Vulkan is Here - <AUTHOR> https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/. <comment><USER2> This chart sums it up pretty well:

[https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/699346348651507713](https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/699346348651507713)

There is no reason why any given app developer would want to talk to Vulkan directly. It's basically only suitable for a subset of engine developers and low level API programmers.

I also heard some people who were under NDA might have some disappointing things to report about the Vulkan decision process now that it's out. But the question is whether it matters at all whether it's a good API or not, given my impression that it's apparently not intended for interfacing to humans but to higher layer APIs.

<comment><USER3> A more recent version of the chart from the same source: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbUg4_5WEAANwhc.jpg:orig](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbUg4_5WEAANwhc.jpg:orig)

It's quite a bit more positive about vulcan.

<comment><USER4> This is the primary UX for Vulkan. The problem is not the API PDF for OpenGL you download from Khronos - its all the drivers that implement it. Not only do you have to support he lowest common denominator GL version and then extension-check every higher level feature you want to use with two code paths every time, you also need to work around all the driver bugs you _will_ find across the board with every combination of platform + GPU.

If OpenGL as of 4.5 were implemented perfectly on all hardware on all systems, we would never need Vulkan because everyone could just AZDO for optimization. Since we don't live in that fantasy world where pigs fly and Nvidia releases freedom respecting drivers, Vulkan takes responsibility away from hardware vendors who demonstrably cannot handle the work and puts the burden on the developer, who... probably also cannot handle the work, but thats a per- application problem rather than a fundamental API problem.

<comment><USER5> Why couldn't someone write a "Vulkan backend for OpenGL" that combined proper standards conformance with actual hardware acceleration?

<comment><USER4> You can. Go ahead and do it. Mesa is likely to implement future OpenGL extensions by translating them to Vulkan rather than implementing them natively to the metal, and someone is probably going to make a libgl that targets Vulkan rather than any of the intermediary layers used around the ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For reality check read "Talos Principle" FAQ on their Vulkan port (probably the most complex non-toy Vulkan application you can try today):

[http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331...](http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651720139/)

TLDR: optimism for the future but right now performance is actually noticeably worse than their DirectX 11 rendering backend.

\</comment><comment>--

 _A: Ok, first, in GPU-bound scenarios (ultra settings, resolution higher than full HD), you 'll see lower performance, 20 to 30% lower. This is work in progress, and we (both Croteam and IHVs) are analyzing and optimizing the performance. We'll get to the bottom of this!_

 _Q: And CPU-bound scenarios?

A: Same or a bit faster. But for now, those scenarios really have to be super- CPU-bound. Like, rendering whole levels, without any help from visibility system, frustum, distance or occlusion culling._

<comment><USER7> You're right about the current status, but there is no reason to believe that there is any architectural issue in the way of performance parity with DirectX. This is a necessary first step, and there is a lot of reason for optimism :-)

<comment><USER8> Indeed, from their Q&A [http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331...](http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651720139/)

 _Let me put it this way: When The Talos Principle came out, it had a very similar frame rate in DirectX 9 vs DX 11. But then we optimized the game, and the drivers were optimized in the meantime, and now D3D11 is 20-30% faster than D3D9! I have a firm belief that this will also happen to Vulkan vs D3D11, over time However, for now you can actually expect lower frame-rate compared to D3D11. C 'mon, it's brand new API, give it some time. :)_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congratualations! It's a major step forward.

Note this however:

 _> "Vulkan takes cross-platform performance and control to the next level," said Bill Hollings of The Brenwill Workshop. "We are excited to be working through Khronos, the forum for open industry standards, to bring Vulkan to iOS and OS X.[1]"_

Of course Apple had to remain the jerks they are and not support Vulkan natively, forcing developers to write translation layers[2]...

[1] [https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-releases- vulkan-1...](https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-releases- vulkan-1-0-specification)

[2] [https://moltengl.com/metalvk/](https://moltengl.com/metalvk/)

<comment><USER10> "Of course Apple had to remain the jerks they are and not support Vulkan natively, forcing developers to write translation layers[2]..."

We write programs that use DirectX,Metal, OpenGL/OpenCL, and now Vulkan and I disagree.

We believe competition is great. OpenGL/CL was in theory a standard but over the years we had to funnel way more resources to make that work than with DirectX or Metal combined. Why? Because of the "design by committee" mentality of OpenGL/CL.

The only reason they had to react with Vulkan was competition from private companies and even then the reaction was slow and painful for those that were forced to support the bloat software for years.

We could do the same thing in OpenGL/CL with 5 different ways,one modern way and 4 obsolete but not pruned from the standard because some company of the committee that had obsolete legacy code banned the removal.

This made the codebase so big and hard to maintain, and expensive for developers to support.

If Microsoft and Apple runs circles around those people, they are forced to act and develop a better standard.

For us it is easier to develop translation layers that support OpenGL/CL messiness.

<comment><USER9> _> We believe competition is great._

Competition is great, sure. But Apple are anti-competition here. Competition would mean choosing between using Vulkan or Metal on their system. Where is that choice (wrapper is a workaround, but besides)?

All those lock-in proponents are actually scared of competition. So we are not in disagreement. Competition is indeed good. Lock-in however is not, and lock- in is anti-competition.

 _> The only reason they had to react with Vulkan was competition from private companies_

It's the other way around. The only reason MS and Apple suddenly woke up is because AMD was planning to open up Mantle (which resulted in Vulkan). Except they reacted in their usual manner. Instead of helping the shared effort they pushed for more lock-in.

<comment><USER10> I am not scared about Apple getting a monopoly. They are not going to sell as much as Android because they only care about the high margin stuff.

I am more worried about Microsoft though, with Windows and Xbox they force millions of people to use DirectX.

Yeah, we agreed on that . It took millions for our company to support OpenGL/CL only because we did not want to make our code dependent on just one provider. It was tough to justify that decision (financially). Decision that only started to pay back with Android popularity.

<comment><USER9> The good part is, since all of them (Vulkan as well as DX12 and Metal) have roots in Mantle, they have a lot of similarities, which makes creating translation layers easier. So I wouldn't be surprised if we'll see Vulkan → DX12 layer in addition to Vulkan → Metal one. As well as other way around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> NOT a successor. It's a very different beast. It's frequently described as a "low-level" API, but "explicit API" is more correct. It gives you control (and responsibility) for things that happen behind your back in OpenGL, e.g. semantics of sharing of resources between the CPU and the GPU, explicit separate access to many GPUs, explicit separation of command buffer building and submission etc.

It will live side-by-side with OpenGL for the foreseeable future. It's just targeting the same general area (graphics using GPUs) and is standardized by the same folks (Khronos).

<comment><USER12> OpenGL is not going away (huge existing code basis etc.), but I'm not sure how much continued development it's going to see.

Is there any case where you would _not_ want to use Vulkan in a new project?

<comment><USER13> I think that Vulkan would almost always be the wrong choice for a new project. A higher level abstraction is probably the right choice, whether that would be OpenGL or a third party game engine or CAD kernel or visualization engine etc depends on the project.

[https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/699501481632886786](https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/699501481632886786)

<comment><USER12> > or a third party game engine

All major engines already have announced migrating to Vulkan and/or its platform-specific counterparts (DX12/Metal), so you'd be indirectly using Vulkan anyway.

<comment><USER14> Well, when you write in Haskell and compile it to x86-64 machine code, you are indirectly using x86-64 machine code. That doesn't mean a Haskell programmer would like to write x64 asm, they're on quite different levels of abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As usual, not available for Mac.

If this follows the usual trajectory, we'll have a sort-of-working implementation of Vulkan 1.0 in OS X 10.13 (although it will kernel panic if you look at it the wrong way).

But maybe Apple's stance on Vulkan is different now due to their own Metal API? Is Apple involved in Vulkan at all?

<comment> SG- Apple is a major Vulkan supporter and is on the "Board of Promoters". They went for Metal because they needed and wanted better performance long before Vulkan was going to be released.

My guess is we'll see Vulkan in the next major OSX/iOS release.

<comment><USER16> Long before? Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done.

I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. If they could do that - awesome for them, and they would never have to adopt Vulkan. If they can't, they'll have to adopt Vulkan.

Here's hoping the latter will happen.

<comment><USER12> > Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew > Vulkan is almost done.

Vulkan was announced in December 2014, with no significant commitment.

iOS 8 including Metal was announced mid-2014, and would have been in development for a considerable time before. By the time it was announced for OSX, Vulkan was still anaemic and not showing significant progress.

So it does make sense to keep using Metal for them.

> I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to > adopt Metal for Mac games early on. If they could do that - awesome for > them, and they would never have to adopt Vulkan.

If that was the plan, it's probably going to fail: The developers of Unity e.g. found Metal, DX12 and Vulkan so similar that they estimate to be able to support all three with minimal development overhead.

<comment><USER16> Why does everyone misinterpret my comment to mean that I was talking about iOS?

I know Metal was announced for iOS earlier - I was talking about the support for Mac OS X. They had no _good reason_ to adopt it for Mac OS X at that point, if they were planning on adopting Vulkan in the near future anyway. Unless, like I said, they'd prefer to keep Metal over Vulkan, and wanted to give it a head start to see if PC game developers would start adopting it.

> If that was the plan, it's probably going to fail: The developers of Unity > e.g. found Metal, DX12 and Vulkan so similar that they estimate to be able > to support all three with minimal development overhead.

I'm not sure how you see that as a "failure". If they are so similar that game engine developers will keep Metal around anyway, then we'll see games be built on Metal, not Vulkan, for Mac OS X. How is that a "failure"? It would mean Metal "won".

<comment><USER3> > They had no good reason to adopt it for Mac OS X at that point

Of course they did: it was already their API of choice on iOS, platform unification alone makes it a damn good idea to adopt it for OSX: iOS is by far their most popular gaming platform, integrating the API back to OSX makes it more likely they'd get more OSX support.

Not to mention a mid-2015 _release_ of Metal-on-OSX means they'd probably been working on it since the Metal-on-iOS release. On top of fragmenting their platforms, waiting for Metal would have meant a year-long delay.

<comment><USER9> _> Of course they did_

They did have a reason, except it's nowhere good. They don't want to support Vulkan because it increases their lock-in control and puts extra tax on cross platform development. Same reason MS doesn't want to support it on Xbox. It's not a good reason, it's pretty crooked but very Apple like.

<comment><USER17> Apple isn't usually about "locking people in" but more about controlling the experience. That can lead to the same thing, where they want everyone to use their API and not someone else's, but the difference is whether they have greedy, malicious intent or not. I don't think they do. Having good intentions means they are more likely to surprise you and do something good eventually.

Still, I wouldn't hold my breath on Apple supporting Vulkan soon. Their OpenGL support is usually a few versions behind so if they do ever support Vulkan I would expect it to be late.

<comment><USER9> _> Having good intentions means they are more likely to surprise you and do something good eventually._

I'll agree to that when I'll see it. I.e. if their intentions are good - they'll get behind the Vulkan effort and will add native support for it on their systems. So far they clearly stayed away from it, but surely noted all its ideas to use in their lock-in variant.

<comment><USER18> Your definition of good and mine clearly differ. As has been noted, Metal existed and shipped before Vulkan, yet you claim they are using all its ideas in their own lock in variant.

Multiple people have mentioned in this thread how engine vendors have abstracted all 3 competing technologies (Metal, DX12, "Vulkan") with minimal effort.

How is there any lock in here? How is it any different from Microsoft or any other vendor deciding to, or not, implement DX12 or Vulkan?

<comment><USER9> _> Metal existed and shipped before Vulkan_

As was noted, it didn't exist before Mantle and before AMD decided to open it. So Apple in fact knew about it all along. Again, you can't try to dismiss their lock-in attitude with the claim that they just needed something and had no alternatives. They simply made the lock-in choice.

 _> Multiple people have mentioned in this thread how engine vendors have abstracted all 3 competing technologies (Metal, DX12, "Vulkan") with minimal effort._

Indeed, since they share lot's of core ideas (all of them originate in Mantle). The question is not about why one can't abstract them, but why Apple and MS push their lock-in instead of collaborating. And you wouldn't like the answer.

 _> How is there any lock in here? How is it any different from Microsoft_

Who said it's different? It's the same crooked practice. But I'm surprised you don't see the obvious lock-in issue here.

<comment><USER3> > As was noted, it didn't exist before Mantle and before AMD decided to open > it.

I see that claim, I don't see any evidence. The first evidence of Mantle being donated to Khronos date back to early 2015, not early 2014. Mantle was _not_ open-source or open at initial release, and wasn't even supported on all AMD hardware.

> So Apple in fact knew about it all along. Again, you can't try to dismiss > their lock-in attitude with the claim that they just needed something and > had no alternatives.

Wait, so Apple's proprietary API is bad because AMD's proprietary existed before it? How does that even make sense?

> They simply made the lock-in choice.

Mantle was only available for AMD hardware on Windows, Apple's first need was ARM/PowerVR on iOS…

> The question is not about why one can't abstract them, but why Apple and MS > push their lock-in instead of collaborating. And you wouldn't like the > answer.

You do realise your pet conspiration theories are only answers to the question "what are your pet conspiration theories" no matter how many time you hint at them, right?

<comment><USER9> _> Mantle was only available for AMD hardware_

Its design was generic, and both Apple and MS used it to make their lock-in variants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thank you AMD. Vulkan is essentially a development of Mantle, AMD's next-gen graphics API, and without that forward-thinking leadership, we'd still be messing with (closed) D3D on Windows, (closed) proprietary per-game drivers from greedy Nvidia, and the outdated OpenGL.

Kudos all the more deserved for the fact that AMD doesn't have the financial firepower of its competitors.

</comment><comment><USER20> The website says it is also a compute API. I haven't heard this before; I didn't know Vulkan came with a GPGPU stack. Does anyone have any experience looking at the compute aspects of Vulkan and how it compares to OpenCL?

I wanted to take a squiz at making GPU compute code for "fun" and I'm wondering if Vulkan compute is worth looking at.

<comment><USER4> Vulkan has explicit compute command queues. It is worth noting that OpenCL 2.1 compiles to the same SPIR-V bytecode that Vulkan drivers consume, you just generate it with a C API rather than GLSL, but either turn into the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And here's a chart on whether or not you should switch to Vulkan:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbUg4_5WEAANwhc.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbUg4_5WEAANwhc.jpg:large)

<comment><USER21> Much better resolution: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbUg4_5WEAANwhc.jpg:orig](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbUg4_5WEAANwhc.jpg:orig)

And credit: [https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/699501481632886786](https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/699501481632886786)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dont notice any AMD products at [https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant- prod...](https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant- products#vulkan) even though AMD already has drivers out. Whats up with that?

<comment><USER23> The AMD drivers haven't been sent for conformance testing yet, probably due to the fact that they're very buggy. (No personal experience but somewhere in this thread someone said they're unusable).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Google gives you everything you need to incorporate Vulkan into your Android > games and other apps where graphics performance is key

Err, do they? Where?

I was under the impression this isn't implemented yet and is expected to be included in Android 7.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I am also wondering. All I see is the same ol' link to half-outdated NDK documentation.

<comment><USER26> Nvidia has an SDK today for Sheild devices [https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan- android](https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-android)

Imagination Tech has an SDK as well. Apparently, a Nexus Player is a good device to work on with it.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/463jo2/vulkan_api_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/463jo2/vulkan_api_example_code_early_drivers_available/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Examples and demos : [https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan](https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan)

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the link. I think that just looking at the "simple" triangle example tells quite a lot about how low-level the API is (at least for me). The source C++ file is >27kB and ~760 LOC..

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Could OpenGL be implemented as a library on top of Vulkan? So that future drivers will only implement the Vulkan API and if you want OpenGL, you just use an OpenGL library?

<comment><USER30> I was thinking the same thing. Seems like that could have a lot of neat applications as afar as porting and keeping existing software working.

Hopefully with lower level APIs like vulkan it means higher level APIs could be better designed than opengl perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A video showing the dramatic performance difference between Vulkan and OpenGL on an Android TV device:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_I8an8jXuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_I8an8jXuM)

<comment><USER32> Can anyone explain (or at least provide a glimpse to) why the difference is so huge?

<comment><USER33> It's described in the link: [http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/gnomes-per-second- in-vulkan-a...](http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/gnomes-per-second-in-vulkan- and-opengl-es), the code doesn't use any batching but each gnome is a unique draw call, which is a worst-case scenario for OpenGLES2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is finally my chance to delve into graphics hacking. I'm interested in bindings to Common Lisp with this >:)

<comment><USER35> Not to dissuade you from graphics hacking in CL (it's a lot of fun!) but this isn't what Vulkan is for.

It's a graphics API that gives you more explicit control over synchronization, buffering, and resource sharing. There's still many reasons to prefer OpenGL (for which there are good bindings in CL already and could use more contributors!).

If you're just the curious sort and want to know more then by all means... it will be a tough battle if this is your first delve into graphics programming.

<comment><USER36> Could Vulkan be the opportunity to build a small and simple API for people to learn graphic programming? I did learn OpenGl 10 years ago but it was already a big mess and each time I were searching for some information I could only discover mountains of hacks. I'm quit sure it's worse now.

<comment><USER35> OpenGL is much better these days and if it's your first foray into graphics programming learning WebGL is not a bad start IMO. You might need to use a browser that can support some of the OpenGL ES features (WebGL extensions) like VBO's and such but you can get really far that way.

Vulkan is not the right choice if you're just getting started unless you're already motivated and intensely curious (ie: already have some decent exposure to OpenGL, multi-threading, and are curious to know more).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Dumb question: what will change for end-users ?

<comment><USER38> I think that's quite a reasonable question.

1\. Less CPU usage than an equivalent game in OpenGl. This is especially true for games which want to draw lots of different individual things to the screen, so you may be seeing more of those.

2\. Smaller drivers, which means more consistently performant and bug free. There's far less of a chance of getting weird things from having an unusual operating system or graphics card setup.

3\. More cross platform. There are many different pieces which change on different platforms (consoles vs desktops vs mobile), but depending on what platforms choose to support Vulkan, it's one less thing to worry about when porting over.

4\. Maybe better games. There's a bunch of things which help with development, so as long as a sufficient majority of graphics cards get vulkan drivers, it may help reduce some coding cost.

Games which use common engines (ie, Unity) will likely get these features for free. Others will have to work harder for it.

<comment><USER39> That's the big question I have: how well does Vulkan seem to be bridging the divide between API and GPU semantics? Will we finally see a time where graphics drivers no longer monkey-patch _per game_?

(I'm still somewhat skeptical as the monkey patching is a value-add secret sauce that seems likely to continue solely because it's such a weird competitive thing between the two biggest vendors and a galvanizer for the brand loyalties they try to maintain, but perhaps I'm just feeling pessimistic about the capitalist drives here.)

<comment><USER40> > how well does Vulkan seem to be bridging the divide between API and GPU > semantics?

That's the entire point behind Vulkan. OpenGL was created back when we still had fixed-function rendering pipelines in GPU's, and while it has evolved to support the massively parallel supercomputers GPU's have become it doesn't have much low-level control over it. Vulkan gives the engine developer the thinnest abstraction possible over a modern GPU, from everything from explicit resource sharing and even explicit access to multiple GPU's (no more relying on nVidia and AMD to add SLI/Crossfire profiles).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great news! I am waiting for the book titled "Vulkan Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning Vulkan (OpenGL) 1st Edition" to come out. Looks like it will be out in August 2016.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think what's most interesting is strong multi threading support in conjunction with an intermediate representation.

Looking forward to seeing SPIR-V compilers in other languages...

</comment><comment><USER43> I am seeing forward to a possible "WebVulkan" analog to WebGL.

<comment><USER44> Yes, it would be great, but it is most likely not happening anytime soon. As previously discussed on the WebGL mailinglist, Vulkan is strictly (and rightfully, wrt performance) working against all the security considerations that went into WebGL by design. A "WebVulkan" would thus not be much of a benefit, or even usable, if it's severly crippeled in it's features.

<comment><USER45> Even though Vulkan for would be of little gain for the web due to all the security considerations required, a WebGL backend should still be able to benefit from being built on Vulkan instead.

Due to the refinement of the pipeline and memory access, etc. provided by Vulkan, there's a lot of room for optimization.

___

Though on the other hand, even with additional overhead on a Vulkan web API, the improved state management and access to command buffers may still allow for smarter rendering with negligible overhead via JS

Fun times

<comment><USER44> I completely agree and one could theoretically do away with things like ANGLE! Though, I also suspect that the implementor's overhead is rather large in contrast to the current way WebGL is implemented in Chrome and FF, which is currently a relatively 'thin' layer on top of OpenGL.

On the other hand the nature of implementation in Chrome, i.e. does seem to lend itself somewhat to a command buffer approach as in Vulkan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The reason I have been waiting for Vulkan is to get rid of OpenGL driver bugs. I hope that being closer to metal means less bugs.

</comment><comment><USER25> It is rare to see a cross platform release with so much collaboration behind the scenes. Extremely exciting!

</comment><comment><USER47> Does this do anything to address the difficulties of sharing the gpu resources among processes, particularly concerning untrusted code like a website? Even opengl es can crash my video driver easily under a heavy load and it's more careful than opengl.

<comment><USER48> > Even opengl es can crash my video driver easily under a heavy load and it's > more careful than opengl.

If Vulkan as low-level as expected then it's will easily let app lockup your GPU completely. Though as drivers are they shouldn't cause troubles anymore.

<comment><USER48> * Ooops, as drivers are tiny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Would it be worthwhile to write a Golang API on top of such a low level implementation or would that just negate the reason it exists in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER6> Quick Vulkan starter pack (if you just want to see if it runs on your system, without compiling anything).

Windows-centric, but many things also available for Linux and Android.

\</comment><comment>- Drivers </comment><comment>-

Nvidia GPU driver: [https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan- driver](https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver) (worth trying even if your GPU is not listed as supported, e.g. 900 series mobile Maxwell GPUs like GTX 970M or GTX 980M work ok)

AMD GPU driver: [http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon- Vulkan...](http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Vulkan- Beta.aspx)

\</comment><comment>- Demos </comment><comment>-

Nvidia Vulkan Choppers demo: [https://nvidia.app.box.com/s/rj9nzxkpz21qu34h8zew301kray9urb...](https://nvidia.app.box.com/s/rj9nzxkpz21qu34h8zew301kray9urbf)

Nvidia Vulkan Fish demo (threaded rendering): [http://developer.download.nvidia.com/mobile/shield/assets/Th...](http://developer.download.nvidia.com/mobile/shield/assets/ThreadedRenderingVk/ThreadedRenderingVk_20160215-02.zip)

Vulkan examples binaries by Sascha Willems: [http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/examples.php](http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/examples.php)

\- requires assets from source distribution (create "bin" subfolder and place binaries there): [https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan](https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan)

\- also may need to install Visual Studio 2015 redistributables: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=481...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=48145)

\</comment><comment>- Games </comment><comment>-

Talos Principle: [http://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/) (there is a free demo available)

See how to enable Vulkan support here: [http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331...](http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651559970/)

\</comment><comment>- Tools </comment><comment>-

Vulkan HW capabilities database: [http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/](http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/)

Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer: [http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php](http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/download.php)

<comment><USER50> Nvidia also just put out a C++ API as well:

[https://github.com/nvpro-pipeline/vkcpp](https://github.com/nvpro- pipeline/vkcpp)

<comment><USER4> Why did they call it vk_cpp.h and not vulkan.hpp? Why???

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I haven't read the docs yet but I wonder if this means there could be an open source d3d or opengl implementation that uses vulkan as its backend.

Also: it is a shame the API docs appear to be behind a login page. Hopefully that will change! The nice thing about opengl is it (at least when I used it) the docs were easy to get at.

</comment><comment><USER51> Quick Reference: [https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.0/refguide/V...](https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.0/refguide/Vulkan-1.0-web.pdf)

The Khronos site seems to be overloaded right now.

</comment><comment><USER52> It will be interesting to see the adoption rate for games and other applications now that it has been released.

</comment><comment><USER53> Too bad the sample code linked to from multiple locations is empty... only a README.md: [https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan- Samples](https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Samples)

<comment><USER54> It might be this: [https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan](https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Newbie question: let's say I want to display a simple 3D object (say, a box) which controlled by the mouse, and the latency between mouse and screen has to be as small as possible. What are my best options? Is it packaged somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER56> Vulkan backend for RetroArch

[https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/2729](https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/2729)

</comment><comment><USER57> Apparently the GeForce 800 series doesn't support Vulkan :(

[https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan- driver](https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver)

Why is this so, any idea?

<comment> SG- They support Geforce 600 and up. I don't even think Nvidia released a Geforce 800 except on mobile which is just a rebranded Geforce 700 so it's likely actually supported.

<comment><USER57> on my laptop:

$ lspci | grep -i nvidia 03:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM108M [GeForce 840M] (rev a2)

<comment><USER58> Note the 'M' at the end of the model number. The laptop GeForce models are different (and less powerful) than the desktop models. According to the website, the 840M supports "entry-level gaming", which isn't really the primary use case for Vulkan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> So many teasered demos, but no video to look at...

</comment><comment><USER60> Vulkan remains, and will only ever be, the Primarch of the Salamanders for me. Sorry, I guess my gamer culture overrides my tech nerd culture.

</comment><comment><USER61> Where is Apple on that page?

</comment><comment><USER62> I have dream to see such a master piece enabled on web browsers through javascript.</comment>


The Rise Of Visual Social Media - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3000794/rise-visual-social-media

<comment><USER2> Ugh, I feel dirty after reading that...

I guess the B-Ark hasn't left yet.</comment>


Google web search given shot of Caffeine  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/11/google_caffeine_web_search/ <comment><USER2> Okay. After having five or so stories about this, I think we all know about the Google engine changes by now. Seriously.</comment>


Into the woods: how one man survived alone in the wilderness for 27 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/15/stranger-in-the-woods-christopher-knight-hermit-maine <comment><USER2> This is an adapted excerpt from a recently published book. It's about Christopher Knight, who was a hermit in Maine between 1986 and 2013.

Spoiler alert: He survived by committing about 1,000 burglaries of the 100 cabins in the area.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> The bit that really stood out for me: """ He was never once bored. He wasn't sure, he said, that he even understood the concept of boredom. """

Almost seems (too? as a consequence?) that he was lacking a type of curiosity, whether as an existing character trait, or something that developed from having to periodically use all his wiles to obtain the means of survival when surveilling the cabins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I prefer the older 2014 GQ story about him: [http://www.gq.com/story/the-last- true-hermit](http://www.gq.com/story/the-last-true-hermit)

I also just finished watching this fascinating story about a 54-old man who decided to live alone in the Alaska woods, for more than 27 years, building his own cabin. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNXFJ1AMHrM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNXFJ1AMHrM)</comment>


More Thoughts on CPU backdoors (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2009/06/more-thoughts-on-cpu-backdoors.html

<comment><USER2> link to previous HN story:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5850154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5850154)</comment>


Seoul's mayor found dead, hours after he was reported missing - <AUTHOR> https://cnn.com/2020/07/09/asia/seoul-mayor-missing-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> Likely suicide.

I had a recent covid-insanity-related thought on the topic of suicide.

For the non-religious, suicide is going to sleep forever instead of just for the night.

What if there was an option to go to sleep for a decade? Would people want that? Would it be even legal to research?

Seems like it would have applications for space travel.

I wonder what the moral implications would be... (and Judge Dredd would have predicted this).

<comment><USER3> There could be a small "future tourism" market for people wealthy enough to afford it and willing to leave behind everything and everyone they know.

As a way for people to escape a bad present in hopes of a better future, I don't think it would make much sense. The only people who could afford it probably have a pretty good present.

<comment><USER4> In Japan there are specialists called "night-moving agents" that helps people to disappear from life situations they are unable to cope with.

They are called "johatsu" or "evaporated" people.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-04-25/japans-evaporated- peo...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-04-25/japans-evaporated-people-have- become-obsession-franch-couple)

Here's an article of a book I found on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article doesn't elaborate, is this thought to be an accident while hiking or is there a chance it was more sinister? He was found in the mountains, but there's no other details. The political details about his likeliness of being a force for change in the upcoming presidential election certainly implies funny business would be worth considering.

<comment><USER7> A bit more information from the NY Times article:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/world/asia/seoul-mayor- de...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/world/asia/seoul-mayor-dead.html)

> His disappearance came a day after a secretary in the mayor's office told > the police that he had been sexually harassing her since 2017, two Seoul > television stations reported, attributing the information to unidentified > police sources.

> Mr. Park, 64, had canceled his official schedule for Thursday and called in > sick to City Hall. His daughter told the police that he had left home after > leaving a cryptic, "will-like message," according to Yonhap, the national > news agency, which cited an anonymous police source.

> When Mr. Park had not returned home after five hours, his daughter called > the police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More (scraps of) information here at the moment: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/53346831](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/53346831)

</comment><comment><USER8> "Nearly 600 police officers and firefighters, along with three rescue dogs, were deployed to search for the mayor."

This looks like a typo or a very surprising number of rescue dogs.

<comment><USER9> I don't understand.

<comment><USER10> Which part?

<comment><USER11> why are three dogs surprising? should we expect a lot more

<comment><USER12> Isn't the image weird? 600 people in the search party, split across many directions and only 3 of them have rescue dogs. Given the importance of the event, and the effectiveness of rescue dogs (actually a dog found the mayor), one would have to assume that it's a typo.

Even a 30-man search and rescue party would generally have more than 3 dogs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Refinator, online lecture notes and PDFs with prerequisite lists - <AUTHOR> https://refinator.herokuapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I haven't worked on this in a few months, so I figured I'd just show off the current state of the project since I'm unlikely to be able to work on it in the next couple of months (since I'm in my last few months of high school, and I'll have a lot of exams and such things to deal with). I posted this yesterday[-1], but it didn't get much attention so I figured I'd try one more time.

This is a _really_ simple proof-of-concept for something I've often wished to be able to use myself. Among other things, I've often felt that prerequisite and "read alongside" lists (ideally based on (topic, sophistication) pairs instead of being specific books as it currently is) would be great to have when you're reading something technical. The about page[0] goes into more detail on this.

Please consider adding any documents you frequently refer to to the list: I've seen searches for, among other things, neural networks, modular forms, type theory, von Neumann algebras, and probability in my logs!

Contributions to the code[1] are welcome too! :)

This has also been posted[2] to /r/math on reddit.

\--

[-1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13245427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13245427)

[0]: [https://refinator.herokuapp.com/about](https://refinator.herokuapp.com/about)

[1]: [https://github.com/mrkgnao/refinator](https://github.com/mrkgnao/refinator)

[2]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5jx53e/refinator_lets...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5jx53e/refinator_lets_you_search_for_online_lecture/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I am really liking this idea.

I am not a programmer. I am a network engineer. In my daily work I have to research a lot on network engineering. In fact, atleast one hour in my job each day involves researching about the topics in network engineering that I am working on.

And I see myself using a similar tool when it is available.

One major factor I would like you to consider is that the web is very much transient. The URL that we see now may not exist one month from now, due to various reasons.

One clumsy workaround that I have been using so far is to use archive.org 's wayback machine tool to archive those pages and add those URLs too. Maybe you can implement something similar. It cannot be something you host because I guess you yourself wouldn't know how long you would be interested/able to support this tool.

I know Evernote intends to solve this in a lot of ways. But I hate Evernote due to lots of reasons. I am more of of a OneNote guy.

Also, is your tool is geared especially towards programmers only? There is nothing wrong in that if you would like to keep it that way. But can you also consider adapting it so that people from other technical fields can use it?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Also, is your tool is geared especially towards programmers only?

No! I myself am a math enthusiast, as you can see :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love comments!</comment>


Ask YC: Writing a business plan? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know or have any resources they like to reference when writing up business plans?
We are very early stage and don't have an alpha for our web product yet.
EDIT: we are planning on doing this so we have something to show VC/Angels when we seek funding. which we are needing (somewhat) now. <comment><USER2> Sequoia has some interesting bullet points (right side of page): <http://www.sequoiacap.com/ideas/>

Granted, most online business won't meet all of those requirements, but they also aren't likely to be funded by Sequoia.

<comment><USER3> use that like an outline then make your slidedeck:

Company Purpose

        * Define the company/business in a single declarative sentence.

Problem

        * Describe the pain of the customer (or the customer's customer).
        * Outline how the customer addresses the issue today.

Solution

        * Demonstrate your company's value proposition to make the customer's life better.
        * Show where your product physically sits.
        * Provide use cases.

Why Now

        * Set-up the historical evolution of your category.
        * Define recent trends that make your solution possible.

Market Size

        * Identify/profile the customer you cater to.
        * Calculate the TAM (top down), SAM (bottoms up) and SOM.

Competition

        * List competitors
        * List competitive advantages

Product

        * Product line-up (form factor, functionality, features, architecture, intellectual property).
        * Development roadmap.

Business Model

        * Revenue model
        * Pricing
        * Average account size and/or lifetime value
        * Sales & distribution model
        * Customer/pipeline list

Team

        * Founders & Management
        * Board of Directors/Board of Advisors

Financials

        * P&L
        * Balance sheet
        * Cash flow
        * Cap table
        * The deal

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want a book, the best one I've read (and over time, I've read more than my fair share) is "Business Plans that Win $$$": <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060913916/>

It looks old and outdated and cheesy. But while it is from 1987, the differentiating principles are the same ones that you hear echoed by pg, 37signals, Sequoia, etc. Sound business principles (the kind that an investor who has not drunk of the kool-aid, yet, should possess and be looking for) have not changed in those years. The book pushes you to answer the same hard questions that a good investor will, and position your plan in the best possible light.

<comment><USER5> No doubt - that is one awesome book. I have purchased copies for friends and they've all come back mclovin it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What do you expect to gain from a business plan?

Keep working on your product, get a user base, and worry later about verbalizing the specifics of your projected market share and what day exactly you plan to go cash flow positive.

Sure, a business plan will force you to really question what your value proposition is, and how you plan to differentiate your product, but that can all be done by creating a brief outline.

But if you must: [http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/startups/bu...](http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/startups/business- plans-entities/how-to-write-a-business-plan.aspx)

<comment><AUTHOR> we want something to show potential investors.

<comment><USER7> Investors don't typically look at business plans. They look at your elevator pitch and about a 10 page PPT slide highlighting your main points: your technology, your team, and the market.

<comment><USER8> "Investors don't typically look at business plans."

That's only going to be true if you're making something like a website where the market and the monetization strategy are limited to a few well-understood choices. If your business is something like, for example, selling handicapped- accessible home swimming pools to parents of children with disabilities then a business plan is key.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but the focus of YCN are Internet businesses for the most part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I understand, VC's and Angels in tech startups don't use business plans. They use a 10-15 slide PowerPoint deck, and the elevator pitch, or a 15-30 second pitch.

If you're building a web product, and you're in a tech hub like the Valley, Boston, NYC, Austin, etc... I wouldn't bother with a business plan. If you're not in a tech center, I'd bet you're going to have a hard time raising funding with or without a business plan, but YMMV.

If you're gung ho on a business plan, the "Business Plans for Dummies" is a decent start. SCORE: <http://www.score.org/index.html> offices usually have a lot of good resources on business plans, bus. plan writing software you can use, etc... They would probably have someone who would be willing to look the plan over and critique it for you. And, I know it was mentioned elsewhere, but the Small Business Administration has a lot of resources for small businesses: <http://www.sba.gov/> You also might want to try your local chamber of commerce as well. If you're in a smaller/mid-size city, business people are probably going to be your sources of funding, so you might as well go where they are and start networking. You could make your business plan and ask for a critique from a couple of them and see if it gets you anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> "If you're building a web product, and you're in a tech hub like the Valley, Boston, NYC, Austin, etc... I wouldn't bother with a business plan. If you're not in a tech center, I'd bet you're going to have a hard time raising funding with or without a business plan, but YMMV."

What sucks is I'm not in a hub or really anywhere near one. I'm hoping to find something/someone locally who is willing to fund me (and my co-founder) enough to get to one. Until then... I keep hacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.paulgraham.com/vwplan.html>

We used that as a model when we wrote our first business plan.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are a few good brief articles up on Guy Kawasaki's VC firm's site (Garage Technology Ventures). The most memorable points from the articles were:

1\. The purpose of a business plan / pitch is to _sell_ your company to an investor, not just describe it. (This is a pretty self-evident point, but it's helpful to hear from my perspective as a hacker who's usually very interested in how things work, and sometimes needs to take a step back to think about those kinds of issues.)

2\. Don't try to fool an investor - they see hundreds of business plans a year, and already know all the tricks out there. Just be honest and rely on the merits of your product / team / strategy. If you have a good idea and a plausible way for it to be successful, you've already got all you need. (Another simple idea, but it's nice to hear from an investor that honesty is appreciated, and that a hacker with good communication skills has a chance against a smooth-talking MBA.)

<http://www.garage.com/resources/index.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER12> I was recently talking to some VC's and asked what they thought of my one-page business plan concept. (We're not sending it out to VC's yet.) They loved the idea though. They also said that they believe that a well crafted business plan should be less than 9 pages.

They also distinguished between an operational plan and a business plan, saying most combine them. The "how" you are going to accomplish your goals can be in a separate document for later.

Here is more info on the one-page approach: [http://www.mystealthstartup.com/2008/04/15/a-different- appro...](http://www.mystealthstartup.com/2008/04/15/a-different-approach-to- approaching-vcs/)

Here is what we used to model our business plan from: <http://www.ftpress.com/articles/article.aspx?p=385536>

</comment><comment><USER13> I've read over the comments and I absolutely don't agree with those saying a business plan should not be a priority. If you do it right and spend a lot of effort on it from the start, it's not just a documentation for possible investors but becomes a set of guidelines for your company. It forces you to sit down and really analyze your product, market and the goals of your startup.

Personally I've read my fare share of literature on business plans but must say the book "The Definitive Business Plan" by Richard Stutely stands far above all. It's not written with a specific focus for a Web 2.0 firm but will give you a really clear overview of what you would want to include.

I hope I have been able to be of some help.

Best regards,

Eiso Kant

</comment><comment><USER14> It's important to illustrate strong market potential in size ($$$) and scope (long term growth.) Your business plan should make a compelling argument that illustrates a strong understanding of your operating environment, market trends, and how your business will strategize to use these trends to your advantage.

It's also important to not overlook the risk analysis section. Go a step beyond a simple SWOT analysis and describe your most primary risks, how you will mitigate them, and what your contingency plan is. If you don't have this section in your business plan, investors will undoubtedly grill you with questions on how you plan to deal with risk.

Keep terms consistent and be sure to PROVIDE CITATION for sources used in your market analysis. Yes, it can be a pain, but it goes a long way in showing the reader that you've done your homework.

Following a template is not a sure-fire way to write a success business plan. The outline posted here is a very good starting point--take it and adapt it, add sections, and remove sections to make the plan more relevant to your business and its operating environment. Above all, avoid using business plan software. In any business plan, your primary goals are to illustrate that you know what you're doing (strong team, market and competitive analysis sections), you know how to deal with risk, and that you are passionate about what you're doing. When writing for investors, try to avoid coming across as desperate--give the impression that whether or not you receive money from them, this is what you're doing, the investment would just make things a little easier.

</comment><comment><USER15> So long as you're writing the business plan with the purpose of helping you think through your new venture, rather than with the purpose of being able to drop it off John Doerr's lap and have him be, like, "Sweet plan, dude, here's three million dollars to go make it happen," it's a good idea. But be careful about writing the perfect business plan without working on your product simultaneously; business plans go through many revisions and iterations, just as do most software development projects.

Having said that, I'm one of those guys who really did find the process of writing a business plan to be personally helpful, whether or not a potential investor likes the result. So here's my .02. I'd start with John Nesheim's books, both "High Tech Startup" and "Unfair Advantage." I'd also check out his blog and his reading list. Somewhere in there he has a template that many successful tech companies have found useful for their own business plans. He also has a sample business plan, written by students, that you can take a look at.

Again, a rough 10 or 15 page business plan can't hurt at this stage, but you should be focused on making your product awesome, so that people will want it. Get that handled, and then worry about writing a really tight executive summary and you'll be good to go.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER16> Write a business plan for the experience. Not that many people will be reading it. Write it for yourself, and for just exploring your monetization options.

For writing a business plan, try the book Hurdle (OOS on Amazon at the moment) or try the following from the SBA: [http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/plan/writeabusinessp...](http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/plan/writeabusinessplan/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> I've used the PwC format for a class that I've taken in entrepreneurship. As people have mentioned, the usefulness of a business plan varies depending on what you're doing. However, if you can write a good one, it really forces you to think things out well.

[http://www.pwcv2rform.com/cgi- local/hcregister.cgi?link=pdf/...](http://www.pwcv2rform.com/cgi- local/hcregister.cgi?link=pdf/devbusplexmpl.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> here you go guys...

a small business opportunity. allow people to post their redacted business/operational plans for funded/non-funded entities.

allow people who are looking for live plans to be able to search through abstracts/text of the plans to get a feel for what's there... charge people something small, like $10/year for the rights to access/view x number of plans.

charge them something less if they post their own plans...

also, have the ability to have plans (anonymously) reviewed by given trusted people within the site...

to deal with someone's fear that a given idea might be "stolen" the actual idea portion of the doc can be left out... for the purpose of this site, it wouldn't be that important/critical...

thoughts/comments...

if you want to build something like this, let me know.. i'd probably be willing to personally throw a few grand into something like this....

-bruce email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER19> Two words (or is it one?): VentureHacks

I've found this site to be an awesome resource.

<http://venturehacks.com/articles/deck>

</comment><comment><USER18> here you go guys...

a small business opportunity. allow people to post their redacted business/operational plans for funded/non-funded entities.

allow people who are looking for live plans to be able to search through abstracts/text of the plans to get a feel for what's there... charge people something small, like $10/year for the rights to access/view x number of plans.

charge them something less if they post their own plans...

also, have the ability to have plans (anonymously) reviewed by given trusted people within the site...

to deal with someone's fear that a given idea might be "stolen" the actual idea portion of the doc can be left out... for the purpose of this site, it wouldn't be that important/critical...

thoughts/comments...

if you want to build something like this, let me know.. i'd probably be willing to personally throw a few grand into something like this....

-bruce firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER20> There's software called Palo Alto Business Plan Pro, available for $99 I think or illegally. It will do all the numerical calculations involved in a business plan. You can use it to crank out a bullshit business plan in an hour.

</comment><comment><USER21> There are many, many books on the subject. They're all fairly standard. Go to your bookstore and get the one you prefer.

Daniel</comment>


Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined - <AUTHOR> http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/06/human-capability-peaked-about-1975-and.html

<comment><USER2> You might want to look over some of the frankly racist and reactionary stuff on Charlton's blog before buying into this simplistic thesis. Or the story about how he got fired from the editorship of his flaky pseudoscience journal: [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/elsevier_to_medica...](http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/elsevier_to_medical_hypotheses_editor_br.php)

Hm, actually you don't need to read past the linked post for obvious indications that the man is a complete crackpot. Molecular biology is trivial?

<comment><USER3> From the masthead: "An Orthosphere Blog. Ortho-sphere = orthodox sphere = reactionary Christians (Christian = 'Mere Christianity' of all denominations)"

That was enough for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...and nostalgia isn't what it used to be either.

The world is a much, much, much better place now than 35 years ago. We are healthier, happier, richer, and better off than then. The world is a freer, richer, more democratic, more connected, more diverse, more tolerant place now:

<http://www.gapminder.org/world/>

The author can't see the difference betwen _focus_ and _capability_. We're spreading all the human capability more evenly now, because we're not stuck in a myopic and monomaniac cold-war world where the only thing that matters is beating the other guy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very weak premise, basing human capability on lunar landings alone. I can argue that if we do not reproduce the Higgs boson in forty years that we've peaked right now; more likely, the interest simply isn't there in repeating an experiment for the good of science unless capitalist interest catches up, which we are seeing in spades with private companies making strides toward suborbital and orbital flight.

</comment><comment><USER6> > 40 years ago we could do it – repeatedly – but since then we have _not_ been > to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we have not been to the moon > since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it. Humans have lost the > capability.

This sentence makes a lot more sense of you replace instances of "could" with "wanted to" and "capability" with "desire". As does the remainder of the article. There's no particular reason to go to the moon and it's extraordinarily expensive, so we don't do it.

Edit: I guess this guy is just a little irrational. Here's another example where he says that science is a curse that comes from not having a shared theology: [http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/06/cancer-of- epist...](http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/06/cancer-of- epistemology.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is so ridiculous I don't even know where to begin. Apparently, and without any evidence given, humans cannot fly to the moon anymore and that's why we don't go: we lost the ability to do so and we're ashamed to admit it. Again, there's no evidence for this, and no attempt to explain how or why we have advanced so far in so many other areas.

Then, as if this stupid theory wasn't enough to offend the intelligence of the reader, we get this gem: affirmative action and media whoring committee members stole our ability to fly to the moon.

Just wow. Why was this posted? As a spot-the-fallacies exercise?

Frankly, this guy seems supremely uninformed.

 _That landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans._

How or why was it the most difficult problem solved? Why was is the supreme human achievement? We'll never know, because the author is too poor of a thinker to bother with justifying his assumptions.

It's post-hoc reasoning if I've ever seen it. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc>)

<comment><USER8> All I needed to read in order to figure out that this guy is a complete loony:

 _Since the mid-1970s the rate of progress has declined in physics, biology and the medical sciences – and some of these have arguably gone into reverse, so that the practice of science in some areas has overall gone backwards, valid knowledge has been lost and replaced with phony fashionable triviality and dishonest hype. Some of the biggest areas of science – medical research, molecular biology, neuroscience, epidemiology, climate research – are almost wholly trivial or bogus._

If anyone really thinks progress has slowed in either physics, biology, or the medical sciences since the 70s, I would be happy to debunk those claims, but I'm not going to even bother up-front, it's so absurdly wrong that I doubt anyone will even ask for a reference...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author's entire argument rests upon this proposition:

 _"That landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans."_

Yet there utterly no justification of this statement.

I would have thought that a professor of theoretical medicine would have some understanding of the importance of justifying one's arguments with hard evidence, but apparently not in this case.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd be interested to see comparisons between the engineering of getting humans to the moon versus keeping the LHC working.

<comment><USER3> Apollo was way bigger than the LHC, $200B (today's dollars) vs $7B. The engineering of the LHC is impressive, but a lot of it is scaling such as bigger semiconducting magnets. With Apollo everything was unknown, huge rockets, space suits, life support, space rendezvous, cameras, pens, even Tang.

<comment><USER11> > With Apollo everything was unknown, huge rockets, space suits, life support, > space rendezvous, cameras, pens, even Tang.

Tang wasn't invented for the space program, it was merely a commercial food product they happened to find a use for. The Space Pen was inspired by the needs of the space program and was used in it, but wasn't a prerequisite for it.

[http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2011/01/tang-...](http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2011/01/tang- was-not-invented-for-the-space-program/)

<http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp>

<comment><USER3> Tang was a joke.

I believe the color video camera for was specially made by RCA, but the workhorse still camera was an off-the-shelf Hasselblad.

I had thought that the Space Pen was an existing commercial product. Apparently I was only half right. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would argue the issue is more about the priorities of the American government and also its economic decline. America has fundamental issues that means it can not longer fund such a mission, but it is likely that other governments and economies that are healthier and with different priorities could do manned missions to the moon.

It is important to differentiate between human capacity and the capacity and priorities of the American government. They are not the same thing, even if when one lives in the US, it can seem like it.

One could argue (similarly incorrectly) that human capacity in Britain peaked in the late 1800s, but again that was because that was the peak of the Britian empire.</comment>


Easily reviewing PEP8 issues over Pull Requests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/OrkoHunter/pep8speaks <comment><USER2> Nice! And useful, too. You should make this a "Show HN: ", though.</comment>


Show HN: TrueJob 1.0 – Pandora for jobs and data for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://www.truejob.com/?release=1.0 <comment><USER2> How is this similar to Pandora?

In Pandora you specify one song/band you're interested in, and it shows you a list of similar things.

Can I say that I work at Microsoft, and have it show me a list of jobs that are super comparable to my current position? This would be great for pivoting out of a stagnant job...not something I need now, but I've been there in the past.

I see an incredible amount of voting, highlighting, keywording, etc. Maybe I'm missing it.

I'm almost certainly being nitpicky about how you invoke Pandora.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our tagline has always been a bit of a struggle -- we originally said OkCupid for jobs, and then tried (briefly) doing Tinder for Jobs, but none of it felt really "close" to what we were going for.

The idea behind using the Pandora analogy was: when you start a new station on Pandora, you input something you want to listen to, and it starts playing music, at which point you can "like" or "dislike" the song to get Pandora to "learn" what type of music you like.

In that same way, you can "like" or "dislike" a lot of things about a job posting, and then we can give job recommendations will try to find jobs that fit you based on that.

But even outside that, we also allow you to filter through a bunch of other things, so the Pandora analogy breaks down somewhat fast about that time. If people have thoughts as to how we can describe this differently, we're all for it :)

<comment><USER3> Why are you trying to force yourself as a comparison to other companies? In certain cases it makes complete sense and from a brand building perspective can work wonders, but it doesn't always work. I would focus more on describing the value of the product in a clear and concise way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, I've never been a fan of "X for Y" type of analogies, but our service/services is hard to describe succinctly -- we want to get across that we are a "smart" job search company, and we have the thumbs up and thumbs down like Pandora, but also that we are more than that, including giving analytics that end up being very useful.

We've thrown around "Data driven startup job search" and "Recommendation based job search engine", but those are pretty vague and don't feel quite right either.

To be honest, we're so close to this, that we would love an outsiders take on us -- if you had to describe us, what would you call us? Maybe we just always overthink it and someone will have the perfect way to describe us :)

<comment><USER4> Jobs you like

<comment><USER5> Jobs like you

<comment><USER6> You like Jobs

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf Having spent the last few years working on the jobs industry/problem, I wish you the best. Most of the major players function on antiquated business models that have carried over from the newspaper days. Measuring success is still done on a pay-per-click basis, which in the scope of hiring really makes no sense. I hope you can move the needle forward!

<comment><USER7> This is the number one issue people who post jobs on job sites have. Too many useless clicks and completely unqualified applicants such as plumbers applying to programming jobs.

<comment> enahs-sf I think a cost per application system makes much more sense in terms of measuring ROI and trying to solve for cost per hire.

The hard part of creating a matching algorithm for jobs is dealing with people who are looking to change careers. For example the plumber who has been reading up on algorithms and learning C++ in her spare time. Your algorithm would likely classify this person to a plumber career track based on her experience, but struggle to show this person jobs in programming. On the flip side of your marketplace, you would likely screen this persons application from ever going to this employer for just the same reason. The experience on their resume is irrelevant for a programming job. This in my experience is the crux of the job industry problem today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks interesting. Some possible improvements:

* add salary info (where that's available) * offer the possibility to search for remote jobs

<comment><AUTHOR> Remote jobs has been one of the most requested filters from the feedback we've gotten, so we're definitely looking into that. Salaries are harder (since we gather jobs directly from company websites and salaries are rarely listed), but in the future the hope would be to use the salary data we do have to at least suggest what salaries are for comparable jobs. Stay tuned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cannot right-click or shift-click to open a job in a new tab. I do not want to click the back button when browsing a list. I want to open each item in a new tab.

<comment><USER10> That makes sense. We'll look at making an update so that works.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey Guys,

It's been 2 years since I first submitted a side project I was working on to Hacker News ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8644172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8644172)), and so much has changed since then (including our tagline). We've done a major overhaul on so many systems that I wanted to let you guys know what we've been up to, how we've changed, and get feedback to let us know we are still on the right path.

The idea with TrueJob was that we want to help job seekers find employers and vice versa, while giving analytics to both sides to help them improve as well. We allow job seekers to like or dislike almost anything about a job posting (location, company, random words or phrases in the job description), and then employers can see that data on the other side:

[https://gfycat.com/HarmfulSizzlingKitty](https://gfycat.com/HarmfulSizzlingKitty) [https://gfycat.com/UntidyMagnificentKodiakbear](https://gfycat.com/UntidyMagnificentKodiakbear)

We want to improve job search -- we know how hard it is to hire as a startup, and we know how hard job seekers have it trying to search for jobs. We want to give data that helps both sides improve, and we think we've done it in quite a cool way.

So, what's happened since our last posting?

* I quit my job and focused solely on TrueJob

* TrueJob was setup as an official business, incorporating in Deleware, setting up business accounts and getting a good "base" for the business

* I started building a lot more features into the product, and also working on a lot of the bugs, errors, and performance issues that people had mentioned in the comments

* I built out the entire other side of the platform (employer side), and added in a bunch of support to setup organizations

* TrueJob became a team of two in October 2015 when my coufounder, Michael Kling, joined onboard, and has really helped flesh out a ton of code and build up the product even more

* We built out a custom scraping solution that scrapes company websites to find job postings, and keeps track of how many jobs a company has, what system they use to post those jobs, and how those jobs change over time -- Here's a snippet from AirBNB for example: [http://i.imgur.com/FjPL8UB.png](http://i.imgur.com/FjPL8UB.png)

* We've interviewed startups on how they hire, like FarmLogs and TentCraft, Arbor Networks and more ([https://blog.truejob.com/](https://blog.truejob.com/))

* We've become the second biggest listing of startup jobs in the United States, outside of AngelList (mostly from our scraping processes)

* We've created a custom tool to embed a company's job postings into any page (which we've used with Michigan tech communities like the TechBrewery, TC New Tech, and other Michigan businesses)

* We've added in a lot more ways to filter for jobs and get information about companies, like our new tooltips or filtering

* We've built out job recommendations based on things you like/dislike/etc

* We interviewed with Sid of Gitlab here: [https://about.gitlab.com/2016/10/03/yc-application-office-ho...](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/10/03/yc-application-office-hours/), where we talked about our YC app and more

<comment><USER11> Why is thus product focused on startups, and why is this better than angel list?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just a few things that came up to mind when I first arrived on the website:

As a UI/UX perfectionist, the dark theme gives me a terrible vibe. It's just not well executed. I think you guys would be much better off with a white themed site. Look at inspiration from the new Stripe website!

I do believe that the splash page could be redesigned much better, it's very dull and it doesn't really have a major call to action when I land. You should make the signing up / searching more in your face.

Secondly, the tagline is horrible, not everyone is familiar with Pandora and the concept of the station, etc.

Good place to iterate from though! Good luck!

<comment><USER10> Thanks for your thoughts, appreciate the feedback! We've gotten lots of mixed reactions on the dark theme (e.g. some people have said it stands out from most current sites with white themes), but it's something we're thinking about. Thanks also for your points on the home page - we're continuing to iterate on that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I noticed this job is under "Denver" but the posting itself says India. [https://www.truejob.com/locations/denver- colorado/jobs?sort=...](https://www.truejob.com/locations/denver- colorado/jobs?sort=date&job=front-end-developer-34rmw)

<comment><USER10> Ah, thanks for finding that, that's something for us to fix. As Scott said below, we find most of the job postings direct from company websites. We do different things to parse the locations when we're scraping, but it's not perfect yet. We have a 'report' feature for cases like this, but right now that only appears when you are logged in. Probably we'll add something like that available to everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anything outside the US?

<comment><USER10> Hey - I'm Mike, the other cofounder of TrueJob. We're focused on just the US right now (originally just Michigan), but once we get more resources we're hoping to expand!

<comment><USER15> There's a lot of non-US devs on here; you might want to set up a mailing list for them to sign up with. I'd like to hear again when you open up for the rest of the world! (NL here)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why does the location page for Charlotte, NC say "ANN ARBOR" in orange letters in the top left?

[https://www.truejob.com/locations/charlotte](https://www.truejob.com/locations/charlotte)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oof, good point. Looks like we had hardcoded in a variable for location profiles that we meant to take out in the end. We're pushing up a fix now for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can't sign up because they think my email address is fake.

Edit: They are fixing this, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I know we keep at least one spam email point open for people to register under (letthemeatspam.com), which is a Mailinator alias. If that still doesn't work, reach out to me at scott ~AT~ truejob.com and I'll get you sorted out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love the layout and design. Not sure if I missed this but is there a way to specify all of California in the search function instead of just individual cities? I think that would be useful for some people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! It's actually fairly easy for us to specify all of California (it was actually part of our alpha release years ago), but we were never quite happy with how the UX of it would work -- how do we break out state vs city, or both combined?

We do want to make this happen though, and it shouldn't be too bad, but we need to figure out a good way to show it to the user. Stay tuned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congrats on starting to work on it full-time.

If you scrape the jobs from companies, what incentives do the companies have to pay to post the jobs on TrueJob?

</comment><comment><USER20> Puppet Labs in Portland has two company entries, one with 36 jobs, the other with 30.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right -- we scrape a good deal of startups, but sometimes we get duplicates, and although we try to de-duplicate via a lot of different methods, sometimes they sneak through.

This one should be fixed now, but there's probably some other examples people will find as well, and we catch and fix them when we see them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pricing page is on point

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man! We thought it would be funny if it said $0 no matter what you chose, because we were going to be free during beta.

Also, if you're back in Michigan sometime, let me buy you a beer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> No jobs in Canada I see :/

<comment><USER23> There are some actually. You just can't search for them directly. A keyword search for Toronto turned up a few. Unfortunately when you try to sign up, there's a message that it's not available in Canada yet. Curious why if the the OP is around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> bug: your job post calculator = 0 all the time.

</comment><comment><USER25> Congrats guys!</comment>


Game of Thrones torrents: ALL results removed in compliance with EUCD / DMCA - <AUTHOR> http://torrentz.com/search?q=game+of+thrones <comment><USER2> Great! Less stupid junk video stuff on internets — the better. Consumers of this popcorn crap must pay and must suffer from DRMs.</comment>


Help, I'm getting arrested - <AUTHOR> http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20119537-251/help-im-getting-arrested/

<comment><USER2> So heres an interesting point:

1) No Twitter/FB integration. Yes, you want this NOT using your mobile data. You just need that msg sent ASAP with minimal overhead so that the message has the highest chance of getting out there. Also proably easier to implement.

2) If you are getting arrested, how will you turn on the phone, get to the app, open it, and long-hold the bullseye. This should be set up as part of a buddy system. O well... first steps and all i guess.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cue a bunch of people being shot / tasered / gassed as they reach for their phones?</comment>


Cassowary Constraint Solver in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://badros.blogspot.com/2011/05/cassowary-constraint-solver-in.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed the Cappuccino folks eyeing this paper on Twitter...

(Since the new Lion Auto Layout facility is based on the same algorithms.)</comment>


MacBook Pro Retina Display Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/5998/macbook-pro-retina-display-analysis

<comment><USER2> What happens if you span the desktop across the internal retina display and an external non-retina display and then move a window so that parts of it are on both displays? Is it just double size on the non-retina (which would be bad)? Or does it get drawn twice, in both resolutions, and each display gets their appropriate resolution (which would be preferable, but might be overly complex and taxing on the hardware)?

<comment><USER3> It appears correctly-sized on both displays, at least when I tried it in Lion a few months ago. It's an impressive effect.

If you have Xcode and Quartz Debug you can enable HiDPI on any external monitor and try it out.

<comment><USER4> Also, if you have AirDisplay and a new Retina iPad, you can run the iPad as a HiDPI monitor.

It'll be a little laggy, though, which probably won't be the case with a non- WiFi connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I really wish the $2199 SKU had the 512GB SSD, or at least offered it as an option - otherwise the spec is near perfect in my mind."

Many of my colleagues agree. Slower cpu with 512GB at ~$2500 would be just about perfect.

<comment><USER6> It is a typical strategy of Apple to _slightly_ underspec desirable aspects of a product like hard drive capacity or RAM (...or ports - _sigh_ ). That way, they can release an updated version where those specs _are_ bumped, resulting in a product that is perceived as _significantly_ better instead of just _slightly_ better in comparison to the previous model.

I think it's also about using components that give you the largest gross margin - A _slightly_ outdated model of a component will always be cheaper and more readily available than the cutting edge model - which further carries the risk of being less broadly tested.

An in-between step is often to offer that option (like a larger SSD), but at significant additional cost. Particularly with things like RAM, apple sometimes charges you more than twice the regular market price: Getting a Mac Pro, for instance, you pay ~1k € extra when jumping from 6GB RAM to 32GB. Buying 32GB of RAM (yes, ECC and everything), sets you back 400€.

Their SSD prices have gotten slightly more reasonable lately (buying the regular HDD option, selling that drive and buying your own SSD often saved you hundreds), although they're still a good bit off - especially considering that Apple buys OEM from Toshiba and in bulk.

My personal conclusion is always to buy the bare minimum configuration and upgrade myself - I purchased a Macbook Pro 17" at the smallest configuration and added an SSD and an extra regular 1TB drive. Will probably add some RAM later this year. Had I gotten all that at Apple right away, I would probably have to pay 50% extra (although they don't even offer the option of exchanging the DVD Drive with an HDD).

<comment><USER7> If this is like the Air (which I'm waiting for the teardown), then I'm not sure how normal people are supposed to upgrade the memory as it's soldered, while the hard drive is upgradeable (though probably not feasible for non- techies unaccustomed to opening up their laptop).

<comment> X-Istence Apple has released pictures on their website: <http://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/design/>

Scroll down and mouse over the image of the bottom of the MacBook Pro with Retina display. Notice that the RAM is soldered on, the SSD however is not.

<comment><USER8> Thought I saw this in the video on apple.com... Saddened to learn that I was right.

My PC loving mates are going to tear the ass outta me on this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The smart move now will be to wait 2-3 months before buying the Retina Display machine. I'm convinced that by the launch of Mountain Lion the OS will let you use the full resolution of the machine for UI, also it will give some time to other apps to upgrade their UI in order to support the new resolution.

While the upgrade to Mountain Lion will be free, I have a funny feeling that Adobe will charge (or at least will try) you some extra money for an updated version of Photoshop for Retina Display MacBook Pro :).

Any self respecting company or individual developer will probably provide a free upgrade for the UI of their applications soon in order to support the new resolution.

<comment><USER10> Why? Apple products have always been such that to gain maximum "value" they need to be bought at launch. And isnt an OS upgrade going to be 'just' $30?

<comment><USER11> The keynote and Apple website point out that all purchases of Macs from now on will come with a free upgrade to Mountain Lion once it's released.

I wonder if the free upgrade will be the App Store version that allows you to install it on all authorized versions. If so, this could be an advantage to buying after the Mountain Lion release, since Macs that come with newer OSes generally don't allow you to upgrade your other Macs to the new OS.

<comment><USER12> The way it works now when you get a new Mac, the iLife apps (and presumably Lion) are "granted" to the Apple ID you use to register the computer. Thus you can use that ID to install them on other computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is an advantage of hiDPI screens that hadn't quite clicked for me before - a throwback to one of the advantages of CRTs, allowing multiple resolutions to look good on a single display.

<comment><USER14> While true, to an extent, it's also the case that resolutions other than native will require some kind of supersampling (eg. AA), unless they divide cleanly into native resolution - a problem CRTs never faced.

This results in both blur (ngligible with a high enough resolution, but doesn't seem to be the case here, seeing the Safari vs Chrome comparison) and a performance hit.

<comment><USER15> I get the impression that at every "resolution", we're really at the native retina resolution, but with UI widgets scaled to different levels, and different present-day resolutions reported to applications. Can anyone with one of these beauties confirm?

<comment><USER14> Yes, but this just amounts to scaling via the compositor and graphics stack (hardware-accellerated, of course), as opposed to being left to the 'screen' (post-GPU-hardware/firmware) as would be the case when actually driving a screen at non-native resolution.

See the Safari/Chrome comparison in the article to see what this means in real terms...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really don't like the approach of hiding the display's real pixel size. By now, we should have solved the problem of displaying GUIs with correctly sized elements at various resolutions. This approach only makes it more complicated to do it right in the future.

<comment><USER5> Both Apple and Windows have always hardcoded their PPI values to 72 and 96 respectively. I've never quite understood this.

<comment><USER4> Apple's is based on the typographic convention of 72 points per inch, thus text on a Mac screen would be drawn the same size as it would print.

According to Wikipedia, Microsoft's 96 is apparently based on screen text being viewed from a different distance than printed text, so they use 96 ppi to account for the difference, which also gave them more a few more pixels with which to draw characters. Apple had to draw a 10 point character 10 pixels high, but Microsoft could draw a 10 point character 13 pixels high, giving them more to work with.

<comment><USER17> > Apple's is based on the typographic convention of 72 points per inch, thus > text on a Mac screen would be drawn the same size as it would print.

This would be true if the displays were also 72 dpi, which they are not. DPI in Windows can be set manually. Mine is set to 84, based on the handy on- screen ruler in the settings page. If I view a document in Word's print preview at 100% zoom, and stick a printed page on my display (via static electricity, try it) next to it, they match exactly. Very handy for printing over a page with existing content (paper with preprinted corporate borders, headers).

<comment><USER4> I think the Mac displays used to be, at least at the maximum size. I vaguely recall Mac monitors being somewhat "lower-resolution" than same-size Windows monitors, just because of this. Maybe it was Mac laptops? Not sure. Certainly the original Mac 128 was fixed resolution.

Nowadays, of course, it's a free-for-all.

<comment><USER18> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K#Peripherals>:

 _"built-in display was a one-bit black-and-white, 9 in (23 cm) CRT with a resolution of 512×342 pixels, establishing the desktop publishing standard of 72 PPI"_

ImageWriter prints were 144dpi, and you could verify thtat the system was WYSIWIG by holding a print in front of the screen. Also, Mac OS graphics used 1/72" pixels for years (with various hacks added soon in order to support the LaserWriter's 300 dpi)

Windows (initially?) had separate notions of device pixels and logical pixels (dialog units?) that allowed for some resolution independence. Its most obvious disadvantage was that it was not simple (neigh impossible?) to know whether two parallel lines you drew looked equally wide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm trying to determine whether the "75% less glare" claim means this is usable outside. Anyone seen feedback on this?

<comment><USER20> also interested in this, but doubt it. It needs more brightness too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was worried the Retinabook was only going to double the pixels. The ability to select a 1920x1200 "mode" is awesome.

<comment><USER22> How is that more awesome than any other LCD monitor that is able to up-scale?

<comment><USER23> Because it doesn't upscale, it downscales.

<comment><USER10> Everytime someone makes such a comment, my mind is blown at how we already live in the future. Just a few weeks ago if someone would've told me that they're planning to _downscale_ to 1920x1200 on a _15"_ screen, on a portable computer I would've thought they were crazy.

<comment><USER24> It's not that impressive, when you consider that Sony has let you select a 1920 resolution on some of their 13" laptops for over a year.

Lest I be considered a nay-sayer, I'm going to be getting an MBP largely for the resolution boost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I buy a new MacBook Pro every year, and the dilemma here is similar to Anand's. I bought the high-resolution display on my current 15.4" MBP at 1680x1050. The resolution can be scaled to 1680x1050 or 1920x1200, but I'd like to know how blurry that is as opposed to native resolution. I've flipped my current MBP to 1440x852 to get a feel for the same effective real estate as the Retina Display's native resolution. Will try it out for a few days before pulling the trigger on upgrading.

<comment><USER26> Per the article, the new MBP actually renders at double the scaled resolution (so 3360x2100 for 1680x1050) and then downscales that to fit 2880x1800. (See the screenshots.) It shouldn't look blurry at all. In fact, it should look considerably better than a MBP with a 1680x1050 display.

<comment><USER27> I don't know which screenshots you look at but there sure is blur when not dealing with apps that aware of the retina display, such as chrome (left) vs. safari (right): [http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5998/Screen%20Shot%202012-0...](http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5998/Screen%20Shot%202012-06-11%20at%208.21.29%20PM_575px.png)

In other words, it depends but it most certainly will have its share of issues, question is for how long.

<comment><USER4> I would probably look at apps other than Chrome. There's "unaware of the retina display", and there's "we eschewed native APIs to some extent and rolled our own implementations of stuff".

I don't know if this is the case, exactly, with Chrome. I'm just saying it might not be wise to generalize from Chrome's appearance to retina-naive 3rd party apps in general.

<comment><USER28> > I don't know if this is the case, exactly, with Chrome

As part of its security model, Chrome does something akin to rendering everything offscreen in an unprivileged process then passing that to the user- facing process.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that sounds like it would do it. On the bright side, maybe they just have to double their offscreen buffer size.

<comment><USER16> Actually, since it's 2D, they have to quadruple it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For creators, one of the reasons to own these devices is to create content for retina devices.

I'm curious of Apple and Adobe have worked together to allow image documents to display at true resolution, within a scaled output?

Does that make sense? I suppose what I'm saying is, working at a 100% canvas at 100% zoom level (instead of say, a 50% scale level) while all system elements are scaled.

EDIT: This might not even matter, from a practical perspective.

<comment><USER30> This is Adobe you're talking about. Wait for CS7 or CS8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm torn between my complete refusal to buy all things Apple and the fact that I really want this. :(

</comment><comment><USER32> Who makes the retina display? Samsung or LG?

<comment><USER33> samsung (source: ifixit article)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why are they faking the resolution? Is it that the graphics card has problems, or is it to make their own apps look nicer than competitors, or what? I hope they are not rescaling stuff like photoshop to something other than actual screen res, otherwise they will severely piss off graphics professionals even more than they managed with the Mac Pro workstation non-upgrade.

[edit] reading through the article, it seems that they've either gone and broken the word 'resolution', or Anand is very confused.

 _At 1440 x 900 you don't get any increase in desktop resolution compared to a standard 15-inch MacBook Pro, but everything is ridiculously crisp._

I have read this sentence three times and it still makes no sense unless the word 'resolution' has been completely mauled by marketing idiots.

<comment><USER35> They clearly stated in the keynote that Adobe is working on a retina version of Photoshop.

<comment><USER34> So the current existing version of photoshop can't access all the pixels then? Excuse me while I scream in horror and dismay.

<comment><USER36> > So the current existing version of photoshop can't access all the pixels > then?

It can if you set the global resolution to 2880x1800, but because most UI elements are likely bitmapped it'll be unusable: a 30px button will remain 30px, but will be a quarter the physical surface.

<comment><USER37> It didn't look like you could set it to 2880x1800 (1:1), unless I missed something.

<comment><USER36> Ah well, that would be sad. Though maybe not surprising either (after reading the article, it looks like the "emulated" resolutions are limited but games get access to the native resolution).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Craig Venter: The Biological-Digital Converter - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/conversation/biology-at-the-speed-of-light

<comment><AUTHOR> And here is an opposing view, by the brilliant, if slightly insane, techno- pundit George Gilder:

Evolution and Me - The Darwinian theory has become an all-purpose obstacle to thought rather than an enabler of scientific advance <http://www.discovery.org/a/3631></comment>