Clear Your Terminal in Style - <AUTHOR> https://adammusciano.com/2020/03/04/2020-03-04-clear-your-terminal-in-style/ <comment><USER2> I'd just settle for macOS' Terminal.app's ⌘-K, that resets the terminal, and clears all the screen including scroll back window. Something so basic I have it in muscle memory but I haven't found the equivalent in Linux terminals.

<comment><USER3> A lot of people swear by stuff like iTerm2, but I'm almost a little ashamed to admit that even though I have iTerm configured to my taste, I often still reach for macOS' native terminal. It's not gloriously beautiful or anything (basic Zsh with powerline for the shell), but it just seems to work great without the frills.

Little shortcuts that think of stuff like this without any configuration (iTerms is impressively extensive) are just a cherry on top. It kind of bums me out that's not linux native. Do you know of any other useful shortcuts specific to macOS? I've been using ctrl+L for the longest time. Thank you for sharing!

<comment><USER4> > A lot of people swear by stuff like iTerm2

Actually, I've been using Terminal for years. I usually try to use default apps as much as possible (Safari, Mail, Notes, Terminal) to reduce configuration overhead. I switched to iTerm2 a few days ago after reading an article on HN... not sure if it worth the change, but haven't tried anything fancy yet. What would be _the_ killer feature of iTerm2?

<comment><USER5> For me it is its integration with tmux, and therefore being able to use the command line in a remote computer as if you were using it locally.

<comment><USER6> I just use tramp for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The square brackets for arithmetic conditionals in bash are deprecated. Rather than:

        [ $[$RANDOM % 10] = 0 ]

...you can use double-parentheses. Therein, you can omit the `$` on variables and, remember, the expression evaluates to true for any non-zero value. Thus, instead:

        (( RANDOM % 10 ))

<comment><USER8> You changed the probability here from 10% to 90% by inverting the test.

<comment><USER9> True, you can just invert: alias clear='if ! (( RANDOM % 10 )); then timeout 3 cmatrix; clear; else clear; fi'

<comment><USER10> ((RANDOM % 10)) || timeout 3 cmatrix ; clear

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It may not be stylish, but I was very happy when I realised that CTRL+L will clear the screen, decent speed up if you're doing a load of demos and want the cursor at the top of the terminal

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, Emacs uses CTRL+L to scroll the text buffer so that the caret is in the center. This collision means I often clear terminals by accident.

<comment><USER13> All the more reason for you to finally bite the bullet and make the switch to the superior editor /s

<comment><USER14> ... where Control+L means _repeat previous find /replace_. (-:

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any kind of delay will turn into an annoyance.

If it doesn't, then the randomness will make it a dopamine hit / that somehow makes your brain feel rewarded. Which will lead to more terminal clearing. Not sure if that's the thing you want :-)

I'd stick with CTRL+L instead.

<comment><USER16> That's what I thought too. It looks cute, but I normally turn down any animation delays I can. After the first dozen times it just becomes annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> ahhh missing a great effect

[https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets](https://github.com/bartobri/no- more-secrets)

<comment><USER18> SETEC ASTRONOMY

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think an ideal clearing style would have the resulting shell prompt as an element of the animation. Let's say you've get the matrix digital rain, which resolves into just the prompt "raining" and then resolving into the regular text. Or just the prompt easing/fading in after the main loop.

But yes, most of the animations are quite a bit too long. I wouldn't mind a quick Star Wars diagonal wipe, though, to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER6> What's wrong with control L? That's been the standard way since the 80s at least.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool tool, but as someone who actually works in the terminal, I would hate this after one use. Maybe alias it to `explody_clear` for fun use every once in a while.

If I want the terminal cleared, I want it cleared immediately so that I can go about my next task, or wipe sensitive data from my screen. Adding a delay to the task will annoy me immediately.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've just used alias c=clear in my .bashrc and never looked back. Not even Ctrl+L feels as convenient as c+Enter

<comment><USER22> the full monty: alias c='echo -e "\033c" ; stty sane; setterm -reset; reset; tput reset; clear'

doesn't only clear the screen, but also escape any "broken" terminal configuration such as output of a binary on the tty

<comment><USER23> setterm does not work on macOS. I find reset(1) working fine. It already does clear, too.

<comment><USER14> One of these days, someone will take my portable setterm, which compiles fine on FreeBSD, and compile it on MacOS. (-:

* [http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/setterm.xml](http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/setterm.xml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hate sl. I always alias it and I will purge it from any system that I am in charge of. It is not fun nor cute and I do not want to waste my time watching it.

<comment><USER25> If you use a Dvorak keyboard layout, you will be immune to sl, without having to set any alias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In an average day I open more than 100 terminal windows (alt-escape which opens rxvt-unicode). Use most briefly, then they vanish behind other windows.

Every-so-often, when I get in a mess with alt-tab I run killUnusedTerminalsAndBC.sh, which kills the dozen or so bc instances that accumulate, and then kills any terminals which don't have anything running in them. I've done that a couple of times today, just did it again and killed another 10 hanging around. Most of the rest are idle, but sshed to other servers, so they don't get reaped.

<comment><USER27> I use yakuake with a persistent tmux session for that, I just open my yakuake terminal and perform whatever I want in a new tmux pane (or window if preferred).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My new favourite way: ttyfire

[https://i.imgur.com/c0VIJYg.mp4](https://i.imgur.com/c0VIJYg.mp4)

Video is of it running in gnome-terminal, where the terminal window is scaled right down with ctrl-minus.

Source is here: [https://github.com/dmo9000/ttyfire](https://github.com/dmo9000/ttyfire)

So far its been able to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and OpenBSD with minor patches. NetBSD xterm doesn't seem to support Unicode for some reason.

This was inspired by the Javascript DOOM fire effect that was posted here a bit over a year ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18833765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18833765)

</comment><comment><USER29> I like the VT100 demo. I wonder if there are demos for the more advanced color VT340 terminals?

<comment><USER14> They actually aren't VT100 demos, if you look at them. Several of them use SGR control sequences to set colour. I suspect that quite a few of them would not have worked on an actual VT100 series terminal.

<comment><USER29> I guess it is to late and nobody will read this. But anyway.

A couple of years ago i bought a new old stock DEC VT340 terminal, complete with a set of manuals. It can do much more than ANSI. Wikipedia says it can to bitmap and vector graphics "ReGIS, Sixel and Tektronix 4010". I wonder if there are scripts or tools to demo those capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if the train animation is a direct descendant of this program which was published by Processor Technology in their Access newsletter, Volume 1, No. 4. The author is "Newett Awl", which supposedly was the pseudonym of Gordon French, co-founder of the Homebrew Computer Club.

PT was the maker of the Sol-20, a 1976-ish CP/M machine.

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

Source code: [http://sol20.org/programs/train.asm](http://sol20.org/programs/train.asm)

</comment><comment><USER31> What would you think of a command that clears the screen but first pushes the contents onto a stack so you could return to it later? The thought crosses my mind once in a while but I wonder if I'm the only one who wants it.

<comment><USER32> That's just a form feed character, or CTRL+L.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> While I was working on Alacritty's `clear` handling, I stumbled on a number of interesting details (including a recently fixed bug in `clear` itself).

[https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/pull/2329#issuecommen...](https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/pull/2329#issuecomment-506591085)

</comment><comment><USER34> In times past, Solaris' /usr/bin/clear was a sh script which ran "tput clear", but the amusing parts was the notice which includes

      # Copyright (c) 1987, 1988 Microsoft Corporation
      # All Rights Reserved
      # This Module contains Proprietary Information of Microsoft
      # Corporation and should be treated as Confidential.

</comment><comment><USER35> Another list of terminal pretties missing lolcat.

<comment><USER36> I'd like the matrix animation with lolcat pretty pls.

<comment><USER37> It works: `cmatrix | lolcat`

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone have any idea why the download to the viewer needed for the Twilight Zone file gets flagged by Firefox as a virus? I can't see anything strange in it.

[http://artscene.textfiles.com/viewers/linux/slowcat.pl](http://artscene.textfiles.com/viewers/linux/slowcat.pl)

</comment><comment><USER39> > [ $[$RANDOM % 10] = 0 ] && do_this || do_that

> This gives roughly a 1 in 10 chance of do_this running, and a 9 in 10 chance > of do_that running.

`do_that` having a 9 in 10 chance depends on `do_this` having a 0 chance of returning a falsy status.

<comment><USER10> Afaik this is common syntax for if/else based only on the the initial condition; I can't remember where it's documented but I think it requires the do_this part to be a single expression. However, bash pitfalls recommends against using && and || except for very basic logic.

<comment><USER39> > Afaik this is common syntax for if/else based only on the the initial > condition

You're right that it's common, but you're wrong saying that it's based only on the initial condition:

      $ true && cat nonexistent.txt || echo "shouldn't have run"
      cat: nonexistent.txt: No such file or directory
      should't have run

> I can't remember where it's documented but I think it requires the do_this > part to be a single expression

It's not documented like you said because it's a hack. &&/|| aren't meant to simulate if/else. These aren't expressions either. And they aren't really limited either:

      $ true && { echo "true condition ran"; cat nonexistent.txt; } || echo "false condition ran"
      true condition ran
      cat: nonexistent.txt: No such file or directory
      false condition ran

> However, bash pitfalls recommends against using && and || except for very > basic logic.

The fact that people end up thinking that it's an ok substitute for if/else syntax is the reason why it's recommended against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This one should really have a massive "do not try this":

[ $[$RANDOM % 6] = 0 ] && sudo rm -rf / || echo "Not today"

An awful lot of people just copy and paste things to see what'll happen.

<comment><USER41> I don't think it does. If one blindly copies a command to their terminal, this is a good lesson not to do so. Too many projects suggest `curl foo | sh` as the "quick and ready to go" method for installation which is equally as bad as rm -rf in the wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm not sure if I need an animation for clearing the terminal, but I enjoy having the ruby gem gti providing an animation and executing the respective command whenever I mistype git.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wow - if you go further down they mention there was a VT100 Demmo scene

</comment><comment><USER44> Neat! I personally prefer the very quick vertical tab method: Ctrl+L.

Quick and easy.

</comment><comment><USER18> cbeams? Isn't that a _Blade Runner_ reference?

<comment><USER45> It absolutely is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> ah my old friend `sl'

not to mention the first and only useful application if terminal gif html

</comment><comment><USER47> CTRL+l gotta go fast!

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't think there's a way to map these cute animations to Ctrl+L is there?

</comment><comment><USER49> Unrelated that some may find useful- type reset to actually clear scrollback too if you're confused after too much output</comment>


Any startups doing anything interesting with LinkedIn API, yet? - <AUTHOR>

Spending the holidays integrating the LinkedIn API to our app; I know, I know, get a life. Looking to revisit this old thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492642
The API seems to be getting a little bit better, but the ToS still prevents simple things like sending HTML in a message!
Any suggestions for a better way to reach business users with a (respectfully) viral app? Jive seems to be opening up their API, what about Yammer? <comment><USER2> slightly off topic, but i was noticing a correlation between activity on linkedin and people quitting or changing jobs, it's been rather uncanny how correlated they have been (8 out of 8 folks that have left lately have been using linked in aggressively before departing) and this is in china, land of blocked sites (facebook, twitter, etc).

i'm wondering if there's data to be mined from other such sites so that you can make a prediction of who's quitting. i see this as a major privacy issue, i.e. as i'm a user of linked in and someone's trying to predict if i'm quitting my job.

<comment><AUTHOR> /* A friend at MyBlogLog (!) called LinkedIn the "social network of last resort," and it has that air or desperation about it. A sudden request for referrals is akin to a passive aggressive cry for help! _/

So you're basically telling me my effort to integrate with LinkedIn is a _complete* waste of time, unless I'm trying to capitalize on pathos and desperation? :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reaching business users is very difficult: they are generally older and not active on social networks with the exception of linked in. However, few people are "active" on LI except marketers and job seekers. I run a service in the corporate/legal that relies on invites from existing users to get new users. We decided LI integration was not a good use of time. When I have posted content in LI groups I notice very low click through, regardless of the nature of the content.</comment>


Can we get an alert when someone replies to your comment thread? - <AUTHOR>

- <comment><USER2> Yes; just sign up for Notifo, and put your Notifo id in the notifo field of your profile.

<comment><USER3> Does this honor noprocrast?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> YC startup <http://notifo.com/> will do this.

 _edited_

<comment><USER2> You mean <http://notifo.com>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a thought, if you want to do this then I recommend not posting anything that becomes popular. I wouldn't be happy if I woke up with 100 email notifications that my thread had been replied to.</comment>


SoftBank President Nikesh Arora to Step Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-president-nikesh-arora-to-step-down-1466506804 <comment><USER2> Typical case for botched leadership transition.

Arora held executive positions at Google, Deutsche Telecom, and in a fund mgmt group, is the poster boy of a leader Softbank could wish for. Don't think he would have come over without a clearly defined date for taking over the helm.

Interesting to see which self-respecting exec would be willing to follow into Arora's footsteps. I guess we see a B-player puppet so Masayoshi can continue to hold on.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a different takeaway - Leaders from Google like Nikesh Arora, Marissa Mayer, Vic Gundotra don't succeed outside of Google because Google has a very unique culture and team environment, and success does not come from individual leaders at Google - it comes from teams.

<comment><USER4> A counterexample is Sheryl Sandberg, who was Google's Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations from 2001 to 2008.

<comment><USER3> I like this counter example. I also think Sheryl knows that she can be the kingmaker and not the king to be successful. She is a driving force behind Mark Zuckerberg's success. Of all the folks mentioned, I put Sheryl in the rare breed category who has very high emotional intelligence.

<comment><USER4> > I also think Sheryl knows that she can be the kingmaker and not the king to > be successful.

Another example of this is Uber's Ryan Graves. He was Uber's original CEO, but was replaced in December 2010 by Travis Kalanick[0]. At that point, Uber's success was by no means ensured, but Graves stuck with it, and now he's a billionaire anyway[1].

0: [https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/uber-ceo-super-pumped- abou...](https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/uber-ceo-super-pumped-about-being- replaced-by-founder/)

1: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/02/uber- billio...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/02/uber-billionaires- garrett-camp-ryan-graves)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. He seemed uniquely suited to do the job, with a commercial background in both old telecom and new cloud. Perhaps this just didn't translate to picking companies to buy.

<comment><USER6> This is still behind a paywall. You can search for the WSJ title and follow a search engine link to bypass this.

<comment><USER7> There is a web link under the article that achieves the same result.

<comment><USER6> Which link? I am curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On Twitter, Nikesh is spinning it as a positive, no big deal. He says: I still love Masa, etc. So maybe it worked out well for him. Softbanks stock has declined somewhat since he is reported to have bought $487 million worth to become Softbanks 2nd largest shareholder. If he managed to unwind that transaction and somehow break even then he has done very well. That would mean he would have essentially freerolled any upside in the company's share price over the last 2 years, if it had rised. Pretty interesting because on the face of it, it would look like Softbank had him over a barrel.

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.vccircle.com/news/finance/2016/04/22/nikesh- arora...](http://www.vccircle.com/news/finance/2016/04/22/nikesh-aroras-india- deals-softbank-investors-are-seeking-probe)</comment>


Nvidia launches anti-Intel Web site - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=31862&tag=wrapper;col1

<comment><USER2> I don't believe this is good corporate strategy. The two are in a legal battle, and their future interests do cross. However, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. What exactly do they expect to gain from this?</comment>


How I Escaped the 9 to 5 and Built a $270K Freelance Business by 27 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thecoolestcool/how-i-escaped-the-9-to-5-and-built-a-270k-freelance-business-by-27-665fddde80da

<comment><USER2> Nice points.

 _writing has been a driving force behind the growth of my business and existing network._

Can someone with experience explain if this works in every niche? For example, a low level web dev making 60-70K a year in a corporate job - what should he write about?

<comment><USER3> Hey - Thanks, I wrote this!

A low level web dev could write about their process, various trends in web development that have caught their eye, insights about the various industries you would work with, etc...

If you have an ideal client, write about things that they would want to know about web development. For example, maybe they want to know the difference between SquareSpace and Wordpress? Or maybe they want to know whether or not responsive design is worth it? All of these topics will elevate your name in the eyes of potential clients and demonstrate that you're not just a low level web dev :)</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley Creating Jobs, But Not for Everyone - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/silicon-valley-creates-jobs-but-not-for-everyone/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if this is because we are early adopters of automation and ecommerce, which don't require us to spend as much of our wealth locally. Or do we save more than average, due to the volatility of our young industry?</comment>


Ask HN: Is it me or HackerNews needs a better UI? - <AUTHOR> I really enjoy the content posted on HN. But I frequently find myself skimming through the (often) insightful comments/discussion. Am I the only one who thinks the comments UX makes it difficult to read/participate? <comment><USER2> HN is my favorite UI. I guess what makes some people happy makes others unhappy. For me personally "mobile" UI's suck on mobile. HN works great on mobile, for me at least. HN works great on a desktop too.

One vote for the UI being great just as it is. Mobile and desktop.

<comment><USER3> The voting and hide/comment age buttons are terrible on mobile - they're far too small and close together so it's easy to accidentally press the wrong button. Nested comments are bad on mobile too, since they end up being in a column two words wide.

<comment><USER4> The nesting of comments really bothers me too, the deeper you go into a thread, the narrower the columns.

If you're looking for an app that has solved the nested comments issue, check this out: [https://shn.app.link/HN-ask2](https://shn.app.link/HN-ask2)

Disclaimer: I made it, it's open source, and contributions are welcome! (Built in react native)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually really enjoy the layout.

I think changing the color scheme to make it a bit easier on the eyes would certainly be an improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a designer, but one possible improvement would be to cap the width of the text regardless of browser width.

<comment><USER6> While I agree, to a certain point (depends on the width), not everyone likes this.

<comment><USER7> Which is why the styles should be something users can adjust when logged in.

It's very weird that the only real customizable part of this site is the background color of the topbar, and _that 's_ a perk that requires karma.

<comment><USER8> You can do this already with Chrome extensions on desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ugly UI doesn't mean a bad UX. I always point people towards craigslist and ebay.

I can get my news and put in my .02, when compelled to do so. Also, the community is authoritative and inviting.

What could you want from a new design that would add value to the community?

<comment><USER10> I think Hacker News has perfectly fine UI but horrible UX. Sorry if i got those definitions wrong. I think the colour scheme etc is perfectly fine but the actual functionality of this site is horrendous.

\- There is no search function anywhere

\- Go back far enough in the news listings and it just stops. No explanation. [https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p=15](https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p=15)

\- To find the formatting guide for posting comments you have to go through the FAQs?!

\- Update a comment and you get redirected to the same form with no message.

I really don't get why a site who's target audiance is web developers and hackers has such terrible functionality on their site. Is it because we are really meant to be reading our news through a REST interface?

<comment><USER11> > \- There is no search function anywhere

The bottom.of most pages has a search box.

Most people here will be able.to use DDG or Bing or Google to search the site.

<comment><USER10> I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hacker news is the best mobile performing website I use. Would rather it not change.

<comment><USER8> Yes but for deeply nested comments, Reddit's interface (with Reddit Enhancement Suite) is so much better. You can reasonably navigate a multi thousand comment thread. On HN, that's difficult / impossible, especially on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One small thing that bothers me is the upvote button that looks too much like a button to (un)fold comments, especially when you can't downvote and therefore don't have any downvote button.

I just discovered that there is a [-] to (un)fold comments by the way. I would probably just have swapped the positions and use less confusing icons.

Another thing is the occasional blocks of code that are too wide and not wrapped, this requires horizontal scrolling which I find a bit annoying, especially on phones. And the text-reflow Firefox extension does not handle this, otherwise it would be a non-issue for me.

At the beginning, the appearance of HN seemed raw to me, but I got used to it and like it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the "brutalism". The only thing i would add is a night mode.

<comment><USER15> +1 for a dark mode!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> YAS! I personally use the PWA to view HN as i find it more responsive and more visually pleasing.

[https://angular2-hn.firebaseapp.com/](https://angular2-hn.firebaseapp.com/)

<comment><USER17> Apart from different colors (which can be achieved by changing the CSS here) and using 17x more data on initial load, what does this accomplish?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not that I am supporting this other UI here. But there is something to say about using different fonts, spacing, colors, etc.. You might not agree but it makes a difference to many people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I miss in the HN UI is a way to check what are the new comments when I revisit a discussion thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> another great example of how it can be "better"..

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone willing to list the rest of the currently maintained alternative web UIs for HN?

[http://hackernewsgrid.com](http://hackernewsgrid.com) | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078605) (2017)

[https://vue-hn.now.sh/](https://vue-hn.now.sh/) & [https://hnews.xyz](https://hnews.xyz) | [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hnews.xy](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hnews.xy) (2017-ish; 3 discussions)

[http://tophn.info/](http://tophn.info/) | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782574) (2017; 1 comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com) | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801) (2015)

[http://ihackernews.com](http://ihackernews.com) | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694049) -ish (2010)

[https://hckrnews.com](https://hckrnews.com) | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962820) & [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1722914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1722914) (2010)

App recommendations would also be appreciated (if you created or regularly use the app yourself).

</comment><comment><USER20> I once attended a seminar by Balaji Vishwanathan. He said in that seminar that once he had the opportunity to meet founder of HackerNews, and he asked him why he doesn't do anything about the look and feel of the site? The founder replied,"I want the site to be as ugly as possible". He implied real hackers like things ugly.

<comment><USER7> >He implied real hackers like things ugly.

Maybe be likes things ugly, and believes real hackers should be like him. Either way, I think he's incorrect.

Or else the people who have been complaining about the design and layout here for years aren't "real hackers."

<comment><USER21> It might be implying that "real hackers" end up doing things their own way if they want to e.g. style overrides / pwas / 3 million different hacker news feeds, etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a lot to be said for the simple UI here.

As a developer I'm not looking for anything more here than the "News", "Show", "Ask", "Jobs" features and the insight via the comments.

The UX is the content. Anything more would be fluff. That's not to say that's bad, but on this site it's unnecessary.

When you look at the source of this it'd be pretty easy to build an app that grabs it and rewraps it and that could be a fun project.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the simplicity and lack of bloat make it more refreshing than "modern" UI's, if a little more dated. Also as others have mentioned, there are plenty of wrappers that add more "material design"-esque skins (I have used [http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com))

</comment><comment><USER4> The commenting experience on mobile left me in pain. That's why I created an open-source HN app using ReactNative: [https://shn.app.link/HN- ask1](https://shn.app.link/HN-ask1)

</comment><comment><USER24> What it really needs is a floating button thing like the reddit app has that moves the screen to the top of each comment tree.

</comment><comment><USER25> I mostly use safari mobile to access HN and I've nothing to complain about. Links on mobile may not satisfy touch interface standards but oddly I get what I want most of the time when I hopelessly click.

</comment><comment><USER26> HN layout is great. Much easier to navigate than Reddit for example. I wouldn't change a thing.

</comment><comment><USER27> HN redesign is a recurring theme but I like it how it is now! (even though 99% of my HN consumption (I'd say an average 12 hours/week) is from Premii's android app)

</comment><comment><USER28> I actually like it this way. I think nested comments are hard to read, but that's the only problem.

</comment><comment><USER29> No. I think the UI here is good.</comment>


Fry's Electronics says it's not going out of business - <AUTHOR> https://www.dallasnews.com/business/retail/2019/11/15/frys-electronics-says-its-not-going-out-of-business/ <comment><USER2> I'm honestly surprised that they still exist. When they introduced all those mail-in rebates it pissed a lot of people off. Making your customers jump through so many hoops to end up with missing or denied rebates is one sure fire way to lose your base.

</comment><comment><USER3> Insiders think otherwise: "Bryan Boone, who left Fry's a couple of years ago after nearly 20 years with the company, says he bets "they're going to go out of business." But the former facilities manager and construction supervisor thinks the owners of the secretive and privately owned company — the Fry's family — are trying to keep the stores open as long as possible to avoid paying the costs associated with winding down the business." [1]

[1] [https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/06/frys-electronics- hang...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/06/frys-electronics-hanging-on- but-for-how-long/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Lame. In my area, our only tech store is Best Buy, and I avoid it like the plague because it's overpriced and they don't even carry good stuff. There have been a lot of times where I need something quick (ideally same day), but I end up suffering through the waiting period for Newegg if at all possible.

For example, my wireless router started going out (one radio died completely), so I decided I should invest in higher quality equipment, but BestBuy only has the same consumer crap I'd see at Costco or Target, though maybe a couple more options. I also needed to replace drives and they only had desktop parts. Or I needed to get RAM and they have no ECC or even just high quality non-ECC RAM. Or I need some thermal paste, or a new desktop case.

I could find most, if not all, of that stuff at Fry's when I lived near one, but now I either waste money on a temporary solution at BestBuy or rig up a temporary solution at home until better equipment gets shipped to me.

Also, the eco conscious side of me hates making a delivery truck make a special stop at my house just to deliver a couple items, not to mention the extra packaging and whatnot sending a package entails.

That being said, even when I lived near Fry's, I shopped mostly online because it was more convenient, so I guess I'm at least partially to blame here. Lately, I'm trying to buy more from local sources so they hopefully stick around, and I buy extras of important things so I'm not dead in the water anymore.

</comment><comment><USER5> Went to the Fry's in Concord last weekend. All the shelves were bare. All the shelves in the cages behind the registers were bare. It literally looked like a store that was going out of business and marked all the remaining things to 70% off. You know the really crappy things. In this case all they had were karaoke machines, as seen on tv things, security cameras. It literally was depressing seeing only a dozen motherboards total in the PC components section.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good to hear. It's still nice to shop through their aisles and see actual computer parts including motherboards and cases in-person. I even prefer purchasing these parts in the store as I had experiences with online retailers such as NewEgg where the parts get damaging during shipping. Frys has a great return policy and has never given me issues when receiving credit.

Update: I am referring to their Fountain Valley store: [https://www.frys.com/ac/storeinfo/fountain_valley- location-f...](https://www.frys.com/ac/storeinfo/fountain_valley-location- frys-electronics-hours-maps-directions)

<comment><USER7> I went to the Plano tx location this month and it was incredibly depressing. Felt like a ghost town. It looks like they've stopped restocking everything, so it's felt pretty useless to go in person since anything I've needed they don't have in stock. Sound rooms to listen to different speakers in the back completely gutted, only cheap netbooks in the laptop section. None of the tablets I was interested in on display to try out in person. No motherboards as far as I saw. Entire isles 90% empty. Nothing even in the center big isle walking spaces to grab your attention and make going there to walk around and browse for fun worth it.

Was really sad because I grew up going to this store and it played a big role in my interest in tech. As a kid it felt like a technology mecca, I could easily spend hours wandering the store with my dad. It's where my dad and I bought everything to build our first PC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's a relief. I stopped into the Sacramento location over the weekend and was wondering what the heck was going on. Place looked damn near picked clean.</comment>


Programs that do this shouldn't be released - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/CDh6A.png

<comment><USER2> Programs that use a lot of CPU? How else do you think they're able to do all that sophisticated analysis of your code that warrants a license purchase?

History is on their side anyway; 300% CPU loosely[0] means "using 3 cores", and it's getting easier to get computers with more than that.

[0] [http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5329/what-does- it-m...](http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5329/what-does-it-mean-when- a-cpu-exceeds-of-cores-x-100)

</comment><comment><USER3> What version are you running? Have you tried File->Invalidate Caches?

<comment><AUTHOR> Newest version. First run</comment></comment>


How I Became Rich Before 30 and How You Can Too - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/10/13/how-to-be-successful/

<comment><USER2> _The good news, however, is that nothing is holding you back from being successful at a young age. You just need to work hard, have confidence in your abilities, and surround yourself with positive and successful people._

Really? _Just?_

This is Gladwelling at it's finest.</comment>


Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/25/what-the-humble-loom-can-teach-us-about-robots-and-automation/ <comment><USER2> "In the 19th century, the maturation and standardization of weaving technology finally brought long-overdue raises to textile workers."

Wow. Way to completely write out of the story the PEOPLE who fought tooth-and- nail to get those raises, WaPo....

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls)

Of course, acknowledging the real struggle might seriously impact the whole "things will get better by themselves, just keep sleeping" argument of the piece...

<comment><USER3> Keep in mind that The Washington Post was recently acquired by Jeff Bezos.

This article makes much more sense when viewed in the light of Amazon's current PR problems due to their treatment of poorly paid warehouse workers. They are desperately trying to automate as fast as possible, and this piece tries its best to spin it as a win-win for everyone.

<comment><USER4> You of course have evidence that Bezos is interfering in the editorial operations of the Post, right?

<comment><USER5> It's happened enough with other figures & papers that some people take it as good practice to assume, proof or no, and simply disregard the paper on suspect topics.

Certainly nothing you can take anyone to court over, but perhaps prudent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the other hand, the mechanization of agriculture had devastating social consequences when introduced to the UK in the 1700s, leading to mass unemployment, crimewaves and the introduction of the death penalty for stealing food. The industrial revolution eventualy created replacements but things got very ugly for a few generations.

There's no reason to assume that replacement forms of employment will automatically appear when needed.

</comment><comment><USER7> > as the market for cotton cloth matured in the mid-20th century, further > automation no longer generated such increases in demand and new technology > slowly eliminated jobs in the textile industry.

This seems to be a counterpoint to his thesis: Technology does indeed create unemployment if all demand has already been satisfied.

His point should thus be stated with a caveat: Technology does not destroy jobs _as long as demand increases along with the increased supply_. In order to know whether robots will steal our jobs, we have to first determine whether human demands are already being met or not, and it seems plausible to me that they nearly are today (though the inverse also seems plausible).

<comment><USER8> "Demand" can be a bit of a fuzzy thing. For instance, all those people who were now had "enough" clothes and were saving money from the lower prices were instead buying other things, creating increased demand for some other sector of the economy. Which, presumably, would eventually lead to more jobs elsewhere.

I think a better moral for the story is to expect technology to have significant local effects on employment in particular industries (either up or down), but the evidence for the economy as a whole seems to be much more neutral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The loom was an example of a technology that actually had a more egalitarian effect on wealth distribution: expensive skilled labor was replaced with greater numbers of cheap unskilled labor.

Given the right prices, this sort of technology can make sense even if it doesn't actually "save" labor at all -- replacing one efficient skilled person with two inefficient unskilled ones for the same output makes business sense if the skilled labor is more than double the price.

Today's market has a lot of disparity in labor prices like this, especially when you look at it globablly. So it's entirely possible for new tech that doesn't actually save labor in terms of output per worker to find a niche.

At the same time, it's also possible for tech to do the inverse, and replace three expensive unskilled workers with one skilled one who commands double the wage.

So in terms of income inequality, at least, it's not entirely clear where technology will take us.

</comment><comment><USER9> To write an entire article using historical textile production as an example and not mention the impacts of contemporary globalization on the same industry is confusing at best and hopelessly optimistic at worst.

<comment><USER10> The point of the article isn't what is happening presently in terms of textiles and globalization, but how technological innovation affected the industry in 18th and 19th century Massachusetts.

That said, there are some omissions. The American Colonies / Early United States were labor-constrained. The economy was growing rapidly, and there simply weren't enough warm bodies to meet demand (discussed in Smith, _Wealth of Nations_ , Book 1, Chapter VII). Wages were high, supplies of finished goods were limited, and the benefits of industrialization were high. This contrasted with England in which factories drew masses of labor from the countryside, city populations exploded (Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham grew from small towns of 4,000 - 6,000 in 1685 to major cities of 393,000 - 552,000 by 1881, see Arnold Toynbee's _Lectures on the Industrial Revolution_ ), and working conditions in general were abysmal.

Which suggests _other_ reasons why picking the Lowell factories as the analysis point is somewhat misguided. Toynbee's _Lectures_ paint a markedly different picture of how industrialization proceeded in the UK.

The challenge now is that virtually all basic needs of survival ... and then some ... are satisfied. Does this mean that there's _no_ additional demand or demand growth possible? No. But ... the situation's markedly different from the late 18th century.

Too: the dawn of the Industrial Revolution was a period in which there were vast untapped natural resources -- virgin land (or, if you prefer, newly cleared land by way of the aboriginal genocide and pandemics) in the Americas, forests, untilled prairies, and of course, untold gigatons of coal, oil, and gas in the ground. William Stanley Jevons noted that increased efficiencies tended to _increase_ consumption of resources by increasing their marginal utility (the so-called Jevons Paradox)

We're looking at a constrained resource environment going out, which may well invert the logic of Jevons Paradox and see fewer resources consumed with increasing efficiency. Which would mean that automation would idle, not employ, hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the arguments of this article is that as technology stabilizes we will be able to demand higher pay.

Technology will likely not stabilize.

<comment><USER12> Internet technology has stabilized already: we're still using HTML, HTTP, javascript, etc. The Space Jam website from 1996 still loads in a browser. Most servers and clients still use IPv4. Etc.

<comment><USER11> Using the article's analogies, they talk specifically about web designers.

Would a web designer from 1996 have a job in today's market? In the same vein, it would be like saying the autoloom would still work today, obviously it would, but no one would use it to produce goods to sell commercially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Richard Posner's view:

[http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2014/01/secular- stagnation...](http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2014/01/secular- stagnationposner.html)

<comment><USER14> TL;DR:

> It is difficult to imagine productive activities that cannot be > automated—mining, construction, many medical services, house cleaning: the > list goes on and on.

> A decline in the demand for labor, caused by automation, will result in > lower wages, without necessarily producing an increase in employment (work > effort will not grow if there is no work), let alone an increase in national > income.

However, as he also states, "with no truck drivers to pay, the cost of truck transportation will fall, and price will follow". In my view, this will further reduce the main necessities of living (food, hygiene products, energy) which will in turn allow people to live with much less money. Therefore, the poverty levels should fall, as well. It is not hard to imagine the government paying enough social welfare so that everyone can afford basic stuff. Actually, government could also just buy enough robots and produce all the necessities itself.

<comment><USER15> To extrapolate on what you said: "which will in turn allow people to live with much less money", I think this is absolutely true but the endgame is that most things will be nearly free but people will have no money to buy them.

For example computers are effectively free now, they are widely available on Craigslist for under $100 and capable smartphones are bundled into most cellular plans. Flat screen TVs, for all their perceived excess, halve in price each year. However houses and cars still cost $100,000 and $10,000, even used. What's beginning to haunt me is that soon there will be no money in so many industries that people think of as lucrative now: computing, transportation, services, etc, yet the things that constitute the core infrastructure of our society only appreciate in value. You'll be able to get what you want, but not what you need.

My prediction for America in 10 or 20 years, assuming there is no intervention soon, is that corporations will replace the state as the primary wealth manager and that nearly the entirety of the population, probably 400 million people by then, will have no wealth to speak of. People will be struggling to find high paying jobs because raises will be a thing of the past once automation progressively lowers costs each year. There will be a profound sense of being "locked in", running a perpetual rat race where work that used to be worth $100 per hour slips to $50, then $25, and so on until even the most trying work is not profitable, and stabilizes on some rate set by fear, perhaps $10 an hour. With everyone making this across industries, we'll have neo-communism. Your boss won't be able to afford a home, and neither will his or her boss. But go high enough up the ladder and houses will be gifted out as perks.

Then there will be some kind of revolution, it's tempting to think we don't know what form it will take, but if it's to be successful it will be a peaceful one. Basically we'll all look around and wonder why we're all working so hard in the most productive economy that's ever existed, and we'll throw out the bosses by deciding not to participate in the activities that they depend on. Suddenly everyone will have a substantial level of public wealth, you'll instantly own the home you're in, and it will be unclear whether you'll still pay a mortgage. The way it works is that the people and policies that help society are carried over post revolution, and the ones that hinder it are cast aside.

I kind of hope I'm wrong about all of this, but I know in my heart I'm not. We're living in the last heyday of the industrial age, "enjoy" it while it lasts. We can even pretend that we don't know what the post-revolution age will look like, but that's not true either. Everyone's standard of living will go up to what it would have been without oppression. Only this time it will feel unthinkable to coerce people into doing work you would disdain to do yourself, so robots will fill that role instead of other ethnicities, genders or foreigners. It may very well be the last revolution before we're a spacefaring society.

In fairness, and because this got so long, I just want to say that this is only one possible future, and that we may very well adopt robots on a personal level like the PC (hydroponic gardens, off-grid homes and cars built of recycled materials, a sharing economy like Airbnb for everything) before then and the next generation may follow a completely different path. I just think this is the most likely forecast, based on the evidence I see around me now.

<comment><USER3> My friend, you are an incredible optimist and I hope this is our future. But history shows that power gained is never relinquished without a vicious struggle.

How do you think a non-violent revolt can succeed in a society where mercenaries keep the peace? Furthermore, what if these mercenaries are autonomous systems which require very few skilled individuals to operate? Surely they would simply work for the highest bidders, and viciously enforce whatever "society" these bidders require.

The truth is, going forward, an ever larger percentage of people (specifically their labor) will be deprecated by superior technology (capital). In fact, as technology progresses, most people will become an operating cost in society, as the cost of keeping the majority of people alive will outweigh their total lifetime labor contribution. This is the reality of capital in the technological era. Economics doesn't break down, it just means capital gets more and more of the production pie, and labor gets less.

It will be a brave new world, but in no way will it be better than now. The Dark Ages happened, and they can happen again.

<comment><USER16> _" But history shows that power gained is never relinquished without a vicious struggle."_

People say this, but it's not true. Obviously there are countless cases where violent struggle was used, and quite possibly in many of those cases violent struggle was required (maybe even all), but there have clearly been cases of individuals and groups giving up power. Sometimes in pursuit of ideals, sometimes out of fear that violence might otherwise follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> why would anyone want to job in the first place...? If you're in a place where you need to mindlessly execute duties, it's not a good place.

<comment><USER18> If you have some kind of basic income then what you said makes sense. If not, people still need food and shelter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is conveniently forgetting that demand (which eventually ends in consumer demand) isn't necessarily infinite. We have this thing called a planet we live on, that needs to remain intact (or Elon Musk needs to get a move on getting us to other planets :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Could the inventors of the loom, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, have imagined the types of jobs most of have today, in the morning of the Information Revolution? I doubt it.

There will be industries and jobs enabled by today's technologies, that we can't picture today. My bet is on biotechnology. We know only a very small amount about the systems of life.

<comment><USER20> Yeah there may be new jobs, but why would you have a human doing them, when a robot could?

We can't pretend that a new _tool_ for humans to use is equivalent to a fully autonomous robot which can think for itself beyond any human capacity. Those two things are fundamentally un-alike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought humble loom is a name of some weird startup.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Will robots steal our jobs?

It's not stealing if I don't want it.</comment>


All the international brands that have apologized to China - <AUTHOR> https://signal.supchina.com/all-the-international-brands-that-have-apologized-to-china/ <comment><USER2> What I find so difficult with this whole topic is finding ways to fight this tendency of companies and other organizations bowing to China. So far I haven't found much except signing a couple petitions and boycotting, but petitions don't seem that helpful and boycotts are basically irrelevant as long as the corporation gains more profits in China than they lose from boycotts.

What I kind of like is referring to China as West Taiwan, but realistically that probably also doesn't do much except anger people from mainland China.

It's hard to watch Tim Cook and others talk about privacy and similar issues on some stage while they cooperate with a government running concen-...uh, "re-education" camps.

<comment><USER3> Taiwan is the exiled government of China. Taiwan doesn't call themselves Taiwan but Republic of China. For mainland China I prefer communist occupied China

<comment><USER4> Taiwan does call themselves Taiwanese

<comment><USER5> Increasingly many do. Generally, the more anonymous the survey, the larger the proportion is. Apparently there is still official pressure there to pretend to recognize it as a legitimate government in exile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The hypocrisy is ridiculous. Try ordering something off AliExpress/Taobao shipped to HK/Taiwan and you're directed to "international shipping".

In particular, they should change Taiwan's entry in ISO-3166 before scowling at foreign companies for using a standardized country list.

<comment><USER7> >In particular, they should change Taiwan's entry in ISO-3166 before scowling at foreign companies for using a standardized country list.

Why should China's foreign policy be so privileged as to define intenational standards?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Heh, it links to Inkstone talking about how LinkedIn has totally sucked up to China, but even Inkstone refers to the Tiananmen "crackdown", not the "massacre". So it's working, even in places it is supposed not to.

In the US, police have to murder black people in ones and twos, building up numbers slowly so as not to attract too much attention. In China they get to murder people wholesale. It makes them sloppy.

It seems strange how those who have chosen to participate in law enforcement are so resistant to the idea of not routinely murdering people. Not even just as a matter of, say, setting a good example.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sure they have. And meanwhile they are making contingency plans to leave China in the least expensive manner. The culture wars are coming.</comment>


Interview with reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian - <AUTHOR> http://lambdaphant.com/blog/interview-with-reddit-cofounder-alexis-ohanian

<comment><USER2> I would've liked to see more meat, but a good little quick read.

Summary:

\- I'm a non-technical but savvy founder.

\- Advice to younger crowd: start creating, start sharing.

\- Being a startup outside an area with angel investors is hard; utilize HN and other startup web presences in those cases.

\- I'm still young and have plenty in mind.

\- I don't have outside hobbies, I enjoy my work.</comment>


Hard drives sent through the mail more convenient than Internet backups - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220227/Mozy_ships_hard_drives_to_cloud_backup_customers

<comment><USER2> "Don't underestimate the bandwidth of a 1970 Oldsmobile station wagon roaring down the highway at 70MPH, filled with 8 inch tapes."</comment>


Ask HN: Paywalls - <AUTHOR>

Anyone familiar with paywall technologies? Micropayments?  What's a good resource? <comment><USER2> I think a paywall just hides a site's content from nonsubscribers so it's just a euphemism for a subscription site. As for micropayments, yes I think a lot of us are familiar with that technology - paypal and amazon fps developer docs ought to be enough to get you started. What specifically are you trying to accomplish?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Will read the documentation. I'm interested in requiring a user's micropayment prior to viewing each piece of content.</comment></comment>


Outlook.com is down - <AUTHOR> http://outlook.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it's been down all morning in Quebec, Canada... shows an error page, no way I can read my mails from their website

</comment><comment><USER2> Seems fine to me

</comment><comment><USER3> nytimes.com has been down for >80Min</comment>


Trolling marketers by messing with utm campaigns - <AUTHOR> http://stilldrinking.org/utms/utm-mangler.html

<comment><USER2> Just a heads up that this script makes it look like you were looking for child pornography and getting linked from porn sites.

That might not be a wise thing to be associating with your IP address in someone's database...

[http://stilldrinking.org/utms/utm- mangler.js](http://stilldrinking.org/utms/utm-mangler.js)</comment>


Martin Aircraft Company – Pre-IPO Opportunity - <AUTHOR> http://www.martinjetpack.com/news/137-mac-pre-ipo <comment><AUTHOR> There are a few hoops to jump through if you're not from AUS/NZ, but I think this company is doing amazing things. I can't wait for them to get enough funding to mass produce these!</comment>


Cruise Shows Off Level 4 Skills in SF, Passing Uber and Maybe Waymo - <AUTHOR> http://www.driverless.id/news/video-breakdown-gms-unicorn-cruise-shows-off-level-4-skills-sf-passing-uber-maybe-waymo-0176031/ <comment><USER2> At the risk of sounding pedantic this is not a Level 4 demo. It is a Level 2 demo where the driver didn't have to intervene during the demonstrated route.

What's the difference? Apart from the legal requirement to have a diver ready to take over in test vehicles (which necessarily makes it Level 2), the fundamental difference is that you'd have to show _a lot more than one demo_ to establish that you've achieved Level 4. Level 4s are supposed to be able to operate without human intervention at all within prescribed domains (e.g. downtown cities). That doesn't mean operate one trip or one day or one month without a disengagement -- that's still Level 2.

I'm super impressed by the demo but Cruise will have to show more data to back up a Level 4 claim.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely. And the video although not new is quite impressive. But if the claim of the author that San Francisco is a tough city in which to drive is true, than I fear that some parts of Italy (and probably A LOT of cities in the world) won't have self driving cars for a very long time. When I saw the video the first time I was very impressed, but I would have never imagined that for someone that was a VERY challenging urban scenario. From the article:

        when we see the streets of San Fransisco conquered, then we know that self-driving is ready to come of age.

Seriously? And if you conquer the street of Naples what will come of age?

<comment><USER4> This is moreso true for China and India.

If you've ever been to those countries, the first thing you notice as a westerner is that the streets are chaos, traffic rules are barely obeyed, and aggressiveness is required to get anywhere.

Meanwhile, Beijing and Dehli have extreme pollution problems partially caused by cars.

If any place was in need of point to point autonomous ride sharing, it's Asia. The reduction in cars would reduce congestion from the outset. But in the future, protocol guided right of way negotiation could reduce congestion even further.

<comment><USER5> I tried to flag a taxi in downtown Shanghai for 45 minutes and finally gave into the broken English speaking motorcycle taxi who had been circling the block every five minutes.

Riding bitch through Hangpu to Pudong with a laptop in one arm while lane splitting with aggressive (and otherwise bad drivers) all around was a rather exciting experience.

Even with a skilled pilot, the adrenaline rush was similar to my first time tandem skydiving.

<comment><USER6> > Even with a skilled pilot, the adrenaline rush was similar to my first time > tandem skydiving.

following lines from neal-stephenson's cryptonomicon come to mind:

          "like Disneyland with the safety locks taken off"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice. It's annoying that they provide only 10x sped up video. Watching this slowed down is helpful.

Notes:

* There are frequent steering twitches to the left. This may be associated with passing parked cars. There are similar twitches to the right when in the left lane of a one-way street.

* Crosswalk behavior when turning needs some work. The vehicle enters the intersection, then stops in the intersection before the crosswalk with people in it. This is a hard problem, because the system needs to recognize people waiting to cross but not yet in the roadway. When the light turns green, both the pedestrians going straight and the turning vehicle can enter the intersection, the pedestrians having right of way. The pedestrians now block the vehicle, and the vehicle blocks the bike lane.

* Left turns into multi-lane streets are too wide and into the wrong lane.

* On two occasions, the vehicle is stuck behind a doubly-parked vehicle engaged in loading. The options are to wait or to cross a double yellow line. There's a delay of several seconds, then forward movement. Suspect manual intervention.

<comment><USER2> I counted 30 seconds of being stuck behind the unloading van with no way to pass without crossing double yellow. I didn't notice the autonomous green light turn off though. Possibly the algorithm is, if you're stuck then certain rules become flexible.

Worth mentioning, 30 seconds would feel like an eternity inside a car.

<comment><USER7> I assumed the "autonomous green light" was added in post-production, along with the timer and the company logo.

Google had another crash last month.[1] As usual, it was probably the other driver's fault. Other driver apparently botched a left turn in a two-lane left turn intersection at Rengsdorf and El Camino. Google drives in traffic on the SF peninsula every day, and we know exactly how many times they've crashed. It's reassuring seeing all those miles with only the occasional fender-bumper. It's not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed. Three times.

Still waiting for the CA DMV to post the 2016 autonomous vehicle disconnect reports. Those cover December through November and are due Jan 1st, so DMV should have them up by now.

[1] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3d358211-3f0c-430e...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3d358211-3f0c-430e-b8db-b13392239e1e/Google_121116.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

<comment><USER8> > It's not like Tesla slamming into something on a freeway at full speed.

To be fair, Tesla is not selling a fully autonomous vehicle, yet, people are treating it like one.

<comment><USER9> And Tesla had encouraged that perception.

<comment><USER10> Tesla appears to be extremely clear to users as to the current state of the system. Have you actually used Tesla autopilot? What did you think of it?

<comment><USER11> It's called "autopilot".

Too many people, myself included, that's all that matters.

They need to stop calling it "autopilot" until you can get in and fall asleep in the back seat.

<comment><USER12> Airplane autopilot isn't designed to be used in the way you described. Should aviation rename that as well?

<comment><USER13> Can't you go theoretically go to the toilet on autopilot? It won't land for you, but while turned on it will keep the plane aloft until fuel runs out, no?

<comment><USER8> I don't know the answer to this, but it's my guess that at least the pilot or copilot must be at the controls at all times.

<comment><USER13> should be, but doesn't actually have to I guess. (still relatively empty up there, so not so much traffic to avoid)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Level 4" means that no human intervention is required and in case of conditions going from good to bad, the car can autonomously put itself in a safe state.

That was nice and clean city driving in the video clips but nothing that distinguishes it from "Level 3" (human intervention may be required within ~15 seconds or so) or even "Level 2" (human intervention may be required within seconds, current state of the art).

<comment><USER15> _I imagine a space defined by visibility, traction and road flatness. A large space of Level 0 conditions, i.e. the conditions within most humans can drive, encapsulates Level 1, i.e. cruise control, which mostly encapsulates successive levels.

The benefit of this is you notice where levels "poke through," e.g. Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road conditions could downgrade the system to Level 1. As time goes forward, the inner levels can be expected to radiate out._

EDIT: Never mind. The point of "Level 4" is it is competent in all reasonable operating domains.

<comment><USER14> > Level 4 may work on a sunny day, but a small change in rain or road > conditions could downgrade the system to Level 1.

This isn't the way it works. If a car says it can do "Level 4 on a sunny day" it means when you sit in the car and engage the autopilot (and it says it's safe to engage), then no human intervention will not be required during the course of the trip. If conditions change, the car will be parked without human assistance and wait for help (what happens next is outside of the scope). You could be sitting in the back seat, or your kids could be in the car alone on their way to school.

"Level 4 on a sunny day on some pre-certified highways" is ok. "Level 4 in San Francisco traffic" is also ok, and much harder. "Level 4 unless it starts raining and we'll deteriorate to Level 3" is Level 3, not 4.

This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE, and they're pretty strictly defined.

<comment><USER15> > _This is the definition of autonomy levels from SAE_

 _It 's still domain dependent, right? If the rules say we're flattening precipitation and visibility within normal bounds, fine, but sometimes you have abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads. It is useful to compare hypothetical cars that autonomously navigate conditions no humans would dare._

EDIT: Never mind. The point of "Level 4" is it is competent in all reasonable operating domains.

<comment><USER14> > It's still domain dependent, right? If the rules say we're flattening > precipitation and visibility within normal bounds, fine, but sometimes you > have abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads

No, it's not.

In Level 4, if there's "abnormal weather and badly-maintained roads", the car must be able to deal with the situation and enter a safe state. It can say "please sit down and wait for assistance" but it may _not_ say, "take over the wheel".

In practice you'd probably disengage the autonomy and drive yourself, you _take_ control and it does not _give_ you control. If you can't sit on the back seat drinking beer or send the car to drive your kids to school (we're not considering legislation issues here), it's not Level 4.

This is an important distinction. "Level 3 in most conditions" is good enough to pass as "full autonomy" for most people, but Level 4 is a requirement for not absolving the humans on board for any legal responsibility.

<comment><USER15> Got it. That's helpful. So Cruise/GM are 4G'ing a Level 3 vehicle?

<comment><USER14> It's impossible to tell the level of autonomy from this article. What was shown in this article could qualify as Level 2, 3, 4 or 5.

To provide proof of Level 4 autonomy with video (in certain conditions), it would need to show adverse and exceptional conditions, such as terrible weather, accidents ahead, all routes to destination blocked or any other situation short of a force majeure disaster and then provide a safe contingency for that.

In San Francisco, that would probably mean finding a parking lot where it is safe to wait for assistance from your Transport Service Provide(tm). In rural northern Europe where I'm from, it would mean parking on the side of the road and calling your wife/mom/friend to pick you up :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Level 0: Automated system has no vehicle control, but may issue warnings.

Level 1: Driver must be ready to take control at any time. Automated system may include features such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Parking Assistance with automated steering, and Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) Type II in any combination.

Level 2: The driver is obliged to detect objects and events and respond if the automated system fails to respond properly. The automated system executes accelerating, braking, and steering. The automated system can deactivate immediately upon takeover by the driver.

Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks, but must still be prepared to take control when needed.

Level 4: The automated system can control the vehicle in all but a few environments such as severe weather. The driver must enable the automated system only when it is safe to do so. When enabled, driver attention is not required.

Level 5: Other than setting the destination and starting the system, no human intervention is required. The automatic system can drive to any location where it is legal to drive and make its own decision.

From the Society of Automotive Engineers

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification)

</comment><comment><USER17> Watching this video what struck me most was how overbuilt almost all the streets were - they're designed for high speeds and devote essentially all the space to cars. We know how to get at least a 3x reduction in fatalities, as the Netherlands has done, with engineering changes that make human drivers less likely to make mistakes and make their mistakes less costly.

<comment><USER18> Really? The narrow downtown San Francisco streets? You should check out a suburb sometime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very cool. But am I mistaken that they didn't attempt to go through a 4-way stop with massive pedestrians, like in PacHeights or Marina? I would be curious to see how they fared with the obnoxious drivers skipping their turn as well as the constant flow of pedestrians.

I'm also curious how it would react to going up Mason and California, where there's a traffic light at the top of a steep hill. Last time I had to physically pull myself up via the steering wheel to see anything, and as a seasoned driver I was a bit worried.

<comment><USER20> I'm guessing that will be part of Level 5 or at least we will be very close to level 5(full) autonomy once complex situations like 4-way stops with lots of pedestrians have been mastered.

<comment><USER21> So you're saying until we reach Level 5, autonomous cars will be entirely useless almost everywhere except a handful of US cities?

<comment><USER22> No.... They would work perfect on a highway WAY before we have cities figured out. If autonomous cars and trucks work on highways, then millions of jobs go poof.

<comment><USER23> Fully agree with you until the last phrase.

Highway autonomy will be a nice feature but you still need a competent human driver to be present for end to end transportation. So I still need to order a car with a driver to get to the airport.

I assume that you're referring to trucking. It's possible that trucking companies will set up depots right off the highway and will reduce drivers as a result. But a lot of long distance container transport is already done by trains so it's not immediately obvious that eliminating drivers for only the highway portion of trucking is necessarily a big enough win to make it happen. (Especially if autonomous driving systems allow for the driver to sleep in his cab while underway.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pigeons and human have a pact. You continue and they will fly away in the last second. Cars don't need to stop for pigeons. [https://youtu.be/xPCZtrac- Ss](https://youtu.be/xPCZtrac-Ss)

<comment><USER25> I hope you're kidding. In an area where they had just opened a freeway segment for my commute, my car had a couple of "reverse bird strikes" \-- the car was safe but the fate of the bird was unknown -- at the beginning of the new segment. It's possible the birds weren't pigeons.

<comment><USER26> He was kidding. It's from Seinfeld.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Dumb question: how do these systems distinguish a traffic light? Here in New England at least, there's quite a variety of lights, many different modes (red, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow, no-turn-left red arrow, no-turn-right red arrow, and different light technologies: old-fashioned style, Fresnel lens, slotted shade.

Add to this complexity the weather conditions. Suppose the sun is shining straight at you and you need to squint and shade your eyes just to make out what the light is -- this happens to me frequently -- can the camera see the traffic light and distinguish its color clearly under such conditions?

What about when it's raining, misting or drizzling, snowing heavily, etc. and the traffic lights are these fragmented outlines that you, the human, can heuristically distinguish but a machine might not?

One last thought: suppose it's right turn on red and first car in line is a self-driving vehicle. Can it really look left and safely determine there's enough time to beat the cross traffic? If it's highly conservative and just waits until green, there could be ten irate motorists behind it and guaranteed to honk and curse.

It's exciting technology but there are some very difficult problems to solve. I worry that if these machines can't demonstrate 110% of a human's ability to drive, they simply won't be implemented in many places except some very well defined rigid routes that are free of problematical challenges and variations.

<comment><USER28>
        red, yellow, green, flashing red, flashing yellow,
        no-turn-left red arrow, no-turn-right red arrow

You forgot flashing green, which does actually exist, at least in MA. You treat it like a green light, but it could go yellow and then red if a pedestrian presses the walk button.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, that, and also a traffic cop standing in random spots waving cars around an accident etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Random side thought: How do I signal in an ambiguous situation to the car on who's going first. Like Super high traffic and I want to merge in front of them or let them go first? Currently I do that with a wave. Which is super effective on a motorcycle as people almost always say "sure we can squeeze you in here" which lets me get places way faster.

<comment><USER30> I've read that insurance people strongly suggest to never wave: it's one of the top things that seems to occur during accidents. It's hard to distinguish from someone "waving you on" versus someone "waving to say thanks for letting me go". Trusting anyone else to check for oncoming traffic is a terrible idea. It's really easy to focus on the wave-giver and not check the rest of the traffic. And even if _you_ are good at these, all waves are inherently involving at least 2 drivers, and you can't really count on them being any good.

I couldn't find any real information on this though. I think I picked it up from Reddit comments. Some info does suggest it's legally complicated: [http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2014/03/06/244965...](http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2014/03/06/244965.htm)

<comment><USER29> I was talking about at a 4 way stop or in 2 mph gridlock... Where is more like a construction site than traffic. I almost got smeared once by believing a blinker. Never again, I won't pull out until they are obviously in a turn.

<comment><USER30> Yeah there's not much else you can do at a 4 way stop if the timing is bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Good we need competition in this space. I love Tesla but if this is going to end up everywhere, we need a few good players.

</comment><comment><USER32> It looks like the car doesn't travel in a straight line (it wobbles) because it's trying avoid parked cars.

<comment><USER33> Probably for the best. Someone could always open up a car door unexpectedly. I imagine it would be very hard for a driving algorithm to read social cues and notice drivers getting in/out of cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Cruise was a sponsor of ROSCon in 2014, but had no booth or presenters: [http://roscon.ros.org/2014/#program](http://roscon.ros.org/2014/#program)

Nor do they have any presence I'm aware of on Github. This is in contrast to BMW, for example, who have made a number of contributions: [https://github.com/bmwcarit](https://github.com/bmwcarit)

Anyway, just curious to what extent Cruise used (or still uses) ROS and open source software in their stack.

</comment><comment><USER35> Funny to see the it slow down for the pigeon in the road at 14:50.

<comment><USER36> Hah, nice catch, I remember seeing it do that weird jig but didn't look rewind or look close enough to figure out why it did that.

<comment><USER37> There is a paragraph and video fragment describing this in TFA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> >within 5 to 10 years we'll see these vehicles driving safely around San Francisco

<comment><USER39> Pretty ironic in consideration of "red lights don't apply to me" Ubers and more sane but extremely slow grandma Teslas

<comment><USER40> how dare you emit an utterance that amounts to anything other than deification of our future self-driving overlords and the peter-theil-worshipping engineers who unleash them upon us!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I said it before and I'll say it again:

You might not be able to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime but when you do you've got an aircraft carrier.

GM (and the other automotive manufacturers for that matter) decided they wanted in on self driving and electric vehicles, had a few meetings, wrote a few checks and a few years later look at the result. Are Google and Tesla going to reply with similar videos?

<comment><USER42> > You might not be able to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime but when you do > you've got an aircraft carrier.

I'm not sure what this means.

<comment><USER43> He's saying that while it may be more difficult to change strategic direction of a $50B company (Ford/Gm/etc.), once you do, you have a huge company and giant production line behind you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Extremely cool feat. Next try Chicago or Detroit in January guys.

<comment><USER45> Thats one of the reasons why Uber chose Pittsburgh for development. We might not get the same amount of snow as those cities but we get enough and have a variety of terrain for them to use as test cases.

<comment><USER46> Chicago and Detroit don't get all that much snow.

(Southern Michigan gets quite a lot of snow. Prevailing winds are westerly so lots of lake effect. Grand Rapids gets almost 2x the snow that Detroit gets. Cleveland also gets more snow than Detroit, lake effect from Erie)

<comment><USER44> Once they can traverse Chicago or Detroit in the winter safely then they can try Grand Rapids or Buffalo.

For the record in East Lansing we get a lot more snow than Detroit but we're pikers compared to say Holland or Grand Haven.

<comment><USER18> I drove in Grand Rapids and Chicago today. I'd take bad weather in GR than here at home any time. More snow more often doesn't mean more difficult to drive, more population and smaller streets here make it way riskier. Ice and sliding are easy problems to account for in code, bad manners are not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What I'd liks to see with level 4 is millions of miles driven by a car with a SOFT outer shell. That way collisions don't hurt other cars or even pedestrians. Make the car's top entirely out of foam or something, when driving without a driver.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's interesting how the autonomous car evolution is to a very large extent a result from the private sector. Companies could have been asking the federal government to install sensors in all stop signs, and under the street to support this evolution. Rather, they look at the cities as they are and build something that works with it. Sometimes I wonder if government should take a more active role and ease the adoption by adapting cities to autonomus vehicle (rather than the other way around as it is today).

</comment><comment><USER49> Each time the Cruise starts from a stop light, it's too slow.

Every time ... cars pass it, and dive into its lane (a typical reaction to slow moving vehicles).

Still, nice accomplishment.

<comment><USER50> It's hard to tell for sure what's happening in a sped up video like this, but starting slower than other cars at the light isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on just how slow they're going. Going hard off the line is extremely inefficient for very little benefit. Autonomous cars correcting that habit could be good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Example edge case: Waymo cars know that police cars often stop behind other cars and to expect people to be walking nearby.

Thought: Once we have 99% self driving cars it will be quite easy to convert a portion of roads to pedestrian only at times when traffic is light: bollards go up, lighting changes, cars informed to reroute.

</comment><comment><USER52> This looks very amateurish, no roundabouts, no give-way intersection. It's really easy to stop at red lights or where then car in front of you breaks and it emits another red light: if ( light == red) stop() ....

</comment><comment><USER53> This video was posted quite awhile ago. Are we sure its not just Nvidia's reference app configured by the Cruise people? Most of this stuff was in the Tesla and other Nvidia Drive demos.

</comment><comment><USER54> Now that tesla has started to pretend selling autonomous cars now is making sense, the field went from research ( where researcher honestly reports shortcomings themselves) to the horrendous world of SV start up, where everything should be considered a lie until the day someone can actually buy the stuff and test for himself.

And so you end up with posts like this trying to analyse a video frame by frame to assess the reality of the technology, and yet everyone including the author tries to guess where's the catch ( is the green light really trustworthy ? Why is the video accelerated ? Etc..).

<comment><USER55> Cruise is now owned by GM, which I really doubt is going to throw something out into the market without testing very rigorously first.

<comment><USER56> I get GM cars as rentals pretty often and while they're better than Chrysler I don't have a lot of faith in their product.

<comment><USER55> My point was that they don't take a cavalier SV-style approach to testing things.

<comment><USER10> Many Silicon Valley startups don't take a "cavalier SV-style approach" to testing things, either. There are a ton of medical device startups, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> 5-10 years still seems roughly accurate or optimistic. A tech demo does not a consumer-purchasable licensed product make.

</comment><comment><USER58> Would be more impressed with a drive from Lombard and Van Ness to Telegraph Hill.

</comment><comment><USER59> Anybody else think this was about scientology for a moment?

</comment><comment><USER60> What is a level four skill?

</comment><comment><USER61> Good news for Lyft?</comment>


2012: The Year in Graphics - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/30/multimedia/2012-the-year-in-graphics.html

<comment><USER2> What a great way to get me closer to the paywall threshold!</comment>


Show HN: Aggregating remote jobs with AI - <AUTHOR> http://sagfi.com <comment><AUTHOR> I had explored a lot of job boards and aggregators while I was searching for a job. I discovered that they only difference between them is solely in the elements of design. Therefore, I built this project.

Sagfi significantly differs from other job boards. Firstly, it provides developers with controllable hiring steps. Secondly, Sagfi is much smarter thanks to AI. It uses natural language processing and machine learning to detect the most important aspects from the text of a job and display them as keywords. In the near future, the algorithm will be updated and improved.

Any suggestions or thoughts are welcome.

</comment><comment><USER2> The UI is really nice and clean. Its light to use and feels perfect. Id like pagination instead of endless scrolling. Makes it easier to switch context. Good job! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Good job. Keep it up! :)</comment>


Scientists connect the brains of 3 people, enable thought sharing - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-to-brain-mind-connection-lets-three-people-share-thoughts <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138116)</comment>


Ubuntu Pocket Guide Available as a Free Download - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5139752/ubuntu-pocket-guide-available-as-a-free-download

<comment><USER2> I was hoping to see a cheat sheet, but 170 pages...</comment>


Safari giving away personal details as you browse - <AUTHOR> http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-know-who-your-name-where-you-work-and.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JeremiahGrossman+%28Jeremiah+Grossman%29

<comment><USER2> Dup - lots of discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523858></comment>


Kragen/xcompose: for sharing .XCompose keybindings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kragen/xcompose <comment><AUTHOR> Since there is a unicode discussion the next thread over ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23524400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23524400)), I thought I would promote this very excellent, life-saving, time-saving and alltogether wonderful way of typing various Unicode characters in X11.

No relation, just a happy user.</comment>


On PGs Talk: Super Angels Selling Fast - <AUTHOR>

My understanding of convertible notes is a little iffy, so excuse me if I'm completely off base.  But if it's a super angels goal for a company to sell fast, wouldn't the company also need to be profiting fast?  And if it's profiting fast, wouldn't the company be able to pay off its interest, and therefore the super angel would never get any equity? <comment><USER2> Convertible notes are only technically debt. They work like equity in an acquisition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. But isn't it possible for a company to be profiting enough that they could pay off the debt before an acquisition? Especially in the case of a company being able to sell so quickly at a value 10x higher than the super angels valuation.

Is it wrong to go into an angel investment with the hope of paying off the debt before it converts and keeping your equity?

<comment><USER3> Yes, in theory, you could pay the angel back upon note maturity (which would probably be principal + interest).

However, _most_ angels may not be too happy if that was your plan all along. They're putting money in on the hopes that your success will somehow multiply their money. If you're just planning to pay them back their interest, they might as well have put that same money into a bank.

Again, it really depends on your angel -- my _strong_ advice to you is to be forthcoming about your goals. It's better to have everyone on the same page up front... especially if you plan on having a long term relationship.

<comment><USER4> I doubt they would sign a deal that leaves them open like that with handshake deal terms different from the on paper terms. Maybe the debt is only payable on demand.

Can anyone post or point to a sample document?

<comment><USER3> You'd be surprised. :)

I'll post a note term sheet that I raised money on last year once I find it but notice the prepayment clause here: [http://startuplawyer.com/convertible- notes/convertible-note-...](http://startuplawyer.com/convertible- notes/convertible-note-term-sheets)

When you're raising on a convertible note, you're essentially taking a loan from the angel. You're promising to "pay them back" at the next financing by converting their money into stock equal to the principal + interest they've accrued on that note. If you _really_ wanted to (and the term sheet doesn't preclude a payback), you could pay them back for only their principal & interest instead of converting them to stock.

<comment><USER5> I was curious about this recently, so I looked at a ton of convertible note agreements. Almost all (if not all) included provisions like "cannot be repaid without consent" and/or "elective conversion", which I think both protect the investor against this kind of problem.

<comment><USER4> Where did you get the agreements?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Game mechanics for thinking users - <AUTHOR> http://pietro.open-lab.com/2010/11/09/game-mechanics-for-thinking-users <comment><USER2> I think it's kinda funny how the "Did you consider a woman player's perspective?" question at the end asks us to be mindful of women as a game- playing demographic while simultaneously forgetting that women are also a game-designing demographic who might be reading this very article.

Just sayin'!

The "Art of Game Design" book looks fascinating, too--I ordered a copy!

<comment><USER3> (I am the author of the article) Uh.. yes you are right, thanks for the observation. AOGD is an amazing book.

<comment><USER2> :-> I hope I didn't come off as critical! I often hang out with a feminist- leaning crowd, so that sort of thing tends to stand out to me. (The running joke is "The hardest thing about being a straight white male is remembering that not everyone is a straight white male.")

I'm actually just now working through "Rules of Play" by Salen & Zimmerman; it's nice to see the field of game design slowly maturing and accruing "serious" texts. It would be nice if we didn't need academia's help to legitimize our pursuits, but ya can't win 'em all.

I liked the separation you drew here: " _The idea here is to use techniques of game design in a way which is_ integrated in the functionality of an application _not focused on gaming..._ " It's an interesting way to frame the goal of a "gamified application": rather than the "game" being played for its own sake, there is an overarching goal, and the path to that goal possesses game-like qualities as an (apparently) organic side-effect. In the same way that "real life" can distract you from a game, you don't want the "game" of the app to distract you from the "real life" or "goal" of the app.

<comment><USER4> Criticism welcome. I too have "Rules of play", but it is still standing there on my desk, unopened - no time now, writing a new game script :) On "legitimize our pursuits" you could check this writing by Hecker (always stimulating): <http://chrishecker.com/Going_Against_The_Grain></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cycle Sort - <AUTHOR> http://corte.si/posts/code/cyclesort/index.html

<comment><USER2> I believe that the author is referring to the case when the array to be sorted contains only duplicates of a small number of items, where a perfect hash function can speed up insertion; this turns cycle sort's time complexity into Θ(n+k), with _k_ being the number of hashes. In such a case, _k_ is not negligible compared to _n_ , so I wouldn't feel comfortable saying cycle sort is O(n), as he does.

In the general case, cycle sort is Θ(n^2) with a total space complexity of Θ(n).

edit:typos.

<comment><USER3> This doesn't sound remotely right. If n is the number of elements, k is the number of distinct elements, and its O(n + k) as the author describes, k is trivially bounded by n (you can't have more distinct elements than you do elements). Resulting in O(n) complexity, how did you get O(n^2)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you must restrict the input to permutations of [0,...,N], you already know the result! Finding cycles is neat, but this works for the same data, minus having bounds:

(define (trivialsort vals) (lambda (i) i))

</comment><comment><USER5> It's nice to say this algorithm is virtually O(n) in practice, but that's about the "cycling" mechanism only. It needs to prepare a dictionary with offsets, which has to loop over all the keys, perform an O (log n) insert operation on all the keys, and allocate memory on the heap. This already makes it (almost) O (n log n), without even doing the actual sorting.

It's a nice idea, but it's not O(n).

<comment><USER6> > It needs to prepare a dictionary with offsets, which has to loop over all > the keys, perform an O (log n) insert operation on all the keys

Surely you've heard of hash tables.

<comment><USER7> As with all other dictionary/map implementations, hash tables are O(log n) in the general case.

<comment><USER6> No, they're not. Why do I have to contend with arguments like this every time to this topic comes up?

"But," you say, "Hashing a value is O(k), where k is at least log n. Therefore hash tables only support O(log n) access and update, not O(1)." It's become a quite fashionable gotcha, as your upvotes indicate.

The problem is, it's wrong. It's correct in a vacuous, put-it-in-a-footnote sense, but not in any real sense, the way we actually talk about data structures in computer science.

We have a longstanding tradition in computer science of ignoring the O(k) operations that you want to ascribe to hashing. The most relevant example of where we ignore that factor is in--you guessed it--balanced binary trees used as dictionaries. Comparison, like hashing, is also O(k), where k is >= log n. So in the technical sense you're espousing, a balanced binary tree would offer O(log n log n) access and update, rather than the O(log n) access and update that everyone describes it as.

Of course, in reality, everyone considers comparison to be O(1), and thus they say that balanced binary trees have O(log n) lookup. Likewise, everyone considers hashing to be O(1) since it's in the same class of operations as comparison, and thus they say that hash tables have O(1) lookup. This is how the real world of computer science actually talks about things, fashionable Internet objections notwithstanding.

(This is all covered in CLRS, of course, but no one seems to be able to look things up in books anymore. "We assume that the hash value h(k) can be computed in O(1) time...If the number of hash-table slots is at least proportional to the number of elements in the table, we have `n = O(m)` and, consequently, `alpha = n/m = O(m)/m = O(1)`. Thus, searching takes constant time on average. Since insertion takes O(1) worst-case time and deletion takes O(1) worst-case time when the lists are doubly linked, all dictionary operations can be supported in O(1) time on average.")

<comment><USER8> In particular, a good hash table implementation will have O(1) amortized complexity [1] (i.e. average complexity over a worst-case sequence of operations). Since in the Real World we deal with sequences of operations rather than single ones, saying that hash tables provide O(1) operations is quite correct.

[1] <http://videolectures.net/mit6046jf05_leiserson_lec13/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice use of Slovenia's TLD.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how it sounds ;)</comment>