Mozilla's BrowserQuest - Massively Multiplayer HTML5 Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ <comment><USER2> Article about how the game works: <https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/03/browserquest/>

<comment><USER3> Since they used localStorage, you can modify the state of your character.

If you want the best weapons in the game, the sword is called 'goldensword' and the armor is call 'goldenarmor'.

<comment><USER4> What would be the point of that? The only fun in the game (besides the fact that it works at all) is finding the new gear and getting the achievements. If you just edit your character, then you may as well not even play.

<comment><USER3> TBH I just did it because I could.

<comment><USER5> How'd you do it? I'm trying to do:

localStorage.data = localStorage.data.replace('sword1', goldensword')

But it just reverts after I type that into the console. Could someone explain how it works?

<comment><USER4> I ran this line

      localStorage.data = JSON.stringify((function (data) { data.player.weapon = 'goldensword'; return data })(JSON.parse(localStorage.data)))

and then reloaded the page, and I had the golden sword.

<comment><USER5> Ah, I see. I didn't reload the page. I wonder if there is any way to do this without reloading the page...

It be fun to show off if someone figured it out.

<comment><USER6> The client server protocol only lets you specify arbitrary equipment when you connect. To change equipment during the game, you have to Types.Messages.LOOT a dropped item.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I don't understand. Types.Messages.LOOT can be used how exactly?

<comment><USER6> LOOT is an action in the client server protocol - you can't easily use it. The important part is that you can only equip an item that is available to be picked up, unlike when you first connect. You can specify any weapon and armor when you first connect, which is why editing the local storage works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like how they made it really easy to get in. No signup just name your guy and go. I generally don't have time to play games however I appreciate the amount of work that goes into them. Good Job.

<comment><USER8> Realm of the Mad God is even better on that front: it auto-generate a name for you, you just hit "Play" and you're in the game ready to rock (you can edit the game once you're hooked of course, and create a formal account, and start paying your dealer, but the initial experience is "hit play and you're playing")

<comment><USER9> best "tutorial" i've seen indeed.

<comment><USER10> I thought the most clever part was how it throws you (pretty much) directly into killing your first boss monster. You feel awesome within a few minutes of starting, immediately before getting told to go kill more boss monsters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> NPC soldiers with HTML5 orange shield are just too cute :)

And this is actually a nice little game. Buy then again, where is browserid and open badges support ?

<comment><USER12> I have browserID supported on a few projects I've shipped, adoption comes down to the developers, all Mozilla can do is provide the tools.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but this is a Mozilla project, so no excuses on that one.

<comment><USER14> It is on github, you could propose a patch... Mozilla is a not-for-profit, this is a technological demo...

<comment> vertex-four Mozilla are trying to push their BrowserID on the world though. A fairly popular (among devs) technological demo seems like the right place to start that; it'd show us how easy it is for users to use, and how simple it is to integrate. Not using it is a wasted opportunity.

<comment><USER15> This demo is really for HTML5, not for BrowserID. BrowserID might add an unrefined and unnecessary hurdle to the game. Then all the other platform dev's and press will say silly things like HTML5 requires BrowserID or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome! Thanks for the productivity kill mozilla. Looks great and it's a lot of fun. Now I want to learn how to do this stuff in the browser.

</comment><comment><USER17> Brilliant game, the little Easter Eggs really made it worth playing.

For anyone wondering about the 2 mystery achievements at the end; the clues are in client/js/game.js ( [https://github.com/mozilla/BrowserQuest/blob/master/client/j...](https://github.com/mozilla/BrowserQuest/blob/master/client/js/game.js) ), line 278.

Hiding the clues in the code like that just adds to the coolness. Great touch!

</comment><comment><USER18> Very fun and well done. Nice of them to publish the source as well..

<comment><USER19> It feels very polished indeed. It works just fine on Safari, SFX included, although there's no music (dunno if it is supposed to have). A little musical theme per area would be nice.

There are easter eggs all over the place. I don't want to spoil them but a bunch of them really made me smile.

<comment><USER20> There is music, it can listen to it on Chrome.

<comment><USER9> as i could on firefox

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can follow the player population in real-time on this dashboard: <http://browserquest.mozilla.org/status/>

<comment><USER22> Can anybody explain what the dashboard is showing?

<comment><USER23> 3 servers, 10 worlds per server, number is people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just collected the 20 achivements. Really fun demo, inspired me to learn more about pixel art. I can code well but my art skills are bad. Wish they expanded it...

</comment><comment><USER25> This is so awesome. Well done Mozillians!

</comment><comment><USER12> Could not move while on Chrome... was nifty though, I applaud the effort put into this. One day Flash, one day...

<comment><USER26> I'm on Chrome and it worked fine. Took a while to connect to the server, but other than that, it works great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> <https://github.com/mozilla/BrowserQuest/blob/master/server>

It's weird to me that they list the node dependencies in the server README instead of using a package.json.

Very cool project, though.

</comment><comment><USER28> Did anyone figure out how to get to the mario pipe, and what the ??? quest is?

<comment><USER29> First ??? quest: Get an orange potion (to get the Firefox costume)

Second ??? quest: Enter a portal. I found one to the east-southeast to the starting point.

Still trying to figure out the last one.

<comment><USER30> The last one is Rickroll'd, you meet Rick Astley in one of the caves.

<comment><USER28> It's in the maze, I've heard, but I can't find Rick.

<comment><USER31> He's in there. Try unorthodox combinations. I think there's some state stored on whether or not you went through "up" doors or "down" doors.

<comment><USER32> Always go to the left, even if it's the entries to the top or the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's still a long way to compete with Flash in the area of games but it's nice to see this effort.

When I talked to Flash developers, their main concerns were having to worry about different browsers and their belief that everything became "open source" automatically because you can just view the source. They don't want to spend weeks on a project that sets them apart from other competitors only to be copied by the next guy within a day.

<comment><USER34> Shouldn't the beauty of games be the gameplay and the art, not the technology? Isn't it a good thing that the technology behind a game is no longer the primary selling point?

<comment><USER35> It'll be nice when the tech doesn't matter but if someone can't play your game because they prefer a different browser then that kind of sucks.

<comment><USER36> If you're referring to IE, well IE will give up Flash support anyway.

<comment><USER37> If you're referring to Windows 8, Flash will still work in desktop mode. Plugins will only be disabled in Metro mode.

And yes, I think this separation is ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The mouse movement is laggy. Why not use hardware mouse speeds? For an interaction with that much frequency, it makes the game unplayable.

</comment><comment><USER39> Anyone know how they do the networking?

Websock , Comet or ajax?

<comment><USER2> All the info are here: <http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/03/browserquest/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I can't wait until browsers have inbuilt peer-to-peer networking. Then we could do something like this entirely client side

</comment><comment><USER41> I forked this <https://github.com/mkrecny/BrowserQuest> \- added a static file server on branch static and dependency management via package.json. Main annoyance now is that they don't include the audio assets in the github repo : / Great fun game though.

</comment><comment><USER42> I found a bug.

I had my guy move to the other side of a barrier, and he did so by taking a path through the adjacent square - but then my view was in the adjacent square, my guy moved offscreen, never to return.

For such a slick demo, that was really unexpected.

</comment><comment><USER43> Would be pretty cool if someone implemented a decent browser-based MMORPG with a high degree of scriptability. Get the best of MMORPGs and MUDs + portability.

<comment><USER44> The other day, I was thinking about an SMS based MUD for cheap feature phones - text based of course. An online game for places without much 3G adoption but where there are lots of Nokias, so to speak.

<comment><USER45> I had an idea for a universal MUD a long while back (probably in junior high school, when I was a huge MUD nerd). A single game world with interfaces for IM, SMS, and the web. No matter where you were or what interfaces you had available, you could continue to be immersed in the world. I got the communication code working well for IM and the web, but never went beyond that; with Twilio, it'd probably be pretty straightforward...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> works with opera but eats a whole cpu core

<comment><USER9> which version? the non-preview 11 didn't worked.

<comment><USER46> Version 11.61, Build 1250, Platform Linux

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> HTML5, the futur of gaming! Meanwhile, World of Warcraft uses less CPU/GPU than this demo...

</comment><comment><USER48> I'd like to see see gain some traction and give Runescape a run for it's popularity.

</comment><comment><USER49> What is the license on this?

<comment><USER21> We will update the licensing info in the GitHub repo in the coming days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Clever, and very well done.

</comment><comment><USER51> Am I doing something really stupid, or is this not working anymore???

</comment><comment><USER52> 19/20 ... what is the unknown ????? 20th one...anyone able to find?

<comment><USER5> 1\. Go into forest 2\. There is a maze cave in the top right corner of forest. 3\. Get stuck in the maze ;) 4\. To find final award just go through a cave door then go back into the door you came out of. 5\. Yes, caves are magic

<comment><USER52> thanks !! it worked..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Crashes Mobile Safari on my iPhone.

<comment><USER8> No issue on iOS 5.1 here (on a 4S)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Really organized, easy reading source too: <https://github.com/mozilla/BrowserQuest>

Outstanding work that I'm sure is going to inspire a lot of people. Though I don't see a license file anywhere.

<comment><USER21> Thanks. We are going to update the repository soon with licensing info.

<comment><USER54> Awesome! And again great work. The game was really enjoyable and the code inspiring.

<comment><USER21> Thank you. That means a lot to us. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Can't even get past the enter your name screen.

<comment><USER56> I got past that and into the game but I can't get my character to move, tried on Chrome and Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Wow this is pretty cool. But flash could do this years ago :)

<comment><USER58> Yes, but flash will not be here years from now. Just move on.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you fly on a Boeing 737-MAX 8 today? - <AUTHOR> I have a few flights coming up and checked that none of them, according to [1] are on a 737-MAX 8. I'm not sure what I'd do, if that was the case. What's your take? Are the MAX 9 and 10 safer?<p>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_operators <comment><USER2> I think the better question is, assuming you _need_ to fly somewhere, given the choice between a 737-MAX 8 and another plane, how much more money would you pay to ride on the other plane?

<comment><USER3> Oh, so instead of pushing flight safety for everyone, all we have to do is lower the price "enough to make the risk acceptable"?

<comment><USER4> Yes. Like most things in life, flight safety is not a binary choice. To complete what you said - "we have to lower the price enough to make the risk acceptable _to enough people so as to operate the flight at break even point_".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This doesn't look good [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Accidents_and_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Accidents_and_incidents)

> The 737 MAX's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) has > come under scrutiny for faulty angle-of-attack readings in the Lion Air > accident[126] and the apparent similarity of the Ethiopian Airlines > crash.[127]

> On March 11, 2019, in response to the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines > crashes, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) ordered the > suspension of operations of the 96 Boeing 737 MAX 8s operated by Chinese- > based airlines, citing the similarity between the two accidents. A number of > airlines and regulatory authorities around the world followed suit, though > some airlines still continued to operate the type as of this date.[128] On > the same day, in response to the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, > Indonesia ordered the temporary suspension of operations of eleven Boeing > 737 MAX 8s operated by Garuda Indonesia and Lion Air.[129][130] Inspection > is set to begin on 12 March, 2019.[131]

</comment><comment><USER6> Today? Yes, I'd fly on one. Next week? We'll have to see.

We know very little about the Ethiopian Airlines crash (and yes I've see flightradar24 data). The speculation is worried it is related MCAS like the Lion Air crash, but until we know that even in a preliminary way it feels a little knee-jerky to boycott 737-MAX 8s.

Assuming the flight data recorders are recoverable, we'll hopefully learn more and can discover if there's any similarities between the two accidents. If they are both MCAS related I suspect we'll see a international grounding of the aircraft class.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was just thinking about it yesterday and 2 major accidents in less than a year and both flights crashing within minutes of takeoff is a serious concern. I m definitely a bit scared. When we book flights, we generally don't check the aircraft model but going forward, I may.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd go on one. The odds are still safer than driving a car. The worst that can happen is death, which is inevitable anyway.

<comment><USER9> This statistic always bothers me. The statement is made true by reporting deaths per mile, versus deaths per trip. Most of the risk is during takeoff and landing, with thousands of miles in between. In contrast car trips are short with most the risk during the actual miles. IIRC, going by deaths per trip makes a flight about 3x more dangerous.

Now that's not a whole lot still, and the per mile stat is still important in that one should not choose a cross state drive over a flight for safety reasons.

<comment><USER10> > Going by deaths per trip makes a flight about 3x more dangerous.

Do you mind sharing your back-of-the-napkin math? It seems wrong given the low probability of crash per airplane flight (e.g., there are about 100,000 flights daily and close to zero per day fatal crashes). In fact, about one fatal air crash happens every 7,000,000 airplane flights. I don't know anybody who knows anybody that has died in a commercial airplane crash. I had 2 friends that died in traffic accidents. Anecdotes aren't data, but no one would be surprised by these numbers.

Here are the odds of dying by cause: [https://www.nsc.org/work-safety/tools- resources/injury-facts...](https://www.nsc.org/work-safety/tools- resources/injury-facts/chart)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would also want to filter out plane crashes caused by interference: suicides, bombings, hijackings, birdstrike and the like. This is because I fly happier knowing that mechanical or electrical error is so very very low. This would include however cases such as Air France Flight 447, which was a combination of faulty readings and human error. So, the recent Ethiopia and Lion air crashes would definitely be included, though maybe these were avoidable if the pilots were better educated? So I guess I'd need to see three categories: outside interference, pilot error, mechanical/electrical error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The thing that scratches my head: after the Lion Air incident, all 737 MAX operators should have been made aware and relayed relevant info on the problem to their pilots. Surely the Ethiopia pilots heard about the incident and were aware of the issue?

</comment><comment><USER12> Nope. I've double checked all my booked flights for the rest of the year to ensure I'm not going on any of them.

I think this is gonna be a big issue and we'll see the entire fleet scraped.

</comment><comment><USER13> No.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah. It's just China (and Ethiopia) grounding flights due to geo-trade leverage. If $BA drops 30% it may even be time to load up. Besides, once its your time to go...

<comment><USER6> China (aka Comac) is manufacturing them in Zhoushan. How does it help China in "geo-trade leverage" when they're grounding planes Chinese workers are building and selling?</comment></comment>


Create pretty qr codes - <AUTHOR> http://davidszotten.github.com/prettyqr/

<comment><USER2> That's not beautiful, and worse it isn't immediately obvious that it's a QR code.

</comment><comment><USER3> i like the default one

this is like making helvetica prettier by applying a comic sans filter

</comment><comment><USER4> This is cool, but I like this style better. <http://2d-code.co.uk/bbc-logo-in- qr-code/>

</comment><comment><USER5> The "pretty" [sic] code wasn't recognised by the scanner on my blackberry ("QR Code Scanner Pro").

<comment><USER6> Same here, on my Android (Barcode Scanner).

<comment><USER7> Barcode Scanner on my Galaxy 3 failed to pick it up, noticed the corners but not much else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Both examples worked with Red Laser on my phone, but the "pretty-fied" one took quite a bit longer for the app to recognize.

<comment><USER9> goggles noticed it pretty well instantly

<comment><USER10> For me goggles took the longest I have ever seen it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe it's the orange, but my phone is having hell trying to figure out the prettified code. That being said, it's a nifty idea.

</comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of Microsoft Tag (i.e. High Capacity Color Barcode)

<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/hccb/about.aspx>

Which allows some much more impressive prettification

[http://tag.microsoft.com/resources/implementationguide.aspx#...](http://tag.microsoft.com/resources/implementationguide.aspx#creatingcustomtagimages)

That said, is it just me or does it seem like consumer exposure to barcodes is going to be short lived? NFC will be in every phone in the next couple of years; manufacturing and retail will close the gap completely replacing barcodes with RFID soon after that. Even my local library has done away with barcodes and just RFID tagged every book.

<comment><USER2> Have they taken the next step and made the library door theft detectors* "smart" and able to read the RFID codes and tell whether a book is checked out or not? That would make so much of a difference for Circulation/Stacks grunts at a library who spend much of their time sensitizing and desensitizing books (most of the rest of the time is spent re-shelving).

* Of course those detectors are just intended to be deterrents, but few actually stop people from walking out of a library with a non-checked book (that's what security [sometimes "information"] is for) ... and that's why we need to keep Reserve Book Rooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nate Oostendorp who does open source computer vision over at ingenuitas.com pointed out that from a computer vision perspective you really want the "not so pretty" QR code since it's much easier to recognize algorithmically over on twitter <http://twitter.com/#!/nateoostendorp> (How do I get a link to an individual tweet? Bad Twitter! Bad!)

<comment><USER14> Right-click on the timestamp. [http://twitter.com/#!/nateoostendorp/status/6033430473933619...](http://twitter.com/#!/nateoostendorp/status/60334304739336192)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google Goggles picked it up on my Nexus One.

</comment><comment><USER16> I always wondered how these were created...</comment>


Growing up in post-communist Romania – thoughts on learning English - <AUTHOR> https://viorel.me/2019/thoughts-on-learning-english/ <comment><USER2> Am Romanian who also caught the last years of the Ceausescu regime, can confirm that I also learned English mostly by watching undubbed Cartoon Network shows in the early '90s, my favorite was Top Cat (at least that's how I think it was called). I also learned Italian by watching Berlusconi's channels ("Non e la Rai" and "Mai dire goal" were among my favorite TV shows), and my gf learned a pretty good Spanish by watching telenovelas while she was a teenager. Living in a "small" culture kind of forces you to have to learn new languages, otherwise you risk remaining stuck (both economically and "culturally", so to speak).

I'm still a little upset with myself that I wasn't motivated enough to also learn Russian when I was a kid (I had already learned how to read its alphabet) and maybe also German. Now that I'm approaching my 40s this is definitely on my to do list, I want to have the chance to read the works of people like Heine or Pushkin in their original language.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was on vacation in Iceland. One evening we were having dinner in a tiny village in northern Iceland. Our server was a young man with absolutely perfect American English. I asked him if he had lived in America previously. He responded that he had never left his village in his entire life, but had learned all his English from watching American TV shows and movies. I was astounded.

</comment><comment><USER4> In my village there was no cable TV at all for a long period of time after 89, of course we had no internet and when we finally afford a cheap 486 PC(at that time my friends had pentium 2s) me and my brother learn to use Windows95 in English with no instructions.

Other memory from that period is trying to get larger files from my friends by splitting them into smaller parts and put them on floppies , or when my mother bought me a Norton Commander book and I learned a lot about low level stuff and what does files in C:\ actually do.

About foreign languages similar as the author I learned English and I can understand Spanish too, but also I can understand French and Italian movies but maybe not as good, there were some good italian movies on national TV back then too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Living in post-communist Poland, Cartoon Network via sattelite was exactly my first exposure to English, too. The second exposure was video games.

I wonder how do people learn English in countries like Germany or Spain, where all TV shows and games are fully localised.

Nowadays, in Poland these things are localised, too. I guess I will need to hide that fact from my kids.

<comment><USER6> Speaking for Germany, mostly from school. Germans are terrible at English compared to many other European countries (especially the smaller ones) as they're big enough to sustain their entertainment, Internet and business in their local language.

Despite them being forced to learn English in school, very few will try to consume American media in English, and still prefer consuming the locally dubbed versions. In my opinion, it's the easiest (and most fun) way to get better in English, without doing much at all, except for the initial year or two one would need to invest to be proficient enough to consume said media.

Source: Am a German citizen, who fortunately/unfortunately has English as a native language, spent my first 16 years in Asia, and presently another 13 years in Germany.

<comment><USER7> Hmm. I'm gonna disagree here and say that the majority of Germans I've met speak great English. I however will caveat this with the fact that I'm 22 and it may be a generational thing. I am aware that if I go out into the sticks in Germany, I will be 100% speaking German since it seems to me the more rural I go the less English is spoken.

<comment><USER6> People in rural areas, no matter which country, will almost always be worse off in speaking a foreign language than their urban counterparts.

I agree it is a generational thing, and I believe this does have a lot to do with the Internet and the "international culture" it promotes.

Have you compared some European countries in your age category? It's true that 22-year-old Germans speak English well, but a similarly aged person from Romania, Poland, Denmark or Albania will almost certainly still be better at English than the German.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've learnt basic english with computer games, pirated movies and TV shows (with english subtitles). But to master the language you have to move to a place where they use it. Otherwise, it is extremely hard hard.

<comment><USER9> > But to master the language you have to move to a place where they use it. > Otherwise, it is extremely hard hard.

There are plenty of counterexamples to this. Consider Finland, where most of the population is comfortable with English and admirably grammatically correct (though they never really lose that distinctive Finnish accent), but they have never lived in an English-speaking country, and in fact Finns travel in general less than their Nordic neighbors. Learning English does not seem to strike the Finns as "hard", and if you ask them about the process you often get the usual claim that English is an "easy language".

Looking around European nations, the key to good English seems to be 1) English in school taught from an early age and with a serious approach, and 2) subtitles on television and films, never dubbing (or, as in the case of Romania in the early millennium, a very active torrent community downloading American releases).

<comment><USER10> Yeah and not loosing the accent isn't that strange since Finnish is one of the few non-indoeuropean languages in Europe and compared to English it's definitely not an easy language to learn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think esperanto is interesting, for reasons i wrote here (a simple site): [http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854580627.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854580627.html)

(things like: the cheapest way for the world to talk to each other, fun, not replacing native languages, learn it in 1/4 the time of Spanish or 1/10 the time of English, and probably learn it plus a subsequent language in less total time spent, possible travel benefits with "pasporta servo" (free lodging).)

</comment><comment><USER12> I had a guy in our local IKEA (mainland Europe) explain to us that using a certain combination of items for our closet doors would look "fugly", which led me to believe he mainly learned English at internet forums full of trolls.

It was not that the combination wasn't fugly, he was right about it. But I was somewhat surprised to hear that kind of language from a sales person.

Would there be 12yo kids somewhere out there in the world that can only express themselves in 4chan English?

<comment><USER13> Fugly isn't 4chan English, it's just slang. I grew up hearing people use it in real life.

I'd be unsurprised to hear it in TV programming aimed at teenagers, so perhaps he learned it from that

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My father staunchly refused to buy a TV for the family, saying that there was nothing besides garbage to watch, for what I am very grateful now.

Back then, I had no understanding why he does so, as he himself and grandfather before him were making substantial money bringing TV sets from Japan.

<comment><USER15> Where did he get the news from?

<comment><USER14> We barely had any, life was very slow and uneventful

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For me it was mostly video games. I have vivid memories of teachers' being astounded by how much I already knew as far as elementary. Though it was funny that I knew what "sword" is but other more common words eluded me.

</comment><comment><USER17> I made a mvp to practice a foreign language with subtitles. The spoken language is how we all learned our primary language from our parents, so it makes sense to start there as an adult.

You can check it out at caplearn.org, if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was born shortly before the Romanian revolution and I still learned English by watching Cartoon Network. I never had to really study English since.

</comment><comment><USER19> Growing up in post-communist Russia, I learned a lot of English by playing videogames like Civilisation. All pirated, of course.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's an interesting anecdote. Growing up in communist Romania, the only English I learned early on was at school. I had a great teacher in high school (he would not utter a single word of Romanian), and then took elective classes in college. When I came to the US the first time I could not really speak, but I could understand well. It took 6 months of TV and social interaction (but mostly TV...) to become fluent.</comment>


Stop describing a planet as 'Earth-like' unless it really is - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/news/stop-describing-planet-earth-unless-130009020.html <comment><USER2> See also [http://www.ice.cat/personal/iribas/Proxima_b/indepth.html](http://www.ice.cat/personal/iribas/Proxima_b/indepth.html)

      Not the Earth 2.0

      In any case, and although it is an excellent candidate
      planet that could harbor life, Proxima b cannot be
      considered an Earth twin. One thing is certain, in fact:
      the history of Proxima b and its star was radically
      different from the history of the Earth and the Sun. The
      formation of Proxima b, the irradiation by its star, the
      tidal forces it suffers affecting its internal structure
      and rotation, its possible climates have no equivalent in
      the history of our planet.</comment>


Valve Will Not Be Officially Supporting Ubuntu 19.10 - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Valve-Dropping-Official-Ubuntu <comment><USER3> Smart move by Valve IMO. Canonical is offloading a lot of work onto them if they continue down this road, and Valve easily has enough sway to convince people to use a new distro.

I think it'd be a huge mistake for Canonical not to reverse their direction on this. The original decision was defensible when it wasn't obvious how many problems dropping 32 bit support would create, but obviously it's a big issue to a lot of their customers.

<comment><USER4> Why would Canonical care? They don't get any money from desktop users. Canonical get to scrap 32 bit on their desktop and server offerings. Why would they want to rethink wasting that money just to prolong the time when they abandon it? Where's Steam going to go? How can they be certain that whatever distro they switch to won't eventually abandon 32 bit? (I mean, I guarantee they will.). Will they then go back to Ubuntu? Or a third distro, then a fourth.... Why don't they just fix their problem now and get it over with?

<comment><USER5> > Why would Canonical care?

It become popular in the cloud because it was popular in the desktop.

<comment><USER6> That's not true, as much as people want to believe that.

Ubuntu and Canonical jumped on AWS quickly and started to generate supported images that people liked that gave them fresh stuff that they couldn't really get with Amazon Linux and RHEL was still stuck in the 90's enterprise pricing model, so Ubuntu was a natural fit there.

Sadly, most Ubuntu users are on mac clients, and Canonical isn't going to care about 1 laptop when they need to spend the money to support the millions of instances that one laptop is spawning on AWS, Azure, GCP.

The few "linux desktop" people who are left will still have the same desktop, as long as they get their vscode, docker, cloud tools, and a terminal/ssh they won't care much.

<comment><USER7> "most Ubuntu users are on mac clients," What?

"The few "linux desktop" people who are left"

Citation needed.

<comment><USER8> The 1% on Steam hardware survey.

<comment><USER3> 1% of 90 million monthly users is almost a million users.

Supporting something with 900,000 users seems, at the very least, somewhat compelling. Especially since they were already doing it. It's not like they have to actively recruit these people, but what they're definitely doing is telling them to f-off.

Also, this isn't just losing Steam: wine apps with 32 bit installers is a major source of software.

I know personally I actually do want to use a Linux distro now that Unity 3D support is coming, and Ubuntu would have been my first choice, but I know I'm definitely going elsewhere now :-/

<comment><USER9> 1% could also be seen as a blip in the signal. You might lose that 1%, but by concentrating on the 99% you might gain 2-5% more year over year.

<comment><USER10> I cannot possibly imagine that this would result in a net gain of users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One big issue from what I read are installers for Windows software running in WINE. The installers are often still 32bit, and without 32bit support they won't work anymore. So even if the actual Windows application is 64bit, you can't run it in WINE because you can't install it.

This doesn't really surprise me, one big specialized software I used a while ago couldn't be installed under Windows 7 64bit because the installer still was 16bit. I don't think anyone wants to touch a still working installer unless they have to, so they stay behind in technology.

<comment> rvp-x Worth noting that removing 16bit support in windows is an enormous security win, because the DOS stuff relied on things that are really bad for security. 32-bit support is a lot more sustainable.

<comment><USER12> Citation needed. 16 bit code is fairly well isolated in NT-based Windows.

<comment><USER13> Wiki suggest 16bit of Address Space Layer Randomization can be bruteforced in minutes, citing source:

Shacham, H.; Page, M.; Pfaff, B.; Goh, E.J.; Modadugu, N.; Boneh, D (2004). On the Effectiveness of Address-Space Randomization. 11th ACM conference on Computer and communications security. pp. 298–307.

<comment><USER12> Nobody expects aslr from 16 bit legacy code with only 1mb of address space. I think you are describing 16 bits of randomization on a 32 or 64 bit process though.

What I mean is that the virtualization of 16 bit code (using vm86) is isolated from a security perspective, it won't violate process boundaries or kernel security features like ACLs. I believe this was less true in 9x which might be where the confusion comes from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 32-bit closed source software won't be suddenly recompiled to satisfy some open source purity standard. People will stop using Ubuntu for games - <USER2> "linux has no games" will be a strong argument again. Gaming is a huge issue on linux that only recently was solved with Steam+Proton and Ubuntu team just decided to screw with it. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

<comment><USER15> Or people will just get it as a snap.

<comment><USER7> In a format that will be as dead as unity, mir, ubuntu phone, and upstart in a few years.

Nothing that ubuntu strikes out on their own with ever works out.

<comment><USER16> upstart was an rhel thing

<comment><USER17> Upstart was originally developed by Canonical. Several years after it shipped in Ubuntu, it was shipped in RHEL6. RHEL7 replaced it with systemd. While it probably had some RedHat contributions, to call it a RHEL thing does not make much sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now that the WinRT scare has passed and Valve no longer fears Microsoft imposing an App Store-style hegemony over Windows, Valve has little external incentive to continue maintaining tools targeted at Linux users. The life raft is no longer strategically valuable, and 19.10 is a convenient cover for spinning down Ubuntu support. I wouldn't be surprised if this is followed up in a few months' time by an announcement that the internal Linux team is being dissolved altogether.

<comment><USER19> Supporting Linux also inadvertently helped Google Stadia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if this statement is mostly an attempt to get Ubuntu to reverse course. It seems unwise to pull support from the most popular distro if it could be supported with additional technical effort, such as bundling the libraries with Steam. Of course that's effort that Valve would likely prefer to spend elsewhere.

<comment><USER21> I think Ubuntu will lose its status as most popular distro after 19.

<comment><USER22> This whole thing has been pretty funny.

Valve: Here Linux, you finally have lots of video games, no silly BS, they just work.

Ubuntu: Oh shit Linux might get popular, quick, we better break the video games!

Valve: ...

<comment><USER23> I think honestly Canonical is just "pulling a Redhat". Redhat walked away 20 years ago from the consumer market to focus on the server market (Fedora came much later.) Server is where they make money. They don't get any money out the video game market. The users don't give them any money. Neither does Valve. Nor the game developers. Nor the hardware developers. They need money to develop and maintain stuff and grow. They might reconsider if there is push from the server customers though.

<comment><USER24> My employer uses Ubuntu for most developers, meaning all our software is designed to work on the latest LTS Ubuntu and we (I assume) pay a significant amount for support. But the only reason we use Ubuntu is because it's more familiar to the average developer than RHEL.

<comment><USER23> So ask your employer to convey an interest in maintaining the 32-bit library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As I mentioned in the other thread.

I've switched to flatpak steam, works well and its working towards the sandbox this stuff should be in.

[https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.valvesoftware.Steam](https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.valvesoftware.Steam)

For wine itself -

[https://winepak.org/](https://winepak.org/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm fine with this, but it is a bit annoying to see a developer not deal with 64-bit builds. I wonder if it's only because Windows allows them to be lazy while it generates more money for them?

Either way I think valve's Linux team should rethink this. They depend on 32-bit libs, but Surely they can find alternatives for the 64-bit build and who knows it might even make the experience on Linux even better.

<comment><USER27> My guess is that there are a lot of third party developed games which only work on 32-bit compatible systems and Valve either doesn't know exactly which ones are which or simply doesn't want to put the effort into organising them such that users are warned about which specific games have incompatibilities. The other option is just letting the games that would only work on 32-bit compatible systems fail with cryptic error messages and have to field masses of complaints about it while looking extremely unprofessional in the process. In this case it's not that surprising that they would just decide to drop support, especially considering that Ubuntu is a relatively small chunk of the market to begin with.

It's pretty unfortunate. I totally get Canonical's desire to get rid of the seemingly unnecessary bloat and maintenance burden from having to support 32-bit applications but this is the consequence and it's a big blow to gaming on Ubuntu, especially seeing as Steam has only been supported on Ubuntu since 2013.

<comment><USER28> Ubuntu makes its money from server and enterprise clients. If Valve needs to support 16/32 bit for its customers then it's up to them to do it. I expect Valve is a much bigger company than Ubuntu, maybe Valve can contract out this work to ... Ubuntu instead of just freeloading.

<comment><USER29> Valve has contributed a ton of work to Ubuntu/Linux. They've pretty much single handedly turned around Linux gaming to the point where I can safely expect most windows-exclusive games on steam will run smoothly on Ubuntu. Freeloading couldn't be farther from the truth.

<comment><USER30> > They've pretty much single handedly turned around Linux gaming to the point > where I can safely expect most windows-exclusive games on steam will run > smoothly on Ubuntu.

Wait... What? When did this happen?

<comment><USER31> It's called Proton and the repo is here: [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What about macOS Catalina, which also drops 32-bit support and has already caused games to become unavailable?

<comment><USER33> If they are dropping Ubuntu 19.10 over lack of 32 bit support, it's probable that they're going to drop support for Catalina and up as well. I don't think they've made a statement yet, however.

<comment><USER34> Dropping support for Catalina would be akin to dropping support for macOS entirely, while dropping support for Ubuntu is not the same as dropping support for linux.

In fact Valve already have their own distro, and it's not based on Ubuntu.

<comment><USER33> Hmm, I've done some googling and it looks like Valve has a 64 bit version of Steam for macOS already. You may need to delete Steam.app and re-install to get it. So you will still be able to use Steam itself on Catalina+, but will need to wait for 32bit only games to have a 64 bit version made available (or for someone to come up with some kind of compatibility tool)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Quite a lot of games on Linux rely on Wine to run. They are 32-bit Windows games packaged up with a 32-bit version of Wine. The 64-bit version of Wine still has quite a few bugs and really shouldn't be used for commercially sold software. Valve is making the correct decision here based on Ubuntu dropping 32-bit support.

[https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#Is_there_a_64_bit_Wine.3F](https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#Is_there_a_64_bit_Wine.3F)

[https://bugs.winehq.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=win64&resolutio...](https://bugs.winehq.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=win64&resolution=---)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm not sure why valve doesn't just ship a 64bit client with their own compatibility layer(s).

There's a lot of problems on various linux distros hunting down and setting up the correct 32bit libs. Windows is fine for obvious reasons, but valve already seems to want to move to a more platform independent approach.

<comment><USER37> Valve already ships the equivalente of a whole Ubuntu 12.04 32-bits included in Steam to be used by games.

I would really like if Valve could move Steam to use Flatpak or some other thing instead. Their bundled libraries are a mess and lots of time doesn't work correctly.

<comment> dylan-m Someone even made an unofficial flatpak for Steam, too. It's on Flathub and it works great for my needs. Makes perfect sense with the way Valve packages Steam already, since they try really hard to provide the same environment on every distro. The only problem I have with it is you can't easily add additional library folders due to the sandboxing. (Need Valve themselves to add portals to the application code so Steam can pop up a native file chooser which grants access to whatever file the user chooses, and there's no directory tree portal anyway … yet). But that's solvable. Much better, long term, than Valve stubbornly clinging to whatever distro continues to build for an obsolete architecture at their own expense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm running Steam on a 64-bit Ubuntu 18.04. What changes with 19.10? I figured Canonical was only announcing the end of the i386 installer; presumably this is not about that?

<comment><USER39> They are dropping 32-bit app support entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I moved to Debian, increasingly found Ubuntu to be problematic

</comment><comment><USER41> This kinda sucks for me, as a Linux based developer who's also a gamer. I've been gaming on Steam with the Proton compatibility layer, and most of my Windows-only games work flawlessly. If future Ubuntu upgrades break this, then I won't upgrade until I find another solution.

</comment><comment><USER42> So a switch to OpenSuse or Fedora would make sense perhaps. I had a great time trying out OpenSuse.

<comment><USER43> Which one between openSUSE and Fedora is the most community driven? I'd rather see them break away from targeting a Linux distribution that is mainly funded from a company that gets their income from servers/cloud. They need to either go with a distro that has a desktop oriented company behind or with a distro that is community driven.

<comment><USER44> Valve is currently maintaining SteamOS which is based on Debian, so why wouldn't they want to go with that? The Steam client is already in the Debian non-free repository.

<comment><USER42> Hey what can I say. Good point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Well done, Linux as a gaming platform will be dead.

</comment><comment><USER46> If this does happen and Valve pulls support for Steam on Ubuntu, I'm probably going back to Windows. This news is depressing since I've been a happy Ubuntu user for about a year now.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wonder if this is really a problem in a few years, most gaming will probably stream from services like Google Stadia, gaming will be OS agnostic

<comment><USER48> I certainly don't want to live in that dystopia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The first consumer 64 bit processors came out a decade and a half ago. Why is legacy 32 bit still a thing? It's not like anyone can say they haven't had _ample_ warning time that 32 bit deprecation was coming.

<comment><USER50> Video games are more media than they are software. Sadly their format is software but their release is media. Old games aren't actively supported and won't be updated. You need to ensure some kind of compatibility with 32 bit software or drop a huge amount of support for games. And if you don't, the video game industry will probably drop you.

I think you will probably need some kind of compatibility wrapper you can wrap 32 bit binaries in that will make it compatible with 64 bit systems.

<comment><USER51> This. Games are done when they're done; much like finished novels, films, or music, once the developer considers it done, it won't get updated anymore. Also likewise to film or music, if it ends up becoming a classic, it might get remastered or remade a decade or two later, but those are the exceptions rather than the norm. The vast majority of games will just stay like when they were originally made, much like the majority of novels, music, and film.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Unique domain or subdomain? - <AUTHOR> I'm wanting to launch some micro-sites that cover niche topics, and am trying to decide if I should get a unique domain for each or just run them as subdomains off my main site.  The only difference would be the URL, as the sites will all be running on WordPress 3.0 multisite.  What are your thoughts on this?  Any difference for my main site and the new sub-sites with SEO on subdomains versus unique domains? <comment><USER2> Why use subs over directories? If you really want to build a site and brand as well as have your hard work pay off I recommend directories over either option.

From an SEO and link popularit standpoint you will only have to worry about a single domain and all of the link building you do will benefit the site over all. With subs you need to treat each sub as a unique URL from a link popularity standpoint making your SEO efforts that much more work.

From a marketing perspective again directories feel like the better way to go. If you are building a single brand and not differentiating the products greatly other than by subject matter then directories again feel like a better way to go.

Generally I recommend subs for areas of a site that you don't want to have indexed and don't want to worry about natural search for.

As far as unique domains unless you want to operate a network of sites you would just be creating a lot more work for yourself than is probably worth it in the begining.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I was thinking of having the sites feel more unique. E.g. different themes, content style. Sortof like how the Envato network of sites are all similar but unique.

So, in your opinion, would it seem too odd to visitors if Techinch.com looks entirely different than Techinch.com/apps? Would apps.techinch.com feel better if the site style is totally different? That said, I plan to get a more homogeneous overall theme by spring...

<comment><USER3> From an SEO point of view, I completely agree with solost - using subfolders like techinch.com/apps is much stronger than subdirectories or individual sites - especially if the topics are all relatively connected.

I'm not entirely sure how easy it is to do and it would take a bit of hacking with your Wordpress template, but as a compromise you could look at having each category page (so /apps, /widgets, /whatever) have it's own background image - although I imagine completely different themes or very different styles could be a bit of a nightmare.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I ended up doing is creating <http://techinch.com/apps> with a full new WordPress install. Currently the main site and the new /apps site are running fully different themes, but I plan to bring them together with a customized WooThemes Canvas next year.

We'll see how it goes!

<comment><USER2> Taking a quick look, I think the experience is okay. While things are different they are not so radically different as to make me feel uncomfortable as a user.

I am not sure if this is the approach I would take, I very much like the homepage theme, however I am certain you have reason why you are doing what you are.

Good luck and keep us up to date.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm ... so you would think it would be better to just keep adding more diverse topics to the main home page? Or you like the main theme and would use it on the sub-site?

What I'm thinking is that by having niche sites, I can feature a nice-designed app per day in a small post in a small post without swamping my main content. Similar to Greatwebapps.com ... and I hope to do a network of sorts of sites like that eventually. But, I'm not certain it's a good approach.

And, by the way, the content on techinch.com/apps is just filler test stuff, and is in no way the stuff I plan to use once it's publicly live.

Thanks for your suggestions ... I really appreciate them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're optimizing for SEO, you want unique domains for each one. Google gives a special bonus for searches on .com/.net/.org domains. So if you get bananapeelcompost.com for your new site on that topic, you'll pick up a big SEO boost for people looking for "banana peel compost" on Google.

The downside compared to subdomains is of course the cost of the domains (shouldn't be too high if you're not a spammer), and the extra administrative cost.

Read <http://www.kalzumeus.com/category/seo/> for more details on the exact topic you're looking into - he has successfully built microsites and written on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER5> If the viewers and/or pageviews or what not are going to be aggregated for the purpose of ad sales, or traffic projections for selling the sites to an acquirer, I would go with a single domain with subdomains. It is a much simpler, easier story for everyone to understand and builds the main brand so much better.

Been there done that on separate domains. Won't do it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good, and in general was what I was thinking, but wanted some input. I would prefer to build my main site's brand, so very good points. Thanks for the input!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> After all the thought and consideration, I honestly think I'm going to go with a unique domain and do separate sections off this. I'm trying to do something totally different than my main site, eventually hoping for some synergy between the two, but for now, I think this will be better. Somehow it just doesn't seem right doing mysite.com/somethingelse when the second section is totally different.

So, plan from here: get a new domain, something that I can use with multiple sites. I'm thinking something about "one a day" or "something per day" ... any ideas? Then, I'll have apps.newsite.com, whatever_niche.newsite.com, etc.

Thoughts?

And by the way, I'll still be taking the advice on sub-sites ... just those will be with more similar content. At least that's what I'm thinking now. Thank you so much everyone for your help ... HN is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER6> I think most, if not all, of the answers you get will be opinions. While clearly a unique domain would be ideal for identity, I think the SEO benefits are very little if any.

Look at the number of successful services that give you just a simple subdomain, including Google services like Blogger.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. And, building the main site's brand is what I'd really like to see overall. So I'm thinking of doing short subdomains (apps.techinch.com), and it should make sense, be easy enough to look up and remember, and get the Techinch name out there more.

Thanks for the input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Subdomains are ok seo wise. However Google Webmaster allows some operations only for top level domains. The change domain feature comes specifically to my mind.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Quick poll: Which one sounds better as an iOS app gallery/review site/subsite?

\- apps.techinch.com

\- ios.techinch.com

\- mobile.techinch.com

\- something else?

\- the techinch.com/whatever version of the above?

And thanks all for the input!

<comment><USER8> I have some domains which I wanted to use for a similar purpose but I don't need them after all: iosgame.com, ios-game.com, iosgame.net, iosgamer.com, iosgamers.com, ios-games.com, iosgames.net. I can give you them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the offer ... very generous of you. I'm actually not planning on covering games much, as I'm not much of a gamer. I'm aiming at covering well- designed productivity and design apps, perhaps some games and fun apps as well but that won't be the focus. Thanks anyhow!</comment></comment></comment>


Nantes a Swift Replacement for TTTAttributedLabel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/instacart/Nantes <comment><AUTHOR> I made a swift port of TTTAttributedLabel ([https://github.com/TTTAttributedLabel/TTTAttributedLabel](https://github.com/TTTAttributedLabel/TTTAttributedLabel)) a popular UILabel replacement written in Objective-C. You can find it here [https://github.com/instacart/Nantes](https://github.com/instacart/Nantes).

Since TTTAttributedLabel isn't maintained anymore, we wanted a Swift version that we could continue to update.</comment>


Meet Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://meetclj.raynes.me/

<comment><USER2> As both an inexperienced programmer and as someone trying to learn Clojure, I can testify that this fills are real wide and gaping hole in otherwise existing Clojure materials. It's tough as nuts taking Clojure on as one of your first languages. Most materials assume a great deal of programming efficiency and experience of the reader. I'm happy as hell that this is being published.</comment>


Found Photos: Rarely seen Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2009/11/07/found-photos-rarely-seen-steve-jobs/ <comment><USER2> Original article is at: [http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.ste...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.steve_jobs_rare_photos.fortune/)

<comment><USER3> Just click the above instead.

Can Anon84 (or mod) link the original in the title instead? I enjoyed the post, but it'd save people time.

Not to be stern but: _Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone else reminded of the Mac vs. PC commercials when looking at [http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.ste...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.steve_jobs_rare_photos.fortune/9.html) ?

<comment><USER5> I'm reminded of how badly I want an Eames lounge chair :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone has more info about the "not having any furniture" thing? It's the first I hear of it.

<comment><USER3> The pic isn't new [1][2].

Two anecdotes on Jobs' Furniture:

Larry Ellison, _"It struck me that there wasn't furniture good enough for Steve in the world. He'd rather have nothing if he couldn't have perfection."_

Ed Riddle, _an early Mac team member, recalls his interview with Steve Jobs: sitting on a furniture-less floor, staring into each others' eyes--the two men shared a Zen master--followed by Jobs bowing and saying it had gone well._

I did something similar. I wanted to figure out: what were the fewest amount of items I needed to get stuff done? I shrunk it to: a bed, desk, chair and computer. Of course I had peripheral stuff. But now that I think about it, I didn't even need them.

[1][http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/technology/0911/gallery....](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/technology/0911/gallery.steve_jobs_testimonials.fortune/3.html)

[2]<http://news.cnet.com/geek-gestalt/?keyword=Steve+Jobs>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shame they didn't caption everyone at the table in this photo: [http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.ste...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.steve_jobs_rare_photos.fortune/3.html)

<comment><USER8> You might be able to find some matching people in the images from folklore.org (great site for you early Mac fans out there).

[http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&...](http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&gallery=1)

<comment><USER7> Yep, I used to follow it years ago when it was still being updated. I think I've read all the stories on that site. (That's where I learned that Steve Jobs couldn't program. Amazing!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The no-furniture titbit is interesting. The no-clutter principle in apple design, packaging, and his famed presentations seems to have been part of his real-world aesthetics too.

</comment><comment><USER10> his house looks like something out of a disney (or pixar) movie. based on the photos, the inside looks equally interesting.

<comment><USER11> yeah, too bad he wants to tear it down and build a new one in its place. I love old 1920s style Stucco homes. They have a hell of a lot more character and style than anything new. It's sad to see the house lived in in those photos and now its derelict and empty and rotting away.</comment></comment>


Rest – A Haskell REST framework - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.silk.co/post/90354057868/announcing-rest-a-haskell-rest-framework

<comment><USER2> I always thought that what makes Haskell particularly readable are the types: to understand what a function does, it is often enough, and always helpful, to understand what type it takes to what types.

So, when the first type I see in a Tutorial is

        Resource IO (ReaderT Title IO) Title () Void

I am confused. When, in addition, the functions are named

         mkResourceReader :: ??? -> Resource IO (ReaderT Title IO) Title () Void

I lose hope that I'll ever understand what's going on. Granted, it was only recently that I understood what 'ReaderT Title IO' alone means.

I wonder, is there a simple explanation for what's going on, or is the problem at hand really so complicated that this is the easiest way to explain it?

For example, maybe there should be a shorter and clearer name for the type 'Resource a (ReaderT b a) b () Void'? What does one do with resources -- I can only see them plugged into the 'route' function.

At this point I started cursing that I can't find the Haddock documentation anywhere, and I'm too lazy to search through github.

I'm sorry if this comes across as unfriendly to the author of the library, but I hope it's helpful to see what a person who tries to understand what it does might go through. The more I look at it, the more I think that everything could be fixed with a better tutorial.

 _EDIT_ It's late at night, and I'm rambling, but perhaps it would be enough to explain in the tutorial what the composition

        route . mkResourceReader

does, and what its type is? It seems like that might be tractable.

<comment><USER3> I think your comments are valid and I mostly agree very much with this sentiment. Thank you for sharing.

But let's look at it differently.

This framework has been developed and shaped over a few years in a corporate environment by a small team of relatively experienced Haskell programmers. The code has been shaped and tweaked to specifically tailor all the needs we had at Silk for a effortless development of a very consistent REST API for our core product. The code solves a lot of problems at once.

We never developed this framework as a minimal library for public use. But, because it solves and actual problem for us and is very general purpose we felt obliged to open source it. This might be very useful for other as well.

One of incentives for a company to open source an internally used framework is to get community feedback that might end up shaping the software to be simpler, more generally applicable and more battle tested. That's why your critique is useful and exactly one of the reasons to opens source.

To go more in the why the types for a Resource are what they are right now:

\- In a real world example your API probably doesn't run in IO, but in some monadic context that allows acces to you database, configuration settings, log server, S3 buckets etc.

\- Resources contain a schema type that statically enforce the invariant that no routes will ever overlap in the server.

\- A single resource, or multiple resources, can be identified by multiple identifiers (e.g. a user by uuid, e-mail, or last name). We require a total mapping from identifier to resource action.

\- While stepping deeper into an API (path segment by path segment) we can learn more about our context and pass information down to sub-resources. We do this by extending the context, in the simplest case with a reader.

\- The `route` function builds up an existential. So it looks like the type of the Resource is irrelevant and could be one simple type synonym, but it isn't. It's different every time and carries a lot of static information about the resource used at runtime, and for code and documentation generation.

We'd love to hear how we can simplify this.

<comment><USER2> There's nothing wrong with what you are doing. There is no law that states that all open source libraries in the world should be perfectly documented, and have a set of tutorials that would gently teach anyone as much as he wants about how to use it. Writing documentation and/or tutorials is hard work, and the larger your target audience is, the harder and more time-consuming it is.

I don't think your library will be generally useful to a large audience until you or someone else writes better documentation for it. But you don't have to target a large audience. It's quite likely that when someone else has the same problem, it would be faster for them to reuse your library than to write their own. They might even document the process.

I don't think I'm qualified to give any specific advice, but here's some general suggestions which may or may not be to the point. If you are sufficiently motivated, you should decide who your target audience is, and write enough documentation for them. For example, for an advanced audience, it might be useful to say a few words the general design of your library, explain which problems your library does solve and (more importantly) what the limitations of the design are, perhaps outline anything in the design that is strange or unexpected, but useful from your experience. The most important thing for them to know quickly is whether your library can actually solve their problem (which is probably slightly different from the problem you solved), whether it is actually faster to use your library than to roll their own. If they really need to, they'll figure out the rest. The end result might be closer in style to a CS paper than a tutorial.

Oh, and one thing you really should fix: it is annoying that the haddock documentation is not available on Hackage at the moment, and probably not searchable on Hoogle as well.

Again, there's nothing wrong with your library, you are doing a good thing open sourcing it, and any time you put in describing it and explaining it to people is valuable. Just keep doing more of what you are already doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have the expertise to dissect this code, so I will choose instead to criticize the name of the project. My opinion is valuable, relevant, and provokes further discussion.

<comment><USER5> Instead of addressing the linked article, your post is insightful self-parody, with much sarcasm -- a style more suited to reddit than hn. Please remove it at once, preferably falling on your sword afterwards.

<comment><USER6> Where are the HN rules? I always see comments referencing the style of comments that are encouraged / discouraged, without any actual reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. I'm just getting into Haskell. Coming from the JS world, it's nice to be able to start to learn similar things that I do as a JS developer. My mind only thinks in the way of the web currently, so this helps my transition. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you guys integrate this with Happstack/Wai/Snap at work, or do you use pure rest or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use both the rest-happstack and rest-snap backends, rest-wai is brand new so we haven't gotten around to using that one. You need to pick one of the backends to run an api, rest doesn't contain a web server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know this was just released, but are there any open source projects that currently use this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't seen any projects except for rest-example [https://github.com/silkapp/rest/tree/master/rest- example](https://github.com/silkapp/rest/tree/master/rest-example)

But on the bright side we have been using this in production for a long time :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that they are using hs-src-exts, can the job not be done by Template Haskell?

<comment><USER3> It could, but would be extremely messy. We think hs-src-exts is really the right tool for the job here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice! I worked with this project when it was not yet public, and it's good. A lot easier to use than what the monads might lead you to think. The generated API clients are great too. Of course the Haskell client uses the same types as the server, so you get type errors in the client if the API changed.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have a Haskell project that exposes some NLP experiments in a Yesod web app. I would also like to provide a REST interface, so this looks good.

That said, I found nothing in the documentation for using this with Yesod and the developers seem to best support happstack.

I am a newbie at using Haskell for web apps, so I need to dig into the possibility of mixing happstack and Yesod in one app.

<comment><USER12> While this looks like a cool project, since I have already started using (and like) Yesod, I am probably better off using Yesod's REST support ([http://www.yesodweb.com/book/restful- content](http://www.yesodweb.com/book/restful-content))

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kind of a colliding name, huh?

<comment><USER14> This would become "haskell-rest" in most package systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Googlabilty of the name is really bad. Rename it to something else e.g. HRest

<comment><USER16> Or Resth, (unless somebody in the lisp community bagged that one already)

<comment><USER17> Nobody thought of Hest? I admit it does sound kind of silly though, but it's got the 'H' at least, and it doesn't _sound_ like Rest.

<comment><USER18> With that name you can get a mascot, too:

[http://en.bab.la/dictionary/danish- english/hest](http://en.bab.la/dictionary/danish-english/hest)

<comment><USER19> No reason they can't use that mascot regardless!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "We've decided to call our REST framework - wait for it - Rest."

<comment><USER21> This thread's queue for useless bikeshedders is full, sorry.

<comment><USER20> I disagree that the name for something like this is a trivial decision. Especially when considering the name for a framework which will need to be discoverable on Google to gain popularity. And even more especially when you choose to name the framework for working with a technological concept in one specific programming language the same thing (albeit different casing) as that technological concept itself.

How is that not a really important decision that should be considered practically? If I want to query Google for REST vs. Rest, or even converse with people about it, you don't think that will quickly become (needlessly) confusing assuming the framework becomes popular? And if you aren't expecting the framework to become popular, does that make it OK to choose such a lazy name?

But, hey, at least you got to namedrop the term "bikeshedding" along with your highly specious argument.

<comment><USER22> Google "haskell rest". Done. See @sfvisser's comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7965468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7965468)

<comment><USER20> I fail to see how that solves the problem for anyone other than people who already know that they're looking for a Haskell REST framework that might be called Rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't writing out to the network a side effect?

Edit: Haskell folks are a bit touchy :) Just a joke, I use Xmonad, I'm cool with y'all.

<comment><USER19> Generally, it is the desired _effect_. In Haskell, it will be reified in an IO action, will appear in type signatures, and - as a value - can be manipulated and combined with similar values. It will only be a _side_ effect if called with unsafePerformIO or similar, and the Haskell community will rightly condemn you for doing so (outside debugging) without a proof for why it's both okay and necessary in this circumstance - relying on side effects means you lose all kinds of guarantees that the type system usually affords you.</comment></comment>


1.8B people on Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/vb.4/10103225611545401/?type=2&theater <comment><USER2> Really? I wonder how many of those are human (non-bot) and unique (not one person with 10 accounts). I know so many people in the UK/ Germany who are not on FB and have no interest in joining. So even among people who are privileged enough to be able to join FB (and afford a device to do so), the coverage is significantly less than 100%. Would be great if it's actually 1.8B people, but I doubt it...</comment>


Dell has a limit of 10 servers per invoice, sends 750 letters to online.net - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/online_fr/status/412886607155310592

<comment><AUTHOR> Did someone at Dell mistake the "email" memo from the French government?</comment>


Transitioning to Remote Work: A Practical Guide - <AUTHOR> https://woven.com/blog/remote-work-guide <comment><USER2> Really good article, especially for someone like me looking to make the jump.

Especially about importance of getting your workstation right with lighting etc. Completely agree!</comment>


How Google could beat Facebook at its own game - <AUTHOR>

Google could obtain a social network graph quickly from gmail accounts.
Moreover, it could release a platform similar to Facebook but take it another step further by providing free hosting on its massive computer cluster.
There would be some sort of revenue sharing system in place for apps created using this platform.

<comment><USER2> I agree. They could but will they? Google has been executing well only in the ads area... they've performed poorly in all other ones.

If Google were smart, they could combine Gmail, Orkut, Picassa and Blogger into a single social platform. But that would not guarantee success.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it would be a good move to make. Instead of hiring so many software engineers worldwide, they could "out source" much of their app development to entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER3> They essentially do this already by scooping up interesting startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> But they don't scoop up that many. Outsourcing app dev to entrepreneurs would result in thousands of apps. Google could then focus on making the infrastructure and dev platform better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ok...so? not be a smart ass, but really, who cares if goog is going to take on fb? i've got to pay my cell phone bill, and find a cofounder. When they actually release something, i might just check it out. But uh, goog hasn't been so hot on the social networking/soft side of things. see: orkut.</comment>


Major League Baseball's broadcast restrictions crimp the cord-cutters - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/mlb-baseball-blackout-map-2019-2020-n1031311 <comment><USER2> Whereas we started with a sort of level playing field [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos.,_In...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos.,_Inc._v._Aereo,_Inc). overturned the apple cart and gave the whole game away to broadcasters. An innovation-crimping, incorrect decision. It's akin to repealing the first sale doctrine and requiring a consumer bookseller to share her garage sale proceeds with the author.

I have a wonderful slingbox (distinguish from sling tv the service, and talk about self inflicted damage, slingbox took home all the ribbons) that makes life on the road almost tolerable. It does what Aereo did but with a slightly larger footprint. A courageous Congress will reverse the decision and restore the status quo ante.

</comment><comment><USER3> The only way that would change is a boycott. As long as the sports ball leagues know they'll get your money no matter what they do, they're going to try to extract as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER4> How about everyone just stops watching baseball?</comment>


Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/surveillance-capitalism-has-led-us-into-a-dystopia/p06p0tdy <comment> barrow-rider The word "surveillance" in the title is superfluous.</comment>


Grooveshark UI revamped? - <AUTHOR> http://grooveshark.im/ <comment><USER2> Next to Songza, Grooveshark is my other love. But it appears that thing I love the most is missing, and that's the channels.

And if anyone from either Songza or Grooveshark comes by, being that I've tried to contact you both directly through your site, here what I really want.

Curated New Release Channels, as submitted by artists world-wide.

In fact I'm going to a show on the 20th of an artist that I found on a world music channel on Grooveshark. And I paid $60 for a show at the Chapel for a Grooveshark world music artist.

But I'd really really like a curated play list of new releases.

It's all about Discovery. Curation and discovery!

Sure I like my classic rock, and hits of the 90s, I like that like the best of them. But what I don't get is new, indie, releases, put together in a great playlist.

Maybe something to think about.

Thanks for your time.

</comment><comment><USER3> didn't grooveshark die?</comment>


Cello – a Verilog compiler for transcriptional logic in bacterial cells - <AUTHOR> http://cidarlab.org/cello/ <comment><USER3> This seems really cool but I have no idea what it can actually do, does someone that understands this want to give an overview of what this allows us to do?

Edit:

From reading their summary again it sounds like they are using plasmids, which are like mini strands of DNA that float around the cell, to control random bits of the cell. Does the machinery in the cell just randomly bind to plasmids and do what they say?

<comment><USER4> They have a pretty extraordinary 102 page Supplementary Materials that I haven't completely gone through ([http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2016/03/30/3...](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2016/03/30/352.6281.aac7341.DC1/Nielsen.SM.pdf)).

If you have access, Figure S5 was helpful for understanding.

As an example, they created a plasmid (circular piece of DNA that's easy to engineer) to be an AND circuit. They added two genes (A and B) with promoters that are activated by two different signals ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promoter_(genetics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promoter_\(genetics\))). The also added another gene, C, with two promoters that bind proteins A and B.

When genes A and B are activated, they create proteins that block the production of protein C. But this inhibition only happens if both A and B are present. Thus, you get an "AND".

You can then use the inhibition or production of C to do something else. In this case they used it to block the production of a protein that fluoresces, but you can do whatever you want with that logic. Like targeted treatment of IBD: only produce drug C when gut signals A and B are present, but not before.

Or make more complicated circuits.

<comment><USER5> This is so cool... they have blinking LED debugging of genetic circuits:

"Debugging genetic circuits

We developed a strategy for "debugging" a malfunctioning circuit to determine which gate is causing the failure. This was done by creating a series of plasmids that transcriptionally fuse the output promoter of each gate to yfp."

Basically if the liquid fluoresces the gate you're debugging is outputting a 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope you like zombies because this is how you get zombies.

</comment><comment><USER7> Name conflicts aren't usually a big deal but I'd like to point out there is already [http://libcello.org/](http://libcello.org/)

<comment><USER8> On top of that the author of [http://libcello.org/](http://libcello.org/) also had some trademark issues with using the name Cello for his project from yet another use of 'Cello'.

See:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4bnrn4/a_discu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4bnrn4/a_discussion_about_the_breaking_of_the_internet/d1aytd0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if you can make a latch? It means allowing combinatorial loops:

        wire q, q_bar;
        assign q = !(q_bar || reset);
        assign q_bar = !(q || set);

If I'm understanding this, I think the answer is no. The output signal is a concentration of a specific protein and there is no way to eliminate the protein once you have it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I work on eukaryotes, so I am not very familiar with bacteria. Is it really this simple in bacteria where you can modify it according to a planned circuit and get the results you expect? I can understand maybe generating simple behaviors like upregulating a gene or superficially influencing some aspect of its metabolism, but is it possible to get a specific tightly controlled response? Do we know enough about bacteria for this to work now?

</comment><comment><USER10> Can you use this to factor large numbers into primes?

How many bacterial cells do you need to factor a number of N binary digits?

It would be cool if bacteria beat quantum computers for this task :)

<comment><USER11> Honest question: what would make a bacteria better for factoring than a conventional computer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is interesting stuff. I wonder which literature is essentially required to understand what's going on.

What I really like to know: How do you make sure that genetically modified organisms don't escape accidently, and how do you make sure that such modified organisms don't use their new capabilities to mutate into something completely unwanted (causing new kinds of pandemics, famines etc.)?

</comment><comment><USER13> A paper in which cello was used was posted to HN two days ago. The comment thread is worth reading if you find this one interesting.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11417689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11417689)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this the road to massively parallel systems?

<comment><USER14> or to the new black death...

<comment><USER15> The previous discussion on this pointed out that all this is is a compiler that turns a Verilog representation of a circuit into a DNA one. Since most people don't have ways to actually synthesise the DNA that's output, you need to send away to companys that do, who check for sequences that encode toxins etc.

<comment><USER16> Getting bacteria or animal cells to express a custom strand of DNA like a fluorescent protein is basically a first year lab in undergraduate molecular biology. There are even relatively cheap consumer kits made by the diy bio community [1]. DNA synthesis is at most a dollar per basepair, although you'll have trouble finding someone who can accurately produce something approaching or exceeding a kilobasepair.

[1] [http://openwetware.org/wiki/DIYbio/FAQ/Kits](http://openwetware.org/wiki/DIYbio/FAQ/Kits)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> BRB.

Making a forkbomb bacteria.

<comment><USER18> Isn't a forkbomb bacteria just bacteria?

They:

      - <USER2>
      - Produce at least two more of itself

I think most bacteria has us CS majors beat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bacteriophage-based hacking anyone?

</comment><comment><USER20> I look forward to the day when my cellphone is powered by an Intel Petrium 5 bioprocessor.</comment>


Ask HN: How to fix Startup Britain? - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday the UK Government launched a new web initiative called startupbritain.org. The premise of the site is to "...provide everything you need to know about start up, in one place".
On the surface this appears to be a site offering useful information. However dig a little deeper and as one prominent blogger puts it "...StartUpBritain is nothing more than a government backed link farm" http://postdesk.com/debates/why-startup-britain-is-nothing-more-than-a-government-backed-link-farm/
How very disappointing and appallingly executed this promising initiative has been. Many potential entrepreneurs and businesses have come away with a bad taste in their mouth - but this need not be the case.
As entrepreneurs shouldn't we try and fix problems? Clearly there is demand for some kind of British focused start up web site. Couldn't we borrow principles from US sites like Hacker News (http://news.ycombinator.com), et al. and give entrepreneurs a suitable starting point - driven by a community?
Therefore why not make some suggestions and open up a debate.
Startup Britain needs your ideas... and why not let us present the best of these to Mr Cameron? <comment><USER2> There was a site called Jedi Britain earlier....or maybe it was called JFDI Britain. Liked that more.

I think the hard part is finding collaborators. I'd lilke to see more side- project startups, with multiple collaborators.

Yes, you can do it on your own. But maybe it's viable as a sideproject until it takes off if there's a few of you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment.

I was thinking that it would be useful to create a site where companies could pledge a small amount of help, or entrepreneurs could post their top 5 tips?

Anyone else have any interesting ideas?</comment></comment>


The temptation of White Labelling (and why not to do it) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pollenizer.com/the-temptation-of-white-labelling/

<comment><USER2> The piece would be far better if it defined what white labeling is.</comment>


Apple blocks iPhones from green ranking scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/25/apple-iphone-green-ranking

<comment><USER2> It's pretty simple. They don't want someone else's labelling on their products. For them it has no tangible benefits, so they won't bother. It says nothing about how 'green' the iPhone is or is not.</comment>


Developing an App for iOS, Android and Windows Phone - a Comparative Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.zetalab.de/blog/developing-an-app-for-ios-android-and-windows-phone-a-comparative-study/ During the last six months I have written the same mobile app for the three major (or to-be major) platforms, that is iOS, Android and Windows Phone. The article details some of the experiences I made while doing this. <comment><USER2> Be forewarned: the comparative study uses _old_ copies of the Android (2.3!) and Windows Phone (7) SDKs, so this study is probably of limited use.

<comment><USER3> You need to target android API level 10 to reach the most of the market.

<http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> great, detailed read</comment>


Download Linux Voice Issue 1 – With Audio - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxvoice.com/download-linux-voice-issue-1-with-audio/

<comment><USER2> one of the mag's founder's here.

It's about a year ago that we launched the crowdfunding campaign to create Linux Voice. I know quite a few people from Hacker News supported us. Thanks!

It's been a long year, but I'm ridiculously proud that we've made it, and we're able to release this first issue as promised (keep checking back because there'll be a new one every month).

Let me know if you've got any questions about the mag, or what's happened in the last twelve months.

<comment><USER3> Any chance of releasing the "source" of the issue? I'd like to try an ePub conversion.

<comment><USER2> The first couple of issues were sort of hacked together in such a way that makes conversion to HTML (for ePub) a little awkward.

We got our act together by issue 3, so for this one on, it should be possible (and from issue 6 onwards, we already have the ePub for subscribers, so we'll release these as well when the issue goes CC).

<comment><USER4> Please consider html as main publish format. Pdf is quite inconvenience for screen reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Flipping through this PDF brings back the excitement I used to have reading the Linux mags from the late 90s/early 00s. Maybe I'll take my tablet down to the last Barnes and Nobel and read it there for the full effect.

</comment><comment><USER6> Kudos for launching it under CC3 license, I'll surely listen.

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome work! Just got a subscription.

Glad you have a digital-only subscription too!

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome. Awesome podcasts too!</comment>


AT&T 1993 "You Will" Ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8 <comment><USER2> I worked at AT&T / Bell Labs when those commercials were flooding every show on TV.

Bell Labs was upset because AT&T made those commercials without consulting us. A PR company thought up all the ideas. We had zero projects internally working on such products.

That's why those products came from EZPass, not AT&T; Skype, not AT&T; Apple iPad, not AT&T.

Even thought it wasn't AT&T that brought those things to market, nearly all of them do exist today. It is a beautiful thing. I feel lucky to be living in what my co-workers call 'The freakin Buck-Rogers-would-be-jealous future'.

Tom

PS. Oh, and the one where they guy has a Dick Tracy-style video-phone on his watch? Well, soon after AT&T bought McCaw Cellular my friends in the cellular phone communications research area were asked to work up an explanation of why such a thing can't exist and isn't likely to exist any time soon. It turns out that after AT&T bought McCaw they (McCaw) was very unhappy to learn that the wrist-phone was a figment of a marketing person's imagination and not something actually being developed at Bell Labs. Ooops. I hope they didn't let themselves get bought by AT&T just because they thought we had that product in the wings.

<comment><USER3> Tom: I was also at the Labs (Research @ MH) when these spots were made.

We were consulted by the PR people before they were shot.

As far as I know, most "predictions" in those spots were based on real technologies and demos that were running in the Labs at that time. My dept was directly responsible for two of them.

I do not recall the Dick Tracy watch but the projects behind the books on- line, video-on-demand and "EZ Pass" were being done at HO and MH.

Others were products or concepts in the pipeline (e.g. fax from a tablet -- remember GO/EO?, tickets from a cash machine -- NCR ATMs).

Some things shown were straight line extrapolations from core technologies that had existed in the Labs for some time (e.g. driving across the country without needing a map, video telephony, packet voice/video, etc.)

Much of the really interesting work from Research at the Labs never made it into real products from AT&T due to various political, business and regulatory issues.

Many things later got "reinvented" by other firms that were better able to capitalize on the innovation.

It has been said that any company that can afford an organization like Bell Labs Research will ignore it.

That was definitely the case for Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But does anyone have the spoof version of this made internally at Microsoft? They paid Tom Selleck to do the voice over. One scene depicted a woman walking in the surf along a beach. She's wearing a white dress and a big straw hat. Selleck says: "Have you ever received a fax in your hat?" Cut to fax appearing from slot in her hat. Then he says "You will".

There were others IIRC and I saw them in Redmond in the mid 1990s.

<comment><USER5> There's a hat for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't decide what gave me more amusement: the stuff they got right (ipass/ezpass idea, video conferencing and skype like stuff), the stuff they got wrong (phone booths!, tablet pcs being more than a gimick) or the stuff they claimed they would do, which they now actively oppose (skype like stuff).

I remember these commercials fondly, as they were a big push to get me into programming when I was a boy -- such cool and endless possibilities. Of course back then they were so futuristic, and now they look rather quaint -- who would want devices that are so big and bulky?

<comment><USER7> _or the stuff they claimed they would do, which they now actively oppose (skype like stuff)._

Remember that AT&T isn't actually the same company it was in the 90's. Depending on whether you're talking about hard lines or mobile, it's either SBC or Cingular.

<comment><USER8> Both of which were AT&T before they weren't...before they were again. What goes around...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ...and the company that will bring it to you, will be counting the minutes until the exclusivity contract with AT&T expires.

<comment><USER10> You really think Apple made a 3+ year exclusivity contract with AT&T? Even in view of the explosive possibilities of the device? Hmm, it's possible, but it doesn't seem likely. It's probable that they are continuing to choose to do business with them for some reason or another.

<comment><USER11> Apple did sign a five-year exclusive with AT&T. Sources:

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/confirmed-apple-and- atand...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/confirmed-apple-and-atandt- signed-five-year-iphone-exclusivity-de/)

[http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Apple_iPhone_Ex...](http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Apple_iPhone_Ex_brief.pdf)

[http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Apple_iPhone_Ex...](http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Apple_iPhone_Ex_Order.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Shows what I know. :P Why is everyone speculating that they might come out with a Verizon phone then? Surely this is basically a broken leg on the possibility of that happening until 2012?

<comment><USER11> There was speculation that because the original agreement did not include the iPad, Apple was under no obligation to give AT&T exclusivity on the iPad, and that they renegotiated the contract when the iPad was released. Such a renegotiation could have included an earlier end to exclusivity.

It will take another court case to confirm if that is true, since neither party comments on the terms of their agreement.

<comment><USER10> Interesting . . . that other court case is entirely possible too with people complaining about the unlimited bandwidth bait and switch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One ad in particular that later struck me as prescient was the ~1999 Quest ad of the guy asking what movies a hotel had: "All rooms have every movie in every language, anytime, day or night."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ9qcp6Lcno>

<comment><USER13> At the end, the guy says "How is that possible?" and I'm thinking... "The Pirate Bay".

<comment><USER14> At first I took that in as a funny statement. Then after a few seconds in just became sad. Damn media companies suck. Where would they be without Napster and The Pirate Bay showing them where the pent up demand is/will be?

<comment><USER15> > ... Where would they be...

Squeezing every last cent out of the market

No, seriously. They don't care about fulfilling consumer demand; whatever they predict will be most profitable is naturally what they will do. They are a company after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think in 300 years, people will still know what a fax is because it'll never go away.

<comment><USER16> [http://www.thehighdefinite.com/2010/02/the-evolution-of- the-...](http://www.thehighdefinite.com/2010/02/the-evolution-of-the-fax- machine/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They should remake these. Imagine we didn't all loathe them for a second, what would you include if you made them today?

<comment><USER18> I'm a lot more cynical now than I was in the early nineties, so my ideas would focus mainly on forced biological modifications imposed on us by the ruling class. (Think stalkers at the end of Half-Life 2, except replace the Combine with Halliburton.)

"Have you ever been stripped of agency by intrusive mind-control and body- modification technology and sacrificed any biological dignity you had to serve at the behest of an omnipotent AI god for the benefit of a handful of plutocrats? You will..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The whole 'the future is now' hit me last week when we got to the theater, saw the 5-10 minute line we didn't want to wait in, and purchased the tickets from my iPhone instead. What hit me was that a) I didn't event really break mu pace as I was walking into the theater, and b) it didn't even seem that exceptional a thing to do.

<comment><USER20> And we have 3d hologram without glasses with 3DS and OLED TV's as thin as a paper and 1gbp/s Google broadband letting you download Blu-Ray movies in less than 10 seconds yet we live with them today like it's nothing.

<comment><USER21> Whoa, none of those things are commercially available yet.

Looks like the future is in 2-3 years? :D</comment></comment></comment>