Blowing the whistle on Leviathan (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-blowing-the-whistle-on-leviathan/2012/07/27/gJQAAsRnEX_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> And the sad conclusion, from 2014: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will- blowing-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-blowing-the- whistle-on-leviathan/2012/07/27/gJQAAsRnEX_story.html)

Fined $12,500 for … putting a piece of rope around a hunk of blubber that killer whales were already eating.

<comment><USER2> Looks like your comment linked back to the original 2012 story. Did you intend to link to a later article from 2014?

<comment><AUTHOR> Argh, you're right. Here's the article I meant to follow up with: [http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24905474/monterey- mari...](http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24905474/monterey-marine- biologist-nancy-black-must-pay-12)</comment></comment></comment>


Techcrunch Mentioned Startup Looking for CTO / Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupdigest.com/classifieds/techcrunch-mentioned-startup-looking-for-cto-co-founder-2/ <comment><AUTHOR> We want Yu!</comment>


I will fund your dream software or website - <AUTHOR> https://www.elance.com/j/will-fund-your-dream-software-website/39350446/

<comment><AUTHOR> Full text for those without elance account:

      I've done a lot of work on Elance over the past few years, and I know there are some really talented providers here. I've wanted to do this for a while and finally have the funds, so here I am.

      I know how hard it can be to work on your dream project while you're trying to keep a steady income, and I'm hoping that there's a provider reading this job description with a great idea that we can work on together.

      Before I get into the details, I'm not here to rip off anybody's idea. I'm an honest, ambitious person that's putting out a feeler for a strong partnership with someone that's equally honest and hardworking. I'm happy to sign any non-disclosure agreement you send my way (after reading it over thoroughly, of course).

      So with that being said, I need details. I need to know how long your project is going to take, what it is, and how much you're going to need to stay funded without taking any freelance jobs (you'll need to be 100% focused and committed to this project).

      In order to qualify to bid on this job, please:

      -Be an honest person
      -Be motivated, ambitious, and want to work for yourself and change your life
      -Have a decent amount of feedback (and have a very good reputation)
      -Be able to provide references

      When you explain the idea, please provide:

      -Tell me a bit about yourself and why you want to partner together
      -An explanation of your idea
      -Tell me what makes this project special
      -Explain how the site makes money
      -A description of the competition
      -An idea of the overall income potential as the site grows

      To let you know a little about me: As I said, I've done a lot of work on Elance over the years. I have an advertising/marketing background as well as a lot of experience marketing on the internet. I've been an affiliate marketer for years and am hoping to fund this project by myself, but if the idea is big enough and it's necessary I have the connections to get a lot more funding together.

      Sot that's it! I'm looking for more than an idea - I'm looking for a partner. You have to be honest, extremely hardworking and wanting to change your life. It doesn't matter what part of the country you're in as long as you're honest, hardworking, and have a great idea.

      Go ahead and bid on this job with the price it will cost me to fund you while you develop this project (the money you need as well as the expenses we will incur for possible servers, design, etc...). I'll be able to help pull other contractors together if necessary too. You can post as much detail as you're comfortable being displayed publicly with your bid, and private message me anything else.

      I look forward to hearing from you!</comment>


Ask HN: Life advice - failure with college? Aspiring CS Maj. - <AUTHOR>

First - thank you for even clicking on this and attempting to read and help me.  I understand this is a long post, but I would really value your input as a human being and a member of
This is a very touchy subject for me - as I have not talked about this with anyone.  The best place to start is the beginning I guess.  I would think that the first part is what most of the HN community can share as a common quality.
====background===
Ever since I had a computer in my hands (10-11 yrs) I have tinkered around with everything I could.  Starting with simple things like HTML - basic copying and editing to make stuff portray the information I wanted - even though it was very bland.  The next hurtle for me was the arrival of cable internet - being able to not wait 30 minutes to download a 2 mb file seemed unreal.  Getting the router set up for all the computers and setting up sharing and local games of quake III arena with my dad seemed like such a daunting task until completed.
Then 16 came and the ability to drive - and make my own money and with what I wanted was amazing.  But what would I do with this little stream of income?  I ended up renting a game server from a friend who worked at IBM.  At the time I had no idea how to work linux (thank God he set aside time to help me) - or edit server game files - or even what a cvar was.  So here I was a 16 year old kid running Wolf: Enemy Territory servers for a gaming community - that brought in its own questions - how to get files onto the server for people to download, etc.  Then came along Counter-strike: Source and I picked up another linux box - mind you the cost of this box along was ~$100 a month which was pretty much half of what I made in a month.  And I went on to create a site that accompanied the server - and now a forum.  Editing that forum created so much headache.  MySQL?  Php? What is this stuff. And starting out the school year I took the first computer programming class available ever at the school - VB.net it seemed so fun to be able to make something from 'scratch' and make it to what you told it to!  Even if it wasn't what I wanted.
====background===
Then comes college at 18 - What to major in?  Well my first thought is Comp Sci - after my experience the last 5-6 years I thought I would be a shoe in.  The first CS class I took was with Java.  What is this? There is an actual meaning beind all this programming?  Syntax vs. Semantics, Black Box vs. White box, Object Oriented programming - retaking a same modular element and using it else where?  I ended up with a D in the class, due to my programming, and changed my major.  The decision I regret most so far.  Ended up changing to accounting to finish the 2nd term.
Now here I am 4 years of college later struggling to attempt to like accounting - management - all that fuzzy goodness that comes from Business just to get a degree and move on.  Every business course I took - I would actively attend class the first 5-6 weeks up to the first exam with a solid 'A'  then I would disappear until the next test.  In the meantime I would continue playing around with aspects of the computer - finally installing linux myself as an O/S and understanding how items worked.  Setting up my own computers with seperate parts  Many teachers found this irritating and would drop my grade to a C or even a D just from not coming to class - even though I still read and understood all information that the course was supposed to teach.  And I want to go back and start over as Comp Sci major - even if it means 4 more years of college.  It almost seems at this point it is better to apply to a new University and not transfer credits and start fresh.  Up to this point I have no student loans - or debt - and I do not claim financial aid.
I really do want a career with computers - and not helping people with IT support, not doing peoples taxes, or making sure the zen of accounting is upheld with debits and credits.  I want to touch, feel, breathe computers.  I understand this is a long post - and many will not read let alone post but I would like your feedback - even if it is a smack on the back of my head. <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input guys,

@DanielStraight - I guess it just comes natural for me to want a degree - having grown up in a private school until college they drive down your throat - you finish high school, finish Undergrad and work on Masters. And I guess I never realized it until now - but you are right I do have a drive to learn I just don't think of it as learning because it is so fun at times.

@mfrye I am located near Philadelphia, PA. I am going to try to contact the county commerce offices - maybe find some one close by to work with for free.

If anyone in Philadelphia area happens to read this - I know .NET, HTML/css (not the recent 5.0 stuff though), PHP, MySQL, Java, I am currently learning Common Lisp(halfway through Siebel's and Grahams books), and I can read C++ but do not have an active interest in learning to program in C (so far, although I am sure it would be a nice learning experience as it seems like a good number of robust applications are in C).

For now I think I will continue to try to become a Comp Sci major - even if the piece of paper has no meaning. But if an opportunity arises with a job I will definitely jump on it.

</comment><comment><USER2> I have a similar problem - i'm studying electrical engineering (currently in 3rd year) but i'm passionate about programming and web development. I recently wanted to switch to software engineering but i realized that switching will be a pain in the ass - i would be delay my graduation by at least 1.5 years + spend more money. Anyways, i decided that it wasn't really worth the changing majors at this point. Instead, i will be attending some software engineering lectures on campus and self teach.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm under 25 and I have a similar story.

I quit college three times, I have 0 credits. You will freak out my parents and friends a few times but it's well worth it.

Learn programming on your own, but find a good hacker to pair up with. Work for free for him so you can get up to speed.

College majors don't mean a thing. One of the smartest programmers I know is an English major.

Where are you located?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do you feel you need 4 years of schooling given how much you've learned with none at all? You've already got the drive to learn. Keep doing that.</comment>


Show HN: Activities/Discounts site for Moms - <AUTHOR>

Moms in Tow A site for West Michigan moms to become a part of a community. The two focal points are activities (stroller walks, biking, educational, etc.) and discounts at local retailers (bike shops, photographers, natural markets, and things geared towards moms in general).
I did the design and development for this project. I'm not the founder. This is my first HN submission (long time reader), so not sure if a "Show HN" posting is proper for this type of thing or not (please advise).
The founder, Jenny White, recently pitched at Startup West Michigan's startup night and took first place. A few articles: http://d.pr/zOMi & from the Holland Sentinel: http://d.pr/jS8e
Would love some feedback from those that have created community sites. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://momsintow.com></comment>


Unsolved Problems in Physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.oglethorpe.edu/faculty/~m_rulison/top10.htm

<comment><USER2> I think there are far more unsolved problems than just this. As Feynman said, physics is like watching two grandmasters play a game of chess. A novice might learn the rules by watching but wont understand why masters chose a move or know all the rules from watching one game.

</comment><comment><USER3> This list is rather one-sided. What about gravitational waves, nuclear fusion, turbulence, super high energy cosmic rays?

</comment><comment><USER4> This list only includes problems from theoretical physics, I prefer a list that also includes some problems from experimental physics and applied physics. Problems about superconductivity, neutrino detection, among others areas.

<comment><USER5> Also worthy: the physics of mathematical objects. E.g., Why doesn't the square on the hypotenuse just slide off?

<comment><USER6> Er... What!?!

> Why doesn't the square on the hypotenuse just slide off?

This is nonsensical to me. Could you please elaborate? You seem to be asking why an idea isn't effected by gravity...

<comment><USER5> I'm sure ideas are affected by gravity (think Aristotle, and the idea of rest), generously understood, and according to one story about an apple even effected by gravity, but as for the square falling off the hypotenuse, that was just a joke, which has itself fallen quite flat.

<comment><USER7> +1 for this thread

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To the "why not X" comments:

It's a list with _eleven_ entries. Do you really expect a comprehensive set?

And the black hole information problem (#8) is neatly solved by having all data in the black hole revealed on a the event horizon. Granted, just a theory, but you're welcome to go and look. Bring a camera ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> don't forget the yang-mills mass gap and the navier-stokes initial value problem, both clay millennium problems and both rather important. Well the yang-mills one is probably more important, this list is a bit m-theory biased.

I think the m is originally for membrane, not "magic" but apparently its open to interpretation.

<comment><USER10> The way those problems are posed, by the Clay Institute, they're more math problems than physics problems. Check out the price lectures on their site to see what I mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about dark matter?

<comment><USER12> Or dark energy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The answer is "Chuck Norris". Or you can typecast "Chuck Norris" to integer, that is 42.

For real, the quality of my answer equals to the quality of these questions.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to create a new license that prohibits government usage? - <AUTHOR>

Is it possible to create a version of one of the popular open source licenses that could prohibit use by government institutions?
I ask because I noticed that some of the devices created by the NSA in the catalog are built on Linux and some other open source tech.
http://leaksource.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/nsas-ant-division-catalog-of-exploits-for-nearly-every-major-software-hardware-firmware/ <comment><USER2> The damage to all the other governmental institutions (and by extension, citizens) that can benefit from running open source software would be far more extensive than the damage caused to institutions like the NSA. It seems pointless and unenforceable, like Crockford's "do no evil" license.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is this anarchy? Not all government is bad. The government isn't one single entity (the NSA) which has decided to spy on you. If you try to license something like this, you will prohibit libraries, educational institutions, research institutions, government offices, and the citizens who use these services from using your software.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to think that NASA is exempt by the government from patent royalties when manufacturing equipment for NASA's missions and purposes. But after a little Googling it turns out I am wrong: [http://www.cojk.com/nasa-ordered-to- pay-boeing-28-3m-in-pate...](http://www.cojk.com/nasa-ordered-to-pay- boeing-28-3m-in-patent-case/)

What is more important is that national security can precede legality at times and trying to stop the NSA from using a particular software becomes moot once you consider that an adversary can do the same actions to undermine software. This means the NSA will have justification to ignore any clause of no use an hunt for exploits and may probably comply with a legal clause of no use as a regular user.

On the other hand you shouldn't look at the NSA as the bad guy. Remember that a security/spying agency is controlled by policy. If policies are bad the actor acts badly. Put your energy in fixing policy instead of beating down the NSA. I'm starting to feel sorry for an agency that acts on orders from the government at large.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think you can put whatever you want in your license, but do you really trust the NSA to follow your license guidelines?

Seems to me a bit like putting a sign on your front door that says "no burglars, please."</comment>


Ask HN: HN submissions start from score 1 - <AUTHOR>

Hi Folks,<p>Why do all submissions start from score 1. I would imagine starting from 0 is the more traditional way of doing this. Also, the sumbitter/commenter never gets that score of 1 added to his/her karma. Is there a reason for this? <comment><USER2> Philosophically I would imagine you would implicitly upvote your own submission, hence it makes sense to start at 1.

Alternatively, it could be seen as two transactions:

-1 posting an article costs 1 karma

+1 upvoting your own article costs 1 karma</comment>


NASA releases detailed global climate change projections - <AUTHOR> http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2293/ <comment><USER2> Several comments in this thread mention visualization. These data can be easily visualized with the Unidata IDV [1] (same ppl that make THREDDS). For those interested, go to the IDV dashboard, "Data Choosers" tab and enter

[http://dataserver3.nccs.nasa.gov/thredds/catalog/bypass/NEX-...](http://dataserver3.nccs.nasa.gov/thredds/catalog/bypass/NEX- GDDP/catalog.xml)

for the catalog. At that point you can browse the dataset, add the data as a data source, subset it (serverside), and visualize it. I and others have made a bunch of videos of how to use the IDV[2].

[1] [https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/IDV/](https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/IDV/)

[2] [http://goo.gl/n0Frpb](http://goo.gl/n0Frpb)

<comment><USER3> Trying to follow along here, but having a bit of trouble.

1\. Visited [https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/idv/webstart/IDV/](https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/idv/webstart/IDV/)

2\. Got Unidata IDV running locally

3\. I was then able to add the data source via URL and saw two options in "Field Selector": "Image Collection" and "Omni Control".

I've tried selecting either field and clicking "Create Display", but nothing ever appears in the "Displays" tab. Would welcome further advice or more specific reference to directions among the 16 videos in your YouTube playlist. Thank you!

This may be related to some of the errors[1] that seem to occur on startup of IDV.

[1][https://gist.github.com/bbuchalter/dda50df626e7c4baf501](https://gist.github.com/bbuchalter/dda50df626e7c4baf501)

<comment><USER3> I found that downloading IDV at [https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/idv/current/index.jsp](https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/idv/current/index.jsp) and not using Webstart resolved the startup errors I reported above and now I see the Map View. However, I'm still not able to get any data to render on the map. Would love help still!

<comment><USER2> @bbuchalter Thanks for registering and downloading. We like it when our users register because we have to report usage metrics back to our NSF sponsors. Are you able to load the catalog (the .xml not .html suffix for the catalog URI) in the IDV dashboard, Data Choosers tab, and see the NCML files available at that resource?

<comment><USER3> @julienchastang thanks for your reply. I don't believe I'm able to see the NCML files. I've put some screenshots together here in sequence: [http://imgur.com/a/4oI3q#0](http://imgur.com/a/4oI3q#0)

1\. Add the catalog.xml in the Data Choosers

2\. Select Image Collection in the Field Selector and click Create Display

3\. The error I recieve when I click create display: "Unknown XML root:catalog"

4\. The subsequent Image Collection screen which I'm not sure how to use.

Thank you again for continuing to engage with me on this.

<comment><USER2> @bbuchalter WRT the screenshot, you are in the URL node where you should instead be in the Catalog node.

<comment><USER3> That worked! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The entire dataset is 12TB because it contains _daily_ global 25x25km maps for all years between 1950-2099 probably for a bunch of different variables.

You don't need to download the entire thing to get the gist of it, although it probably would have helped if they also delivered a digest version with for example yearly or 5-yearly averages.

Edit: There is also a THREDDS data catalog present which allows you to extract slices or subsets of the entire data. Other than that it's missing a nice visualization tool I'd say its a pretty reasonable way of making such a huge amount of data available.

<comment><USER5> If you could boil it down for the busier among us: on a scale of "screwed" to "really screwed", how screwed does it say we are? ;)

<comment><USER6> Really? You actually believe the hysteria?

<comment><USER5> Define 'hysteria.'

I believe humanity will survive, but at a significant cost to lifestyle (at least from the point of view of this American). I'll miss the places that are beaches right now being beaches, and I'm not looking forward to the economic disruption as food sources change.

We're an advanced enough society that in a nightmare scenario, we could pretty much weather several generations in a cave under a tightly-controlled resource regiment. But not seven billion of us, and I don't look forward to the culling that would happen as a result of massive climate upheaval.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would be great to see a nice visualisation tool built on top of OpenStreetMaps or something like that which allows you to see the predicted temperatures for a given location though time. Sadly this is way over my capabilities, also a 11 TB dataset is not easy to work with :(

<comment><USER7> Would you be open to Kickstarting this project if the resulting repo was public/open source on Github?

EDIT: I should be clear. I would not be writing the code. I'd do the legwork to find someone (and pay them) who is familiar working with OSM to process the data, create the dataset, and build a javascript frontend to visualize it. The result would be open source. I would accept _no funds whatsoever_ for this.

I don't have the time to do the project, but that doesn't mean I can find someone who does, and get them paid to do it and make the results freely available.

<comment><USER8> In fact, I don't think there's even a way to get historic temperature by day/location anywhere. That would be a useful thing to add, just the ability to down small subsets of the data.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.wunderground.com/history/](http://www.wunderground.com/history/)

<comment><USER8> It looks like you can only do one day at a time though?

My ultimate goal is to make a list of cities with less than 10 90 degree days per year. I still don't see a way to do that on wunderground.

<comment><USER7> Check here: [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data- access](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would literally take me 546 Days 19 Hours 30 Minutes 40.26 Seconds to download this dataset. I'm sure it reads like horror though.

<comment><USER11> ~2-3 days here, but I am no climate scientist so what's the point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recall reading about an investing company making a pretty penny by using data like this to forecast the growth of certain crops.

</comment><comment><USER13> If the earth is 509 million square kilometers and the granularity of the data is 25sq km this means we have about 20.3m data points. It implies then on average each point is 540mb. The dataset seems to be broken down by year rather than location though, a UX issue I'd say...

<comment><USER14> WRT breaking down by year, you could save some download time that way.

Lets say you express the predicted error in the data not as a percentage of temperature but as a time along the trendline. That would imply beyond a certain estimated error horizon, it doesn't really matter which year you download as long as you get the decade vaguely correct, once the temperature error figure exceeds a couple years of travel along the trend lines.

By example lets say today, here, 2080 CE, is 35C +/\- 2C (to make the math easy) but the trend line is 0.1C/yr (unrealistic, but make the math easy) then +/\- 2C is the same thing as saying +/\- 20 years along the trendline, so I don't really need the 2080 data set I can do "roughly as well" with any data set downloaded from 2070 to 2090.

Yeah yeah I know calculus and the derivative is likely not constant or even linear and this is a really simplified way to look at statistics, but the general plan holds as a way to cut back on downloaded data required. Based on REAL statistical analysis you could come up with a formula that says you'll only increase the error bars 10% wider at year X if you skip every Y years of data. Where I'm guessing Y might exceed a decade at the extreme future years of the run. That could save an enormous amount of bandwidth without significantly impacting a visualization or analysis.

"Someone else" has to download it all, run the stat analysis, then tell us all, obviously it doesn't scale for all of us to download it all, run our own stat analysis, then go back in time and only download every Y-th year at or beyond year X. So thanks in advance, "Someone else"!

<comment><USER15> Its frustrating that they are not publishing the data in such chunks. Its good that they make every year available, but for analysis/reporting, you could reasonably just care about years 2030, 2050, 2100.

1 year of data would mean 120GB files or so (assuming 100 years total)

Breaking it down by lattitude would mean 800MB lattide-year average data sets. Breaking it down by longitude would be very helpful too, and not much reason to not make that breakdown in addition to the lattitude one, which means 5mb data chunks.

Its almost as though they are being intentionally uncooperative by dumping 12TB.

Hopefully, some group makes a web interface that allows downloads in these manageable chunk sizes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For some helpful visualizations of these data, check out [http://climateinternational.org](http://climateinternational.org)

</comment><comment><USER17> This article is about creating the projections and that they are available. Is there an article describing what the projections have projected?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think anybody managed to download the whole set so far .

<comment><USER17> NASA has it already. Do they not want to be in the business of interpreting climate data? Or is it too soon even for them?

<comment><USER18> These are projections and the results of simulations - not fact - so they're already interpreting and/or claiming validity of the models.

<comment><USER17> You are technically correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For some helpful visualizations of these data, check out: climateinternational.org

</comment><comment><USER19> Business idea for anyone with some time on their hands. Set up a site, and sell harddives with this data already on it.

</comment><comment><USER20> NASA has released detailed global climate change projections. If you would like to know what these projections are please drink from this data firehose.

<comment><USER21> I'm sure someone here is already making a visualization with the dataset.

<comment><USER22> At 12 TB I think just getting the files would take days of downloading.

I have 25 mbs which equals to 1041:40:00 (hh:mm:ss) That is 25 mbs perfect connection with no errors or drops. 1041 hours equals 43+ days.

[http://www.numion.com/calculators/time.html](http://www.numion.com/calculators/time.html)

<comment><USER23> Would it go significantly quicker if you downloaded it to a VPS instead of your home?

<comment><USER22> That would help but the cost of storage for 11 TB and the up time to download would be extremely expensive. I haven't seen an option that works for less than around $200 to rent and setup.

<comment><USER23> It seems like if these large public datasets continue to come on line, there will need to be some sort of semi-cooperative distributed data store to make them truly "accessible." Or the data provider will need to provide an access/query API, rather than just a big tank that you can copy if you dare.

<comment><USER22> Bit Torrent might actually help as a tool to help distribute these large data sets.

The big issue is that so few people actually would need to download these large dataset.

<comment><USER23> But possibly many more people could use access to the data while they use the apps that were made possible by the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Let's see if these fare any better than the projections used by the IPCC ...

[http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5297](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5297)

"The most recent climate model simulations used in the AR5 indicate that the warming stagnation since 1998 is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2% confidence level."

Kudos to them for publishing these, though. If they _are_ rotten, it ought to be easy to tell.

<comment><USER25> What would be very interesting is for ESR to publish his own predictions, as he feigns expertise.

Or, hell, any global warming denialist to publish predictions at all, or build any model at all beyond their day jobs of quote mining and writing clever PR releases that prey on the public's scientific illiteracy and fossil fuel barons' desire to violate other people's lives and properties with untrammeled carbon pollution.

<comment><USER26> If one's argument is that we don't know enough about what really drives our climate to make these types of predictions, why would one then turn around and make a prediction?

Also, using the phrase "global warming denialist" distracts from your point. When some scientists thought neutrinos traveled faster than light, they weren't called "light speed denialists". Have some respect for alternate scientific opinions.

The problem with GW predictions is that most of them are wrong and the ones that are correct aren't correct for the right reasons.

<comment><USER27> As an ardent defender of science, I tend to agree. There's always been a nagging intuition I've had about climate change that to this day I haven't resolved.

It comes down to the evolutionary history of Earth throughout life's 4 billion year tenure on this planet. The climate has gone through EXTREME changes [1][2], including the Chicxulub impact, which radically impacted the atmosphere's composition and life on this planet. Yet, the biosphere has always adapted and life continued.

Assuming that mankind is destroying the biosphere at an unprecedented rate (we are), and burning hydrocarbons at an even faster rate (we are), are these two factors enough to turn the earth into a Mars-style wasteland, completely devoid of all life?

It just doesn't seem plausible to me on an intuitive level. We can use linear regression models of the atmosphere and show temperatures rising until life becomes impossible, but that is not how complex biospheres work.

In any case, climate science is definitely a worthy scientific discipline to study, but it is becoming akin to economics in the prediction department. As in, the principles are sound, but the predictions of the experts are laughably wrong on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, this is all due to Al Gore and his "moment of genius" which instantly politicized the scientific process, thereby destroying any potential for real scientific progress through the feedback loop of empirical testing and model formation. If you disagreed with Al Gore's version of climate change, Al Gore's version of climate models, and Al Gore's version of climate science, you suddenly became a heretic "climate change denier".

Alas, we humans really are terrible at science.

1\. [http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg](http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg)

2\. [http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/CO2History.h...](http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/CO2History.html)

<comment><USER28> It happened earlier than that, or at least according to a science journalist friend who interviewed MIT Professor Richard Lindzen in 1990 plus or minus a year. He quoted Lindzen saying that he had thought scientists were interested in the truth....

I'm old enough to remember when the Scientific Consensus was that we were causing global cooling. Amusingly enough, one of those guys became one of the most notorious global warming "scientist".

<comment><USER25> _I 'm old enough to remember when the Scientific Consensus was that we were causing global cooling._

At this point, that should be worth at most an eye roll. But it bears re- iterating: never happened. Not true. And repeating it is dishonest.

<comment><USER28> I guess it was just my imagination when I was coming of age starting in the late '60s....

Try again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Will it rain next weekend?

<comment><USER30> I dunno. But I will bet you that August 2021 in Chicago will be warmer on average than February 2022.

<comment><USER31> I predict it will also be more than 10% longer.</comment></comment></comment>


Lexical Distance Among Languages of Europe (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://alternativetransport.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/34/ <comment><USER2> Interesting map.

The methodology probably wouldn't be comparable to Tyshchenko's, but there is an estimate for the lexical distance between Tocharian and the other Indo- European language families (10.2307/601651) - Tocharian comes out closest to Germanic and Greek.

Then again, Tocharian wasn't spoken anywhere near Europe when it was attested, so it isn't strictly within the scope of the map - but it's unclear how it got there. The most popular view, as far as I know, is that it was the second family to branch off of Indo-European, after Anatolian, but Adams showed that it shares some innovations with Germanic (the reflexes of syllabic resonants and the expansion of the singulative function of the n-stems to adjectives) and Greek (a locative dual *-oisi, represented in the Tocharian B genitive dual), and Eric Hamp placed Tocharian in a 'Northern Indo-European' subgroup with Germanic, Balto-Slavic, and Albanian.

</comment><comment><USER3> Norwegian is among the languages most closely related to english. Everybody who would like to learn a second language besides english, can easily learn norwegian. Only drawback is that there are fever people speaking norwegian than there are inhabitants in new york city. Written norwegian is almost phonetic.

<comment><USER4> Pardon for the potentially offensive remark, but to me it always looked a lot like German.

I had German in school for a total of six years and this had a side effect of giving me the ability to read a newspaper in Norwegian with a rough understanding what the text was about.

<comment><USER5> Yes, Norwegian (along with Swedish and Danish) does have a fairly close connection to German.

When I began German in school (at around age 13, iirc), the fact that I had already learned Swedish as a child (due to family roots) gave me a noticeable head start over the rest of the class. Many German words that would have been completely foreign to me as an English speaker were immediately understandable through Swedish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My experience as a Polish native speaker is that slavic languages are indeed close, with the differences usually boiling down to one of the two:

Borrowing a word and changing its meaning - e.g. Russian _запомнить_ (zapomnit') - "to remember" sounds a lot like Polish _zapomnieć_ \- "to forget".

Creating a different word, but with the same idea - e.g. Slovakian vlak (train) a Polish pociąg (train). To a Polish person these two words sound as if the former was derived from _wlec_ (to drag) and the latter from _ciągnąć_ (to pull).

I spent two weeks in Ukraine and once I learned the alphabet, signs were mostly intelligible, even though some familiarly sounding words had a different meaning.

<comment><USER6> Since all these languages were fathered by Slavic, I would think of it less in terms of a group of people "borrowing a word" from another and then "changing its meaning," and more like branches of a tree, the root a stable association between phonemes and concept.

So, for a word like zapomnit' (запомнить/zapomnieć) - we have prefix 'za' and root 'pomni-'. За is a preposition with meaning = behind. Помни- is a derivative of память (pamat') with meaning = memory.

Putting those two together, we have "behind memory." Now parse what those two sounds, "behind memory", can mean - does this phrase mean something that you fail to retrieve from the back recesses of your memory? Or is it something you stash into the back of your memory for safekeeping?

Russian speakers and Polish speakers seem to have arrived at opposite interpretations of this phrase. However, it is obvious that they started from the same place (behind + memory).

<comment><USER7> > За is a preposition with meaning = behind.

In the case of Russian, the _za_ here is not a preposition literally meaning 'behind' but rather an already fully grammaticalized marker of inchoative aspect that one encounters in a number of other verbs like засыпать 'to fall asleep'. Russian запомнить is analyzable as 'start' + 'remembering'.

<comment><USER6> Sure. However, for this simple illustration of how sound bites evolve in meaning over time, I think it makes more sense to look at the semantics of the phoneme "za" rather than the prefix's technical grammatical meaning (though your addendum is useful and correct).

<comment><USER7> > the semantics of the phoneme "za"

The thing is, the "phoneme" [sic] _za_ has an array of meanings, and this was true already by the Proto-Slavic stage. Sure, one could recommend as a mnemonic device that a learner see Russian _zapomnit'_ 'commit to memory' as a compound of 'behind' + 'remember', but that isn't the actual etymology of the word. It is a folk etymology.

<comment><USER6> You're not really arguing with me here - my point _is_ that 'za' had a multitude of meanings prior to the split of West and East Slavic.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I am arguing with you here. Your misuse of terminology like "phoneme", and your inappropriate suggestion that the meaning 'behind' has any role here, merited being called out so that other people reading this thread, who may not be familiar with Slavic diachrony or historical linguistics in general, know to ignore your points.

<comment><USER6> It is quite possible to be extremely knowledgeable about a field and dole out nuggets of wisdom in such a way as to inspire others to take more interest and share their ideas with you.

It is also possible to demoralize and silence newcomers by taking every opportunity to show how far you are above them, and how unworthy they are of your superior knowledge base.

One of those approaches leads to more productive thought and breakthroughs than the other.

<comment><USER7> You will find plenty of linguists who feel that misusing terminology and making inaccurate claims like you did does more harm than good. It would have better had those comments not been posted at all, but once they are posted, then someone has to call them out as flawed. Calling them out as flawed is not "showing how far I [or anyone else] is above" a particular poster. It is simply an attempt to help the community here out by encouraging readers to get their information from some other, more reliable source.

You'll find that HN tends to react badly to inaccurate posting on any scientific field, and one of the great things about this venue is that there are many trained people in various sciences who can call out wrong as wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From my experience, it does not make a lot of sense to me. Spanish is much closer to portuguese (being nearly mutually understandable) than to italian or catalan. Occitan and catalan are extremely close, but here they appear unrelated.

<comment><USER9> Spanish-Portuguese has a solid line while Italian-Portuguese and Portuguese- Spanish are dashed, so the chart agrees with you.

I don't think the spatial potions represent anything, other than allowing the grouping and giving a rough guide at a glance.

<comment><USER10> I also miss the connections between Galician, Portuguese and Catalan.

Unless the way of reading the graph is a different one than what I am thinking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to see something like this for the Scots Doric dialect I spoke as a child (not in school, obviously)

e.g. Using fit, far, fan, fa for What, Where, When and Who not to mention loons and quines for boys and girls.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_(Scotland)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_\(Scotland\))

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the things that's surprised me from learning both Spanish and German is that whilst for a small, basic set of vocabulary, German and English are very similar (e.g. Haus, Schuh, Hund vs. Casa, Zapato or Pero in Spanish), the two languages diverge massively for higher level vocabularies whilst Spanish seems to converge (for example, importante, diferente, imposible vs. wichtig, anders, unmöglich). The net effect is that my Spanish comprehension is considerable better than my German - I can read a news article in Spanish and get a reasonably good gist of what it says; but I still find myself all at sea when reading even relatively simple phrases in German - typically wondering to myself _what the hell verb is that?_

<comment><USER13> English is a Germanic language, except it greatly simplified its grammatical inflection, and then had its vocabulary infused with Romance stock first from the long-term use of Norman French as the prestige language of England and then from the proclivity for Latin (and Greek, but that's not a Romance language) roots in scientific coinage during the Renaissance and Modern periods. In terms of modern vocabulary, more words have a Romance root than a Germanic root. As a random factoid, the third-person plural pronouns in English actually come from Old Norse (courtesy of the Viking invasions, which resulted in a large portion of England being dominated by Danes instead of Anglo-Saxons until around the Norman invasion).

<comment><USER12> I think you're right about many words coming to English directly from Latin during the renaissance and following periods, but it raises another interesting question - why did English take many technical words and terms from Latin, whilst German speakers - who presumably during the renaissance were consulting the same source material - coined their own Germanic words and terms instead?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> /offtopic

> It has been a while since the Croats and Serbians have decided that they do > not speak the same language and this is accurately depicted above but the > Bosnians and Montenegrin also decided that they have their own language.

So much animosity, I did not always quite comprehend why until I met a Kosovar in London during the Championships in 2018 and revealed to them my astonishment over Novak Djokovic's comeback, and they said 'I'd rather kill a Serb' [0] (than be in awe of their accomplishments). I could almost feel their hatered but I implored them to forgive and move on. That interaction prompted me to look up the history on WW2 in the Balkans [1] and the subsequent Yusgoslav Wars and I could see why [2][3] this tragedy of epic proportions among a group only separated by differences in religion has come to pass: It boiled down to how a few were able to sway the many [4][5][6].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- Serbian_sentiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Serbian_sentiment)

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

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

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

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18433883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18433883)

[5] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570850)

[6] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14190764#14192475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14190764#14192475)

<comment> saiya-jin I wish there would be an easy solution to these 'seeds of evil'. Its easy for an outsider like you and me to say 'just forgive', because its the best and most sane thing to do. Unfortunately many human beings don't work like that, emotions often run the show.

And who knows, maybe it I experienced what they did, maybe I would be the same, or worse. I mean, if somebody raped and murdered my family in front of my eyes and laughed while doing it, forgiveness would be probably impossible for me.

The only advice that usually works - wait for few generations. Those scarred will take their wounds to the grave, and young usually don't want to carry too much of the burden of previous generations, which is good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Curious. My personal experience is that as an English speaker the Romance languages seem much closer than German does. But the article places English in the Germanic cluster with a distance of 49 to German vs 56 to French. Yet for most English speakers I would guess that they find it easier to make some sense out of reading French than German.

Beautiful visualization and interesting data set.

<comment><USER16> Old English came from Old German but after the Normans conquered southern England in 1066, English adopted many French words, making the Romance languages easier to learn.

</comment></comment><comment> 0-_-0 I long suspected that Hungarian was the most separate from the rest of the European languages.

<comment><USER13> Most European languages are Indo-European. The exceptions are:

* Basque, a language isolate which is generally considered by many to be the sole surviving remnant of pre-Indo-European languages in Europe.

* The Balto-Finnic languages (not to be confused with the Baltic languages!), primarily Finnish and Estonian, of the Uralic language family.

* The Saami languages, another part of the Uralic language family, of the indigenous peoples of northern Scandinavia.

* Hungarian, yet another Uralic language, although this one seems geographically out of place.

* Depending on how you divide the borders of Europe, there are representatives of Turkic languages in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. There are also some Kartvelian languages and other language isolates in the Caucasian region (primarily Georgia)--note that Armenian is Indo-European.

Indo-European languages are though to originate from the steppe region on the North side of the Black and Caspian Seas, and then get diffused through various waves of linguistic migration into the rest of Europe. Uralic languages probably originate in the northern forest zones of Russia (eventually being pushed out of their homeland by the Slavic branch of Indo- European). At some point, the language migrated onto a steppe confederation which eventually settled in Hungary, which is why it seems out of place. About 1500 years ago, give or take, the steppe confederations shifted from Indo- European dominance to Turkic dominance, which is what prompts the rise of Turkic languages on the margins of Europe.

<comment><USER7> > Depending on how you divide the borders of Europe, there are representatives > of Turkic languages in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.

There are representatives of Turkic well within a mainstream definition of Europe: West Rumelian Turkish in the Balkans, Gagauz in Moldova, Crimean Tatar in Crimea, and (though perhaps now departing from the mainstream definition) several Turkic languages in European Russia north of the Caucasus such as Karachay-Balkar and Mishar Tatar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Also using Wikidata links, you'll get support for many more languages. It is also much easier to process by bots to get more relevant statistics on many more terms than the very anglo-centered and too limited Swadesh list.

<comment><USER7> Can you point to any publications criticizing the Swadesh list as "Anglo- centered"? That is something I would be interested in reading about. Personally, I have viewed the Swadesh list as rather American Indian linguistics-centric, though its application was easily extended to other peoples around the world at a similar level of technological development.</comment></comment>


How to deal with startup competition - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Shapiro/how-to-deal-with-startup-competition-dd61899cade2

<comment><USER2> I gotta say this is such a well written post and especially timely for me. I'm currently employed at a startup in a highly competitive market and I constantly think about "time to market", and "the competition". The amount of stress caused by those thoughts can become a distraction at times.

But the main thing that keeps me sane and motivated is the fact that we have users that love our projects. I'm in a fortunate position where I get to meet many of the people in our community, and get a constant reminder why we do what we do.

The other hidden gem in this post is the fact that each new "competitor" who enters your space can have a positive effect on everyone and actually grow the market. While this means you won't obtain a monopoly, you'll have a bigger arena to compete in.

Maybe more conversations like this one can help foster more healthy competition between startups competing in the same space.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here if anyone has further advice for me to weave into the post.</comment>


Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors - <AUTHOR> https://pavelfatin.com/typometer/ <comment><USER2> The companion article at [https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with- pleasure/](https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/) has some example results, showing Atom, the only Electron-based one in the list, as having several times more latency than the others. I wonder how VSCode compares.

It's unfortunate that software seems to feel slower the newer it is, including developer tools such as text editors/IDEs. I suspect this is because most people - including younger developers - have never seen how fast things can be, but are instead constantly subjected to delays in using applications to the extent that they think it is an absolutely normal speed[1], and then propagate that notion to the software they themselves create.

Also related: [https://danluu.com/input-lag/](https://danluu.com/input-lag/)

[1] For example, everything that uses UWP in Windows. Someone who had only ever used the Settings app in Windows 10, or (even worse) the Calculator, might not realise how absurdly slow they are in comparison to the previous versions' where they would open nearly instantaneously.

<comment><USER3> I also can't be the only one annoyed by the input lag in the windows login screen and start menu search. Somehow both of them seem to think it's fine to just ignore keypresses for half a second before doing anything.

Annoyance aside I seriously worry about the accessibility of the windows lock screen. Through a weird display setup I sometimes find myself trying to log in blind and I just can't do it. There seems to be no way to reliably focus the password field, and for whatever insane reason it's not just always in focus

<comment><USER4> This insanity is apparently intentional, but can be fixed for the lock screen at least: Win+R->gpedit.msc->"Computer Configuration"->"Administrative Templates"->"Control Panel"->"Personalization"->"Do not display the lock screen"->Enabled

This poorly named option doesn't disable locking the screen, it just fixes it to not eat your first few keystrokes when you start typing your password.

<comment><USER5> This is one of the reasons why Windows drives me bonkers— all the interesting settings seem to be locked in disused basement lavatories. See also changing capslock to control.

<comment><USER6> > _See also changing capslock to control._

Is it even possible to do it through system settings alone, even if obscure ones? I use AutoHotkey to do Caps Lock -> Ctrl remap, and it's one of the first programs I install on every new system.

<comment><USER7> Happy 10th HN anniversary!

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

Wow, how the time flies!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Because sampling rate is fast enough to misinterpret contact bounce as > keystrokes, keyboard control processor perform so-called debouncing of the > signals by aggregating them across time to produce reliable output. Such a > filtering introduces additional delay, which varies depending on > microcontroller firmware. As manufacturers generally don't disclose their > firmware internals, let's consider typical debouncing algorithms and assume > that filtering adds ~7 ms delay, so that maximum total "debounce time" is > about 12 ms, and average total debounce time is ~8.5 ms.

Debouncing in software is one of those things that 99 % of developers get wrong, and is something even hardware manufacturers get wrong all the time.

A lot of hardware debounces in a dumb and naive way: On the first state change, it waits 5-10 ms and sample the switch again to figure out if it was pressed or not. So you get an inherent "debounce" delay, which is entirely unnecessary.

Debouncing keys correctly works so: If the switch generates an edge, sent key down/up event immediately and ignore further switch transitions for 5-10 ms. _There is no point in waiting for the switch to surely have finished bouncing before reporting the event, because if it is bouncing it MUST have been pressed /released and you know which one it is because you know the prior state of the switch_.

\---

Compositor delay due to VSync

Obviously compositors are using double-buffered vsync precisely because they intend to limit FPS to $smallValue in order to save power and prevent the 3D hardware from entering a high performance power state. They really _should_ be using triple-buffered vsync, but only start to render if something changed, resulting in much lower latency without constantly running at 1000 FPS. There should be a way for the compositor to be notified of changes in client areas, since stuff like X11 damage protocol and RDP are a thing.

<comment><USER9> Under normal circumstances Windows' DWM compositor will avoid compositing at the display rate if nothing has changed. It used to be pretty easy to demonstrate this by using a hook application (like fraps) to put a framerate overlay on DWM, though I don't think that works anymore. If you have g-sync enabled for the active windowed application, the DWM composition rate (and the monitor scanout as a whole) will be tied to the windowed application's vsync, so if it's running at 30hz so is your desktop until you tab away. Many G-Sync monitors have a built in framerate overlay you can toggle on to observe this (though the lag on your mouse cursor will make it obvious).

I suspect in practice most software is not very good at giving the compositor the info it needs to avoid wasteful refreshes of the whole desktop, and the compositor probably also isn't putting in as much effort as it could.

<comment><USER8> That's a good point I totally forgot about. It actually means that most of the infrastructure for this is already around and implemented, but of course fundamentally this is an information problem - the compositor gets told when applications "damaged" their output, but since there is no concept of presenting a frame in these legacy 2D APIs (GDI/+, X11 etc.), the compositor has no idea if the application will continuing "damaging" its output, or if it is "done for now".

I think the best a compositor might be able to do is something along the lines of keeping track of the latest possible time it has to start rendering such that the frame can be swapped to the front and sent to the screen. This should result in the lowest possible average latency while rendering at the vsync rate. DWM is clearly not doing this (since the delay is discretized to 16.7/33 ms), the Linux might be doing this, or it might be rendering on every damage event and use triple buffering, either would be plausibel given the 8 ms average delay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seeing as how this and similar articles regularly crop up here, I'm curious as to when this started and why nothing is done about it. I still regularly use my 14 MHz Amiga 1200 for recreational programming and I _never_ experience input lag on that machine.

Thinking back, the first time I noticed input lag was on a Mac LCIII running Word in the mid-90s. Then for a long long time I didn't come across any particularly noticeable latency, except on really crappy websites and in really crappy Java apps. Then Microsoft bought Skype and started working their magic on it, and this seemed to open some kind of floodgate of high-latency crap. That's not even a decade ago.

After that, little by little, everything seemed to slow down noticeably. We've now reached a level when this is seemingly normal. Even programmer colleagues who are my age and older are looking at me like I'm curious when I complain about the latency. I'd say something toxic about Electron here, but it's prevalent in native programs as well.

Have things really gotten so much more complex since 2010 that we can no longer put a character on screen in a timely fashion?

<comment><USER11> There are underlying reasons, much of which can be gathered under the umbrella term of "virtualisation". Modern computers use layers upon layers of software or hardware to present an interface pretending to each higher level that things are simpler than they really are.

These abstractions, however, are leaky, and almost all of them are leaky in the temporal sense. There's a pretend continuity or constant throughput that's not really there.

Everyone knows that operating systems run short time slices of processes on physical cores, so that each program can "pretend" that it runs continuously on bare metal. But of course, _not really_ , so there are gaps in the flow of execution that can occasionally be perceived by end-users.

If that were the only sin of pretense, then that could be worked around, or carefully tuned, but the reality is that it's just one of many layers.

The garbage collector of managed languages (e.g.: JavaScript in Electron) pauses execution within the process too.

Even unmanaged languages have variable overheads when allocating or de- allocating from the shared heap.

The desktop window manager helps each application pretend that it has a rectangular surface from (0,0) to (w,h), when in reality that is transformed and overlaid. That can introduce a lot of variation, particularly because the DWM has its _own_ threads and its _own_ garbage or heap.

The video card in turn is no longer just a block of memory mapped into the address space of the program doing the drawing, but is its own little computer with cores, threads, schedulers, locks, clocks, delays, and so forth.

The display in turn might further delay things because it has complex overdrive or scaling logic, so it needs to buffer frames.

It's turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER10> > Everyone knows that operating systems run short time slices of processes on > physical cores

The Amiga 1200 I mentioned earlier does pre-emptive multitasking on a 14 MHz CPU with 256 bytes of cache. I can switch between my IDE, my paint program, the OS desktop, a file manager and a simple text editor without any noticeable delay. It's as fast as flipping between desktops in FVWM on my PC (an operation which, incidentally, never seems to suffer from latency).

> The video card in turn is no longer just a block of memory mapped into the > address space of the program doing the drawing, but is its own little > computer with cores, threads, schedulers, locks, clocks, delays, and so > forth.

The graphics architecture of my Amiga consists of several different chips all timed to a PAL signal and, since they're sharing memory with the CPU and other I/O, are also affected by constant interrupts.

> The desktop window manager

There's a DWM on my Amiga as well, called Intuition, providing several abstractions for programs to open screens and windows and render graphics and text in them. Plus, of course, GadTools, the system library for drawing UI widgets.

> The display in turn might further delay things because it has complex > overdrive or scaling logic

The cheap, modern flatscreen connected to one of my Amigas upscales and upsamples _and_ does A->D-conversion on the analog RGB signal and yet manages to show my double-buffered displays scrolling in one pixel increments, with 50 Hz vsync without stuttering or tearing.

Yes, the layers of abstraction have increased in number and complexity, but so has the speed of the surrounding architecture. My PC's clock speed is more than 100 times that of the Amiga, it has 4000 times more RAM (in fact the caches in my cheap CPU exceed the amount of RAM on the Amiga), displays are now connected to the GPU with a wide-bandwith digital interface, and so on.

All of this could perhaps be valid excuses if it was consistent. Yet typing in a Firefox <textarea> feels faster than typing in for example FocusWriter, and typing in an xterm faster still. I can paint smooth freehand curves in Gimp with instant feedback (something the Amiga is not always capable of, depending on how much bandwidth the selected resolution requires). The computer is capable of full screen, full frame, fully vsynced full HD movie playback without stuttering or dropping frames.

The most interesting aspect is of course that a computer that might feel laggy in certain applications is fully capable of emulating an Amiga, complete with the perceived snappiness of the UI, despite all the overhead of emulation _and_ the supposed delays of the surrounding architecture.

(edit: getting some numbers straight)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm all for faster software, but input lag measurements need to be put in perspective. Just because an editor can process an input in 3ms doesn't mean the pixels will change on your screen in 3ms.

If you're using a 60Hz monitor, you're only going to see new frames every 17ms at most (1 second / 60Hz). Your graphics pipeline might have some additional buffering, adding 10s of milliseconds of lag. Your monitor likely has some input processing as well, adding anywhere from 10-20ms before it sends the frame to the physical display. Add a few milliseconds here and there for input processing and even the response time of the physical pixels, and you're looking at something like 50-60ms minimum for total display latency _before_ you factor in the software.

Using 144Hz FreeSync or G-Sync monitors can shorten that update time, but you're still looking at 30ms end-to-end latency in even the fastest setups, and that's before you account for software processing lag.

The difference between Sublime Text responding in 11.4ms average and Atom responding in 28.4ms average is difference of almost exactly 1 frame of latency for a typical 60Hz monitor. Add up all of the other sources of lag (buffering, monitor input lag) and you're looking at something like a 5 frame latency instead of a 4 frame latency. Still less than the blink of an eye (literally).

From another perspective: If you really believe that you're sensitive enough to feel a difference between something like Sublime Text's 11ms processing latency vs. Atom's 28ms latency, then you might want to invest in a proper 144Hz gaming monitor with low input lag, as it would improve your experience by the same margins. A gaming-specific keyboard might also help, as average keyboards can have 10-20ms of input lag before the keypress registers with the OS (Source: [https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with- pleasure/](https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/) ) Realistically, though, I doubt many people could A/B test the difference between a 1ms and a 30ms latency editor under ideal conditions, let alone while typing out some code.

<comment><USER13> _If you really believe that you 're sensitive enough_

It's pretty obvious when using extended shortcuts or a string of keys that are committed to muscle memory, like Ctrl+Shift+P (+ first letter of a cmd) or Ctrl+K combos.

Imagine playing an instrument wired up to headphones and then adding a 30-60 ms delay... the longer the delay the more it creates that "off" feeling

Don't forget too, those are bare metal calculations. Stick those apps inside a VM like many devs do or add some other latency along the I/O chain and it all helps to create a perception of lag.

<comment><USER12> > Imagine playing an instrument wired up to headphones and then adding a 30ms > delay

We need to keep these numbers in context. 30ms delay would appear as an echo if you were playing an instrument and also listening to a 30ms delayed version of the same sound.

However, you're not feeling the _latency_. You're noticing the presence of two distinct signals. That's why UX input latency matters much more when you're doing something like dragging across the screen with your finger on the screen: You visually register the distance between your finger and the expected location.

However, when you're typing a memorized series of letters on a keyboard, you're not comparing the keypresses to the letters appearing on the screen. You already know what you're typing and what you expect to see on the screen. Visual stimulus latency is on the order of 250ms, so you wouldn't even begin to start processing types for an order of magnitude larger than the latency of these text editors, for example.

Most of us are operating with regular 60Hz laptops or monitors. End-to-end latency from physical key press to physical color change on your monitor might be as high as 50-60ms even with zero-latency software.

<comment><USER14> > However, when you're typing a memorized series of letters on a keyboard, > you're not comparing the keypresses to the letters appearing on the screen. > You already know what you're typing and what you expect to see on the > screen. Visual stimulus latency is on the order of 250ms, so you wouldn't > even begin to start processing types for an order of magnitude larger than > the latency of these text editors, for example.

nothing makes me want to throw my computer through the window faster than typing and not having an instant response honestly. It doesn't matter that the brain cannot process the letter. Would you imagine handwriting where the shape of the letters you write is 1/4th of letter shape late ?

Even for typing, just comparing xterm at 60hz and 120hz on my monitor feels different when typing moderately fast (100 wpm according to [https://typing- speed-test.aoeu.eu/?lang=en](https://typing-speed-test.aoeu.eu/?lang=en))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem to measure input stack latency nor how long it takes for the pixels to be actually visible on the display after all of the compositing delays.

All this measures seems to be time from injected keyboard event until pixels change on whatever bitmap/surface in memory. Message passing, in other words.

<comment><USER16> That sounds like it's measuring almost exactly the portion of the end-to-end latency that an application can actually do anything to reduce; the rest is in hardware and drivers. So it would definitely be a useful measure, but cutting this measured latency in half won't cut the entire end-to-end latency in half.

<comment><USER15> Application might be able to make choices about APIs that affect output latency. Hardware swap chain (AKA multi-plane overlay) is going to be visible on the screen at least one full vsync faster than something that's composited on a frame buffer. In the best case, this measuring method wouldn't see any difference in such case. In the worst case reading pixels from the screen might even misleadingly measure worse due to triggering a corner case code path in the window compositor.

Using an emulated legacy API (like Windows GDI) might yield a very low latency score in this test, even though it might take much _longer_ to actually be visible on the display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would love to see XCode on that benchmark, as I regularly manage to out-type it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been working on a browser-based editor, and it feels slow. So does this input-field on Hacker News website. Is it something about the browsers?

</comment><comment><USER19> Using Java to measure latency... Does not sound very accurate.

<comment><USER20> either way, if your text editor editor lags, there must be a bigger problem... or are we back in the 60s?

<comment><USER17> It's called Electron and it shouldn't have been used for building desktop apps in the first place. I presume it was built as an inside joke when people were joking about web browsers becoming the new OS.

That said, it allows companies to use cheap web developers to build (previously more pricey) desktop apps, so it's used everywhere now. It's good enough to make money, but obviously using the wrong tool for the job will make some aspects of the experience worse.

Since most consumers hate working with the buggy software on their computer anyway, the loss for a company in making it slightly worse by introducing delay is negligible.

<comment><USER19> When you compare Winamp 2.x with Spotify, you realize how slow software is today.

<comment><USER17> When you compare Winamp2 with Deezer, you realize that you can add 800MB of bloat to an MP3 player :( Most of it is just Electron, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Everyone dials in - a trick for running distributed team meetings - <AUTHOR> http://nat.org/blog/2010/04/everyone-dials-in/ <comment><USER2> A question I'd considered for an "Ask HN":

Conference call quality sucks, even when everyone is on a a supposedly high- quality landline. I find that I spend so many cycles decrypting voices that I can't concentrate on the discussion at hand.

Given all the nice $100-ish USB microphones and such out there, is there an opportunity to build a conference call system which makes it tolerable to listen to the person speaking?</comment>


What do you pay for? - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/pay-for-web-services

<comment><USER2> Right price is key. e.g. clearly it's not convenience per se, but convenience for 99 cents.

But I'm puzzled at 37signals: their products were developed quickly (as they boast), but there are no well-known competitors. _What's going on here?_

1\. 37signals is an effective geek PR company - or, thought-leaders for agile, rails, etc. They blog, they keynote, they give. They teach a lot of useful and interesting stuff (and I like it). They are cool. As a result, who knows about their competitors?

2\. Pricing - starting at $24 per month ($288 pa) for basecamp. For a business, the monthly charge may be attractive for cashflow and tax (deductible), but neither are an advantage over copy-cat SaaS competitors. They host it, which justifies a higher price for you - provided that the hosting is a valuable benefit for you. They maintain it, and add features, so this is like a maintenance charge, which a business would pay anyway.

However - if they retain "simplicity" (key to their philosophy) and _not add features_ , what's to stop competitors from catching up?

3\. They add features in the form of new products (which they have done), and the older ones get cheaper and cheaper til it's "normal".

4\. They have passed (or will) a special threshold of economies of scale, such that competitors cannot catch them. With so many customers, their profit margin per customer can be too low for competitors to enter. Their competitors, offering a comparable price but with fewer customers, would not be able to break-even. They'd need to grow their customer base much bigger. But how long would that take? How much would it cost? What's the chance of success (risk)? (37signals has other strengths, to make it harder) What's the prize worth (reward)? 37signals isn't a madly profitable company, so why go after them?

These arguments apply to a for-profit competitor - but what about a non-profit competitor? i.e. open source? I'm really interested to hear other's opinions.

I'm not the first to wonder this: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/06/bascamp-faces- competiti...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/06/bascamp-faces-competition- in-free-alternative/)

<http://wisdump.com/business/being-37signals-for-free/>

 _EDIT_ "By Jonathan Barket on April 7, 2006 5:24 am" makes some good points (search for him - sorry, no permalink)

<comment><USER3> 1\. Basecamp is well known within the developer community but not as well known outside of that.

2\. The problem is not catching up, it everything else which is hard to explain. The layout, the features to provide or to leave out, finding the right mix is harder then the programming itself.

3\. Their new products are not very well integrated and have overlaps in features so that is a weak point.

4\. A generic offering is not where the money is. You develop the generic components and then you put them to work in a way that is specific for a particular vertical market. You sign people up free to a generic version, then once you have the vertical version done you offer them that at a higher price point. You do offer a generic "pro" version and some buying of additional useful "modules" for those you don't have a vertical version for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> interesting look - the itunes one makes sense - perhaps the same reason people buy candy at the checkout</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone with experience dealing with Shenzhen electronics manufacturer? - <AUTHOR> I've made contact with a Shenzhen electronics manufacturing company and got an initial quote to get some electronics designed and built. I want to have 1,000 units made initially. The device is a small single board computer about the size of a (big) thumb with a handful of chips and i/o ports. The company is very experienced in building devices that are very similar.
Is there anyone here with experience dealing with Chinese electronics manufacturers willing to offer me some wisdom about how to succeed in my dealings?
Their initial quote is $3,500USD (which I believe is for the design only, but I have emailed them to confirm) and they've said that the BOM for a single unit is $25USD which seems a little on the high side but approximately right.
I'm wanting to understand things like:
 If the single unit BOM is USD$25, what should I expect the approximate price to be for 1,000 units?
 what approximately should it cost for such a company to do the electronics design according to my broad specifications? Is $3,500USD too high?
 should I be negotiating on the price that they have offered, and if yes, how do I negotiate in a manner that is respectful and polite yet conveys confidence?
 how can I best lock down the 1,000 unit volume pricing for the item I wish to have manufactured, before committing fully to this manufacturer?
 what's a good way to learn (fast) how to work with Chinese culture in a respectful and polite manner whilst also getting the job done to a successful outcome.... any books?
 Any pitfalls or tips in particular to look out for?
thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Am in the process of ramping up a similar-sized board.

If you are worried about IP leakage, it's best to take more of the project on yourself. If you're US-based, there are a number of boutique PCB manufacturers you can call on stateside. Fast iteration is key; even next day airing stuff from China can sometimes double the iteration period when you consider customs.

Don't try to deal with China yourself if you have no experience. There are numerous agents who know the shortcuts, and I wish I could recommend some. There's nothing more irritating than realizing you picked the wrong shipping company or freight forwarder and thousands of dollars' worth of product getting delayed 3 months or lost entirely because, say, you thought FedEx was as good there as they are here.

There are more than a few horror stories where "account managers" on the Chinese side lulled their customers into a sense of turnkey operation, then pilfered the SWIFT or IBAN transfers once the order volume got huge, lying to both manufacturer and client, disappearing scot free into the Chinese system only when they determined the jig was up and they couldn't defraud their client, you, out of more money.

If you're at all technically capable, recommend you consider getting the bare boards made in China but doing your own pick and place and reflow in your own business (costs about $5k in capital equipment). That way only you know what you're building, and you can exert way more control over the unexpected changes that are inevitably coming.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cost depends on complexity, not size, so it's hard to tell whether $3.5k is little or a lot.

For price, it changes a ton with volume. You can estimate searching components on mouser.

If I were you, I'd look for someone willing to do design that you can trust more, or work with crowdsupply/indigo go/kickstarter and get connected to their referrals for a comparison.

Happy to chat more, feel free to email me.

</comment><comment><USER4> I work for Shenzhen electronics manufacturing company, but I am not for PCB manufacturing. I think your issue is relatively easy to handle, I think I can give you some advice on communication with vendor. If you feel free, you can contact email@example.com to talk about details of your requirement.</comment>


The Haskell School of Music: From Signals to Symphonies - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/dp/1108416756/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1 <comment><USER2> [http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/03/HSoM.p...](http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/03/HSoM.pdf)

[http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/SOE/](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/SOE/)</comment>


Ask HN: Who's looking for employment? - <AUTHOR>

In my time at hacker news, I've seen a few "Who's hiring" threads. Since I'm currently looking for a job, I thought it'd be neat to do that sort of thread in reverse.
If you're currently looking for work, post your name, a link to your resume/cv, the type of work you're looking for, and where you're looking for work.
I'll go first: My name is Nicholas Carlson. I'm looking for a junior or mid level C++ programming position. I currently live near Boulder, but I am more than willing to relocate to the west coast.
Resume: http://bit.ly/cmwUEm <comment><USER2> ncarlson - have you checked out wsod.com in Boulder, CO? -- I have two friends that work there and they seem to be "always hiring" .. I believe theyre a .NET shop, but from the sounds of it as long as youre a decent dev you should have a fairly good shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I just dropped off my resume and cover letter there yesterday. It looks like a great place to work. Hopefully I'll get a call back.</comment></comment>


I Worked on the AOL Content Farm & It Changed My Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/i_worked_on_the_aol_content_farm_it_changed_my_lif.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d805f0590a2795c%2C0 <comment><USER2> Looks like one of the big lessons he learnt at AOL was how to write sensationalist headlines.</comment>


How two bored 1970s housewives helped create the PC industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3047428/how-two-bored-1970s-housewives-helped-create-the-pc-industry <comment><USER2> This can be read as a story of what happens when management becomes divorced from engineering... literally.

>Lore Harp and Carole Ely of Westlake Village brought along the Vector 1, a PC designed by Lore's husband, Bob Harp.

>In 1980, the partnership began to crack at the seams. The stresses of the company took a heavy toll on Bob and Lore's marriage, prompting them to seek a divorce.

>Bob fought with Vector's board of directors, insisting the company should sell an IBM PC compatible machine, but Lore and the board resisted. [...] "I felt that I had to leave the company and start another one based on PC compatibles," says Bob. Vector's board granted his wish, firing him in 1981. The following year, Bob founded Corona Data Systems, which created one of the first IBM PC clones.

>Lore became the first female founder to take her company public on the New York Stock Exchange. But the celebration was short-lived. IBM PC's jump into the personal computer market in August of that year had a clarifying effect on the industry.

>In 1982, Lore married tech media magnate Patrick McGovern, the founder of research firm IDC and publisher of Computerworld and InfoWorld [...] She sought a new beginning with more time devoted to her marriage. [...] Between the grueling daily commute and a lack of love from the board of directors, Lore had had enough. She stepped down once again, this time for good. It was 1984; she was 40 years old.

>The company filed for bankruptcy in 1985, ceased operations in 1986, and a holding company liquidated all its assets [...] in 1987

<comment><USER3> I think it reads more as a story of what happens when there are factors outside of your control while running your company. They could do nothing about the IBM PC and they even knew that IBM was mimicing their business strategy, and yet there was nothing they could do. IBM couldn't work with them because they couldn't handle the volume.

They knew their end was coming and they all exited the company when they saw what was coming. I think they showed themselves to be much more savvy then you give them credit for.

Today, it would be like you finding out that Google is about to come to compete with you.

They did great, I think. They did an IPO, cashed out, stuck the investors with the shitty stock, gave all of their employees significant stock grants, and went on to live nice lives. That's everyone's HN dream.

<comment><USER4> > They could do nothing about the IBM PC and they even knew that IBM was > mimicing their business strategy, and yet there was nothing they could do

Actually, they could have done what one of the founders suggested, and actually did after leaving the company: create an IBM compatible system.

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

<comment><USER5> I bought a PC-compatible from Corona circa 1983 after my extensive research showed it had better technology (and thus more of a chance of corporate survival) than the also-newly-created Compaq.

<comment><USER4> Yeah; just think if the same product had been sold by the well-known Vector Graphics brand :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got through the first paragraph before the whole page was replaced with an interstitial ad.

What would you call that, Flash Of Actual Content?

</comment><comment><USER7> "The firm ultimately shared its fate with the every other PC maker that didn't jump on the IBM clone bandwagon. The only consumer PC company that survived into the 1990s with its own significant platform was Apple, and even then, just barely."

What made Apple SO different from all the others that failed?

<comment><USER8> Not much, really. I would even dispute the premise: the Commodore Amiga was still a viable platform up through the mid-'90s, for instance, and Atari's ST was still around and kicking then too.

<comment><USER9> Much or most of the Amiga and Atari ST installed base in the '90s was "low quality" though: users who didn't have hard disks and likely couldn't afford one, who were possibly using a TV and likely couldn't afford a decent monitor, who didn't have a printer and who were mostly buying games that came on booter floppies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_booter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_booter) . Those guys would have had trouble using business/"productivity" software effectively even if they'd been interested in buying it. Obviously there were better-equipped Amiga and ST systems too, but by and large Apple and the PC had run away with the users who had the budget and the inclination to run application software.

(In general, the serious cost barrier of a hard disk and a decent monitor as more or less the price of entry to serious computing almost certainly had a major impact on the shape of the computing industry until pretty recently.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Or better: "How 2 wives created Silicon Valley". Rewind the clock to that morning in 1938 when Bill Hewlett started working with David Packard in the garage at the house where Packard lived. They worked there for 1 year. They made no money for 1 year. Meanwhile, Mrs Packard went out to work, and later Mrs Hewlett went out to work. And for several decades afterwards, this was how many early stage startups in the Valley were financed: finance-via-wife.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pretty awesome story. All articles I've seen on women in tech talk of Fiorina, Mayer, etc. Yet, these women were awesome, their influence great, and I've never heard of them. Should probably get cited more often in discussions on either women in tech or historical accounts of entrepreneurs making it big on a budget.

An example on the technical side would be Margaret Hamilton: the woman who pretty much invented [1] software engineering (and coined the term) during Apollo project. The first CASE tool for it, too, IIRC. The reliability and integration capabilities of their production code exceeded [2] anything I see in Agile, etc. Yet, I didn't see her name in any mainstream article on the subject and only knew about her due to a casual mention by a friend while discussing high assurance systems. Seemed to be better known in research sector per Wikipedia [3].

So, next time Mr. Nadella at Microsoft wants to rag on women in tech, we can remind him of two whose management talent he still hasn't beat and one that his engineers lag behind in production code despite not being limited to 60's era tech. ;)

[1] [http://htius.com/Articles/r12ham.pdf](http://htius.com/Articles/r12ham.pdf)

(See more of how they started rather than USL itself. Talk about straight up hitting all the problems head-on, at once, and attempting once-and-for-all.)

[2] [http://www.htius.com/News_Links/251093main_The_NASA_Heritage...](http://www.htius.com/News_Links/251093main_The_NASA_Heritage_Of_Creativity.pdf)

(see page 13 for specific principles she derived)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_%28scientist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_%28scientist%29)

</comment><comment><USER12> Many parallels can be seen between the founders of Vector Halt and the Clarks in the Halt and Catch Fire series.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWrioRji60A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWrioRji60A)

<comment><USER13> no nono nooooo, dont remind people about that terrible pop show with no respect of history or technology.

They say things like "Atari 420ST" on that show.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If this era interests you, be sure to catch A&E's 'Halt and Catch Fire', although in my opinion the second season is heading downhill.

<comment><USER15> Two brief thoughts about HCF:

1\. The show's story and characterization is innovative because it intentionally is about people who lived in a historical period, not people who _shaped_ it. Joe and Gordon are not Jobs and Wozniak. Jobs and Woz are Jobs and Woz, and in the long run the Macintosh eats the Giant's lunch. So it's cool to see ambitious people try to reach for the stars, even if they're fated to fail.

2\. The show does a good job not being solely about the drama or about the technology and history thereof, but of being an acceptable blend of the two. Certainly the tech details are sometimes inaccurate, and the history skewed (the characters keep coming up with ideas for which there already were contemporaries). And the drama is often contrived, and in the first season, often not very good. But somehow when then come together the weaknesses manage to get overshadowed by the strengths. A good hack of a prestige drama.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Imagine what the industry would have looked like if IBM locked down its hardware, so that nobody could develop an OS for it.

Or if they started an app store.

<comment><USER17> You won't need to imagine that, you can look around you and see it every day, we're heading there pretty rapidly only via a slightly different path than the one that you are suggesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Bob designed other boards for S-100 bus machines, including a PROM board that eliminated the need for hobbyists to manually enter a boot-up program sequence via front panel switches Does it mean Bob Harp invented the BIOS?

<comment><USER19> Wikipedia has the term BIOS being used in the way we expect by CP/M in 1975, the article has Vector starting in 1976 and the PROM board created after their memory board saw success.

It sounds like he brought the BIOS to S-100 bus machines though.

<comment> mark-r CP/M hardly ran on anything _but_ S-100 bus machines in the beginning.

It was common in those days to compile the BIOS directly into your copy of CP/M, rather than running it from ROM. CP/M had memory areas set aside that you could patch. The ROM was only expected to contain a boot loader that would copy the OS image into memory and jump to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r Not only did Vector Graphic build complete systems, they also sold components. My first computer had their Z80 processor board at its core.

</comment><comment><USER20> My Dad had a Vector in the 80s - learned a lot from it. It had a big reset button on the front, which instantly booted into the "monitor" \- a program which let you inspect and disassemble RAM. (RAM was not erased in the reboot.)

You could, of course use the monitor to disassemble the monitor, which was a good way to learn assembly language.

Later I wired an Atari joystick to the machine - it had some kind of GPIO pins. It was a very hackable platform, with S100 slots, tons of space inside, and lots of DSUB cutouts on the rear panel.

Wrote several video games in Z80 for that machine, although graphics were limited to TRS-80 style 6-pixels-per-character.

Later I found out that Disney Imagineering built a loudspeaker monitoring multiplexer around a similar S100 computer. It allowed a sound technician to remotely choose an amp output to monitor. I wonder how many other cool applications these machines enabled.

</comment><comment><USER21> I love hearing the stories about the also-rans of the computer business. Many fortunes to be made and lost back then.

<comment><USER22> Me too. I have a real fascination for this Cambrian period of computing, even though I came into it via the strange world of home computers (Sinclair). By the time I got my hands on business computers, Wintel had won.

I saved an S-100 machine from the skip when I was at school, made by SWTPC. It ran Uniflex, a version of the Flex operating system which was designed for multiple users, based on some Unix ideas.

It worked briefly when I got it but then stopped, and I could never figure out why. In the end, I donated it to this guy [http://www.computermuseum.org.uk/fixed_pages/swtp.html](http://www.computermuseum.org.uk/fixed_pages/swtp.html) who I found via the wonderful alt.folklore.computers newsgroup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> tangential: the cover ([http://b.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline/...](http://b.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline/2015/07/3047428-inline- popularelectronics.jpg)) with the Altair - the spark of one tech revolution - also contains the "CCD's - TV Camera Tube Successor?". It is like the editors were able to somehow feel heartbeat pulse of the future ...

</comment><comment><USER24> I need this as a semi-historically-accurate Kirsten Wiig / Amy Schumer buddy comedy, and I need it yesterday.</comment>


SoftBank vs. Zume: Robot pizza fail - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-14/robot-pizza-trucks-hit-some-bumps <comment><AUTHOR> "I love the path-dependency here. "Why do the robots cook the pizzas in trucks?" "Well, in an earlier version of the business plan the trucks were moving; it was a terrible idea, but by the time we figured that out we already had the trucks." "</comment>


The CTO drought and the broken pipeline - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/the-cto-drought-and-the-broken-pipeline-71e6bf1c0ebb <comment><USER2> I think a relatively minor footnote in the article is the most important point: CTO pay is about what contractors make, except it comes with a hell of a lot more stress and responsibility.

From my experience in the states, CTO pay starts at around 200k, and can obviously go much higher depending on the size of the company. No matter what size the company is however, the stress is orders of magnitude more than being a senior engineer, who can make upwards of 175k.

I honestly wouldn't consider the stress without making 250k+ and a ton of equity. There comes a point where it's just not worth the extra money.</comment>