.  There
          are various stereotypes that can be plugged into
          most Anime stories.  This allows the characters to
          be put across very clearly.

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

I wonder if the highly stylized use of archetypes from western culture would improve voice acting in English versions of games? (This would require some re-writing, as many games originate in Japan and other non-western cultures, so the archetypes do not match up exactly.)

<comment><USER3> I've got a couple of reasons that I think have more influence:

\- When voice acting isn't in your own language, you don't notice the flaws so acutely.

\- A lot of anime dubs (especially older ones) were made by people who just didn't care about quality. This seems to be changing.

<comment><USER2> I agree that the quality of dubbing has greatly increased. But there still seems to be just that little bit of impedance mismatch. I think it's because the archetypes don't match!

Japanese female archetypes are just weird to Americans, and often don't have good analogues in our culture. When you have the tragically strong woman who will never be desired by a man, in English dubbing, she often comes across as the female badass that everybody wants, but is too afraid to try for.

Military types often don't match. Anime portrayals of Western-style Squad leaders/Sergeants are Japanese caricatures that have become Japanese- archetypal. The Japanese expect slightly different things from their fictionalized Generals than Americans or the British. (Like the degree to which they are allowed to display battle-lust, versus having to couch it in terms of "their duty.")

I think that when "voice acting isn't in your own language" it's also often the case that the archetypes aren't your own culture's. I think your first point is just another part of the same cultural mismatch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Voice acting does not sell games. Pretty screenshots sell games. Companies optimize accordingly.

(See also: Why do companies with engineering budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars come out with websites that look like they were designed by an artistically talented 15 year old in flash in 1998?)

</comment><comment><USER5> I kept thinking of Oblivion while reading this story. Rings very true.

</comment><comment><USER6> The voice acting in the Riddick games is top notch.</comment>


Show HN: InstantCryptor – File Encryption Web-App for Dropbox and Google Drive - <AUTHOR> https://instantcryptor.com

<comment><USER2> This saved my ass last night when I needed to share a highly sensitive legal doc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Built by one of our team members as a side project over the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm the app's author, happy to hear your feedback!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please use Chrome or Firefox</comment>


Jelm: Extreme Learning Machine in J - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/peportier/jelm <comment><AUTHOR> I have been playing with neural nets since the 80s, and J since around 2010 or so. This was the first I had heard of ELM, and having a J implementation, I dove in. My interest is mainly academic, since I do not work in the ML community, but I have been self-studying AI/ML for decades. I would be curious to how J performs against a Julia or Python implementation of the same algorithm, since it is interpreted, but very fast. I personally like the way J makes me think and work. I leave the JQT open on my desktop at work and at home for more than just a calculator, but less than a full-blown programming tool, although it is.</comment>


A C++ library for solving second-quantized Hamiltonians - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dafer45/TBTK <comment><USER2> what's the application of this? I lack the background to understand it.</comment>


Ask HN: Freelancers,What are your biggest painpoints? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Interruptions from calls, administrative overhead, self-employment tax, and health insurance costs.

If at all possible, bill out jobs instead of hours. If you absolutely have to bill per-unit-time, choose as large a unit as you can get away with. Per-hour may work for attorneys, but when you have to watch the clock on every little thing as a developer, everyone loses.

Unless you are old, do whatever you can do to minimize self-employment tax. It's currently over 15%, and it's for a retirement system most of us will never get a dime out of.

If you have trustworthy people you can lean on for things like advertising, accounting, sales, etc., hold on to them for dear life and pay them fairly. The more you are able to double-down on your strengths, the better.

<comment><USER3> Let me ask you a question. would you pay someone to manage this hassle for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keeping the pipeline full for when projects end or go on hiatus.

The dumbest mistake I've made has been this.

That slack time in between paying gigs can really kill financial momentum. Also, If I'm idle for more than two weeks that wastes not only money but also mental bandwidth. I go from thinking about work to thinking about how to get work, and that is stressful.

Always be networking. Always take meetings even if you are fully booked. Stay visible.

<comment><USER5> Conversely, keeping the pipeline full while engaged on other projects. This applies especially if you are booking in one-month blocks. How do you keep incoming leads hot when you won't be available for at least 60 days?

<comment><USER4> I'm very upfront about my availability. I also let people know weeks in advance when I will be available. And in between that time I stay visible at my favorite events/meetups and in social media (publishing little open source things), asking questions, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> About a year ago I conducted a small-scale survey on how freelancers approach marketing and sales and what their biggest problems in these areas (and in general) are:

[https://bjoernkw.com/2016/01/15/survey-for-it-freelancers- ho...](https://bjoernkw.com/2016/01/15/survey-for-it-freelancers-how-do-you- approach-marketing-and-sales-the-results/)

<comment><USER7> Heads up, this was impossible to read on mobile for me.

<comment><USER6> Sorry for that. Google Charts apparently can cause layout problems on mobile devices. The static image version linked in the article should work fine, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Getting access to jobs that are remote and do not require me to do any kind of UI nonsense. The cross section here can be fickle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Germany here - bureaucracy.</comment>


Short Selling Is Tough Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-18/short-selling-is-a-tough-business <comment><USER2> Matt Levine has another article that does a great job of summing up short sellers [1] (see "Short selling, etc.").

I used to work on a product that tracked short sellers, so I had to read a lot of press releases and interviews and etc. from short sellers. I definitely agree with Matt Levine's summary here:

> "One thing I will say for short sellers is that many of them really do > believe their (standard, correct) claims about their role in financial > markets: that they make markets more efficient, deflate bubbles, root out > fraud and delusion, and generally make the world better with their unpopular > and negative activity. They see it as a noble but misunderstood calling."

And in quite a few cases, they're not wrong - I mean, Jim Chanos is probably most well-known for his short position in Enron. Say what you want about Bill Ackman, but Herbalife _does kinda seem like a pyramid scheme_.

It's really interesting, and while the financial benefits are obviously there it does seem like quite a few of them really just enjoy calling bullshit and exposing people/corporations for it. I don't doubt they would probably also do really well as investigative journalists.

1: [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-12/banks- do-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-12/banks-do-the- trades-they-want-to-do)

<comment><USER3> > they make markets more efficient, deflate bubbles, root out fraud and > delusion, and generally make the world better with their unpopular and > negative activity.

This is true when they're shorting Enron or some other fraudulent entity. The issue is that you can short any high risk high reward play and make money if they fail. But then enough shorting can _cause_ them to fail, because it makes it more difficult to raise money by selling new shares or using shares as collateral. And causing a large undertaking to fail when it otherwise wouldn't have is obviously not efficient.

It also increases volatility because on one side the existence of the shorts makes the company more likely to fail, but if the company succeeds anyway or even just stays the course then there could be a "short squeeze" as the shorts have to buy back the shares they owe when no one is really interested in selling, so the share price skyrockets. It's not exactly a moderating influence.

<comment><USER2> > The issue is that you can short any high risk high reward play and make > money if they fail

Or (as a short) you can lose massive amounts of money if they're incredibly successful - in fact, your losses are actually uncapped.

And anyway, that seems like a good thing - there should be a force tempering high risk endeavors.

> But then enough shorting can cause them to fail, because it makes it more > difficult to raise money by selling new shares or using shares as > collateral.

That sounds like a good thing.

If your company has an appreciable amount of short interest the likely reason is that the company's overvalued, not that Jim Chanos is colluding with Andrew Left and Bill Ackman just to bring down your company and profit off your failure.

Further, I don't know that I've ever seen a mid+ cap company take any sort of significant hit from short interest where there was _nothing_ to substantiate the short's claims, and there have been _plenty_ of inverse situations (companies growing in value even when there _were_ substantial issues brought to light by a short seller).

EDIT: Actually I take that back, I have seen some - because the SEC brought fraud charges against them. It's the short version of P&D and it's just as illegal.

> And causing a large undertaking to fail when it otherwise wouldn't have is > obviously not efficient.

On the flip side, causing a large undertaking to fail faster when it was doomed from the beginning is obviously more efficient.

> It also increases volatility because on one side the existence of the shorts > makes the company more likely to fail

Many people are worried that volatility is _too low_ these days (thus why Feb was such a big deal), so I'm not sure that's a great argument.

<comment><USER3> > And anyway, that seems like a good thing - there should be a force tempering > high risk endeavors.

The point is that it does the opposite.

Suppose you have a high risk company with a million shares and a would-be share price of $1000, but 20% of the shares are shorted so the share price is $900.

Now if the company fails, the total losses to the actual shareholders are 8% _higher_ even though the price per share was lower because there are de facto more shares in existence.

Meanwhile if the company succeeds, the shareholders make significantly more, because there are de facto 20% more shares in existence and the shareholders paid $900 each instead of $1000, with the shorts having to pay the difference. Which is why the total (e.g. $900 times 1.2M instead of $1000 times 1M) is more -- because it's attracting more total investment into the stock by having the shorts reduce the cost of buying shares today and then heavily subsidize potential gains tomorrow.

> If your company has an appreciable amount of short interest the likely > reason is that the company's overvalued, not that Jim Chanos is colluding > with Andrew Left and Bill Ackman just to bring down your company and profit > off your failure.

Haven't they tended on average to lose money on shorting?

> On the flip side, causing a large undertaking to fail faster when it was > doomed from the beginning is obviously more efficient.

True in theory, but is that actually what happens? Large companies rarely do anything fast. Even when the shorts are right, it's usually months or years before it all shakes out. And as above, when they're right what they're really doing is increasing total third party exposure to the loss.

> Many people are worried that volatility is too _low_ these days (thus why > Feb was such a big deal), so I'm not sure that's a great argument.

People are worried about volatility as an indicator, not because it's a good in its own right that society benefits from creating artificially.

<comment><USER2> > there are de facto more shares in existence.

> because there are de facto 20% more shares in existence

Sorry, what? Am I misunderstanding you? How does short selling increase outstanding shares? It's hard to parse the rest of this given what seems like a grave oversight.

Once you borrow the shares from firm A and sell them to person B, person B is the holder of record for those shares now. Firm A doesn't own them anymore - that's why you have to pay out company dividends to firm A from your own pocket while you're borrowing them.

Regardless of how they track their positions, the only thing firm A owns is an obligation from you to give them shares back at some point. There's no change in the number of outstanding shares.

Or are you talking about naked shorting? Because that's been illegal since 2008 (regardless of whether it still occurs).

> People are worried about volatility as an indicator, not because it's a good > in its own right that society benefits from creating artificially.

Well, for one: People _are_ worried that volatility has become a good in its own right - hence the famous "Volatility has become a player on the field" quote and why the $XIV delisting was such a big deal.

For two: You said that short selling increased volatility. I said volatility is really low, to the point that some people are concerned it's too low. Clearly, short selling hasn't had a major impact on volatility.

<comment><USER3> > Sorry, what? Am I misunderstanding you? How does short selling increase > outstanding shares?

Selling short requires borrowing shares. It's the same way that banks create money. There were 1000 shares, then 200 more were borrowed and resold. The buyer of the 200 shares have shares, so in practice does the original lender who is owed a share by the short seller. The IOU isn't technically a share but for most practical purposes it is. If you want to sell it, it's worth a share. If the share price goes up or down, so does the IOU price. If the share price gains $1, the owner and the lender make $1 _each_. If it falls $1, they each lose $1.

> Firm A doesn't own them anymore - that's why you have to pay out company > dividends to firm A from your own pocket while you're borrowing them.

Right, which is why it acts like another share again -- the original dividend is paid to the person the short seller sold the share to but the lender still gets it too. There are de facto two dividends because there are de facto two shares.

There are actual differences of course (e.g. IOUs can't vote), but for questions of exposure to price fluctuations and that sort of thing, it's effectively creating a new share.

<comment><USER4> > the original dividend is paid to the person the short seller sold the share > to

It is not. Whatever side bets people may have with each other may result in money changing hands, but it's not the "original dividend".

There are still 1000 shares, 1000 votes, 1000 dividends paid, 1000 dividends collected, 1000 ownership claims on residual assets. The bookkeeping can be confusing, but there's no shares being generated.

> for questions of exposure to price fluctuations and that sort of thing, it's > effectively creating a share.

If you and I agree that if Apple goes up at least 10% by this time next week, I'll pay you $500, otherwise you'll pay me $300, then we both now have exposure to price fluctuations. How many shares, exactly, do you think we've created? I'd love to see your math. :)

Just because you have exposure to X doesn't mean you _own_ X, and it certainly doesn't mean you've created X out of thin air.

<comment><USER5> The company only has 1000 shares, but because the lender effectively has a share and may not even know it was lent, investors hold 1001 shares. If a dividend is paid, the company pays 1000 dividends, and investors receive 1001 dividends. If the company goes bust, all 1001 shares have lost their value. If there's a shareholder lawsuit with a payout, there will be 1001 claims , although the company will only be willing to pay 1000, which can be a big mess for a court to figure out -- see some earlier articles from the same author as this.

In your case, we've jointly made a wager. I wouldn't be an investor in Apple, like I would be if I held shares, and would still be, if my shares were lent out.

<comment><USER6> A shareholder who lends their share to a short seller is not entitled to a claim for dividends from the company. They must get the dividends from the short seller.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's what I said: the company pays out 1000 dividends, and 1001 shareholders receive a dividend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The full profile of Jim Chanos (that the article is quoting) is available here: [https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1b00ynrgtn05r...](https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1b00ynrgtn05r/How- Jim-Chanos-Uses-Cynicism-Chutzpah-and-a-Secret-Twitter-Account-to-Take-on- Markets-and-Elon-Musk)

The part that I thought was most interesting was that he structures his fund as 190% passive long and 90% active short. This way, his short fund (which has average annualized returns of -0.7%) can still allow him to make a lot of money.

I like the idea that a short fund can make money if they can beat the negative of the passive index - so if the S&P returns 10%, and I can have a short fund that returns -5%, I can use his strategy to outperform the S&P.

<comment><USER8> I have Chanos' returns since inception in the 1980's. I have talked to Chanos a bunch. The guy is the biggest enduring fraud, figuratively speaking, in the investing world. His returns are _dreadful_. There is no money manager in the history of the world in which his own personal enrichment has diverged so much from his clients'. The worshipping of him is nothing short of shameful. I thought we despise the notion of getting rich at other peoples' expense?

Btw, losing less than the S&P is not a strategy but if you think it adds alpha I won't bother debating. Have fun spending alpha.

<comment><USER9> > _His returns are dreadful_

Ursus loses money in up markets. That is almost by design—it's a catastrophic hedge inspired by 1987. His headline fund has been profitable for almost every vintage older than a few years.

<comment><USER8> The hedge fund? Wrong. I have those returns too. Ever wonder why neither he nor anyone talks about his returns? It's not a conspiracy...

It is insane to me. We detest more than anything the notion of the high fee hedge fund manager who gets rich while his clients lose money, but the world gives Chanos the biggest pass of all time. This is a guy who has made something like $1 billion pre-tax and pre-divorce while his fund has just lost copious amounts of money over any relevant time frame.

<comment><USER9> > _The hedge fund? Wrong. I have those returns too._

Chanos has multiple funds. Some of them are designed as catastrophic hedges, and work accordingly. His other funds are intercyclically up, doing better in the crisis and early recovery phases and less well in late recovery. If you're seeing different numbers, you're being fed garbage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For me the upside of short selling is not worth the risks[1]. Long term the market appreciates, so if you are young, wait it out and rake in the annual average 6% S&P market gain.

      [1] RISKS
      - Upside is capped to 100%, the most you'll ever make is 100% shorting.
      - Downside is uncapped, unlimited losses.
      - Have to pay interest while you hold the short position.

If you really believe in a short position, the only strategy I'd personally recommend is put options. Limits your loss to the total cost of the options, and upside is more than 100% potentially.

<comment><USER11> Put options have their own enormous downsides. You pay a large premium up front, and you lose everything if the stock either A) doesn't change value at all or B) collapses later than you predict. Both methods are a rotten deal.

That's quite unfortunate for society as a whole, since it means there are very few people with the incentive to deflate bubbles and frauds.

<comment><USER5> Put options cap your downside, and cap your time horizon. You can pay the premium for a very long horizon if you want -- if you think the company is going to fail all the way to zero, the prices pretty far out of the money are often pretty low even at 2 years out.

It would be pretty disappointing if the stock kept climbing and then crashed 2 days after the options expired; but at that point you might have given up on your traditional shorts as well.

<comment><USER11> It would be even more disappointing if the stock barely moved, and then crashed 2 days after the option expired. In that event, the put goes to zero and the traditional short wins the jackpot.

A more abstract way to make the same point is that a put or call is making a bet about volatility, whereas traditional long or shorting is a pure directional bet.

<comment><USER10> I know this pain. I bought some Jan 19' $10 put options in Kodak right after they announced their nonsense cryto abomination.

I knew it had run on speculation and was going to come down. The problem was I timed it wrong. By Feb 7th after my options expired Kodk was trading in the mid $2 range, down from $11. I lost my entire option bet, oh well. Lession learned.

<comment><USER11> I think frequently about buying puts but never pulled the trigger. It's so, so tempting because in cases like that, you are 100% sure that you're right, and in fact you actually are right.

The last time I thought of buying puts was a month ago when Tesla was at 350$, propped up by the "funding secured" claim. It was so obviously bogus and a sign of desperation. But I was terrified of buying an all-or-nothing lottery ticket, so I didn't. That one would've been a big winner and now I feel the pain of missing out. Hearing your similar Kodak story is useful to reinforce my resolve that I should just stay with vanilla investing strategies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The obvious lesson is: Don't put all your money in a short-selling fund. (Not investing advice.)"

Why do people always say "You should/shouldn't do X, Y, and Z. But this isn't investing advice"? It's obviously written as investing advice. What else is it? Life advice? Casual advice?

If it's not investing advice, don't make such an authoritative claim.

<comment><USER13> Because if you are in a position where you might plausibly give investment advice, and you make a statement that could conceivably be construed as investment advice by the authorities, you may find yourself running afoul of the law. So just like a lawyer making comments about legal choices, you make it explicit that you're not acting as a professional advisor.

<comment><USER14> Is there any precedent for this kind of short disclaimer saving someone's legal rear as a defense?

<comment><USER15> In order for there to be a history, there would first be a few obstacles to get over: "What are you, stupid? I _said_ it wasn't investment advice. Sue if you want, good luck finding a lawyer to take the case."

Okay, potential plaintiff found a lawyer who will take the case. It would still need to go before a judge who didn't immediately laugh it out of the court room.

After all that, then you might find a court case recorded somewhere. Let us know what you find.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: For your startup, do you use a CRM? - <AUTHOR> I'm doing research on CRMs and am interested in what are some of the major problems with CRMs that startups use.
Seems like there are a million CRMs out there so I'm curious about the pros and cons of each one.
Hoping to get a great discussion and insight. <comment><USER2> I really like Close.io; everything less-technical sales reps/etc need from a CRM (principally it plays _really_ well with Gmail so even if they don't live in the app your business can pretend that they do) plus a really powerful API for integrating deep into your app/email toolchain/Slack channel/etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thought. Any downsides you see with using Close.io?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nope, no CRM here at Beeminder.com

We support our 4,500 active users with a combination of a shared gmail support account, admin screens on the core web app, and a tiny globally distributed team.

One day that won't be sufficient, but it's seen us through the first five years.

Our original intention was to automate some of the standard interactions, that we would just manually process the transactional emails 'for a while'. But funny thing is, the human interaction has proved to be a critical and valued part of our service. We're pretty sure those actual humans will always be part of the service Beeminder provides.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. That's a great story that you can support that many users without the need for a CRM.

Would you care sharing what are some of the key functions that the combination of a shared gmail support account and admin screens that made your team so effective?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hubspot CRM seems like a no-brainer for small startups. 100% free and you get their GMail chrome extension that allows email open and click-rate tracking.

I've heard a lot of good things too. It was discussed the The Steli and Hiten podcast. Steli thinks Hubspot went and took certain features that people like from various CRMS when they built this CRM. Seems solid.

I'm using it by default since I use their Gmail chrome extension. I think each time you send an email using the email tracking, that contact is automatically created in the CRM. So it should be able to track each email I've ever sent to each person as long as I had the tracking on.

[https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm](https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm)

(edited to add link)

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds like a really handy feature.

On the flipside, any reason why you think Hubspot CRM isn't a good tool for small startups? Is there anything that you don't like about it or that it can't do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are my notes on possibilities, for if we ever actually get a CRM:

1\. HelpScout -- [http://helpscout.net](http://helpscout.net) \-- Seems nice

2\. SupportBee -- [http://supportbee.com](http://supportbee.com) \-- Almost want it for the name alone but we got an anti-recommendation from a friend at Gratipay

3\. BeSnappy -- [http://besnappy.com](http://besnappy.com) \-- Possibly recommended by patio11 but then I heard they shut down?

4\. Intercom -- [http://intercom.io](http://intercom.io) \-- Recommended by Matt at HookFeed

5\. FreshDesk -- [http://freshdesk.com](http://freshdesk.com) \-- Recommendation from friend at Gratipay

6\. Front -- [https://frontapp.com/](https://frontapp.com/) \-- Lots of funding and big names behind it; Patrick Collison recommened it now too (coupon code for 3 months free: startuppack)

7\. FogBugz -- [http://blog.fogcreek.com/fog-creeks-email- workflow/](http://blog.fogcreek.com/fog-creeks-email-workflow/) \-- Blog post by Fog Creek about what they do

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. What would make you actually think about getting a CRM in the first place?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here you have another alternative: Pipedrive [https://www.pipedrive.com](https://www.pipedrive.com)

It's easy to use, it has tons of integrations and it's cheap. About why you should use a CRM, for example, to classify different leads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The product DOES look simple and easy to use.

What are some of the things that you don't like about Pipedrive or that it can't do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> streak.com is the way to go. integrates right into gmail.</comment>


Ask HN: Learning Hexidecimal Arithmetic - <AUTHOR> Has anyone taken the time/effort to learn arithmetic in hex (beyond simple addition/conversion)? I am dealing with a lot of legacy C/C++ pointer wrangling code, and I'm curious if it is worth the effort to learn to make debugging faster... <comment><USER2> There are calculators that can operate directly in hex.</comment>


What people get wrong about Bertrand Russell - <AUTHOR> https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/philosophy/what-people-get-wrong-about-bertrand-russell-philosophy-logic <comment><USER2> As someone who took a few university courses on analytic philosophy covering Russell, I've never heard anyone suggest he "sold out". Maybe that's just people who aren't really familiar with Russell or his personal life that say that?

If you're going to argue that he wrote sellout books, then he did that long before he gave up on logicism. See for example Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, which is aimed at people who know nothing above regular public school math.

I think the ability to recognize that he had basically hit a dead end with logicism was probably his greatest success, instead of falling prey to a sunk- cost fallacy. The guy wrote one of the most influential papers in philosophy of the 20th century ("On Denoting"), as well as being one of the central figures in the founding of an entire field of study, but he knew when to call it quits, and I doubt he regretted it at all. His social and political writings and activism are a treasure trove of wisdom IMHO.

Edit: if I'm being fair though, it is pretty common for people to say History of Western Philosophy was a bit of a poor work that he did just because it would sell well. That is just one book out of hundreds of works though, and honestly it's not _that_ bad if you balance it with more neutral sources on some of the material.

<comment><USER3> I don't think _History of Western Philosophy_ is bad but it is opinionated. If someone were expecting either a dispassionate overview or heartfelt enthusiasm for all philosophers past I can see how they'd come away disappointed. Especially when he's particularly dismissive.

If you go in expecting Russell's view of Western philosophy through the ages then you'll get just that.

<comment><USER4> _History_ is a terrific book. Whatever its flaws, it's a great read, and often very witty.

Wasn't it based on lectures?

<comment><USER5> Since he's up-front that he's gonna be including opinion, and about his own limitations when it comes to presenting certain philosophies (IIRC for Bergson he was like "look I can't figure out a way to explain this that doesn't seem like total bullshit, but I'll try") I don't really get the complaints about the book. I think it's great. Why would you want Bertrand Russell to write such a book and _not_ provide his analyses? It's better that way! There are plenty of similar works by people mainly known for writing their histories of philosophy. Go for those if you want a just-the-facts version.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I'm much more comfortable with "this is my take on this subject, and here's how I'm a bit biased, but I'll try anyway to be as objective as I can as well" than "this is the way things are"-style proclamations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a side note since this discussion is related to Russell and his brilliant contributions, I think a similar discussion can be had regarding Russell's contemporary and co-author Alfred North Whitehead (mentioned breifly in the article).

If Russell can be charged with "selling out" or directing his work toward a more general audience, Whitehead can be accused of the opposite, or perhaps even worse. If you read into his works post Principia (which he co-authored with Russell) you find a brilliant logician and philosopher begin to deviate from commonly held assumptions of Western thought and attempt to articulate a philosophy often at odds with "objective" ways of thinking. His works are interesting yet difficult because he is often so at odds with 20th century science and philosophy that he has to create his own terms to describe phenomena, which he builds upon with increasingly unfamiliar terminology until most readers feel completely alienated and give up.

Imo both Russell and Whitehead were great minds and deserve their fair share of consideration and contemplation, pre- and post- Principia.

<comment><USER8> Apropos AN Whitehead, I listened to an interesting talk the other week [1] about "process philosophy", specifically in phil of biology. The speaker (John Dupré) thought that he was working along the same lines as Whitehead, but that he was a poor writer so no-one can _really_ be sure if they understood him.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're interested in Russell, or mathematics in general, I can't recommend the graphic novel Logicomix highly enough. It's about Russell and the Principia Mathematica

<comment><USER10> As a former mathematician, I totally disagree.

Logicomix has nearly no mathematical content. The most technical part is a quick description of Hilbert's Hotel, but I thought it was very shallow, since there was no explanation. It did not even try to define infinity, or suggest how to distinguish several kinds of infinity. And, at least in the French edition, the Barber Paradox is wrongly stated!

Logicomix is mostly about people, especially Russell, with the postulate that everyone that worked on the foundations of logic was insane. But if you scrutinize the story, many details are wrong (IIRC, the young years of Russel, Frege's aggressive bursts, the last years of Cantor, …). They bent the reality to obtain the cliché that most people expected: genius mathematicians are mad.

<comment><USER2> I agree, the graphic novel was entertaining, but not an accurate portrayal of their lives.

If you're looking for something more factual, then Russell's own autobiography is a good place to start. Also "The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell" (edited by Nicholas Griffin) is a source I can vouch for.

[https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Bertrand- Companio...](https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Bertrand-Companions- Philosophy/dp/0521636345)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Arguably Russell saw the limitations of "technical philosophy" more clearly than those who thought of themselves as following in his footsteps. The analytic tradition has produced some great work but too many of its practitioners have conflated rigour with technical argument. I would wager that there is not a single major work of political or moral philosophy which depends on a formal logical proof. What endures of Russell's logic is of interest only in logic. If Russell wanted to address the problems of real life, he had to leave behind the symbols and numbers that had so captivated him in his youth.

What are the shortcomings of logic? Just incompleteness, or is there more?

<comment> pure-awesome I'd say the major shortcoming of logic is its inability to express uncertainty.

It's well-suited for mathematical proof as practiced, where axioms and definitions are precisely defined, and there is no reliance on empirical observation with potentially noisy data.

However, most of real-life is not as clear-cut. Deriving the truth of a statement may depend on multiple potentially faulty pieces of evidence which must be taken into account together. For this, one needs to assign probabilities.

This is useful even when applied back to mathematics. In practice, mathematicians form conjectures "likely to be true" long before they are formally proven. Additionally, they must narrow the search space in their minds in order to try the most likely avenues of proof, a process we refer to as "creativity".

Even using probability is only one more step towards solving the question of formally codifying general reasoning. We must also consider factors such as use of language and forming concepts (what precisely IS a "chair", after all?), and further aspects which form a basis for human action and which cannot be logically derived, namely our morality and base goals. Not to mention the entire plethora of such questions with which the field of philosophy concerns itself.

(These are the types of questions to which we will need to find some answer if we are ever to construct a useful generally reasoning AI)

Much as classical Newtonian mechanics is a useful approximation of physics at large scales and low speeds, formal logic is a useful approximation of reasoning at high certainty and low flexibility of interpretation.

<comment><USER12> > I'd say the major shortcoming of logic is its inability to express > uncertainty.

There are formal logics that incorporate uncertainty, non-crisp truth values, or both.

<comment> pure-awesome Indeed! I was speaking somewhat imprecisely - I was referring to logic in the sense of Bertrand Russel's work. I should rather say the major shortcoming of CLASSICAL logic is its inability to express uncertainty.

That being said, there are many flavours of non-classical logic and (paraconsistent, multivalued etc.) but their usage remains scarce outside of work in logic itself. Some intuitionistic, constructivist, and computational logics seem to be gaining popularity, especially in computer-related circles (computer-aided proof, numerical methods etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Minor correction: Gödel's incompleteness theorem dates to 1931, not 1944.

That said, I agree that the later Russell's more popular writing has been given short shrift, and stands the test of time in many ways better than the earlier Russell's logicism.

<comment><USER14> That is true, Gödel's incompleteness theorem dates to 1931. In 1944 Gödel published his first philosophical paper, entitled _" On Russell's Mathematical Logic"_.

The mistake was probably made because the author Julian Baggini is a philosopher and so he is mostly aware of Gödel's philosophical works and not so much of his mathematical accomplishments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Principia Mathematica was surely one of the most useful wrong-turns in history.

</comment><comment><USER16> I highly recommend The History of Western Philosphy precisely because it's highly opinionated. It's got many things to like, including being frank about not knowing the answers, and treating figures such as Augustine and Aquinas as philosophers in their historical context. A very engaging book.

<comment><USER17> If you are looking for a proper introduction to western philosophy and a history of ideas, I recommend instead Antony Kenny's A New History of Western Philosophy, which academics think is an excellent introduction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No applied logic is useful, but you need computers because the proof is big. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automath) gets started just around the time he dies, so Russel still made the right call, but lets not sacrifice a good idea "cause Gödel" for all eternity to prop him back up.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was halfway through the third or fourth paragraph and thoroughly confused which Russel is the author talking about. I don't understand why the author mentions the first Russel if the article isn't (mainly) about a comparison between the two.

It confused me so I'll ask the obvious question: this article is about the second Russel who wrote Why I am not a Christian, right?

<comment><USER20> I don't know if this is what you are actually asking but it reads like that.

There are no two Russells, it's the same person, just different kind of works in different periods of his life.

<comment><USER19> > There are no two Russells

What? Okay, I really didn't realize that it's just one Russel.

I mean if you read the first paragraph and don't have background in philosophy you would assume there were two persons named Russel after reading the first paragraph! I mean author says the first Russell was short lived and gives yearX-yearY. So yeah, I thought the first Russell died in yearY!!

I feel stupid now :-/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I never thought that Godel incompleteness of a logical system was particularly damaging; the ability to make self-referential statements is useful, the ability to resolve self-referential paradoxes less so.

Same for the halting problem in CS, which is typically resolved by (sleep 9999; kill -9 $pid). QED. ;-)

<comment><USER22> The trope of self-referential paradoxes as the foundation for grander proofs has always bugged me. My gut always says "sure, but what if we just banned self-referential paradoxes?"

<comment><USER23> I think those are called type theories. IIRC that was at least the idea behind the original type theories, before they got co-opted by the CS rabble. :)

<comment><USER24> Right, IIUC type theory started as Bertrand Russell's attempt to do exactly that (and follow through the ramifications - you can't "just" anything in math). Then suddenly, Haskell. Or something.

<comment><USER25> _Then suddenly, Haskell._

Sequence of events:

Russell publishes Principia Mathematica (1910-1913)

David Hilbert studies Principia Mathematica, and keeps working on open questions from it (1913 onwards):

 _He poses the proof of the consistency of arithmetic (and of set theory) again as the main open problems. In both these cases, there seems to be nothing more fundamental available to which the consistency could be reduced other than logic itself. And Hilbert then thought that the problem had essentially been solved by Russell's work in Principia. Nevertheless, other fundamental problems of axiomatics remained unsolved, including the problem of the "decidability of every mathematical question," which also traces back to Hilbert's 1900 address.

These unresolved problems of axiomatics led Hilbert to devote significant effort to work on logic in the following years. In 1917, Paul Bernays joined him as his assistant in Göttingen. In a series of courses from 1917–1921, Hilbert, with the assistance of Bernays and Behmann, made significant new contributions to formal logic._[1]

In 1928 Haskell Curry moved to Germany to study under David Hilbert

Curry's work developed into the Curry–Howard correspondence[2] which led to the language being named after him.

[1] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hilbert- program/#1.2](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hilbert-program/#1.2)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspondence#Origin,_scope,_and_consequences)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > But although it is true that Russell's political writings were often > naive > and simplistic, ...

Say what? Of all the books on politics I've read in my youth Russell's were some of best. Not simplistic but written in a clear language. Not naive but stemming from the rich classical liberal and socialist tradition of the likes of Wilhelm von Humboldt and John Stuart Mill. A tradition that has been completely erased from the history books in the last decades (which ought to make his political works all the more interesting).

(I fully accept the possibility that I am in fact naive and simple-minded, of course. :D)</comment>


Prabook - <AUTHOR> https://prabook.com/web/home.html <comment><AUTHOR> Prabook is an English-language, web-based, open-content collaborative biographical encyclopedia, comprising over 3 million people. It's owned, developed and supported by World Biographical Encyclopedia, Inc., located in New York, United States.</comment>


Google announces ban on "multi-purpose" Chrome extensions - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/google-announces-ban-on-multi-purpose-chrome-extensions-7000024566/ <comment><USER2> The Ban Calendar

July 20, 2012 - First step to ban plugins. NPAPI plug-ins in Windows 8 Metro mode

October 31, 2012 - 2nd step to ban plugins. Smarter NPAPI installs from the Chrome Web Store

November 15, 2012 - Banned packaged Apps v.1 Restricting extension APIs in legacy packaged apps

December 21, 2012 - First step to ban external extensions. No more silent extension installs

September 23, 2013 - Banned plugins. Saying Goodbye to Our Old Friend NPAPI

November 07, 2013 - Banned external extensions. Protecting Windows users from malicious extensions

December 19, 2013 - First step to ban all extensions Keeping Chrome Extensions Simple

Next? When Chrome extensions will be disabled at all?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is why I started using Chromium instead of Chrome -- Chrome forces you now to use (and pay for!) the web store (it's impossible to install extensions not hosted by Google, if you're running on Windows because "think of the users!"[1]) and if your extension doesn't get along with any of their policies (i.e. the extensions listed here), then Chrome users can't use it at all. Super-awesome, Google.

Chromium doesn't (at the moment) have these restrictions.

[1]: The post with this fucking Newspeak title: [http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users- fr...](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-from- malicious.html)

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Chrome forces you now to use (and pay for!) the web store"

Huh? Seems free for me to use. What specifically do you have to pay for?

<comment><USER4> It costs $5 to get a developer account for the Chrome Web Store.

Cheap compared to an iOS developer account, but still...

<comment><USER5> That sounds more like it's "show us you're a real person before we host your stuff" than any real attempt to make money...

<comment><USER6> "We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files…"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm increasingly getting the impression that Google would just love extensions to disappear altogether. They probably just added them to get Firefox power users, now that Chrome is king and they're pushing it like crapware (large scale bundling), they probably don't care anymore.

<comment><USER8> Maybe they should just stop pay for Firefox development if they don't like Firefox. Google pays huge amounts of money to Mozilla.

<comment><USER9> that's a little bit disingenuous. google pays huge amounts of money to Mozilla to be the default search engine because of the huge amounts of money Mozilla users make google by using google services on a daily basis. it's not like they're propping up a competitor just for the hell of it (or even to avoid anti-trust issues).

<comment><USER10> +1 I donated to Mozilla a few days ago, thinking how small my donation was compared to Google. However, Google must make $$ on Firefox hosted searches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am a satisfied Firefox user. Google just has too much power these days.

<comment><USER12> It should be noted that this is just for the official extension listing, you can install any extension you want manually.

<comment><USER13> Only on Linux and Mac though. Windows users can no longer manually install extensions, "for their protection".

<comment><USER14> > Windows users can no longer manually install extensions

Windows users can manually install extensions; you have to flip the developer mode setting and unpack the extension to install it.

<comment><USER15> Unpack the extension, too? This process probably reduced the external extension installations by 100x, while they can still pretend that you can still technically install external extensions.

First off, I think their original excuse was BS, because I very much doubt more than a marginal number of users were affected by malicious extensions this way. And second, there has to be a balance between what's safe by default, and what level of freedom/flexibility you have. If that "freedom" is hidden away in 10 layers of submenus, then might as well kill it for good, because it's not going to help anyone.

<comment><USER14> > Unpack the extension, too? This process probably reduced the external > extension installations by 100x, while they can still pretend that you can > still technically install external extensions.

Er, no, they say you can't, except for development (and the method that you can use, whether or not you are actualyl doing development, has always been the preferred method for development.) They aren't pretending that they making things available to Windows users, they are saying straight-up that, outside of development, Windows users cannot use non-Web Store Chrome Apps.

Heck, even before they disabled the old, less onerous manual method, Chrome pretended that you couldn't -- if you tried to install extensions directly from the web without setting a command-line flag, Chrome would just tell you that you couldn't install extensions except from the Web Store (you _could_ then drag the downloaded extension to the extensions page and it would install, but Chrome did everything to hide it from you.)

> First off, I think their original excuse was BS, because I very much doubt > more than a marginal number of users were affected by malicious extensions > this way.

I'm glad you think that. Is there any reason you'd care to share why anyone _else_ should believe it?

> And second, there has to be a balance between what's safe by default, and > what level of freedom/flexibility you have.

Any position you choose on the continuum is _a_ balance between those things.

> If that "freedom" is hidden away in 10 layers of submenus, then might as > well kill it for good, because it's not going to help anyone.

I think the flexibility retained for developers helps exactly the people it is designed to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As I understand it, this rule primarily targets extensions that do sketchy things without their users' knowledge, like how HoverZoom recently started silently tracking their users. This feels like a good policy to me, and I'm not aware of any benevolent extensions that will suffer for it.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Keep it simple, stupid. If you know what's good for you.

AKA: the Unix philosophy by racket.

<comment><USER17> have you seen firefox/chrome/any modern web browser?

I just wonder how long until google infects android with this BS.

Sorry, sorry, android is 100% free I forgot. How long until they infect play services with this.

iPhones are looking nicer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, it's great that they keep their browser the way they want it to be. We can download Chromium if we want so I don't see any problem here. Anyway, if they could think of the publishers and remove AdBlock once for all instead of giving money to their developers, I would be more than happy.

</comment><comment><USER19> > It might have been helpful for Google to have created a sample extension as > a "don't do this" example. Bizarrely, Google chose instead to illustrate the > problem using an infamous gag screenshot of the seven-year-old Internet > Explorer 7 stuffed to the limit with toolbars and add-on panes.

It's not bizarre. If you read the original blog post, the IE screenshot is there to illustrate the motivation behind Chrome's longstanding goal of making addons/extensions unobtrusive: "The name "Chrome" came from this principle as we wanted the browser to be about "content, not chrome." "

> Google won't allow third-party developers to build toolbars for Chrome, but > the company still makes its own toolbar for Internet Explorer and > distributes that toolbar widely.

As do Bing and Yahoo. Since IE has not put the same emphasis on minimizing chrome in their browser, and since all major search engines distribute toolbars for it, it is not hypocritical to follow the local conventions and distribute a toolbar for IE like everyone else does. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

> The real reason for the new policy might have less to do with user interface > guidelines and more with Google's attempt to shut down extensions that > intrude on its advertising fiefdown.

Or it could have to do with the fact that an extension that unexpectedly starts injecting ads into all of your web pages is extremely annoying, and (worse) is hard to attribute to the unrelated extension you installed. The article itself shows an example of one star reviews from unhappy users.

> In other words, images on the pages you visit, be they ads or content, can > be replaced with ads from the Superfish network.

Yep, sounds pretty seriously annoying, doesn't it? What sane person would install extensions if this behavior became commonplace?

There is a lot of aspersion-casting here, but no mention of any innocent actor who is hurt by this. This seems like a pretty common-sense move that benefits users. And yet the article and some of the comments here are hostile. Google has become the company that people love to hate.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if something like Reddit Enhancement Suite considered to be "multi- purpose."

</comment><comment><USER21> No more startpage24?

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/startpage24-incl-v...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/startpage24-incl- video-do/idmjjnnadgpnniaebiicdndgjlgpadcb)

How sad!

</comment><comment><USER22> What about things extensions Tampermonkey, are those at risk by this?

</comment><comment><USER23> I think that Microsoft associated bloggers should try and resist the urge to "puntificate" on Google related matters and announcements in any professional capacity, it always comes off as though they are trying to take advantage of the situation and somehow spin it to the benefit of those who have them 'not quite on their payroll'.

Avoid the spin, here's the original post: [http://blog.chromium.org/2013/12/keeping-chrome- extensions-s...](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/12/keeping-chrome-extensions- simple.html)

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the career advice. But perhaps you didn't notice that, as I always do, I provided a prominent link to the original Google post (the same one you just provided) in my original write-up. I always make sure my readers have the opportunity to go to the original source.

PS: I'm not on anybody's payroll. I am a freelancer and my compensation for this post comes from ZDNet, a division of CBSInteractive. You can take sides if you want to. I write for the benefit of my readers, a very diverse group.

\- Ed Bott</comment></comment>


The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-secret-to-good-writing-its-about-objects-not-ideas/263113/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I almost always find thoughtful discussion of how to write and convey ideas to be inspirational. Lyn Dupre's book, _Bugs in Writing_ ([http://www.amazon.com/BUGS-Writing-Revised-Edition- Debugging...](http://www.amazon.com/BUGS-Writing-Revised-Edition- Debugging/dp/020137921X)) is good about some of the mechanics.

Likewise, thoughtful articles about how to structure and write good computer code are almost always interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although I found discussion interesting, I feel like there could have actually been a few concrete applied examples in this article.</comment>


KDE 4.10 has been released. - <AUTHOR> http://dot.kde.org/2013/02/06/410-release-plasma-workspaces-applications-and-development-platform

<comment><USER2> Moving the workspace/Plasma to Qt Quick was an excellent choice.

BTW I love the PicMi game included in KDE Games!

<http://kde.org/announcements/4.10/applications.php>

<comment><USER3> Can you describe the benefits? I perused the release notes and I couldn't find any details.

<comment><USER2> They started migrating several releases before 4.10, maybe that's why.

To sum it up, I'll paste this: "In short, QML makes it very easy to write fluid user interfaces, while retaining speed. The advantages expand well beyond the mobile application sphere, and represent a new way to do GUIs." [http://jontheechidna.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/my-thoughts- on...](http://jontheechidna.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/my-thoughts-on-qml-and- the-desktop/)

QML is part of QtQuick: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QML>

Aaron Seigo also had some good points on his blog (If I remember well) but I couldn't find them now. Check his blog nevertheless, it's worth it: <http://aseigo.blogspot.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to love KDE, but they lost me and all the other users where I worked when they stopped supporting NFS home directories. Kmail was one of KDE's greatest assets, and now we are stuck with thunderbird on XFCE.

KDE claimed to be "Enterprise Ready" once ( <http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-2.2.php> ), but silently went back on that when they forced the usage of the terrible akonadi and nepomuk with even the most basic components. I don't know of an enterprise setup that doesn't have NFS home directories by default, so I guess KDE is no longer ready for the enterprise?

<comment><USER5> I used KDE 4.x at one point with NFS home directories via autofs (before migrating to Awesome). Could you elaborate on how it no longer works?

<comment><USER4> Akonadi uses a MySQL db which is kept in your home directory to keep everything - mailbox index, your contacts, calendars etc. MySQL frequently has issues on NFS, and isn't supported to work with that.

[http://web.archiveorange.com/archive/v/6W82CWtdN8xPKbyel7HO#...](http://web.archiveorange.com/archive/v/6W82CWtdN8xPKbyel7HO#2xyYQKxtOxhCaZ6)

Strangely I cannot find any official comment from the KDE or KDE-pim projects about what has happened here, even though the forced adoption of this immature technology has caused a lot if ire withing the community. As a single example I give you <http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.pim/33089> but there are thousands more that you will find if you ever try and google a solution to the various and sundry Akonadi/Strigi/Nepomuk issues that people are having.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those of you on fedora can get the latest by adding the kde-redhat repo here: <http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/> You'll need to temporarily enable fedora- updates-testing and upgrade systemd before upgrading the kde packages (at least on F18), but otherwise it's been stable for me.

No clue what state that's in, but I believe you can get it in ubuntu 12.10 at <https://launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa>

</comment><comment> iso-8859-1 Here's the PrintScr commit for Konsole: [https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde- baseapps/konsole/r...](https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde- baseapps/konsole/repository/revisions/5526c75fb26c6967937699601abc31457b338712)

</comment><comment><USER7> So I just installed KDE 4.10, plugged my HDMI cable to watch some series and - TA-DA! - it is finally recognizing AND adjusting the screens in the right resolution without my assistence! It still asks me if I want to do it, which is great, but it actually set up the resolutions exactly right (opposed to gnome3, which messed up the resolutions completely). Great stuff!

</comment><comment><USER8> Nepomuk, Strigi, Soprano and Akonadi caused my desktop to hang.. and I'm not the only one with such problems ([http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=98468](http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=98468))

Does anyone know if there is a stripped down/leaner version of KDE that's just a bare operating system ?

<comment><USER9> Turn them off?

Or, try Razor-qt. <http://razor-qt.org/>

<comment><USER2> I think it's better to turn them off. I've tried to use razor-qt for 2 weeks and I finally quit. There are some stuff that are not done, or half-baked, that we take for granted in KDE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yay more KDE!!!

I only wish making a startup had meant I would have my computer nearby instead of only Android devices...

Can I get KDE into Android???

No?

Well, I have then to somehow get sufficient money to rent my own place, so I can bring my own computer, and finally update my Fedora 12.

<comment><USER10> A interesting note here:

I noticed my karma was swinging wildly.

Using the "threads" button, I noticed that the "YAY more KDE!!!" post is the culprit, it is swinging between -5 and +5

I expected such things usually from posts of controversial political opinions, not of a "Yay KDE!" comment.

I guess there are lots of fans and haters of KDE?

Maybe fans of GNOME are downvoting while KDE lovers are upvoting?

It is interesting sometimes to see how people might get trigger happy, and stingy with personal software choices.

I guess if I said that I hate Emacs and love Vim the result would be the same (the swinging Karma)

<comment><USER11> It's because there are two types of voters: those that vote because they agree or disagree with a sentiment and those that vote because the comment was useful and added to the conversation. We want more of the second group voting; the first group's votes are useless and counterproductive.

Your first comment completely deserves a downvote by the second group, and your second comment is intresting but off-topic; I generally vote those up if I vote on it at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll have to give it a try today!

</comment><comment><USER13> I am wondering why team publishing such noisy screenshots. It's pure acid.

<comment><USER14> The screenshots, to me, look like an accurate reflection of how the desktop looks when configured to look the most professional and estatically pleasing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why didn't they just jump to KDE 5? KDE 4.10 is a confusing name, because in standard decimal format it would look like KDE 4.1...

This looks very nice. KDE is the most polished desktop environment currently out there for Linux/BSD/illumos, and the 4.10 release seems to be the one that's finally caught up with OS X in terms of fit and finish. I would download it, if only I had a computer fast enough to run it...

Stuck with a 1.6GHZ dual-thread Atom desktop with 1GB of RAM and an ancient integrated graphics chip. Xfce is the only full desktop environment I can run with minimal performance impact. Guess it's time to upgrade to either the iMac or the XPS One.

<comment><USER16> Double digit minor version numbers are very common. Linux was 2.6.34 or something, GNOME was up to 2.32, current Blender is 2.65 etc etc.

KDE major version numbers seem to follow Qt major version numbers, KDE3 was based on Qt3, KDE4 on Qt4, so I'd assume that KDE5 will eventually be based on Qt5.

<comment><USER17> KDE5 is going to require a significant refactoring of the code base into qt quick 2 and c++11 anyway. Just look at all the things they need to add to kwin (though it is probably the worst case): <http://community.kde.org/KWin/Qt5>

<comment><USER18> My understanding is that KDE4 was itself the result of a significant refactoring. My guess is that it's only a matter of time before the conversion happens (and by the looks of it, the devs are already looking into it).

<comment><USER19> A lot of things in KDE4 were (re)written from scratch. No such thing will happen for KDE5. It is mostly about splitting the base libraries.

That said, Plasma and KWin will probably have the most changes, one from the mass conversion to QtQuick, the other for supporting Wayland.

<comment><USER17> Any KDE based application could in theory start using qtquick instead of qt C++. I don't know why you would take a C++ implementation and make it run on qtscript, though.

I easily see new applications written against kde5 using a lot of qtquick and js implementations. Especially with Ubuntu phone coming, there would be little to change between some gui designs between supporting the desktop and phone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>