You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL - <AUTHOR> https://cyberomin.github.io/startup/2018/07/01/sql-ml-ai.html <comment><USER3> > _say a person bought a pair of shoe, sunglasses and a book. For their > newsletter, we will show include shoes, sunglasses and books. This was a lot > more relevant than sending random stuff._

I agree with the general sentiment of the article, but this seems like a poor example, since a more sophisticated approach can add a lot of value to a recommendation system. How do you know whether a customer is likely to want more than one item in any of those categories? If they already purchased sunglasses, wouldn't they be more likely to purchase, say, a sunglasses case and/or sunscreen? If they purchased a book, do you recommend the same book again? And if not, how do you choose which book(s) to include?

Of course, you could technically still handle this in SQL with a bunch of CASE statements, but obviously that doesn't scale well across a wide range of products. The whole point of ML/AI in that use case is to scale that type of nontrivial decision making.

<comment><USER4> Obviously ML can add a lot of value here, but its questionable to me if its trivial to build such a model with available data, keep said model up to date, or train variations on it easily, cheaply and quickly enough to A/B test the result and ensure you're _actually_ making any tangible difference.

So you know... I don't think it's unfair to say that for smaller vendors, the cost/effort of setting up a ML model may dwarf the fractional improvement it offers over just having one person doing human generated SQL queries.

The point is this isn't like machine vision or voice, where its almost _expontentionally_ better than traditional approaches.

It's just... a bit better. Which is worth it only if the fractional improvement pays for the setup cost.

<comment><USER5> It's not unheard of to see +10-30% in revenue when adding a recommender system [0]; The system described by the author is arguably more complex than a recommender system, since he has to develop, maintain and evaluate a set of rules that are not based on real data, but only on his intuition of what users want. GP gave good examples of how this would easily fail (do you always want to recommend items from the same category; if not, how do you know which other category to recommend?)

[0] [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.895...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.895.3477&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

<comment><USER6> For newer or smaller firms the SQL approach makes sense. Both because there is less data, and it's less risky to implement. Once the context is fully fleshed out, then it's easier to move on to a ML recommender system. It's also easier to track improvement vs a benchmark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice post,

Here's a different way to think about the situation with current AI/deep- learning; if the current upsurge of methodologies was getting close to _general_ AI, it would be getting closer and closer to a hammer that really did let you treat everything as a nail. IE, it would be general purpose.

But I think I can say we're not seeing that even though deep learning seems to be continually expanding the domains that it can operate on. How is that? This Open AI is very eye-opening; "We're releasing an analysis showing that since 2012, the amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially with a 3.5 month-doubling time (by comparison, Moore's Law had an 18-month doubling period)." Essentially, as a rather brute- force-y method, we have shown we can expand deep learning's impact to a larger and large domain but not at all in the fashion of human learning tricks (where the new isn't that much harder than the old trick).

Maybe, in this process, a better algorithm that adjusts to new situations without increased costs will surface. But until then it seems new and old methods will need to coexist.

[https://blog.openai.com/ai-and-compute/](https://blog.openai.com/ai-and- compute/)?

<comment><USER5> This doesn't sound related to the post, no? The post doesn't argue for general AI that learns like humans do, it only discusses the merits of AI as a whole vs hard-coded SQL queries and heuristics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good post, but I couldn't disagree more. Regardless of your business size, it will always be valuable to know information such as:

* How does every additional coupon-dollar affect the total amount a customer buys?

* What is the relationship between customer age and retention for my store?

* Does giving a customer more purchase options help or hurt their chances of making a purchase?

My experience is that each of these questions can be solved, in part, using 3 lines of Python code:

        from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression
        lr = LinearRegression()
        lr.fit(X,y)

Then look at the beta coefficients of the model, and you have a rough idea of how different features are correlated. Doing something like this in SQL sounds difficult. If you have data to interpret, it makes sense to use similar methods. I can't think of an example where you have data but refuse to look at it until your company is "bigger".

<comment><USER9> I overall agree that ML is needed over 'just SQL' in a lot of cases (though SQL + good visualizations / exploratory analysis can answer a lot of those questions qualitatively). I would also be careful with the linear model approach. Multicollinearity can hide how important a feature is (or reverse sign of a feature) when trying to use coefficients to interpret importance, so using a linear model like that isn't as straightforward as it seems.

As a workaround, you could look for high VIF to detection multicollinearity, use some sort of stepwise selection / penalized regression, or use something like relaimpo ([https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/relaimpo/index.html](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/relaimpo/index.html)) - not sure of a Python equivalent - to judge overall feature importance in the model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The premise for this article is wrong!

The author describes using SQL to pull facts from history; who was the number one customer the last week, who abandoned online orders and so on.

The premise should instead be how to fit a model onto your business data so that you better can guess who will be the number one customer next week, what (s)he will order and so on.

The problem that ML addresses is how to arrive at that model, under the assumption that you can use historic data to pick either model or parameterise a model.

SQL has it merits, as does the relational database model, but this has nothing to do with creating models (even though we are modelling the data itself). The author gives some examples that are, frankly, trivial.

But he has a good argument around namedropping "hot" technology when your business need does not incorporate distributed trust (blockchain), modelling behaviour (or some such) using ML and so on.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe I'm niave, but are there really people who want to hop on the AI bandwagon just to do mundane lookups like this?

When I worked with machine learning many years ago, we learned that it was no better than the heuristics already in place. The thing is, it's much easier to diagnose a well written and understood heuristic than a machine learning model.

<comment><USER12> Machine Learning is usually seeen as a magic black box by many people. So yes. There's a recent trend that seems to favor a machine learning first approach to solve very simple and mundane problems because people feel that they are missing some magic insight if they don't do it (FOMO).

For example, the author refers to a shopping newsletter where you personalize suggestions for certain products after a customer buys a particular product. This is very often a machine learning 101 example but really there's nothing preventing you from writing those heuristics yourself -no ML involved(e.g: if a customer buys a pillow, suggest pillow cases).

Machine learning does makes sense for something like that if your website is Amazon, but is definitely an overkill if your website is an e-commerce for house garments.

The funny thing is that usually you will end up writing those heuristics implicitly since you need to label your data anyways.

<comment><USER13> Another fun thing is that you will learn a lot more about your customer base if you do the research and write those heuristics yourself, vs. having ML do them. A business that understands the behavior of its customers is much more competitive than one which delegates that understanding to a black box. I don't contend that ML has no valuable (even transformative) applications but it's not a substitute for personally understanding every detail of your market.

<comment><USER14> I don't understand this at all. I've worked with a close to a hundred data scientists now and every one of them is an expert in the business problem they are trying to solve.

You can't just throw an algorithm (even one like AutoML) at a problem and expect to be able to do magic with no knowledge of the domain. The technology simply doesn't work like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like to think I'm not too nitpicky about fonts, but that st ligature is incredibly distracting.

It's the second article I've seen here that uses it over the last few days, but I'm not sure if it's the same site or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any font preference?

<comment><USER16> Turning this clause off in your style sheet turns off that awful st ligature:

font-feature-settings: "liga", "dlig";

So just remove that clause from your stylesheet and you'll be rid of that ligature.

<comment><USER15> I like ligatures when they're used well, but that one is just incredibly distracting.

Shame the advice is to turn them off completely...

<comment><USER16> Testing a big more, just dropping "dlig" from the feature settings declaration turns off the awful st ligature. So they don't have to 'all' be turned off to get rid of that one. What I don't know is what other ones get turned off by dropping "dlig" from the declaration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This post is downright bonkers. "We don't need ML/AI! Proof: _list of things you wouldn't use ML for_ "

There are so many problems you can solve with a neural network. Should Waymo ETL sensor data and do a WHERE NOT IN for bicyclists?

This is blog post is pretty dismissive. Statistics software has been in use since the beginning; see SAS. Financial institutions, actuaries, etc, have been using these methods with SQL data as the input and it's the only reason they're still in business.

If this blog post simply suggested hiring a BI Analyst in your startup, I wouldn't disagree.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's no logical equivalency between SQL and ML/AI.

SQL is a language that helps retrieve the data you're looking. ML/AI helps you predict the future (using past data).

Maybe this is directed towards product people? But it has SQL in the title so it can't be. I'm confused as to who the audience is here.

<comment><USER19> You're missing the point. Much of the "intelligence" that AI/ML is touted as solving could be accomplished through standard SQL queries on well normalized data. But no one will invest in a company because we have proper data structures and accurate SQL reports that we learn from.

<comment><USER20> That's been done for ages. The point of AI is to adapt to the world instead of having humans spend time understanding the problem set.

SQL can apply a human understood model to data points. AI lets us develop new models and adapt them.

AI lets us solve problems that have abstraction, or problems that change over time. You can't have SQL detect cats in an image or drive a car.

<comment><USER21> Cleaning the data, choosing the right ML algorithm, selecting the features, tuning the parameters, etc. ML also involves a lot of human time thinking to the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> oh-kumudo The title is often true, but it doesn't mean too much or anything. And the same argument is brought up again and again in the past as well.

What OP suggests, the so called SQL, is basically a heuristic based system. When done probably and carefully, it could of course work very well, and is indeed often used as baseline model to bootstrap a ML system. However, eventually the rule-based system will hit the wall, and ML be the savior of the day to push the metric further for a margin of 20-30%.

So yes, when you are small and has little data, ML is irrelevant. But same thing could be said to too many things in software industry, you probably won't need Docker/Big Data/Fancy JS as well, if you are building a small scale online store.

Choose wisely your tech stack based on your problem, but the title is needlessly sensationalized.

<comment><USER22> that is quite a leap to call SQL a rule-based system. SQL is a standard query language that you can use to discover how attributes and values relate to one another within data.

<comment> oh-kumudo > standard query language that you can use to discover how attributes and > values relate to one another within data.

That doesn't make it not a rule-based system. There is no learning component in SQL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this highlights a problem separate from machine learning, block chain, and similar vs the tried and proven technologies and a long standing one: attempting to solve via understanding vs seeking the simple solution to avoid thinking about it.

Ironic that machine learning is 'simple' but that seems to be the case at times especially with the 'throw block chain or machine learning at it' approach when a proper algorithm could do it far more efficiently. The funny thing is that both approaches have their place. If turning it off and on again fixes a rare issue faster than following every instruction to machine code you are better off restarting it occasionally - unless it is a critical application where doing so will cost millions of dollars or lives.

</comment><comment><USER24> I like this article's focus on technology as a way of helping skilled people do their job more effectively. Why shouldn't a business owner be able to use Bash and SQL to run their business? Maybe the solution isn't new technology, but training people to use the old stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was exactly the point I was making. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> But you don't gain ML/AI know-how by doing SQL, nor you discover previously unknown potential about your product buy sticking to your usual toolset.

Not that I necessarily disagree with the OP but I find it deeply uninspirational.

What's the difference between using ML/AI for problems traditionally solved by some other tool and using any other tool to solve the same problem unconventionally? Both can be "hacking". I guess my issue with this is the word "need", don't do what you need to do but what you want to do if you are looking for inspiration. After all, mankind never needed to leave the garden of Eden but left it anyway.

<comment><USER26> I think the OP just meant that you can get a lot done with databases queries and a bit of automation. There's no need to call that ML/AI.

<comment><USER27> Something I hate about the business side of the tech world: the fad-chasing.

From the article:

> I hear these days for you to close that funding round quickly and early > enough, you must throw in "Blockchain" even if it has no relevance in the > grand scheme of things. A while ago, it was Machine learning and Artificial > Intelligence.

Right on. No, blockchain won't help you with your corrupt voting system. If you don't understand the technology, you can't reason about its applicability, and there are more buzzword-chasers than serious technologists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There aren't very many DBAs practicing in modern shops and devs don't seem to be too into SQL and delivering excellent SQL queries and schemas. It's its own skillset.

I would also call out the NoSQL hype train here.

NoSQL _has its place_ , and largely its place is when SQL can not tolerate the intensity of traffic or the size of the dataset. You can look at the Dynamo paper for an example of the engineering rationale.

Postgres can take _enormous_ amounts of data at quite decent rates - <USER2> spending too much time on tuning even.

<comment><USER29> usually I am joining many different data sets many of which include some time of log data (sometimes petabytes in size but usually a few TB). the logs are persisted to hdfs or s3, which is why spark and hive make such a nice way of doing work compared to something like postgress.

also, its nice to plop json, avro, csvs, parquet, or what ever data in storage and just query/join/analyze it. no need to put the story on hold because you are waiting for the oracle dba to increase space again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Turns out that people are actually kinda smart - toss in some raw cycles to handle the mind-numbing bits and you can have a solid system that does smart things en masse.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure about this article, but there is certainly scope for an article named "You don't need Blockchain, you need SQL/a Database"

</comment><comment><USER32> The real problem is people (including the author of the article, apparently) think ML is necessarily some kind of ultra-complicated technique that needs a PhD and a GPU. But, come on, 80% of the times you can use ML, dead-easy techniques are more than enough.

I mean, the author is talking about how SQL is a good-old 40 year old tech. In the mean time, one of the simplest ML algorithm, linear regression, is about 200 years old, even older (AFAIK) than Ada's program for Babbage's machine. It's very easy to understand and implement, and even excel has it as a standard function.

Sure, linear/logistic regression or naive bayes won't help you tag pictures with text à la facebook "this is a picture of a young man dancing with a red shirt", but the vast majority of use cases of ML are way easier, anyway. So yes, most of the time, you can easily find "talents" that will solve your ML problems. And if you really want to, you can implement it in SQL.

</comment><comment><USER33> sql is great but i am still waiting for the succesor to sql. sql was made for relational data. but a relational data with nested data structure kind of like postgres and jsonb built in mind from the ground up is what id really like to see.

<comment><USER34> Why? What _problem_ do they solve that RE can't, other than putting the "consuming service" data structure into the database, instead of putting the data into the database and selecting appropriately? I've not seen a good justification for these things yet, other than "convenience" so the client "needs less code to structure the data", which is almost always a false saving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Previous post/discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16898827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16898827)

</comment><comment><USER36> Or maybe you can do ML with SQL.... Postgres can do basic linear regression, I did this a couple of times for an analysis and found it pretty handy.

<comment><USER37> What? not having to choose either or, actually using good tools for the job, solving the problem instead of mindlessly following the hype? /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What was the Twitter thread/HN thread referenced about using "boring" approaches to solving problems?

<comment><USER39> This one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16898827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16898827)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Counting items by value is a maximum likelihood estimation method too. It's still ML if you do a count, group by, max or threshold - just a less sophisticated way of doing things. The Naive Bayes algorithm is implemented by counting, at its base.

<comment><USER41> So any reduction is ML?

<comment><USER40> Only if it fits to an existing statistical model.

<comment><USER41> How about counting the elements of a linked list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> When you already know the query logic or the logic is easy to derive - use SQL if you can. For more complex stuff ML may work as your rule derivation mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER43> I thought graph databases were the canonical implemention for recommendation systems, one of the few use cases I'd not go straight to sql</comment>


Raising a startup is the best education you can get. - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently a (junior) high school student.
About a year ago, I had applied to YCombinator with my friend(Austin). Unfortunately, we didn't get accepted but it was still a great experiance, by not getting in you learn a few things. Now, I've made my goal in life to apply to YC as many times until we get accepted, obviously I'm not gonna come knocking with the same startup.
I'm pretty sure that the experience/knowledge that a startup gives you is much, much more valuable than you'll gain in any University. Even if you go back to your job, you'll still be far, far ahead than if you were to work those years that you spent building a brilliant startup.
I hope you apply for YCombinator, and if you don't...wait a few months and do it again! :) <comment><USER2> Why not just make it your life goal to get your startup to the point where YC would be lucky to get a deal with _you_?

</comment><comment><USER3> YC should be a means to an end, as opposed to an end in and of itself.

Your goal, with respect to this area, should be to launch a series of successful startups that allow you to execute your exit strategies and build cool things. YC may, or may not, help you get there.

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems premature to state that A is better than B while still not having run the gamut of either.

Starting a startup is a vastly educational experience, but you can't really compare it to college. It's like comparing apples and bicycles.

<comment><USER5> Bicycles would win any day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You are right, in the sense that great education is not only derived from a post-secondary institutions and that via everyday experiences, attained while raising a start up, is very educational.

Though, I must agree with wheels [<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=767367>] based on the fact that the knowledge derived from either experience is very hard to compare; one being often thought as theoretical and the other, very practical. The challenge, then of course, is to decide what type of education suits your life's goals appropriately.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't focus on YC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry if the tonation of my post is to entirely shift your startup into focusing on YC. What I meant was, Working on a startup is the best form of education. If you land a deal with YC, that's even better, it's a way to decrease the number of errors you make along with the time it takes for you to succeed.

<comment><USER7> I agree that YC would increase your chances of being successful, but I wanted to encourage you that you can do it either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://bizteen.net/about-bizteen/>

"Endorsing the company politics of Micheal Scott comes Emil Hajric."

What exactly do you mean by that?

<comment><USER9> (as in Michael Scott of The Office.. my bad if you already knew that)

<comment><AUTHOR> heh, I was having a bit of a laugh there. But Yes, PStamatiou, you got it!</comment></comment></comment>


I love netbooks but Asus is blowing it - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/18/iLoveNetbooksButAsusIsBlow.html <comment><USER2> I think Asus had blown it already with no assistance from the iPad. They've been moving away from their core market for some time - the original 7" Eee was a hit, but now it seems to have been entirely replaced by larger, more expensive models.

They've diluted their brand significantly too; originally they were quite distinct from laptops but now there's a lot of crossover. And far too many models - a local comparison site pulls up 35 different Asus netbook models - how am I meant to know the difference between a 1000HA, 1008HA, 1000HE...

I doubt it's such a big deal to most people, but their move towards Windows really puts me off too. Having the original Eee run Linux was a big draw to me.

<comment><USER3> The bigger screen size is useful. The 7" was, admittedly, a little too small.

However, you're totally right on everything else. If they could offer $200-250 models again, I might even buy one on impulse.

They really need to compete hard and drive the price down; the Kindle, iPad, cell phones and new Android tablets are making the market more competitive.

<comment><USER4> The 9inch that I had might be the sweet spot for me. Although it was the keyboard that killed it for me, slightly small and the tilde key was removed an all the numbers pushed left as a consequence. Could never really get used to it.

If they could somehow get a bit more key space on the 9inch that would be good but otherwise I'd probably need a 10inch. That said very happy with the mobility vs size tradeoff that my 13inch bmp has.

<comment><USER5> My biggest complaint is that no one is designing a netbook with TrackPoint rather than a trackpad. (Lenovo doesn't count, b/c their netbook offerings have been horrid.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nothing's changing at the low end of the netbook lines because they're all still shipping with Windows XP or Windows 7 Starter, so the hardware has to be nearly crippled. Thanks, Microsoft.

But at the higher end there are some neat ones. I got an Asus 1201N, which has a dual-core Atom, real Windows 7, and HDMI out. Makes a decent travelling machine and can handle almost any media needs.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that just an ultra-portable PC, rather than a netbook? I thought the whole point of a netbook is that it was very cheap but underpowered (though more than enough for the internet, hence its name).

<comment><USER8> That does seem to be the point of netbooks, although I never really understood the reasoning behind it. It's underpowered but you are supposed to surf the net with it? If there's one program that is a performance and memory hog, it's a web browser.

<comment><USER9> They actually make pretty decent MS-Office machines and super portable dev boxes.

Or if you want to put together a cheapo NAS, a netbook, a couple USB hubs and a half dozen 1TB external HD's will serve as a pretty decent NAS for a fraction of the price with tons more capability.

Or as a little print server or cheapo box to test network junk on

Or a super portable slide presentation machine (with one of those pocket projectors) for doing pitches (bonus, you can also edit the slides on it!)

They're also small enough to open up all the way in coach on a plane, with space left over for a mouse and your drink so you can get some work done on a long flight (whether that be writing documentation, putting together presentations, hacking some code, or whatever else you want).

On vacations I use mine to offload photos from my camera, then I can go and sort and edit them while watching TV that night, and it's small enough to fit in every tiny hotel safe I've ever come across. Being able to do this has saved more than one traveling companion from disaster...folks who had left their laptops behind in lieu of a portable HD for offloading their pictures.

They're fast enough to play some old games (I like to play Sim City 4k on mine), but it plays lots of casual games like plants vs. zombies ok.

or watch some ripped movies, pretty much any ripped DVD will play fine on it (I also have an external drive I can hook up, but I usually leave that at home). I have usually a dozen or so movies on mine at any one time. I rarely turn the hotel TV on when I travel.

I also have about 10GB of old 78s ripped to mp3 on it for background music when I can't get on the web (<http://78records.cdbpdx.com/>).

It's fast enough to run emulators for anything <= SNES. For a while I had mine running as a portable Amiga, which was hot.

It's small enough I literally can't tell if it's in my backpack or not, and it's so small it takes up the same space as a book.

Oh, and I have a few thousand e-books on mine (and comics CBZ, CBRs).

And I have some music production software on it, it's good for most things so long as I don't rely on too many real-time effects or push the multi-channel stuff too hard. But I've cranked out a couple decent tunes on it.

It can, in a pinch, act as an emergency swap out for a main computer. My wife's computer died in an electrical storm, and for a couple weeks, she just hooked my netbook up to her monitor and ran it at 1680x1050 to get some MS- Office work done. She plugged a USB keyboard and mouse into the available slots and still had another left over for her thumb drive she drags back and forth to work. That basically saved her job over one particularly grueling project. It wasn't super speedy, but she got her work done.

I'd imagine taking it to school would be perfect because it's so small it fits on a regular student desk with space left over for a mouse.

You could probably travel with one of these <https://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/c609/> and get some multi- monitor goodness from it while on the road.

Overall, I'd say it's probably the best $300 I've ever spent on a piece of consumer hardware. I do a ton of traveling and my netbook has literally been around the world with me half a dozen times. I've entirely stopped taking my regular laptop with me as I found I simply didn't use it and it felt super bulky in comparison (plus I couldn't figure out what to do with it when I was out of the hotel room since I couldn't fit it into a safe).

<comment><USER10> Wow, what a great, comprehensive overview of what can be done with a netbook. I may have to look into utilising mine more.

I mainly use mine for web surfing when I can't be bothered using my main machine (duh) and also to download large files overnight. Sometimes I leave it on for a week at a time. Tip: put your netbook on top of a radiator, which draws the excess heat away from the underside of the netbook. (Obviously the radiator has to be turned off.) My Dell Mini 10V tends to get really hot if I don't.

Here's a great list of classic old PC games you can play on a netbook:

[http://gamingbolt.com/100-games-to-play-on-your-netbook- or-h...](http://gamingbolt.com/100-games-to-play-on-your-netbook-or-home- computer)

Google "netbook games" for further inspiration.

<comment><USER9> > download large files overnight

Yeah, they draw really little power, especially with the screens turned off. If you need to transfer files, or have a system up sending keep-alive pings or something that doesn't require a bunch of computation, they're really ideal.

Great link btw!

<comment><USER10> You're welcome ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to improve a netbook try this: [http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKPQ...](http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKPQ01)

You can now buy the Pixel Qi (read: replacement for e-ink that does colour and video) screen and put it in a number of netbooks yourself.

Perhaps Asus are looking at making their own official models with it in there?

</comment><comment><USER12> On the contrary I have been rather impressed with Asus's netbook offerings. They recently released the Eee 1005PR.. a tiny netbook with a massive 1366x768 resolution in addition to their already ridiculous battery life. I only just started playing with netbooks recently and have an older Eee and have been rather happy with it:

[http://paulstamatiou.com/thoughts-on-netbooks-part-2-asus- ee...](http://paulstamatiou.com/thoughts-on-netbooks-part-2-asus-eee-pc- edition)

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh yes, Dave Whiner #.

I like Asus' netbook. I needed an extra Windows box at work, so I picked up a $300 eeepc. Very useful, and the battery lasts forever. It's like an iPad, except that I can do whatever I want with it, and it's cheaper.

If this is "failure", I like failure.

<comment><USER14> I like my Asus too. I had an EEE, now I am on something a bit bigger (UL30V). It's nice having the performance and battery life (2 graphics cards and settings that change with 2 keys).

<comment><USER15> I love my UL30V like no laptop I've ever had. Two dual graphics cards and 12 hours battery are so great, I don't know how other laptops can compete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "What possible reason would anyone who has one have for buying a new one?"

A low-cost ultra-portable computer?

</comment><comment><USER17> What could Asus really do to make a netbook better? This is a problem of working within the constraints of x86/Windows. They can't make them faster because they're relying on Intel for parts. They can't do a whole lot on the software side because they're relying on Microsoft for software. I know they blamed the iPad for poor sales but I think it has more to do with better competition from Dell, HP and overall saturation of the market. One thing that is always overlooked with netbooks is that they are a usability nightmare for a lot of people with the small keyboards, postage stamp sized touchpads, and super tiny text on a small high resolution display. Those people don't want netbooks.

<comment><USER18> You've answered your own question: Use ARM and install a reasonable Linux Netbook distro (not the lame rubbish they install at the moment).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Maybe the battery lasts longer, but they maxed out that spec when they hit 7 hours use per charge."

My 1005HA was rated for 10+ hours; running linux I generally got 8-9, but another person on HN reported 16 hours with Windows 7. It's not like Asus has been hiding the 10+ hours figure, either; looking through their product information, it's pretty clearly advertised. Does it take too much effort to do the basic research to make sure that a statement is correct before claiming it as truth?

<comment><USER20> I understood the maxing out to mean "more than enough" so that increasing it won't add more value. Of course, that is also quite an arguable point but for most people it's valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's interesting is Asus netbooks have almost disappeared from stores I regularly shop at, but there's more netbooks in stock than ever. HP + Dell minis, Acer Aspire One's, and Samsung's nice lineup of netbooks they have this year. The category is definitely still there, and current-gen netbooks are actually fairly nice computers, but Asus really isn't the one leading here anymore...

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't think Asus's sales drop has anything to do with the iPad - they're in quite different markets. Look at the price difference of the machines, for starters, and also the demographics of iPad purchasers - these are mainly well-off people and I think if they wanted a netbook style machine they'd buy one as well as an iPad. There may be a small overlap of people who were looking for a netbook and would/could pay the extra money to buy an iPad instead, but at about a £300+ price hike I would think that these would be in the minority - most people who aren't buying Asus are buying other company's netbooks instead. Asus have had a period of being the dominant seller over netbooks, but I think a lot of other people are producing more competitive machines and so Asus are losing share/sales to them, rather than Apple

</comment><comment><USER23> Am I missing something, or is Winer unaware of the EP101TC? My uneducated bet is that at <$399 it will be the non-iPad iPad to beat.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're missing something -- the EP101TC isn't something you or I can buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is no netbook with the fun chips the phone makers added to their products.

Imagine the cool stuff you could do with a small computer packed with GPS/FM radio/phone reception/accelerometer/gyroscope.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just about any netbook is infinitely more useful and usable than an iPad; in that sense, Asus is not blowing anything.

<comment><USER26> I'm on the road this week for work. The office where I'm working is about a mile from my hotel, and there's a cluster of restaurants around, all of which have wifi. I'm here alone, so no meal companions. I've been eating at the various places, carrying my iPad around and catching up on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest while I wait for my meals. I'd never do that with any laptop, not even the netbook I left at home this week. Why? The iPad starts instantly, weighs a pound and a half, and doesn't need sysadmining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> from Asus I imagine they'll end up releasing a $200-300 iPad clone. They have everything already parts wise.

<comment><USER28> ... and no software. I'm fairly certain that the iPad's success is 80% software and 20% hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Maybe Asus does have something in the pipe, but you don't know about it because they actually keep their secrets and not leak them on purpose.

<comment><USER30> Maybe this one: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_Keyboard> ? I think they tried but this product didn't gain enough traction as they expected (due to higher price, lower specs, ...)

Otherwise i must agree with the article. After successfully introducing netbook concept the EeePC 700 serie, all Asus has done was just milking the product line with god know how many variations. I mean they have dozens of models, all has the same configuration: Intel Atom, 1-2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, with little difference in screen sizes, keyboards layout.

<comment><USER7> To be honest it's not like Asus was doing so great before the netbook. I am happy for them 'cause it shows that there is a reward out there for PC makers that try to innovate (ASUS went up in market share a lot), but I think that expecting a series of home-runs was a bit optimistic given the company hasn't changed (or has it?).

Here is to Asus and the hope that they didn't give up after the Eee Keyboard: some you win, and some you lose, Asus! Keep trying!!! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What did you build or launch in May? - <AUTHOR>

These are some of my favorite HN threads and, hopefully without touching on amoore's toes, I wanted to get one rolling for May before it was too late. <comment><USER2> <http://www.readrboard.com>

Fills a place between the Like Button and article comments. ReadrBoard is a bookmarklet that makes it easy to "react" to quotes, images, and video on a page. Run the bookmarklet on any website, select what interests you, and then click a button or add a tag. User profiles are auto-generated, showing a stream of what you've rated all across the web, capturing how readers feel about the pieces of content that grab them most. The goal is to help readers & publishers identify what online content people care about, and why.

</comment><comment><USER3> Switched the real-time engine @ <http://www.symphonical.com>

It now uses Socket.io, RedisStore and Redis pub/sub with our existing Django app. One ec2 instance for each, didn't get to add the load balancers yet. But almost there :)

</comment><comment><USER4> EdgeCase -- Stops your cursor at the screen edge between OS X multiple monitors.

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/edgecase/id513826860?mt=12>

</comment><comment><USER5> Launched <http://mixy.tv> to the public last week. It's a video aggregation site that pulls video content from different sources, including your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Public beta launch for <http://www.mcqmania.com/>

(It's currently for a niche market in Nepal.)

<comment><USER7> I believe your "the first time in Nepal" should be changed to "the first in Nepal" or something similar.

<comment><USER6> thanks! Will update it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <https://my.infocaptor.com> was launched in May

</comment><comment><USER9> Finderous - Multilevel Location based Q&A iOS App

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/finderous/id520384764>, <http://www.findero.us>

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://goingclubing.com> re-code it in rails.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://www.sftransit.us/> \- an easier way to get San Francisco real time transit arrival times on your smartphone.

Itching for thoughts/feedback/etc from people...

</comment><comment><USER12> Public beta of <http://holaio.com>

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://marqueed.com>

easy collaboration and discussion on visual projects. web developers/designers will love it, no more emailing attachments back and forth.

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://basekb.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Go Mommy Auctions - Better UI and functionality for GoDaddy Auctions.

<http://www.gomommyauctions.com/>

</comment><comment><USER16> SchemaFreeDB - Cloud based NewSQL service <http://schemafreedb.com>

Alpha preview, getting ready for beta.

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.socause.com>

A social action network and a compilation of our achievements. Open beta.

</comment><comment><USER18> Story Dice - iOS / Android app for young writers

<http://thinkamingo.com/story-dice/>

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://go.adcore.com> Search engine marketing automation for free.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hacker News for iPhone/iPad.

<http://www.hackerno.de>

</comment><comment><USER21> <http://facingworlds.co.uk> . A simple job board I made for people to post/find work for free without any registration :D

</comment><comment><USER22> <http://jackpotbuddy.com>

</comment><comment><USER23> Image Overflow - Recent Image Search with no fluff

<http://imageoverflow.com></comment>


Thoughts On Apple's HTML5 Demos  - <AUTHOR> http://theflashblog.com/?p=2069

<comment><USER2> Sorry, this is apropos of nothing, but...

<grammar fanboy>In this article Lee quotes the Light Table demo as saying that it was accomplished with "with just a few lines of CSS and JavaScript," and then remarks that "I was curious as to the contents of those 3 lines as they must be the most powerful 3 lines of code ever written. In actual fact, the JavaScript file that drives the demo is 700 lines long."

What in god's name makes people assume that "a few" means "three?" "A few" just means exactly what it says: a relatively small number. Two is actually a relatively small number in certain circumstances, so you could say "a few" to mean "two." In _this_ circumstance, 700 lines of code could be said to be "a few" lines, because I've seen full Javascript apps that use _7000_ lines.

I don't really care about the trivial Flash/HTML5 contentiousness, and I'd rather stay out of it. But I keep encountering these weird misapprehensions based on imaginary rules concerning the phrase "a few," and it seems silly to me. </grammar fanboy>

<comment><USER3> I took a graduate philosophy seminar as a senior and we spent a full lecture debating the semantics and pragmatics of fuzzy quantifiers like this. There was a sizable portion of the class that felt that "few" is a relative term (as in "few people believe in aliens"), but that "a few" is an absolute term (as in "I cooked a few eggs").

You may be a "grammar fanboy", but I don't think your proposed semantics of "a few" are necessarily correct.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I agree that my own perspectives on "a few" aren't necessarily correct. And "grammar fanboy" was just self-deprecation, not an indication of expertise; _everybody_ uses grammar, so _everybody_ is as much an 'expert' in how it should and shouldn't be used as anybody else.

What I was commenting on was the apparent accretions of personal "rules" surrounding the use of the phrase "a few" colloquially. Sure, when I say "I cooked a few eggs," there's a context; people know I wouldn't cook 7000 eggs, so they would never assume that's what I meant. But I have in fact been chided by people pedantically when I've said something like "I cooked a few eggs," meaning two; in this case, people have often said to me that what I really mean is that I cooked a _couple_ eggs, as "a few" is apparently distinct from "a couple."

All I'm saying is: there aren't necessarily little rules governing when people can and can't use the phrase "a few." I object whenever I'm told that I really shouldn't use "a few" to mean "a relatively small amount;" why not? Maybe Apple's mention of "a few lines of CSS and Javascript" in the article really does imply _only and exactly three_ , but I can't see how. It's possible that there are agreed-upon linguistic usages that mean that Apple is actually lying, but it seems to me much more likely that "a few" is just a phrase that's more fluid and less strict than Lee is taking it to be. Chiding people for using "a few" to mean "relatively few" rather than "always and only three" seems silly to me.

<comment><USER3> I think most people have the intuition that 2 is a couple, a few is strictly greater than a couple, and several is weakly greater than a few.

In any case, in this context, I think it's safe to say that "a few lines of Javascript" implies something on the order of 3-10, rather than 700; I do think Apple was being misleading. Just because the upper bound on something (like the size of a JS library) is high doesn't mean that the phrase "a few" can mean 700...it certainly doesn't scale linearly. At least, that's my intuition, but I'd be pretty surprised if I'm an outlier here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I grudgingly concede that there might be some genuine kind of inter-browser standardization politics around Apple coding demos labelled "HTML5" using CSS, markup, and backend quirks specific to their (mostly open source) browser.

But is there any honest argument at all that these demos, regardless of how letter-of-the-law standards compliant they actually are, are not categorically more open, standardized, and web-centric than _Flash_?

<comment><USER5> They are. And they don't even need the demos to tell us that (they admittedly could have handled the demos better, I just don't think it's a big deal). Safari is a great browser, Webkit is a kick ass render engine, you can do cool stuff with it on the iPhone and iPad and all that cool stuff will (nearly always) also work on any other (say, Android) modern mobile OS. Or nearly every modern browser.

Moreover, if you don't like the Safari UI you can check out one of several Webkit browsers (most notably Chrome).

If you could do everything with emerging web standards that you can now do with Flash this wouldn't even be a contest. The emerging standards would win hands down. You admittedly can't (yet?) but it really does look as though the scenarios where you need to use Flash are getting scarcer by the day.

Apple might be the bad guys with respect to the App Store, they are the good guys as far as browser development is concerned.

<comment><USER6> I can fully understand why Apple promotes Safari. The demos are a showcase of bleeding edge CSS, namely 3D transitions, currently implemented only by Safari. No doubt other browsers will implement them too. See <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-3d-transforms/>

Also, being hardware accelerated on OS X, Safari renders 2D/3D transitions at superior framerate compared to Chrome (don't even mention Firefox). The difference is huge. Apple's message is "Hey look, we made a great (open source) rendering engine and want show you what can be done in HTML/CSS when things are properly implemented. Check this out as a reference implementation and feel free to implement it in your browser."

[Yes, the 2D/3D HW accelerated rendering uses Apple's proprietary frameworks and is not open sourced, AFAIK.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting to note that Mobile safari score 134 better then desktop version which scores 122 for latest version of safari.

<comment><USER8> And, if the rumors are true (the rumors are never true), we'll get Safari 5 on Monday. I'd like to see the browser score then.

<comment><USER9> Probably the same as the current WebKit nightly build (144).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just see this as another instance of Apple falling behind the curve. It used to be that they were so far ahead of everyone else (in design, products, etc.) that they didn't worry about everyone else. Now they are suing people for copying their things, postering about how good they are, etc.

This new state of affairs saddens me somewhat as I have always liked and respected Apple and they are now giving me cause to doubt them.</comment>


Danger – Stop Saying 'You Forgot To…' in Code Review - <AUTHOR> http://danger.systems <comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, Danger came out of a problem we were having at Artsy applying process to our growing team. Through Danger we've managed to codify all sorts of interesting rules so that we, the team, don't have to think about problems like:

Does this swift code take too long to compile? Was a CHANGELOG added? Is a test accessing the network?

These questions are answered automatically on the PR via Danger.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is actually really neat! Would love to play with this some time. My only gripe is that I don't like Ruby. Would you consider adding support for other languages in the Dangerfile in the future?</comment>


I found a 17-year-old file still available for download on Adobe's site - <AUTHOR> http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1 <comment><USER2> That's not _that_ old - Apple still has downloads going back to the Apple IIGS, some 21 odd years ago.

[http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html](http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html)

<comment><USER3> > DOS-Windows/QuickTime/IndeoVideo5.zip

A large number of bad memories just flooded back

<comment><USER4> The download didn't work for me - says it is not found

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A cool thing you'll notice in these PostScript files: seemingly random number sets. These are actually units of measurement specified in points! 612 x 792 points == 8.5 x 11 inches

</comment><comment><USER5> Considering the age of some print shops hardware and software, this doesn't come as a surprise.

</comment><comment><USER6> Its kinda weird that this is the coolest thing I've seen all day.</comment>


Template-Python: The Python port of the Template Toolkit - <AUTHOR> http://tt2.org/python

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... All source-code-level documentation from the Perl Template Toolkit has been copied to the Python version, with all Perl-specific terminology translated to its Python equivalent. Documentation appears in Python docstrings, as appropriate. The main body of POD documentation for each Perl module appears as the corresponding Python module's docstring ..."_

Before python had a usable web framework, Perl was my toolkit of choice. And Template Toolkit (TT), [0] later TT2 was my framework of choice. Now Sean McAfee [1] has ported it to python. Wonder if I can get it to work with Django and ditch theirs?

[0] Created by Andy Wardly ~ <http://wardley.org>

[1] Sean McAfee ~ [http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_threa...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/b1c3ef91b95a4517/cc96d37a1f76cd8a?lnk=raot)

<comment><USER2> > Wonder if I can get it to work with Django and ditch theirs?

Probably. You just don't use theirs and import the Template module instead.</comment></comment>


Gold Coins: The Mystery of the Double Eagle - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/gold-coins-the-mystery-of-the-double-eagle-08252011.html

<comment><USER2> I still don't understand why the U.S. government should care. If they were being circulated as currency, it would make sense. But the metal in the coins is worth many many times their face value. It'd be ludicrous for a holder of a double eagle coin to spend it as $20.

<comment><USER3> Basically, all Double Eagles not in the government's possession are stolen property.

<comment><USER4> Not all of them. A 1933 Double Eagle coin was legally auctioned, and an additional $20 was needed to "monetize" the face value of the coin so it would become legal currency.

<comment><USER5> I believe the government's position is that one coin was also stolen property, which they then dealt with in a special way, given the circumstances.

More importantly, the government believes the 10 coins the article is really about were stolen _by the family who currently is trying to get them back_. A huge difference to the original case of the single coin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How much taxpayer money has been wasted over the past 50+ years over this nonsense. Flights, security, agent hours, overtime, pensions, etc. just to pursue this nonsense.

Anyone could think of a dozen ways the money could have been better spent, but I guess every level of cops need their own little agenda to abuse to feel important.

I say if anyone happens to have one, let them sell it and instead charge a 40% tax rate on the selling price.

<comment><USER7> Don't you understand, if the government doesn't spend huge sums recovering these coins our currency will be devalued.

I mean, devalued more. Because, you know, quantitative easing, and all that.

More seriously: I want to know how the hell you find a jury who will actually support the government stealing heirlooms from an 82-year-old woman's safety deposit box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a single page version: [http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/gold-coins- the-...](http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/gold-coins-the-mystery- of-the-double-eagle-08252011.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Here is the Wikipedia article, I like the pictures, if anyone is interested; <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Double_Eagle>

and more on the trial, which ended this year, here; [http://www.coinworld.com/articles/1933-double-eagle-trial- at...](http://www.coinworld.com/articles/1933-double-eagle-trial-at-long-last- a-conclu/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any qualitative difference (eg. a unique design beyond the "1933" year) between the 1933 Double Eagle coin and the coins from previous years? Obviously, an interesting story makes these worth so much more.

<comment><USER10> No. They are exactly the same design as coins minted 1908-1932 (1907 was a special case, having two different designs, only one of which continued on).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I kept waiting for them to say something about Isaac Newton...</comment>


Firefox 12 released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/04/24/firefox-introduces-a-simpler-update-process-and-more-than-85-improvements-to-developer-tools/ <comment><USER2> I don't know how Mozilla came to the conclusion that their Web inspector is actually usable.

The HTML doesn't appear when inspecting (no, that takes an extra click). The CSS appears in an extra vertical sidebar taking up even more room on the screen. You can't add a Console button, but 3D View is worthy?

I love Firefox, but this it's just plain odd they didn't integrate Firebug into core.

<comment><USER3> In my Nightly (don't know about current release), I just have to click once on the show html button, and if I inspect another page later, it brings the HTML panel along.

I actually find the vertical CSS sidebar to be an excellent choice. CSS (and code in general) is an inherently vertical thing (short line length), whereas the number of rules displayed is maximized using a vertical panel. A console button would maybe be a good idea, but I only use the keyboard shortcuts, so I don't mind, this prevent reducing the visual clutter.

Firebug is a seriously old and not that sufficiently maintened code base, hence the choice to write new tools, more integrated with the browser.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the style inspector is vertical for exactly the reason you cite. We're also working on a better solution so that it doesn't cause issues with responsive designs.

Firebug is still actively maintained and continues to have new releases and improvements. Firebug 1.10 (currently in alpha), for example, is now restartless and has less impact on page performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the one with a full silent update? Soon most people will be running one version of Firefox? Chrome + Firefox means 40%-50% of the Internet is getting a browser update every six weeks. This will be a boon for software developers.

<comment><USER6> _Chrome + Firefox means 40%-50% of the Internet is getting a browser update every six weeks. This will be a boon for software developers._

I never understand this argument.

All we have now is two different fast-moving targets, both with a track record of introducing breaking changes. IME this just results in a significantly higher number of customers complaining to our customer support team (not Mozilla's or Google's) that our web pages/embedded UIs don't work properly any more.

I have yet to be convinced that this obsession with releasing every six weeks really gets useful features out there in a way that benefits most users anyway. As far as I can tell, about 99% of the developers using those features are people writing tech demos for the browser makers and/or trendy web design blogs. Much of the content on those sites doesn't even work on both Gecko and WebKit at the same time, never mind IE. Meanwhile, real sites still have to cope with a majority of visitors who don't have the latest shiny new features.

In any case, a lot of those features frankly aren't all that beneficial anyway compared to basic things like not freezing the entire browser UI because one tab is taking a while to load. That is something Firefox still can't do even though it's several years after every other major browser had it, and the apologists are getting awfully boring now.

<comment><USER7> > I have yet to be convinced that this obsession with releasing every six > weeks really gets useful features out there in a way that benefits most > users anyway.

Security updates.

<comment><USER6> If it takes six weeks to push a security update, you're doing it wrong.

This is part of the problem with the fast update cycle: People are now conflating security updates (which should be out there ASAP and should make no functional changes at all) with functionality updates (which are never necessary unless you want to visit a site that uses a new feature or to use some change in the UI, have a much higher risk of unintentionally or intentionally breaking stuff that used to work, and certainly don't need to happen 8-9 times every year in any case).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Obligatory release notes: <http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/12.0/releasenotes/>

Complete list of changes: [http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/12.0/releasenotes/bugli...](http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/12.0/releasenotes/buglist.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Glad to see they've finally moved to silent updates. That's the feature that lost me years ago, and as nice to see it finally make it, I don't think I'm coming back from Chrome.

The problem with the "hey, before we're going to let you use Firefox, we need to download a new version for you. Wait a few minutes" screen is that it stops you dead from being able to do whatever you opened the browser to do. It's jarring enough to make you avoid Firefox for anything except the times when you absolutely need to test something on it.

That means you use it less often, which means that opening it _always_ puts you through that annoying process. Every Single Time you use Firefox.

So over the years, they've trained me that "Firefox == Pain". It'll take them a long time to train me back.

But I applaud them for finally trying.

</comment><comment><USER10> They're installing a service that runs with elevated privileges to bypass UAC.

I don't think it's a good thing to install that kind of loophole on your PC.

<comment><USER11> That's actually the right way to do it. How do you think Chromes does? Right, they're installing in the user area, not in the application area, to bypass UAC. That's wrong.

Using a service that uses authenticated connections and signed installs is similar to what Windows Update does, for the right reasons.

Best would be that Windows Update would be open to let any app hook into it for updates of course, but til then, that's as close as it gets.

<comment><USER12> A service to handle updates is good. A service _per application_ to handle updates is not very good.

Why is chrome bad? It at least can't lead to a system compromise.

<comment><USER11> Why not?

Since Chrome is in the user area, guess what, anything compromising Chrome can overwrite Chrome itself. It can then prompt you with UAC or simply have a user space trojan. (heh, and it can't compromise Firefox if it's also installed)

An updater has a several magnitudes less code to audit (thousand, millions magnitudes?).

In Firefox's case, if Firefox is compromised, it cannot modify itself (heh, it can compromise Chrome if it's also installed)

<comment><USER13> If Firefox is in UAC'd location, then a Firefox compromise would simply drop an .exe or .dll into user's directory and set it up to be launched by Firefox. As an add-on, for example, or through the same exploit it used to enter the system.

In other words, the installation location doesn't really matter. If the process is breached, the user context is f#cked regardless.

<comment><USER14> In this case, its only the updater that runs privileged (which last time I checked was a separate application). The only way you should be able to 'compromise' it would be too man in the middle, and pretend to be Mozilla servers. Even then, if it used SSL (I'm not sure it does), and had an embedded certificate, then it should be fine.

<comment><USER15> Yes, the Firefox updater uses SSL and other mechanisms to prevent man-in-the- middle attacks. The update payload itself is signed with a private key controlled directly by Mozilla, to avoid vulnerability to CA compromises [1]. The connection to the update server uses SSL and performs additional checks to ensure not only that the SSL certificate is valid, but that it matches one of a small list of known certs or issuers, so a bad CA can't issue a forged certificate [2][3].

[1]: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Reviews/Firefox10/SilentUp...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Reviews/Firefox10/SilentUp..).

[2]: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544442#c24>

[3]: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=583678>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone else noticed a _significant_ improvement in overall responsiveness or am I seeing things?

<comment><USER17> I've been using Nightly for a few weeks and definitely noticed. It's been about as fast as Chrome which used to be way faster.

<comment><USER18> I've been using Nightly for months now and it is surprisingly stable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In case anyone opens their Firefox 11 client and it doesn't automatically recognize there is an update available, you can go to Help -> About Firefox and it will grab the update.

Wait for the download to finish, then click the "Apply Update" button and you will be updated to Firefox 12.

<comment><USER18> I believe Mozilla sometimes "soft launches" auto-updates to a subset of Firefox users to find any new issues before opening the flood gates to update everyone. But, as you point out, manually checking for updates should always find the latest version.

<comment><USER20> I don't think the soft launch is so much for finding issues, it's just so their download servers don't get slaughtered.

<comment><USER21> Beta and earlier users tend to be different in a lot of ways from regular Firefox users. Soft launching surely helps the download servers, but a large point is to watch for new crashes, so that any emergency fixes can be put in before unthrottling the release.

Past issues include antiviruses that crash Firefox because of their invasive monitoring. While ideally these things would be caught by QA or early adopter users, there's no way to test all possible combinations of software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It seems to have subtly broken TreeStyleTabs on OS X, which is a shame because I am addicted to it, but at least it's still usable (the tabs take up ~150 pixels of vertical space). Hopefully this will resolve itself with a TST update.

That said, wow, the OS X improvements are huge. Previously I could only force quit if I wanted to shut down to free memory or whatever, but now it closes normally. I'm also not seeing the same kind of memory usage, but it's early so I'm not sure how long that will last.

<comment><USER23> What part of Tree Style Tabs does it break?

I was about to upgrade, but TST is by far my most important extension (and the number one reason I've never seriously considered switching to Chrome).

<comment><USER22> It's purely the visual component I mentioned, the functionality seems to be okay, although it's reported as broken in the add-on manager. I have the tab bar docked on the left vertically and the tabs are ~3x taller than they should be.

I'm the same way about switching to Chrome, by the way. I would love to but I just can't picture life without TST after so many years.

<comment><USER24> I don't see the tabs taking up extra vertical space, although 3x the size should absolutely be noticeable. I did, however, have a problem yesterday when watching a fullscreen video: if I put my cursor on the left side of the screen, the tab bar would appear (as though I had it set to auto-hide) and obscure that portion of the video. It was quite annoying because the sensitive areas extended all of the way to the top left of my screen, where I have a "corner" set up on my Mac to disable the screen saver.

<comment><USER22> Ah, you know what, I just figured out what the issue was. I was using the "metal" TST skin and when I switched it to another one, the 150px-tall-tab problem went away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I still have my fingers crossed for Electrolysis (out of process tabs/sandboxing) to ship before Firefox 30.

<comment><USER11> It ain't going to happen until they rewrite Gecko in rust. But there might be things that are close enough to it.

<comment><USER26> No, Electrolysis is unrelated to Rust. <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis>

A big problem for Gecko which does not exist for WebKit is XUL extensions. If you think about it, XUL extensions must run in UI process (unlike Chrome extensions), but XUL extensions can also access web content which lives in web process. It is nearly impossible to make this 100% compatible...

<comment><USER27> I thought most Mozilla software was internally based on XPCOM. Then why can't they just proxy the interface calls to go to a different process via standard IPC mechanisms? (I've no knowledge of XUL extension model thou)

<comment><USER26> They can and they do. It is called CPOW(Cross-Process Object Wrapper). <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/CPOW>

The issue is that extensions expect to access web content synchronously, so you need synchronous IPC for perfect compatibility, but that causes your UI process to block on your web process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Will there be a Lion fullscreen-mode and Lion-style floating scrollbars? That would make my day!

Edit: Apparently, not so. A pity.

Does anyone know when we will see them?

<comment><USER15> Lion fullscreen is coming in Firefox 14: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=639705>

You can use it today on the Nightly builds from <http://nightly.mozilla.org/> or in a few days on the Aurora channel: <https://mozilla.org/firefox/aurora/>

Lion-style scrollbars are still in progress: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=636564>

You can test them on the UX branch: [https://msujaws.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/mozillas-ux- nightly...](https://msujaws.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/mozillas-ux-nightly- build-of-firefox/)

<comment><USER28> So that's like, three months? Ok, not exactly the first ones on the field, but good enough for me ;)

<comment><USER15> Correct, Firefox 14 will be released in 12 weeks. (Or you'll get it in just 6 weeks if you switch to the beta channel!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> They haven't gotten rid of the "checking for compatibility updates" dialog - which was the worst part of the Firefox upgrade process in the first place.

Until FF fixes their extension compatibility, stops breaking plugins with each release, gets rid of version verification for all the popular plugins, and finds a more streamlined way (non-modal, ffs!) of prompting you to enable/disable extensions that are now broken or require more permissions, they'll still be playing catchup to Chrome's autoupdate procedure.

<comment><USER11> Well, they're playing catch up on that, that's for sure. But my understanding is that they're adding the necessary features one by one. Next is silent updates (=no dialogs). This one is just "no UAC prompt".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Updated both Firefox and Thunderbird today. As usual, no problems whatsoever.

On the other hand, I'm still waiting for the Thunderbird team to fix this: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449299>

</comment><comment><USER31> Lion native full-screen mode: what's the difficulty stopping this?

<comment><USER32> Nothing, actually! It's already in our Nightly builds, and will be appearing in Aurora some time this week. You can grab Nightly at <http://nightly.mozilla.org>

<comment><USER31> Can you give us some insight in to the decision making process when prioritizing feature additions then? It seems bizzare to me that it's taken since the first developer preview in Feburary of 2011 to get the feature in to merely the _nightlies_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> FWIW, the Web Inspector looked horrible until I switched to the default theme.

</comment><comment><USER34> We're going to have Firefox 50 in a year at this rate.

<comment><USER15> Both Firefox and Chrome increment their version number every six weeks, so it's easy to see that at this rate in a year we will have Chrome 26 and Firefox 20. :)</comment></comment>


VAXen, My Children, Just Don't Belong in Some Places - <AUTHOR> http://www.hactrn.net/sra/vaxen.html <comment><USER2> Regarding applications to modern software engineering, this parable is basically about operations surrounding architectures that promote long-lived processes and rare reboots (VAX) vs. ones that promote quickly-spawned, ephemeral processes and which rely on reboots for cleanup (Unix).

The modern comparison I would make is between the design of scale-neutral twelve-factor apps in language-platforms made for quickly spawning ephemeral processes ("scripting" languages like PHP, Ruby, Node, Lua, or even—in practice—Go)† and the design of "living system" VMs—and languages thereupon—that load and unload modules over time without shutting down (JVM app servers, Erlang, etc.)

It's okay to effectively "reboot" your Heroku instances to get them into a sane state. Not so with your databases, stateful load balancers, or VoIP servers. They come from two different worlds: one eschews state, while the other owns and manages it.

† Notice how all these languages are effectively wrappers around the same paradigm. There's a strong sense in which a "scripting" language is just a language that models the world in the Unixine fashion, such that it can be used to glue other Unixine programs together.

<comment><USER3> UNIX isn't mentioned. When they say IBM I believe they are referring to System/360 and its decendents. This is a story of two mainframe competitors. It has nothing to do with UNIX.

<comment><USER4> In the context of the time, the VAX is the more interactive/flexible/etc. system relative to the 360. It certainly wasn't viewed as a mainframe then. However, from today's vantage point, VAXen--and even the large UNIX servers that followed--seem very mainframe-like compared to volume x86 servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previously discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7278408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7278408)

<comment><USER6> Kind of sad proof of how much the comment quality has dropped on HN this year.

<comment><USER7> Labor day weekend in the US is probably the deadest time of the year. Especially due to Burning Man.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of those classic internet stories. I assume originally from Usenet. Laughed when I read it 10 years ago on Slashdot, and again today.

Here's looking at you, ten-years-from-now tech website that will be sharing this with a whole new group of faces!

</comment><comment><USER9> _It was Monday, 19-Oct-1987. VAXen, my children, just don 't belong some places._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_\(1987\))

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there any support at all for the implication that this anecdote has any more than a humorous and coincidental relationship with the 1987 stock market crash?

I've run across this story more than once. It's amusing but also more than a little troubling if that is in fact how fragile the global financial system is.

<comment><USER11> I doubt this story has any factual basis whatsoever -- it reads like a tall tale with a moral more than anything else.

<comment><USER10> Dunno. I've heard (and told) a few similar stories that do have a factual basis.

<comment><USER12> Do you have them written up anywhere? I'm a total sucker for these kind of stories.

<comment><USER13> If you haven't already, do enjoy _The Case of the 500-mile Email_ (which I believe is factual)

[http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html](http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html)

<comment><USER10> That's a great one.

Related are the faster-than-light stock-exchange trading orders of the past few years.

Some trades were originating out of Chicago for NY exchanges which, based on release timing of information, would have had to travel faster than light. Truth being that there's early access being offered some traders.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/3/4798542/whats-faster- than-...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/3/4798542/whats-faster-than-a-light- speed-trade-inside-the-sketchy-world-of)

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5966v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5966v1.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A curated list of fundraising Asian startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/list-asian-startups-fundraising <comment><USER2> From a quick glance, seems most of the startups are from singapore Not sure if it is because of the author is from singapore or if singapore is actually more vibrant in the startup scene

</comment><comment><USER3> This is illegal for US (private) companies to do right? Sometimes I wonder why it is illegal to tell the world you are fundraising but having a casual conversation about it with someone is fine. Such a bizarre world where you can't really solicit your company as a product but you can solicit your company's product.

<comment><USER4> What? It's definitely not illegal to advertise that you are looking for investment. How else would a startup find investors...?

Maybe you're referring to raising money from non-accredited investors. For the time being, AFAIK that's still not allowed. There was some movement on this in the crowdfunding for equity space, but not sure what the current status is. It seems everyone has gotten too distracted by cryptos and ICOs to care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So many mentions of "AI" and "blockchain"; sometimes even in the same phrase... Not a good sign IMO.

<comment><USER6> Tell me about it:

> Harnessing on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain & trustless Smart > Contracts, Viola.AI sets to revolutionize the dating and relationship space > in the world

It almost reads like a parody. What _on earth_ do blockchains have to do with dating?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is nice, glad to see that people in Asia aren't sleeping and are trying to innovate!

</comment><comment><USER8> Hey Willis! I'd love to be able to sort by region, round, fund raising amount, etc.</comment>


Typesetting Markdown – Part 4: Theme Style - <AUTHOR> https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/23/typesetting-markdown-part-4/ <comment><USER2> This is cool, but a lot of it is about bash programming, and it also heavily ties you to PDF output. IMO no real Markdown based authoring workflow is workable without a preprocessor. I've used many, from GCC's to several home written ones, but I recently started porting my whole authoring workflow for technical documentation to PP ([http://cdsoft.fr/pp](http://cdsoft.fr/pp)). It gives you integrated diagrams with ditaa and several similar packages, and most importantly fills the gap that pandoc leaves wrt composing documents from fragments. Just treating all input files as one continuous input document just doesn't cut it for anything more than simple README's.

Either way, it's great to see how far text-based authoring workflows have come over the last 10 years. At some point Docbook had great promise but XSL is just too hard, and not even that powerful after you managed to grok it, so you still needed to cobble together a bunch of functionality on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't read this in enough depth to figure out what it was talking about, but I did see this:

> Most distributions have the printf command

printf is part of SUS and POSIX; this means that pretty much _every_ system from this millennium will have it.

<comment><USER4> Not only is it guaranteed by POSIX, it's also a built-in in bash. (And the author, I believe, is writing bash, not generic shell: the shebang in part 1 is to bash, and "local", which appears in this article, is not defined by POSIX.)

I suppose there could be an (early?) version of bash that it wasn't built it (and then the POSIX argument applies); but OS X ships a version of bash over a decade old (2007), and it's a builtin there, so it's been there for at least that long…

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hopefully mdBook[1] will have proper PDF output[2] soon.

[1] [https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/mdBook](https://github.com/rust- lang-nursery/mdBook)

[2] [https://github.com/rust-lang- nursery/mdBook/issues/88](https://github.com/rust-lang- nursery/mdBook/issues/88)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's linked in the article, but maybe someone would like to start a little earlier in the series.

Part 1: Build Script - [https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/05/22/typesetting- markdow...](https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/05/22/typesetting-markdown- part-1/)

Part 2: Tool Review- [https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/05/29/typesetting- markdow...](https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/05/29/typesetting-markdown- part-2/)

Part 3: Automagicify - [https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/16/typesetting- markdow...](https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/16/typesetting-markdown- part-3/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting solution, but I would classify the first ~60% of post as yak shaving that has nothing to do with markdown and themes.

The script is maybe too complicated and could have been simplified enormously

<comment><USER8> What do you mean by yak shaving?

<comment><USER9> Yak shaving usually refers to work that you started doing because you needed it while working on your actual problem, but the work isn't directly related to that problem's solution.

Here's a more detailed discussion: [http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old- archive/gsb-archive/gs...](http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb- archive/gsb2000-02-11.html)

<comment><USER8> Awesome! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's some complex but pretty nice bash script template language in this article. The template he includes might be useful to some folks: [https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/23/typesetting- markdow...](https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/23/typesetting-markdown- part-4/build-template)</comment>


How D.C. spent $200M over a decade on a streetcar you still can't ride - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/how-dc-spent-200-million-over-a-decade-on-a-streetcar-you-still-cant-ride/2015/12/05/3c8a51c6-8d48-11e5-acff-673ae92ddd2b_story.html <comment><USER2> As a DC resident, this project is really ridiculous for a few reasons. First of all, it is no faster than a bus because it still does not have a dedicated right-of-way. It also follows the side of the street instead of the center, so it constantly smashes mirrors of parked cars. Sometimes, people parallel park poorly and completely block the tracks, delaying service until the car can be towed. Buses don't have that problem, obviously.

Finally, it is forecast to make $450,000 in revenue per year on $5.1 million in operating expenses. I realize most transit systems don't make a profit, but that is crazy. You could literally buy every single streetcar rider rides on UberPool for less money.

<comment><USER3> Paying for Uber rides does not include paying for new roads. DC traffic is bad enough they need higher density options. If that's busses with dedicated right of way, or street cars with dedicated lanes, or new subway stations they need to do something _that people will actually use._

PS: I don't live in DC in large part due to traffic issues, but also giving up the right to vote bothers me deeply. So, this is from someone that lives close to, but not in DC.

<comment><USER4> Paying for rail doesn't do anything to alleviate the need to pay for roads though. The comparison really is paying for trolley vs paying for Uber (or whatever)

Rail is only useful in certain situations and it's only useful if done correctly. Neither of these things are happening in this case.

And don't worry about your vote. It's really irrelevant. It's really about making you feel like you have a voice then actually you having a voice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a lot of frustration with the DC subway system. Check out these two (frequently updated!) twitter accounts for example:

[https://twitter.com/unsuckdcmetro](https://twitter.com/unsuckdcmetro)

[https://twitter.com/dcmetrosucks](https://twitter.com/dcmetrosucks)

One area the streetcar plans to serve is the H Street Corridor. It's currently not really served by the subway system, so supposedly the powers-that-be decided it was a lower-cost solution. At $200m and 10 years though (and counting), I wish a subway system expansion would have been implemented.

I would gladly pay more tax dollars for a more extensive (and less sucky) subway network here in DC. Instead, I'm spending that money on Uber, when I find out that the next train comes in 20 minutes.

I should add that a monthly pass for the DC metro costs more than twice than NYC's (the 2nd most expensive in the country), and more than triple San Francisco's.

<comment><USER6> The DC Metro is an abomination. I regularly spend about 40 minutes waiting for my girlfriend at the end of one of the lines as she gets on a trip that should take 20. Everything from "Single tracking on line between EVERYWHERE due to construction" to train inexplicably stopping on tracks for 10 minutes, to trains simply deciding not to run in that direction with absolutely no warning, no explanation why, and no ETL on the next train.

It boggles the mind to think how any work gets done in DC when the public transit system is so terrible.

Oh, wait...

<comment><USER7> The saddest part is that Metro _used_ to be incredible. I first moved to DC in 1993, and back then the trains were on time, the cars were clean, and the fares were low. It was excellent. People routinely pointed to it as the best thing about living in the District.

It's taken two decades of neglect and mismanagement to turn it into the horror show it is today.

<comment><USER8> IMHO, the turning point several years ago was when Metro went from automated mode to manual mode after having to go from 6 car trains to 8 car trains. Apparently, the automated mode, where the train driver just looks out for anomalies, doesn't have enough precision to handle 8 car trains that consume the entire platform at stations.

Under automated mode, you had consistent threshold breaking and acceleration, door opening times, etc. It was a very smooth ride.

<comment><USER9> The switch to manual mode was much more due to the fatal Red Line accident than it was due to 8 cars.

Either way, it's a symptom of the fact that the WMTA Union has suppressed the number of full-time positions for mechanics to ensure that existing mechanics get plenty of overtime pay. The result is a system where a single mechanic working a 12 hours shift is preferable to two mechanics working 6 hours each and getting something fixed. From the perspective of ANYONE other than the unionized workers, this is not ideal.

Any riders can see the results of this on a daily basis. The escalators remain broken for months on end, and disabled riders end up having to go to entirely different stations because the elevators will remain out for months as well.

I'll paste a link to a publication that I really don't like, but this particular article is actually very accurate. Sadly, the non-fringe media in DC are afraid to cover this story, despite the fact that anyone who has ever applied to work at the DC Metro can tell you this first-hand, and the data backs it up:

[http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/03/29/exposed-dc- metro-...](http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/03/29/exposed-dc-metro- subways-racist-willfully-incompetent-policies/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live a couple of blocks from this boondoggle, but some of the issues aren't strictly the streetcars fault. For instance, this very morning while walking my dogs, a DC tow truck sped past us all code 3. We rounded the corner onto H ST, and saw the tow truck using the wheel lift, fully extended, to push a car out of the way of the streetcar. And it wasn't like this car was just over the line, the driver had left its ass end hanging about a foot and a half out into the traffic lane. Whomever was driving that wrecker was masterful, blocking the entire street for only about 60 seconds while he rammed the car into place.

Any improvement in public transit is also going to require improvements in the quality of driving out there. People are selfish idiots when in their cars.

<comment><USER11> I'd argue that's a design problem.

A lot of cities have built street cars in the middle of the road, or they place concrete edge between parking and the street car's lane to stop exactly that from happening. Why didn't DC?

This seems incredibly dangerous and poorly thought out:

[http://i.imgur.com/WbWrf9l.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/WbWrf9l.jpg)

I understand that civil engineers are sometimes handcuffed with what they can do. But the city really needs to decide how seriously it is about this project, and either design the city around the streetcars or just eliminate them completely.

It just looks like they tried to half-arse it and it blow up in their face.

Honestly Salt Lake City is a map of where the US needs to go, not DC. Cycling lanes everywhere and streetcars with dedicated space and priority. It isn't perfect (cycling lanes need more protection, like Copenhagen, actual concrete to stop cars driving or parking in them) but it is darn good by the US's standard.

<comment><USER12> I've lived in two European cities with extensive tram lines. Both of them have trams on the streets, but the other one also has dedicated lanes in places where streets are wide enough. The dedicated ones are very fast and enjoyable to ride, but even the on-the-street lines are way better than buses.

Blocking the rails happens very rarely, so I assume it's about everyone getting used to it, plus hefty towing fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > DDOT, citing confidentiality rules in working with construction contractor > Dean- Facchina, declined a public-records request to provide an item-by-item > breakdown.

Well, there you have it. The money was stolen by shady construction contractors. The construction industry in the United States - and seemingly only in the United States - is incredibly corrupt.

<comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charbonneau_Commission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charbonneau_Commission)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's the springfield monorail in real life

</comment><comment><USER16> Berlin has spent much more on an airport you still can't fly from.

<comment><USER17> at least we have some working streetcars.

<comment><USER12> Indeed, the Berlin tram network is surprisingly fast and convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is nothing compared to what we spend on car infrastructure.

<comment><USER19> But at least my car is usable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I thought DC was trying to use a wireless streetcar that was developed in China:

[http://www.npr.org/2015/10/22/450583840/in-d-c-and-china- two...](http://www.npr.org/2015/10/22/450583840/in-d-c-and-china-two- approaches-to-a-streetcar-unconstrained-by-wires)

</comment><comment><USER21> At least they didn't go $6.25 billion over budget on a broken bridge:

[http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/10/from-250-million- to-...](http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/10/from-250-million- to-65-billion-the-bay-bridge-cost-overrun/410254/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Streetcars suck. It's less flexible buses, basically. Subways, on the other hand...

<comment><USER23> Subways are a lot more expensive than streetcars, while buses are cheaper (not that much once you have a dedicated lane) but slower than streetcars.

PS: I live in a city with an extensive streetcar network which is still expanding (Zurich)

<comment><USER24> I believe the damning thing is that DC already has a fairly reasonable subway network, so I can't see the need for streetcars.

<comment><USER25> DC's streetcar and subway systems aren't supposed to address the same need. The metro system, in terms of station placement/spacing, schedules, line routes, etc., is designed to efficiently move people from the suburbs to the core and back again. It's poorly laid out for moving people within the city; the hub and spoke layout means almost everyone needs to transfer and trips are often circuitous. For my commute to my last job, for example, getting to work via metro required walking five blocks, going into downtown, changing lines, coming back out from downtown, and walking an additional four blocks. It took 45 minutes, vs a half hour just to walk to work or ten minutes to bike, and this is typical of getting from place to place within the city by metro. Most people don't bother.

The envisioned broader streetcar network would have been explicitly designed to address intra-urban trips, and would have had a very different layout from metro, with stations spaced more closely together, and fewer lines passing through downtown.

Lots of cities have different systems to address these needs, since it's difficult or impossible to design a system that does both well.

<comment><USER26> _the hub and spoke layout means almost everyone needs to transfer and trips are often circuitous_

I don't know how well it works in practice, but ever since I saw the map[1] for the Moscow Metro I've always liked it. Especially the ring that presumably? keeps people from needing to go thru the core. It probably works better than most systems. E.g. NYC's subway doesn't do well if you're trying to get from outer borough to outer borough. Many such trips involve going thru Manhattan.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Moscow_m...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Moscow_metro_map_en_sb.svg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This would never happen in mainland Europe.

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe letting de-regulated private companies run some services will solve the cost problems.

A little "uber" or "air bnb" type disruption is what mass ground transportation needs.

<comment><USER29> Right up until they have their first pedestrian incident.

<comment><USER30> Plenty of private industries have incidents. How would this be different? There's already well-established legal and insurance systems in place to handle them. Also, privately run infrastructure has more of incentive to have a safe track (literally) record. Unlike government monopoly, they could loose a lot of money, lose their contract, or both.

<comment><USER31> Plenty of modern cities with highly functional urban cores do just fine with public mass transit. DC should be able to do the same.

It is a matter of fixing the right things rather than giving up and handing it over to private industry. Sadly too many interests in the USA are trigger- happy about throttling any/all public transit.

<comment><USER28> Doesn't competition for gasoline, cable tv and phone service keep prices down? Why can't this work for transportation? Imagine what an Elon Musk could do with Amtrak or the New York subway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Government at it's finest.

You can probably take any random person off the street, put them in as project manager, and complete this for less. The incompetency the government has in handling projects is absurd.

<comment><USER33> probably more to do contracting bureaucracy than incompetence. With all of these public works projects there are just too many hands in the bowl to make it efficient. The alternative would be to do it dictatorially, which would not be acceptable either.

<comment><USER34> More likely, bureaucracy AND incompetence.

Each begets the other forever.

<comment><USER26> _bureaucracy AND incompetence_

You forgot corruption, the third member of the triad.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best guides to why and how to do code reviews? - <AUTHOR> Plenty has been written on the topic. What are your favorites? <comment><USER2> Sadly searching the Web for "good code review" returns an ordered list of garbage. A good code review is one which is authentic and nothing more.</comment>


Leaflet – JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Leaflet/Leaflet

<comment><USER2> When I recently needed to add a mapping function to reporting web app I started looking around at what was available. I found the Leaflet libraries very accessible and well documented. A real relief for a self-taught developer.

I looked at two or three other options and this felt like the lightest weight and frictionless solution for getting started. This 'endorsement' is not from a standpoint of an experienced cartographer who has used many different solutions and understands the strengths and weaknesses of each. I am just saying that so far it has been easy to get started and pretty intuitive for adding the features that I need.</comment>


50% off - The Ruby 1.9 Walkthrough (til Tuesday) - <AUTHOR> http://rubyinside.com/19walkthrough/

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm not affiliated - I just think Peter Cooper did a great job and want to let people enjoy this)

<comment><USER2> Oh, thanks! :) Maybe it's time for HN to add a "deals" option to the top? Deal HN? Or is that just AppSumo? ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well maybe :) A place for developers-oriented deals may be a good idea actually!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I continue spending time on this side project? Is it useful? - <AUTHOR>

Since last three weeks I am spending my all free time on building website www.vileos.com. This was also part of learning web programming. I got at the point where I can share my work :). Do you guys think this is useful? something I should invest my time and money in? appreciate your feedback. <comment><USER2> I think any time you concentrate media from several services into a single service it is useful.

One suggestion, create a way for a single user to create a one stop shop for their various video services. i.e. PersonX can register and link their accounts from YouTube, Vine, Vimeo ect...so if I search for PersonX I would be able to visit all their videos in one place.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the suggestion!! yes personalization is very important. before that I wanted to create front page that shows few videos picked from various services on same page (based on some kind of ranking).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> what happens when someone claims copyright ? Have you thought about it ? Have you got some sort of agreement for linking/picking videos ?

<comment><AUTHOR> what I am doing is just embedding videos. isn't that ok?

<comment><USER4> I'm working on a similar project (which I can't link to right now because pagodabox appears to have melted or something) but one of the things I look for is copyright and author meta tags and if I find them I always display them. Youtube and vimeo, etc. might not have that but if you're working through the APIs of these sites or scraping their pages, you might consider getting the author (or username) and description and adding a link to the original site in the view page, just to make it clear that this isn't your content.

But to answer your question - sure, why not? If you have time, and it's not bankrupting you, maybe it can turn into something. And if not, you can always open source it.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for detail response :). Yea I am planning to add link to original video. I asked question to check if people find it useful or not. I guess I don't have anything to lose as far as I am learning by spending $10/month for Azure. and yes I can always open source it later.

<comment><USER4> I might find it useful if I were able to, say, build playlists from multiple sites or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> oh btw this is still work in progress. but its functional atleast :).</comment>