Frenchman Builds a Dream Château on a Grand Estate in the Ozarks  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704026204575266010695437700.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories

<comment><USER2> I am french and visited the Guedelon castle a few years ago.

Before visiting the castle, I had done a full year trip around the world to see all the greatest human made monuments (Angkor wat in Cambodia was my favourite).

I was stomached when I realized the Guedelon castle surpasses all that I had seen so far.

Highly recommended for anybody visiting France.

<comment><USER3> From the website (<http://www.guedelon.fr/>) it looks half-finished and not too visually impressive, although interesting nonetheless. Could you explain what makes it surpass all other human monuments?

<comment><USER4> Indeed, I can see what looks like a rather more interesting castle (built on the glacier eroded plug of an ancient volcano) by turning round and looking out the window:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now how historians from the XXXth century will make sense of that, I'd like to know :)

<comment><USER6> Dude, there's cities with trains running above, below and on the ground. Not much of what we do will make sense in 20 centuries down the line.

The bigger question is, did anyone do something like this in the past and seriously fuck with the archaeological time line?

<comment><USER7> Assuming time machines are possible to build, then it is a good assumption that at some future point in time, whether it's hundreds or even thousands of years from now, a time machine _will_ be built. Then, somebody will get into that time machine, travel back into the past, and mess it up. Thus, someone from the future has probably already messed up the past.

In fact, this new castle in Arkansas may be a symptom of the damage already done to the space-time continuum. Frickin time vandals!

<comment><USER6> +1 for the last sentence

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is an older (and I think better known, and possibly more interesting) case, that of the Facteur Cheval: \- <http://www.facteurcheval.com/> \- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Cheval>

He built a palace all on its own, with his own distinct style, back in the early XXth century.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's about an hour from my parent's house. All kinds of bizarre stuff built out there. Cheap land and labor and few to no building codes.

<comment><USER7> "That's about an hour from my parent's _castle._ "

fixed that for you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It was a mistake not to oppose the Frenchman's arrival in our lands. After the Frenchman finishes the castle, he will start breeding orcs.

</comment><comment><USER11> What a beautiful project!</comment>


The Four Flaws of Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-four-flaws-of-haskell.html <comment><USER2> One flaw I'd point out after working with Purescript a lot is that Haskell's "IO " is very large, to the point of not meaning anything.

printing to screen? IO

network connections? IO

launching the nukes? IO

You get this weird effect of having pure code, then _all_ your effectful code inhabiting the same types. Though this helps make you write more pure code, when you do write effectful code, it's not nearly as safe as one might want.

Purescript's effects is a nicer granular mechanism.

<comment><USER3> It's almost as if programs are useless if they don't perform some IO and therefore, trying to encode this kind of side effects in the type system is theoretically interesting but practically inconvenient.

<comment><USER4> > It's almost as if programs are useless if they don't perform some IO

You seem to have missed the point. At the moment, a CLI calculator has type "IO ()", a filesystem scanner has type "IO ()", an FTP library has type "IO ()", a random password generator has type "IO ()", etc.

It's very convenient that GHC points out when I try to, for example, perform arithmetic on lists, or insert unsanitised strings into templates. It would also be convenient if it points out when my CLI calculator is trying to perform network requests, when my filesystem scanner is trying to generate random numbers, when my random password generator is scanning the filesystem, etc.

<comment><USER5> In trying to advocate for fine-grained effect systems, i hope Haskell isn't presented as 'unsafe' according to an extremely high standard usually reserved for theorem proving languages. Pure functional programming is fighting an even more basic battle that side-effects should even be separated at all. I feel presenting Haskell's IO as unsafe throws out the baby along with the bathwater. Others have not reached the peaks you look down on.

<comment><USER6> are you saying they should check their haskell safety privilege? :^)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Readability : although I'm not proficient in Haskell it seems to lend itself towards perl-like clever one liners.

<comment><USER8> The article is about things that impact professionals (thought they also beginners). For better or worse, experienced Haskell users can read the one liners just fine.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but you've also nuked a developer's ability to easily onboard and understand the codebase with "clever" one liners. Good, maintainable code tends to trend toward lower cognitive load more often than compact solutions.

<comment><USER10> I'm generally of this opinion, but with Haskell I think more often than not the "clever" one liners are actually not clever -- they're just completely standard usages of fundamental language constructs, and they only appear clever to people who haven't used the language.

It's very common to see newcomers or people who've never used Haskell at all mention <$> and friends in this regard. Then someone will say that if you just used do notation explicitly it'd be a lot clearer. And then someone will point out that do notation might _look_ familiar, but semantically it can be spectacularly different from what one might expect from truly imperative languages (e.g., when using the nondeterminism of the list monad). So by encouraging overuse of do notation, you're making the code feel familiar, but you're not actually making it more understandable; if anything, you're making it _harder_ to understand, because you're making it look like something that it's not.

Additionally, while do notation is very generic and broadly powerful, <$> does exactly one thing: it applies a function to a wrapped value, producing a new wrapped value. Once you've used Haskell a fair bit, you very strongly internalize this and tend to immediately understand code involving <$>. If all this code were expanded out to use do notation, you'd have to spend a lot of extra timing reading through the do notation to realize that, oh, this is just a re-implementation of fmap, over and over again.

<comment><USER11> Is that then a limitation of the language? I've only briefly toyed with Haskell (and most of the time I use PHP, so my opinion is almost moot). But from what you've written, it sounds like it's hard to write Haskell that's expressive for novices and experts at the same time.

<comment><USER12> > Is that then a limitation of the language?

How exactly is it a limitation that the language has greater expressive power than most?

Haskell does have serious limitations: laziness is a horrible default, modularity is a joke, reasoning about performance is very difficult, and the correctness of most basic abstractions is conditional on the user never ever using a partial function, not even accidentally - or else hilarity ensues.

But functors, applicatives and monads are godsend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Best rant I have read in years:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4sihcv/haskell_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4sihcv/haskell_the_bad_parts/d5a7344)

</comment><comment><USER14> PureScript is a language that compiles to JS which is heavily inspired by Haskell, yet fixes some of it's "flaws".

Namely it (1) has better record syntax, (2) is employs strict-evaluation instead of lazy-evaluation by default, (3) has a better class hierarchy for "numbers", (4) has a better class hierarchy for control classes[1] (like Monad, Applicative, Functor, etc.). There are more, but to me they are the main improvements.

Compared to Haskell, PureScript fixes some of the "flaws". These flaws are mostly different from the flaws mentioned in the article. Maybe one day PureScript can be compiled to native ...<searching internet>... which is already being worked on[2].

[1] [https://github.com/purescript/purescript- prelude/tree/master...](https://github.com/purescript/purescript- prelude/tree/master/src/Control)

[2] [https://github.com/andyarvanitis/purescript- native](https://github.com/andyarvanitis/purescript-native)

<comment><USER15> If you'd like strictness by default, there's a pragma for that [https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/StrictPragma](https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/StrictPragma)

<comment><USER16> This is another flaw that PureScript fixes: No language pragmas.

<comment><USER15> I don't think this is a flaw, in fact I think it neatly solves the problem of how to extend the language without committing to a design too eagerly and provides a platform for experimentation.

There are pragmas that GHC implements that are now widely held to be problematic, but we wouldn't know this without an implementation, and using pragmas, we are realistically able to deprecate and remove these extensions.

<comment><USER16> Very few extensions have been deprecated: [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Cabal-188.8.131.52/docs/src/L...](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Cabal-22.214.171.124/docs/src/Language.Haskell.Extension.html#deprecatedExtensions)

Convenient, widely-used extensions that have been around for a long time aren't yet part of the language standard: [https://prime.haskell.org/ticket/67](https://prime.haskell.org/ticket/67)

<comment><USER15> That's not anywhere near a complete list of deprecated extensions and there are others that have been completely removed from the language [1]. It's unfortunate that ScopedTypeVariables hasn't been standardised, but there hasn't been a new standard since 2010, so it's not hugely surprising.

[https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/LanguagePragmaHistory](https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/LanguagePragmaHistory)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for that link! I haven't seen that wiki page before. Even so, only 4 extensions have been removed. I know others are de facto deprecated, like Rank2Types.

I picked scoped type variables as an example because it's been in GHC since version 6.4. That was released in March 2005, so it had plenty of time to make it into the Haskell2010 language standard.

<comment><USER15> I'd expect either Rank2Types or RankNTypes to be included in Haskell', you may be thinking of ImpredicativeTypes.

Wow, I did not realize ScopedTypeVariables had been around for so long.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, I meant that you pretty much always want RankNTypes instead of Rank2Types. My fault for not specifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tools and ecosystem coherence, basically. We have infrastructure technical debt and...factions.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hear NixOS (linux distro based on functional principles) solves the package management problem for Haskell.

* [https://ocharles.org.uk/blog/posts/2014-02-04-how-i-develop-...](https://ocharles.org.uk/blog/posts/2014-02-04-how-i-develop-with-nixos.html)

* [https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1vghgw/nixos_a_gnu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1vghgw/nixos_a_gnulinux_distribution_based_on_purely)

* [https://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/nixos-jfp-final.pdf](https://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/nixos-jfp-final.pdf)

* [http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/blog/posts/2014-06-28-My-experience-wi...](http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/blog/posts/2014-06-28-My-experience-with-NixOS.html)

<comment><USER18> FYI, it's possible to use Nix package manager outside of NixOS. I'm not quite convinced that some of the choices the NixOS distro has made are good (or to my liking) but the package manager seems much better thought out.

I was able to quickly install Nix on a not quite up-to-date Linux distro to get my hands on specific versions of some programs that are too big to conveniently build from source.

I'm not sure it solves the package management problem for Haskell completely, but it should help managing GHC versions and external dependencies (ie. native libs required by Haskell libs), which cabal/stack aren't great with.

Note: I was a bit disappointed that installing Nix required root access to create /nix store. I would have liked to put it in my home directory instead.

<comment> vertex-four Unfortunately, because Nix derivations embed full paths to all their dependencies, moving /nix elsewhere means you don't get access to the binary cache and wind up having to build everything from source. If you're happy with that, you can compile Nix manually to put the store in your home directory: [https://nixos.org/wiki/How_to_install_nix_in_home_%28on_anot...](https://nixos.org/wiki/How_to_install_nix_in_home_%28on_another_distribution%29#Manual_Installation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I often wonder what is it that keeps Haskell out of the mainstream as a development language. There seems to have been enormous popular support for Haskell by experts over quite some time, yet relatively newer languages like Golang are coming along and eating Haskell's lunch.

<comment><USER20> Probably the whole needing to learn an entire part of English that many didn't even know existed before.

A language really shouldn't require its language-specific glossary to be mandatory reading, just to understand anyone speaking about it. I could just learn any other language in half the time!

from the above comments

> "I have this pure function that I want to apply to the inner value of my > functor"

pure function I know well enough, that is the same for any language, functors though... is that a function object that can be applied to something? then why does it already have a value?

I can take terminologies from C, to python, or C#, and feel a-okay, but haskell kinda feels like it went and shut it self away from the world, and its terminology developed differently due to that, I guess.

<comment><USER21> Haskell terminology is based on the mathematical underpinnings of its type system. It's due to this that those unfamiliar with the maths often have trouble at first grokking the terminology. It's not that Haskell shut itself off, it just draws it's vocabulary from a different source than the other languages.

<comment><USER20> I am aware it didn't invent the words, it was more of a "feels like" statement, as opposed to literal

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The overuse of weird operators is just a deal breaker for me. Haskell ideas are good. But I prefer explicit keywords rather than -> <$> and co everywhere. for instance, pattern matching that looks like switch statements would be more readable than lines of |

<comment><USER23> You can just write something like

        foo x = case x of
                  pattern1 -> ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would add pragmas.

People like to say there is just one implementation of Haskell and it's ghc, but there's actually n different ones, with n being the number of combinations of pragmas that exist.

Each combination you use in your source is a different version of Haskell.

<comment><USER24> While I see how this at first appears to be a problem (when I started with Haskell I sure thought of it as one), it turns out that language-pragma filled code can be mixed with vanilla code too without problem. The pragmas usually just expose more of the inner representation of GHC (I'm thinking things like FlexibleInstances, TypeApplication, RankNTypes and not the pathologically broken and perhaps logically unsound ImpredicativeTypes). So it really is just GHC you are shipping (and not GHC + which extensions are enabled).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Regarding space leaks, the recent GHC version now allows an entire module to be strict, not lazy. Would this prevent space leaks (and perhaps other performance-sensitive problems)?

</comment><comment><USER26> atom (ghcmod + the various haskell pluings) is good enough for me honestly

sublimehaskell (hsdev, etc.) was good as well</comment>


Goldman Sachs Abandons Five of Six 'Top Trade' Calls for 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-09/goldman-sachs-abandons-five-of-six-top-trade-calls-for-2016 <comment><USER2> An ETF that trades against Goldman's advice would be an interesting product.

<comment><USER3> You might appreciate the second section of [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-20/bank- gloom-...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-20/bank-gloom-and- trading-insights)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, so let's say that China is gutted, with a real estate bubble that makes 2008 look rosy by comparison, massively low consumption, a nonsense stock market propped up by 1 trillion USD, and thus China's due for a globally relevant collapse.

If I have let say 100k in capital, is there any instrument through which I can short China's real economy?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps Bitcoin

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sort of advice is always junk. If the trade tips were good investments, they'd capitalize on the info themselves rather than giving it away.

<comment><USER7> > they'd capitalize on the info themselves

You don't know that they aren't. If ciients act on these ideas then they'll help move the market in Goldman's favour.</comment></comment>


Why haven't cash-strapped American schools embraced open source? - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/education/campus-infrastructure/3-reasons-linux-doesnt-star-in-us-school/240155736

<comment><USER2> Story time. I teach high school math and science at a small school, where we have roughly 30 computers. About four years ago, our district had not funded any new hardware in 8 years. So when we started that school year, only 3 computers actually worked.

I had just started using linux that year, so I ran a class introducing students to linux. I taught students to install and maintain ubuntu systems, and suddenly all 30 computers were working again. Students maintained those 30 computers for the next year and a half. It was a bittersweet time when the district funded hardware again, and we had 30 new machines running Windows 7. I am fortunate to work in a district where I was supported in teaching students to dual-boot half of those machines.

It has been an overwhelmingly positive experience to bring linux into a school system. Many students are now running linux on their own machines. I still teach an intro to programming class that uses linux exclusively, and on any given day a small number of students are choosing linux for their everyday school work.

I also saw the politics of trying to make open source more mainstream in the district. When the district was deciding what machines and what software to purchase, we almost went with openoffice. I didn't take a side in the conversation, I just kept reiterating that both MSOffice and LibreOffice work as long as everyone in the district is using the same software. The real friction comes when people are trying to share formatted documents between systems. The district was just about to go with openoffice, but for no clear reason at the last minute the superintendent made a unilateral decision to go with MSOffice. I think it was easier to appease the few loud MSOffice supporters, knowing everyone else would move on, than go with something new and risk having made the "wrong" decision.

I've been getting more into programming, including trips to PyCon last year and this year. The more involved I get in the professional programming community, the more I see how much the open source world has to offer the education world. The obvious benefit is open software. There is a tremendous need for high-quality open software to make educational work more efficient. My favorite example is that most teachers still write their lesson plans in Word, which is like programmers working in an old version of Notepad. Programmers have had vim and emacs for 40 years, but teachers still don't have a dedicated curriculum planning tool.

I love to talk about this stuff, so feel free to get in touch through my profile.

<comment><USER3> Sounds a lot like committee stuffing. Have you read the "Evangelism is War" internal Microsoft document ?

[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351958)

Juicy quote below:

"""Our mission is to establish Microsoft's platforms as the de facto standards throughout the computer industry.... Working behind the scenes to orchestrate "independent" praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy's, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. "Independent" analyst's report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). "Independent" consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). "Independent" academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). "Independent" courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage.

I have mentioned before the "stacked panel". Panel discussions naturally favor alliances of relatively weak partners - our usual opposition. For example, an "unbiased" panel on OLE vs. OpenDoc would contain representatives of the backers of OLE (Microsoft) and the backers of OpenDoc (Apple, IBM, Novell, WordPerfect, OMG, etc.). Thus we find ourselves outnumbered in almost every "naturally occurring" panel debate.

A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select the panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can't expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only "independent ISVs" on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed – just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the "real world." Sounds marvelously independent doesn't it? In fact, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the "independent" panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you've got a major win on your hands.

Finding a moderator is key to setting up a stacked panel. The best sources of pliable moderators are:

        -- Analysts: Analysts sell out - that's their business model. But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.

        -- Consultants: These guys are your best bets as moderators. Get a well-known consultant on your side early, but don't let him publish anything blatantly pro-Microsoft. Then, get him to propose himself to the conference organizers as a moderator, whenever a panel opportunity comes up. Since he's well- known, but apparently independent, he'll be accepted – one less thing for the constantly-overworked conference organizer to worry about, right?"""

<comment><USER2> I know that stuff goes on, but it's amazing that people put stuff like this in writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I currently work on "student facing" products in higher ed. Find courses. Register for classes. Degree audit. Etc. My work is just a small slice.

It's all open source. I took the job because I believe that open source solutions for government and non-profits are the Correct Answer.

Now, a few years later, I'm disillusioned.

The work I do, one cannot push harder. Like an octopus, the harder you push, the harder the problem fights back. Rather, you have to come at everything sideways. Covertly lay out a tarp to the side of the problem. Sneak up on the problem. Whack it on the head. Hope that it falls onto the tarp. Once it's unconscious, drag the tarp in a generally useful direction. Quickly. Before the problem wakes back up. Before it starts to wander off in some random direction and resumes eating everything in sight.

The IT needs for higher ed are so varied and complicated, there is no one size fits all. I don't see how any code I've written could possibly be used as-is any where else. It's barely useful across all our colleges and departments.

My prior real gig was basically a lot of ETL for medical records for regional health organizations. The higher ed stuff I do now is far more complicated, overall. Which really surprised me.

The community governance model for collaborative development of open source software is very, very, very inefficient. I came from doing startups. Working higher ed, I can't believe how long stuff takes. And what does get accomplished is lowest common denominator stuff, stone soup style. Imagine doing pair programming XP style with the stupidest people you've ever worked with. Now have those people do "software architecture".

I don't know so much about K-12 and community colleges.

But methinks continuous improvement, cultural change for higher ed IT is hopeless.

First, it's wicked hard problem. Scheduling, resourcing, registration, financing, payroll, etc. You'd never guess how much work goes into determining if a class is open (for enrollment) or closed. Now imagine that deliberation for absolutely every function within an organization as heterogenous and weird as a university.

Second, every single mailstop within the organization insists on their own unique super double plus awesome way of doing things. Not better or worse, just different.

Third, there is no existential crisis which can be used to ram change down every one's throats. A president or provost or whoever really is just a fund raising figure head. They're not an executive like a CEO. They're more like the secretary general of the UN.

The only way I can imagine higher ed IT can be "solved" is for GATT style agreement for how stuff should be done to be forged. But I don't want to see that. I love universities for their complexity, weirdness, variety, unruliness. To become an organization with straight forward IT needs, it'd become just a diploma mill. And that'd suck.

</comment><comment><USER5> In my area, it's that the technology budget is separate from the general fund budget. The general fund, which pays for teachers, facilities maintenance, and things like libraries is squeezed by falling payments from the state and a cap on the amount of local contribution. We're losing teachers each year (I think 7 years and counting) and the overall budget is down about 35% from the peak in the early 2000s. The local voters haven't rejected a general levy in many years, although they did reject a capital levy for a renovation to combine two schools. (that would have closed a school campus that dates from the early 1900s and needs seismic upgrades to be safe, and moved the students to the half empty high school)

The tech budget is funded by separate tech levies, which can only be spent on computers or tech related staff.

This leaves the district in the strange place of being able to afford iPads all around for a couple grades in middle school, but not being able to afford a librarian for the primary school. There can be a media specialist, but only if the media is not books. They can have smart whiteboards in each classroom. But not a librarian.

<comment><USER6> Let's start a charity where developers donate time to migrate local schools to open source.

<comment><USER7> It's not just the migration, but the support. I wouldn't want to be reliant on charity or the type of support many open-source projects have if I were a school.

<comment><USER8> When I've helped rid people of their virus-infested Windows problem by installing Ubuntu, I rarely heard back from them. It really is easier to use and less error-prone in many respects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Granted, every School District is going to have its own way of dealing with IT, but here's how things were during my stint volunteering at a LA Unified School District elementary school between 2002-2004.

First of all there was some up front payment the school/district made to their contracted IT provider. Wehn purchasing computers, no matter what type of computer you wanted, it would cost at least $1400/unit. This was because it came as a package deal with "support". Typically this meant the choice of an e/iMac or iBook or some cheap Dell box with a cheap 15" CRT. As a result the much better equipped, teacher preferred, Macs were typically what were purchased for classrooms and the bargain basement Dells made it into admin offices. Additionally a server for At Ease for Workgroups[1] was occasionally purchased for some other ridiculous number I don't remember.

At this particular school, even if you could switch the entire campus to FOSS software, it wouldn't really affect costs because the school signed a contract to lock the price in at a certain rate. The contracting company would have just pocketed the savings.

Now, the worst part was the the price premium for "support" bought you the privlidge of having the the buck passed to Apple for Mac support (basically some sort of Applecare for Education) or shipping in a new Dell that would sit in a supply closet until they sent someone out... if they ever did. Hence why I was volunteering.

The school was pretty lucky as computer purchases tended to be an uncommon event as this school was near Universal Studios and Warner Brothers and both would regularly donate a number of their two year old "outdated" machines. A lot of what I ended up doing was replacing aging LC IIs[2] and Performa 575s[3] with the new computers.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease> [2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_LC> [3]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_LC_500_series>

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot of it is just actually due to legacy.

It may be hard to understand here but tech in education takes a back seat in most standard schools. There are not a lot of (if any) resources in most schools available for tech support, upgrades, hardware, etc.

So what happened was that 10-20+ years back schools slowly integrated tech and computers - Windows was really the only sensible choice for most institutions in that it allowed for everyone (non-techies) to run software that met the needs of students, teachers, admins, etc. PCs and Windows was the sensible and natural choice back then and everyone jumped on.

The problem now is that the cost to migrate hardware, software, licenses, systems, and knowledge to better platforms is significant, daunting and costly even if the new stuff is free. Its analogous to building a city around one center point for years and then realizing that you want to move the whole city 5 miles down the road with everything basically continuing to function (oh yeah and on a shoestring budget).

On the bright side the education system is filled with many who are tech savvy. They know the tech sucks... its pretty obvious when you have to use IE6 for some online lesson plan and then you go home and watch Netflix on your iPhone. So there is pressure there and things are moving but it will be slow and painful and likely whenever you send your kids to school you will gasp in horror at the tech museum they call the computer lab.

(On a side note if you are entrepreneur in edtech - the most important thing you can understand is what the tech landscape looks like to students and teachers and administrators. Very different for all 3 groups and very detached from the tech saturated environment of Silicon Valley)

</comment><comment><USER11> When I was in high school, I created an iOS app [1] for my school district and we made it open source (on the school district's GitHub [2] ) so other districts could benefit. Quotes from established ed-tech companies for a similar product were very expensive (especially compared to the cost of self- publishing). There certainly was interest from other districts to adopt it because they heard of the project and saw that it was open-source. The problem was getting someone to get them through the last 25% (customization, graphics, publishing, maintenance).

There's now a team of student developers at the school district who help keep the project going. I believe this makes it first the school district to create open source software in California.

[1] App (now also on Google Play): <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ifusd/id454673943?mt=8>

[2] GitHub: <https://github.com/FremontUnified/>

</comment><comment><USER12> The thing about schools and computers is that it really is a losing battle on the part of the school. They wish to provide the students with easy to access to tech to allow them to become intimately familiar with it to advance in the world.

Then they have students use computers for the most simplistic things. Typing up essays and getting to piece together a video in windows movie maker is the absolute extent of what the above average Canadian high school can do. They don't understand, they being the old guard of teaching, the things a modern computer can do because they think in analogue methodologies, not digital.

Only within the last few years have we replaced overheads and transparencies with 'smart boards' and projectors and even then, few teachers have been found to use them in any manner other than an even more LIMITED version of the traditional overhead. Very recently the younger teachers have built small wordpress sites or shared google drives for notes because of ease and personal comfort which is a giant step forward but moot for all it does to solve the issue of the unsavvy teachers.

If a school were to wise up and switch to open source, the amount of headache from staff is simply impossible to imagine. The students can understand the rapid pace of technology and the very new or extremely impassioned teachers can cope with it where the older teachers throw their hands into the air and bring out the transparencies. A billion dollars to the person to come up with a way of easily transitioning them to modern method.

Sorry for the rant, but education hits close to home for me.

<comment><USER13>
      | Only within the last few years have we replaced
      | overheads and transparencies with 'smart boards'
      | and projectors and even then, few teachers have
      | been found to use them in any manner other than
      | an even more LIMITED version of the traditional
      | overhead.

Back in 2001, my university microeconomics course was delivered via overhead transparencies (rather than Powerpoint like most other classes). But even the usage of transparencies was too much for this professor. All of his 'slides' were just transparencies which he had used a wet-erase marker to write dense paragraphs of text, which was mostly what he was reading back to us. Not only was this worse than most usage of PowerPoint that people complain about, he didn't even take the time to maybe type up these 'slides' and print them on transparencies (or go to a local office supply store / print shop to get it done).

Point being some people will use the tools presented to them (even very basic tools) in the most bone-headed way possible. It's just a fact of life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish the guy quoted in the article was more specific about features that LibreOffice lacks. Information that's actionable for developers is likely to result in improvements.

Complaints like "We don't like it" just split proponents and opponents of the software into opposing factions and aren't productive.

<comment><USER15> Try this:

The front page should not have a page number.

Please place a header on each page. On the even pages, the header should be on the left, on the odd pages, the header should be on the right. On the bottom- center of each page, place the page number, except for the front page, as specified above.

The above is probably a bit much, but it is, as far as I know, absolutely impossible to do in Libre Office, or it is not, it is extremely difficult to do, but this sort of formatting is absolutely trivial in MS.

If the above sounds to complex, then try creating a working TOC in Libre Office.

The grammar and spell-checking capabilities are not very good in LO.

I've also had many doc -> PDF conversion problems in LO. There are many other smallish issues.

LO is about as much of a replacement for MS Suite as Gimp is a viable replacement for Photoshop for productivity and real-world work. I use the FOSS stuff at home, but my overall productivity is way lower at home as well. I've ran into many things I simply cannot do. It really is a cost-to-productivity ratio here. MS Suite really isn't that expensive if you compare the speed and accuracy you can accomplish common tasks.

<comment><USER16> _The front page should not have a page number.

Please place a header on each page. On the even pages, the header should be on the left, on the odd pages, the header should be on the right. On the bottom- center of each page, place the page number, except for the front page, as specified above.

The above is probably a bit much, but it is, as far as I know, absolutely impossible to do in Libre Office, or it is not, it is extremely difficult to do, but this sort of formatting is absolutely trivial in MS.

If the above sounds to complex, then try creating a working TOC in Libre Office._

... on the other hand, those are all trivial thing to do in LaTex. Maybe the problem is people using Libre Office for things which Libre Office is not designed to do?

<comment><USER17> You could do all of above in Word version 4.0.

Why isn't Libre Office designed to create a report which can be printed and bound? Seems like a basic word processing task.

<comment><USER18> Because none of the developers does that themselves, I suspect, and because said developers probably personally believe that paper is "obsolete" anyway so resist adding features like that when asked.

<comment><USER17> When launching LO Writer, one is presented with a virtual blank sheet of paper. The entire metaphor of the program is built around printing.

In any case, I have virtually no Libre Office experience, and I was able to generate dizzystar's test case in about 2 minutes. My apologies for leading us down this dead-end discussion. (The only confusing part was that you have to manually turn on headers & footers before you can click on them to edit.)

When it comes down to it, LO is probably not missing many features, but they haven't received the UI research/testing effort to make them accessible. The general look & feel is also 'old fashioned'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How awesome if would be if Windows dominance was limited to K-12... I want to live in that world.

I'm in University and I still find myself explaining to "cyberinfrastructure" developers that their "novel idea" is really just cron + shell + GUI, of which the first two have been around since the 70's (and their "novel" GUI sucks). Combine that with the legion of Matlab programmers cranked out by engineering departments (Python? you mean this is free?!), and I think schools primarily succeed at creating more consumers of technology, rather than the producers they purport.

<comment> mc-lovin Python and Matlab are not interchangeable.

Matlab is unique in its expressiveness for numerical and matrix computation, and value semantics.

Value semantics matter a lot because they result in functional programming without even having to think about it, while copy-on-write means that you can pass big objects into pure functions and they never get copied if you don't modify them.

e.g. in Matlab, the following function is pure (and never makes a copy of big_matrix)

      function y = my_pure_function(x, big_matrix)
      x = x + big_matrix(i, j);
      y = x ^ 2;
      end

<comment><USER19> > Python and Matlab are not interchangeable.

Matlab and Python are perfectly interchangeable for the overwhelming majority of undergrads and graduate students. Claiming that they are not interchangeable based on the difference between pass-by-reference and copy-on- write is just silly.

You're ignoring the typical use case for an engineering student: general math & plotting. In Python, that is easily accomplished with NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib. These are all free.

Kudos on knowing how these languages work and understanding some low-level design specifications, but negative kudos for not understanding the education system and the immense fiscal burden it places on students for books & software. Sure, many schools provide a free license... here is a little tidbit of information for you: ain't nothing free.

<comment> mc-lovin > Claiming that they are not interchangeable based on the difference between > pass-by-reference and copy-on-write is just silly.

Actually I gave one more reason.

<comment><USER19> > Matlab is unique in its expressiveness for numerical and matrix computation

It really isn't. <http://wiki.scipy.org/NumPy_for_Matlab_Users>

<comment> mc-lovin it is.

I read that link already, in fact used it as a reference when I did convert from Matlab to python. I converted back when I realized that in spite of the apparent syntactic similarities, matlab is still very different to scipy.

In matlab, everything is a matrix. The only "gotchas" when it comes to types, is that

      f = X(X > 0)

and

      f = X(double(X > 0))

give different answers because logical indexing requires actual logical type. Apart from this, you will almost never have to do type conversions in matlab.

Python arrays are not scipy matrices or arrays. And a scipy 1 x n array is not a matrix.

All these little things add up to more time spent thinking about programming and less about mathematics.

Don't think of me as some biased matlab fanatic.

I am a grad student, and I found the appeal of python as strong as those who advocate it as a substitute for matlab. The difference is that when it came down to doing my actual work, I just couldn't do it as easily in python. I am the student whose interests you claim to be advocating, and I'm explaining why I, and so many others, make the choice of matlab.

<comment><USER19> Oh well... easy for me, hard for you. Best of luck! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've seen rms speak before, and one point he made really hit home. It is absolutely inexcusable for a school to teach using what is essentially a mystery black box. If a student wants to be able to open up the source code and see how things work, they should be able to.

<comment><USER18> That's clearly nonsense, tho'. In school you teach at a level of abstraction, it's the same anywhere. We don't require someone to make paper and ink before they learn to write. We don't make people become mechanics before they learn to drive. People with the interest study those things _after_ their basic schooling is complete.

<comment><USER21> Dunno where you went to school, but my CS education taught me the full stack - computer architecture, a wide variety of programming languages and styles, abstractions from simple data types to objects, and language design/implementation. We went up and down levels of abstraction, and my teachers put an emphasis on knowing how things worked or how to use tools in a general sense (instead of just using C++ or Java or Objective-C or Visual Studio for the entire baccalaureate program). Being able to look at existing code bases was really helpful in this regard, even though Appel et al's Tiger compiler is a tiny little toy compared to real compilers like GCC or LLVM. It's anecdotal but I can tell you that so far in my career, being able to examine IT services from the business process (good ol' layer 8) all the way down to the electrons whizzing by has been a definitive advantage, and one not shared by many of my fellow IT admins or software developers.

As for your car analogy, I think we should do a better job of teaching new drivers how cars work, how they perform under different operating conditions, the physics and the mechanics involved, etc. Again it's anecdotal, but I saw my child's driving improve quite a bit after taking one of those car control clinics, in which a solid understanding of the physics and construction of cars played an important part.

<comment><USER18> Your secondary school? Really? I call shenanigans.

<comment><USER21> Whoops, sorry - I didn't realize you meant K-12.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember asking my high school's one-man IT department this exact question, and he said that the school needs someone to sue in the event something goes wrong.

<comment><USER23> Lie. No one ever sues MSFT for delivering a bad product, let alone (cash- strapped) schools.

<comment><USER24> I think in reality the reason is a sort of _"nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"_ mentality.

I know that if _I_ found myself suddenly a school technology administrator person, I would be _very_ inclined to take the easy way out and just install windows on all the lab computers. I would do this if only so that I did not have to fight the stupid mentality of _"You have to teach these 5th graders how to use obscure features of a version of MS Word that will be a decade and a half out of date by the time they graduate"_

Seriously, every "vocational" computer skills class I ever had was absolutely worthless. They should shitcan all of those classes and teach something that is actually worldview expanding... but that will never happen. The people in charge of making those decisions will all inevitably think that those courses are important because they are teaching the tools that _they_ are _currently_ using.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> At Microsoft I work with an organization named TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) which places volunteer software engineers with schools to teach intro computer science & programming classes to high school students. The program has greatly supplemented the intro CS teaching resources available in the Seattle area.

However, the volunteers run into massive roadblocks with school IT departments. Want to install a new browser or (a god forbid) an IDE on lab computers? Expect at least a semester of hand wringing.

This isn't the fault of the IT staff, it's a result of massive underfunding of public education. Everyone does the best they can but school employees are stretched so thin already that it's very hard to drive change to computing resources that are a prerequisite for computing education for those students who don't have access to their own DEV environment.

Long story short: school systems that are strapped for cash don't have the capital resources to bring an alternative architecture up to parity as a teaching tool. They don't even have the resources to support volunteer teachers.

<comment><USER26> I don't understand. How much funding does it take to install a browser (or even an IDE)? Do they really save money by wasting an entire semester or more doing something that should be so quick and simple?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Somewhat off topic but I just wanted to point out that American GDP has recovered and is now higher than before the recession. In fact it's higher than it's ever been. GDP per capita is higher than ever. We are, as a country, richer than we have ever been. But somehow funding for schools keeps dropping.

<comment><USER28> " _A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit._ " -- D. Elton Trueblood

Such a person would also be counterproductive using the criteria of capitalism, and I think the rest follows from that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The article here is spot on: 1\. Market share 2\. Unfamiliarity 3\. Technical gaps

Of these, perhaps #1 is the most important, and to some extent impacts #2 and #3. Linux has a 1% usage share [1]. Schools would be doing students a disservice by teaching them such a marginal desktop technology, when the opportunity cost of teaching them a mainstream operating system is so high. To the masses, Windows skills are more valuable than Linux skills. I'd love to squeeze my own favorite esoteric topics into the curriculum, but there are only so many things you can teach in a day or a year, and you have to choose based on maximum benefit.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)

<comment><USER30> I was going to say something like that, but less eloquently.

I handle a small network, and deploy Windows and Office mainly because most people know it, easing the training burden on me.

This isn't a software company here. If it were, obviously, using LibreOffice would be the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment> mc-lovin This was a good article, and I think it's important to point out that it doesn't just give reasons why US schools _don't_ use open source software, but that these reasons (especially 1. and 3.) also explain why US schools _shouldn't_ use open source software.

Eventually I believe the economics will change, but we are not there yet. There may be special cases where talented individuals have donated their time to set up and maintain open source software in schools, but this is no more indicative of the true economics than if Microsoft had donated an entire computer lab for free. Rather than evangelize open source for all use cases, I think that we should render unto Microsoft what is Microsoft's.

</comment><comment><USER31> At $11,125 per student in total funding (not counting $359 food services fund) I wouldn't call our local schools cash-strapped. They do call themselves cash strapped though.

<comment><USER32> How many students per teacher (or possibly easier to calculate but less accurate, how many students per class)? That does seem... Lots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The real battle is between native and cloud apps.

<comment><USER32> Does anyone not agree that a bit of both is best? A bad connection kills you otherwise. There is a middle ground.

<comment><USER33> as in chromebooks?

<comment><USER32> Maybe, I haven't used one. I was thinking of favourites of mine. Instapaper and Dropbox were at the front of my mind.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tim Cook: Apple is dedicated to the advancement of human rights and equality - <AUTHOR> http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20504740#post20504740

<comment><USER2> A bit of fact checking.

1) Tin Mining:

There is an IDH workgroup for Tin. It was founded in August of 2013. The 2013 impact report [1] from the IDH doesn't actually contain the word tin. Also the tin division has released no press releases or news other then its founding.

[1] [http://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/impact](http://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/impact)

:.:.:

2) Supplier Responsibility.

The program has only existed for 8 years.

"Our Supplier Code of Conduct was already one of the toughest in the electronics industry, and we made it even stronger [...] We drove our suppliers to achieve an average of 95 percent compliance with our maximum 60-hour work week." (This program started in 2012, after the 2010 foxconn suicides).

18 out of 240 factories now have employee eduction programs. This represents ~270,000 out of the estimated 1.5 million workers (18%).

13 out of 240 factories now supply their workers with clean water (5%).

The IDH work group Apple Founded certified all Tin Smelters they source from are "conflict free".

Apple publicly states bonded (indentured labor) that goes on for a time longer then 30 days is a humans rights violation. But only ~16% of its indentured labor follows this guide line.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/supplier- responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2...](https://www.apple.com/supplier- responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2014_Progress_Report.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> The 'code of conduct' is a sham:

Foxconn and Pegatron issue fake payroll slips to hide long hours, threaten workers to tick boxes saying they consent to working nights, overtime is mandatory, ID cards are illegally confiscated leaving workers trapped at the plants.

The employee education program is a joke. Employees are herded into a hall, shown some slides and then asked to take a test. The answers are shouted out and repeated in unison by everyone. Thus everyone scores 100% and passes.

<comment><USER2> I'm pointing out that even if they _were_ doing it correctly, and you _gave_ Apple the benefit of the doubt. Their current successes have no reached enough of their supplier chain to brag about, or make the claims they did.

So even if your only source is Apple. Apple's claims don't stack up with their documents. A.K.A. lying though your teeth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good spot catching that Apple's own documents don't stack up with their claims. But this is how the company operates as a whole - sell the sizzle, not the steak. I think they simply thought that nobody would actually bother to verify their claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a letter which Tim Cook et al issued to Apple UK staff after the BBC's documentary unit, Panorama, went undercover into the iPhone factories.

Terrible working conditions in continue to exist, contrary to public statements made by Tim Cook, and the supply chain continues to make use of child labor wittingly or unwittingly.

When an Indonesian tin supplier to Apple is asked about Apple's environmental policies his response was "Bullshit Apple. Apple Bullshit".

[1] BBC iPlayer - [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vs348](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vs348)

[2] Magnet

        magnet:?xt=urn:btih:76291D1E48A0930CD649A42E3C7BD82F78E5EE16&dn=panorama+s62e44+apples+broken+promises+hdtv+x264+ftp+ettv&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337%2Fannounce

<comment><USER3> Please edit your comment to put four spaces in front of the magnet link. Your comment destroys the page for people on mobile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, thanks for the heads up.</comment></comment></comment>


In 2016, the tech industry forgot about people - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14125128/2016-tech-industry-silicon-valley-theranos-samsung-uber-humans <comment><USER2> > It's as though some ideas and products are developed (and crises are > handled) in an abstract concept zone, one in which money flows freely and > techno-optimism can overcome any problem.

I think there is a difference between the grocery store, headphone jack and self-driving cars - and situations like the Theranos debacle. By definition, technology is artificial and whether or not it is specifically purposed to help humanity is up for debate. The store/etc., while initially inconvenient, are clearly forward-thinking design decisions that pave the way for technology where Tesla's car death response is a regressive, but human, response.</comment>


The Hash Monster: ESP-32 Tamagotchi for WiFi Cracking - <AUTHOR> https://telescope.ac/petazzoni/the-hash-monster-esp32-tamagotchi-for-wifi-cracking <comment><USER2> If you enjoy this kind of RF hacking tool, you may enjoy the Flipper Zero even more:

[https://flipperzero.one/](https://flipperzero.one/)

It has 125kHz RFID (for cloning door access badges) and a 433 MHz transceiver (for cloning garage door / barrier remotes). This is much more desireable for me than Wifi.

Wish I could get the same capabilities in a phone case format so I could clone all my different badges into something I carry with me all the time.

<comment><USER3> Flipper Zero is great! I just pledged them last month on Kickstarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just today decided to build a Pwnagotchi[0], and I've got a spare M5Stack[1] sitting in a closet, so it looks like I now have two projects for this weekend!

Even though the ESP family has been around for a while, I continue to be amazed by what people can accomplish with such resource constrained (by today's standards) embedded systems.

[0]: [https://pwnagotchi.ai/](https://pwnagotchi.ai/)

[1]: [https://m5stack.com/](https://m5stack.com/) (also linked in the blog post)

<comment><USER5> By today's standards, indeed. Those devices are very powerful for their size. A single one would be able to coordinate a fleet of moon landers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Be careful what data you collect: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc).

<comment><USER7> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc%2E](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc%2E)

HN eats the last period; you can use %2E to avoid that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love these types of projects. I built the pwnagotchi last weekend and documented the process on YT [https://youtu.be/2DIPVpcjR1I](https://youtu.be/2DIPVpcjR1I)

I might have to find some part for this now...

</comment><comment><USER9> I have one of these lying around (and spent a couple of hours setting up an ESP32 camera to work with HomeKit, so this seems like a fun follow-up). The M5Stack range is loads of fun.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't know how much confidence I would put into this, but there is an amazon listing: [https://www.amazon.com/M5Stack-Development-Extensible- Contro...](https://www.amazon.com/M5Stack-Development-Extensible-Control- Prototype/dp/B07PWJMNRN/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=m5stack&qid=1599082564&sr=8-4)

<comment><USER11> If you want one, they look to be cheaper at adafruit ($34 or $42 if you want the motion sensor): [https://www.adafruit.com/product/4178](https://www.adafruit.com/product/4178) [https://www.adafruit.com/product/4177](https://www.adafruit.com/product/4177)

or mouser: ($43): [https://www.mouser.com/Search/Refine?Keyword=M5Stack+ESP32](https://www.mouser.com/Search/Refine?Keyword=M5Stack+ESP32)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems like to protect against this, I should have a long password and not use words (e.g. mix numbers for letters). Is that correct?

<comment><USER13> 10-12 "random" characters + WPA2 and you're safe.

<comment><USER14> And have no children to ask you what the wifi password is.

<comment><USER15> Long password of phonetic pronounceable gibberish is also an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would love if the software stack were extended for on the go usage:

Use HashMonster to capture packets. Send those packets to my mobile phone via bluetooth. Phone sends it to my PC running at home via mobile data plan. PC cracks the password, returns back to phone.

That way I can crack passwords to wifis while waiting somewhere if I dont want to eat my data limit

</comment><comment><USER17> kinda amazed you can get a microcontroller SOC board w/ case, battery and a screen for about 50 bucks shipped.

<comment><USER18> And if you are willing to compromise on the lack of case and a smaller screen you can get them for as low as 6 bucks shipped. Look for the ttgo esp32 with usbc and integrated lipo charging circuit, can highly recommend them!

<comment><USER19> Also recommended here.

Check these out. ESP32 (wifi+bluetooth), lora radios, GPS, oled screen, and battery holder - ~$25US:

[https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32967228739.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32967228739.html)

I have four of them, all work exactly as described.

And what tda is talking about for ~$8US: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32824839148.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32824839148.html)

Or no screen, but with an SD card slot for %5US: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32846099054.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32846099054.html)

I bet that last one would run Hash Monster just fine - if you need a screen for feedback - they're under $3: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32922106384.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32922106384.html)

<comment><USER20> The LILYGO® TTGO T-SIM7000G also makes a great autonomous wigle throwie.

tindie.com/products/ttgo/lilygor-ttgo-t-sim7000g/

<comment><USER19> Ooooh. A nano SIM and an LTE antenna. But no quickly googlable info about what cellular capabilities it has. I'd _assume_ it does 3G/4G/LTE? Have you ever used that? (We don't have any GSM/2G left where I am, so a lot of the inexpensive cellular project boards dpn't work here any more...)

<comment><USER21> It is based on SIM7000G, which is LTE CAT-M1(eMTC) and NB-IoT. So "4G".

<comment><USER19> Oooh, thanks!

(Goes back to still open tab to order a couple... Don't now what for yet, but you know shrugs:. Hmmm, I've got Meshtastic running on some other TTGO boards, I wonder how much work it'd be to bridge two LoRa mesh networks together over SMS or the internet?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ESP32 is crazy versatile. Too busy and should not add more project but this is very interesting and the 433 one mentioned below.</comment>


Rise of Subscription and the fall of advertising - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-graph/rise-of-subscriptions-and-the-fall-of-advertising-d5e4d8800a49 <comment><USER2> Was at Barnes and Noble today looking at magazines.

The internet is garbage for finding out what is going on so often.

Just go to the magazines section at BN. It's so visually compelling, looking at all the covers, scanning the aisles, a wonderful way to learn.

Also make sure to look at magazines that come out quarterly, they tend to be more highbrow / simply have better / longer articles. Stuff like Jacobin, The Baffler, Monocle, New Atlantis, The Hedgehog, etc.</comment>


Why I left Google (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/13/why-i-left-google.aspx

<comment><USER2> This is from March of _last year_ , BTW, and has been discussed numerous other times on HN.

(Ironically, there have been so many other articles titled "Why I left Google" on HN that I can't actually find this one in the archives. But it's there :)

<comment><USER3> The issues around "Why I left A_PUBLIC_COMPANY" are really important. The question go beyond Google(s), it forces us to think if there are alternatives to growing or being public without doing a deal with the "devil". I don't think so, the definition of a public company implies that.

Can private companies with less capital win this game and stay relevant in the long term?

<comment><USER4> There are plenty of massive, dominant private companies. Koch, SC Johnson, the list goes on ...

The nature of VC or anyone investing OPM requires a short horizon. When it's your own money you don't ever have to cash out.

<comment><USER5> Exactly.

I was reading about Ford Thunderbird recently - the car that "created the market niche", was a huge success, rose Ford brand to a new level etc., and oops, the project was _closed_ by board and reopened only after huge fight by Henry Ford II.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So he leaves Google because of steps they are taking to protect and enhance their revenue stream, and joins Microsoft? As a former Microsoftie, all I can say is that is like going from the kettle to the fire and doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER7> I've worked for neither company but my thought was the same as yours.

Anyone who licenses software from Microsoft knows that lately their most important objective is increasing licensing revenues.

Changing products to increase licensing or changing them to enhance a different revenue stream is six of one, half a dozen of the other for me.

<comment><USER6> After reading this ([http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/05/25/google...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/05/25/google-20-time- vs-the-microsoft-garage.aspx)) I think his preference is mostly cultural. I never worked at Google, but I was born, raised and work in tech in the Bay Area. Microsoft culture rubbed me the wrong way when I was there. It seemed more what I imagine to be an organized and orderly Northern European governance under the cloudy, rainy skies. California Bay Area culture is more sunny and free libertarian with a dash of anarchy thrown in. You may discount my general characterization, but these things matter and people definitely have a preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The way these things read... I wonder if people are getting paid an extra bonus to have PR write up a "why I left the other guy" post and put their name on it as way to just bundle up a bunch of FUD in one place.

I'm not a big fan of either Google or Microsoft, so I don't really care about what they say. It's just that these "why I quit" letters have become boilerplate PR pieces that don't really offer anything new or interesting.

<comment><USER9> I look at it as a more public exit interview. I don't doubt that his expressed concerns were part of why he did leave (I also don't doubt that there are other factors)), and by making those concerns public there's a chance that more people may see it and try to rectify the problems.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but in the entire history of people quitting and writing "letters to the editor", has any manager ever actually read it and thought anything other than "whatever, dude wasn't on board, glad he left"?

Do you really think Sergey Brin or Larry Page or Eric Schmidt are going to read this and think "oh man, we better change what we're doing".

Nope.

People who are fans of MS are going to read it and say "yeah, see, I told you google is evil. Even his 15 year old daughter had a poignant critique of Google+ that shows she's not only wise beyond her years, but that Google+ sucks just like I always thought already."

It just doesn't sound genuine.

<comment><USER10> It sounds genuine to me. He articulates a lot of the same reservations I felt during my brief time working there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I lost all interest in reading the article after looking at the msdn.com domain.

EDIT: Downvoters, I don't see how this is wrong. Microsoft has a long history of spreading FUD about competitors (Florian Mueller/FOSSPatents, <http://www.scroogled.com/> [when their own practices are very much the same], sponsoring fake studies that show that the TCO of Linux is much greater than that of Windows, and so on.) I certainly would be interested in an unbiased opinion on the topic, but I don't think anyone on Microsoft's payroll can give me that.

<comment><USER12> The article is all about the difference between the innovation being created by low level employees and the stupid decisions by top level management who want to shut it all down. The author is among the former and even says he _doesn't like ads_ , so I think your proposition that he is a Microsoft shill working in an elaborate anti-Google marketing campaign is misguided.

There's not much excuse for not reading things and then complaining about them.

<comment><USER13> James Whittaker was not a "low level employee," he was a director of engineering. This is the same level as Kurzweil. At that level he was responsible for many management decisions, some of them probably "stupid."

<comment><USER14> A company the size of Google has 100's of "Director"s. There are probably 3 or 4 layers between a director and the CEO... if not more. I doubt he had much to do with the actual market direction of the company (ironically... since the word "Director" would lead you to believe that it had something to do with directing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This guy was only at Google for three years (less, in fact), but this reads like he was a 10 year veteran or something. I can't really take it all that seriously because of that.

He was offered a Partner position at Microsoft. That's why he left. No need to philosophize about corporate culture here.

<comment><USER16> The funny thing is, before he was at Google, he was at Microsoft... and here's what he had to say to CNN/Fortune (<http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/29/the-problem-with-micr...>) in 2011 about Microsoft:

"You want to innovate in mobile? ...deal with the made men who run the relevant cartel. And if they don't like you or your idea, your innovation goes nowhere."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are Google's driverless car just a way to show more ads? Instead of driving a car you could be watching an ad.

<comment><USER17> And Google Glasses? Chromebook? Nexus? Jesus this guy is plainly wrong.

<comment><USER18> And don't forget to mention Google Shoes :P

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/google- shoes_n_2853...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/google- shoes_n_2853098.html)

<comment><USER17> But the phone is good (i'm iPhone owner), and the rest of the projects looks promising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this person's opinion is rather colored. Google has been about ads since before they were public. I personally don't have a Facebook page, and don't use g+ that much, so I'm not as infatuated with social networking as much as some I suppose, but I keep track of my karma on HN hourly when I post a message here, so to each his own.

I have no idea what his second article about Microsoft and the mobile space is getting at. Look, if you think g+ is failing, what makes you think Microsoft is going to suddenly own the mobile space? I interviewed at a place in Seattle about 7 years ago that was doing Windows phone stuff, and again at MSFT at a different point for the windows mobile team as an embedded SWE. Microsoft has been in the mobile space forever, yet he's saying they are the innovative company capable to turning on a dime and taking over a new space? I don't believe it.

My wife has a windows phone, I don't like it, she hates the Bing search. I just bought a nexus 4 to replace my G2 because I want software updates for a long time. My wife is probably moving to an iPhone or Nexus. Last I looked gmail supports imap, you don't have to view ads. I only see ads on my nexus when I use google services, they don't flash up on my screen randomly.

I work on security for Windows, but for my own personal use, I just bought an ARM chromebook. It's a great price, despite the 'secure bootloader', it took me about 5 minutes to get the Ubuntu install started on an SD card, and if I screw up the recovery is drop dead simple. Right now, we are sweating bullets because if we make a mistake on Win8 boot, we are going to hose up the machine and recovery is long and painful.

Google has plenty of problems, and sure if you ask me, Google+ has a terrible interface and shipping it without a good API was brain dead, but Microsoft sure doesn't seem to be setting the mobile world on fire.

So I'd take this and many articles like it with a giant cake of salt.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Sharing is not broken"

"Share this on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, LinkedIn, SlashDot, Myspace, Technorati, Friendfeed, Messenger, or Stumbleupon."

<comment><USER21> Only two of those are relevant. With the right content, a third one may also work. The rest, you can ignore

<comment><USER22> Probably what somebody said about Reader, when all the Google services were listed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I recently switched from using the Google Translate API to the Bing/Microsoft Translator API for my Android app, because Google charges usage fees while MS is free at the lowest tier. This was the first time I saw Google charge money for a service that Microsoft offers for free.

<comment><USER24> Can you be kind enough to comment on the quality of translations? I am in need of a translation API for one of my projects and it is down to Google or Bing.

<comment><USER23> I have only used English-Spanish, but as far as I can tell, the results are approximately the same (translating individual words with appropriate verb conjugation but no regard for context).

You can test them out in their browser apps: <http://www.bing.com/translator/> <http://translate.google.com/>

<comment><USER24> Cool.. thanx for your input! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Shouldn't the title be _Quitting Google_ instead? This title sounds like Google is quitting, when instead an employee quit Google.

<comment><USER26> Right. That's what I thought while clicking the link "Google quitting _what_? "

<comment><USER27> That's it folks, Sergey pulled the plug out of the Google server below his desk. Everyone go home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Little mention of Android and Chrome? No mention of Docs/Drive, self driving cars, Go, Google Fiber or their growing forays into hardware (Nexus, Glass)?

As a lot of these indicate, one of Google's chief contributions in recent memory is helping to make computing cheap, ubiquitous and decidedly not monopolized by Microsoft. In the blink of an eye, we've gone from a world where everything the average person owns that can install software runs on Windows to a world where more like 1/3 (and shrinking) of a household's computing devices run Windows. And in 2013, Chromebooks and Steamboxes look like they could displace a lot more of MS's presence.

There's a conflict of interest here. Even if their game is more complex than Coke vs Pepsi, these are very direct competitors. An ambitious Microsoftie has something to gain in a coy, well written put down that conveniently ignores the competition's bigger recent achievements.

</comment><comment><USER29> I feel like I've read or seen a fair bit of Google criticism from ex-Googlers on the msdn blogs. Can anyone confirm I haven't just been seeing this post over and over?

I don't care if it's just optics; having a post about this on your current employers blog platform makes me highly suspicions, no matter how many people share his opinion

</comment><comment><USER30> Between this piece and other comments I've seen in the wake of the anti-Google backlash of this past week, why is it that supposedly under Eric Schmidt, a "business guy" Google was all innovation and tech, and then when Larry Page, a very technical cofounder, took over, the company is now some sort of ad machine? If this is true, what does this say about leading personalities and company culture?

<comment><USER31> I've always felt that Ben Horowitz's characterization was the best:

<http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/15/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo/>

TLDR Eric was a peacetime CEO and could allow the company to do the things he allowed. Larry is a wartime CEO. Hard decisions need to be made, and the company needs to be driven with focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Google first Kills or acquire small companies and then kill the acquired company for integrating it with Google Plus. Then turn off the service without thinking about the peoples using it.

It is the power of huge money, monopoly and over confidence.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hate to be that guy, but who is James Whittaker?

(nice writeup, as it mirrors the feelings many of my google friends feel)

<comment><USER33> He was an engineering director for a couple of years working on the dev/test tool chain and Google+.

He's done a few books, including one he co-authored called _How Google Tests Software_ , which is a fairly pragmatic discussion of large-scale testing practices at Google. (I'm not sure if this is still the case, but Nooglers used to read this book as a part of their orientation.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why is this being upvoted now is beyond me. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER35> HN works in mysterious ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So it's a year later and sharing still isn't broken and Google still isn't part of it. Maybe that's the point?

</comment><comment><USER26> The fact that this 'personal blog' is on _blogs.msdn.com_ says a lot :)

</comment><comment><USER37> "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."

\- Jeff Hammerbacher, Facebook

</comment><comment><USER38> So he goes to microsoft?

<comment><USER39> See: "Why I joined Microsoft", [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/14/why-i-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/14/why- i-joined-microsoft.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is going to come back every time Google does something the community here doesn't like, or which they see as "corporate-minded focus" over innovation.

</comment><comment><USER41> Working at Google have much higher pressure than MS. not a place for loser.

<comment><USER42> Nice personal attack for someone who's writing is barely comprehensible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This site has very wide columns. Here's a readability link that might be easier to scan:

<http://www.readability.com/articles/nljhmuka>

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't know. Google has come up with Glass and is working hard on the self driving car. Sounds pretty innovative still to me. I hope the author is wrong about the pipeline of new stuff.

</comment><comment><USER45> The way I see it, Google is the new Microsoft, and Microsoft is not dead yet, but becoming more and more irrelevant. Now, what has to happen for Google to become irrelevant?

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't like Google. But I don't like Microsoft either.

And this guy has evil written all over him. He worked at Microsoft for 3 years prior to joining Google. He is now back working for Microsoft. Blogging on msdn.com.

<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-whittaker/13/878/229>

<comment><USER46> > And this guy has evil written all over him.

Can you explain what about him makes him "evil"?

<comment><USER47> I think it's fairly clear that if you work for a large company like Google or Microsoft, you are quite literally the spawn of Satan.

<comment><USER48> ^^ hahaha

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This blog post is one year old.

<comment><USER50> I'm sure I've seen it on hackernews before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Google+ is a bizarre

</comment><comment><USER52> The guy joined Microsoft as a Partner, Partners got it good at Microsoft, 500k/year (range is around 300k to 1 million a year) average and they were exempt from the yearly 10% mandatory cut the rest of the workers are exposed to.

</comment><comment><USER53> Google's New Portal Provides Help for Hacked Sites [http://www.hackersnewsbulletin.com/2013/03/googles-new- porta...](http://www.hackersnewsbulletin.com/2013/03/googles-new-portal- provides-help-for.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> "Why I left Google" - said no Guido ever.

<comment><USER55> Um, you do know that Guido works at Dropbox now, right?</comment></comment>


One of the best performances in 'Rogue One' is by an actor who died in 1994 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/12/15/one-of-the-best-performances-in-rogue-one-is-by-an-actor-who-died-in-1994/ <comment><USER2> I can't disagree more. The CGI was bad and should have been kept to a minimum. It was the ONLY thing I (and a few other's I talked to) didn't like about the movie.

<comment> crooked-v Looking at a single frame at a time, it's nearly perfect. I think the problem comes in how something about the lighting is just a little bit off compared to the rest of the scene and how that shows up when the face starts moving.

It's something that works better for Leia at the end because, aside from the shortness of that scene, the lighting is more indistinct and washed-out, so the little giveaways of light on skin aren't as obvious.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I was wondering how they got Tarkin so wrong, while Leia was pretty darn good. The lighting is what made the difference. The shine that was on Tarkin, which didn't work in those dark scenes, worked perfectly fine in the super bright lighting.

<comment><USER4> I thought leia was worse, when her mouth moved I got a horrible chill.

<comment><USER3> Glad I wasn't the only one. When it was just her face, it was fine. As soon as she talked it bugged me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So who got paid?

Crispin Glover went through a similar experience in Back to the Future 2 & 3 where they took old footage, added a stand in with prosthetics based on his face mold, and didn't pay him.

Basically due to using the face mold, the argument became that the new actor wasn't playing George McFly (a character) but Crispin Glover (an actor, covered by the Screen Actors Guild). They settled out of court and supposedly he got $750k so this one isn't settled.

Ref: [http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/back-future-ii-a- le...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/back-future-ii-a-legal-833705)

<comment><USER6> Disney/Lucasfilm signed an agreement with the estate of Peter Cushing. In the case of Crispin Glover, they used his likeness without his consent, which prompted him to sue and win.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like a simple and reasonable approach. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This should win them an Oscar for visual effects. Unlike what they did with Paul Walker in F&F7, Tarkin not only looked and spoke almost exactly like the 1977 Peter Cushing, the character had a substantial role in the movie. (note: surprised there's no credit to Cushing at all on IMDB)

This is truly groundbreaking, and I would expect a new era in movies where they bring back actors from the dead and/or sign actors to contracts to license their likeness beyond a single movie.

<comment><USER7> Expect more of this. Facial scans of full FACS [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System) have already been and are done. I expect more comprehensive scans as well as some advancement in audio synthesis (probably based on scans? I'm not knowledgable about audio). On top of that, some legal and you will get full- fledged synthespians soon enough. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_actor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_actor)

Animators, to an extent, already are actors. You have to be in order to be an animator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People seem to have a wide range of reactions to it. I thought Leia was perfect, and Tarkin was in the uncanny valley. But I've spoken to people who feel the exact opposite. Regardless, great movie and the days of CGI characters are definitely upon us.

<comment><USER9> Leia was played by Ingvild Deila [1] [2] [3] in Rogue One (at least in part, there may have been CG involved too).

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6488665/](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6488665/)

[2] [https://twitter.com/Ingvild_Deila/status/808730029203095556](https://twitter.com/Ingvild_Deila/status/808730029203095556)

[3] [https://twitter.com/Ingvild_Deila/status/809666112820539392](https://twitter.com/Ingvild_Deila/status/809666112820539392)

<comment><USER10> Obviously there was CG involved; she looked exactly like 70s Carrie Fisher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To be honest I think they did the best they could do given the technology and given its tradeoffs a solution that wasn't as bad as other people think. Maybe 10 years from now they will do a remastered version where the CG is more convincing. The issue I saw was that the skin was glassy possibly due to the lack of translucency. If I were to do it I would have made it into a holographic voice call for Tarkin and keep the reveal with Leia since there was less lighting and screen time for her.

If they had recast Tarkin we would also probably still see complaints.

</comment><comment><USER12> This thread is fascinating to me. I watched the whole movie thinking that they had found an amazingly good Cushing look-alike. I had no clue it was CGI until I came home to read the spoilers. Curious if the people that thought Tarkin looked fake saw the movie in 3D?

<comment><USER13> I saw it in 3D (hated it, really want to see in non-3D) and couldn't tell he was CGI either.

<comment><USER14> It was _so_ obvious in 2D. I wonder if 3D somehow helped mask it.

<comment><USER15> I saw it in 3D and when I first saw his face, thought "Dobby!"

<comment><USER13> Ooooohhhhh now I see it. You're right there is an uncanny resemblance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I saw this in theatre and instantly knew something was off with his face. It was such a disturbing feeling, made my brain question whether everyone else in the movie was CG as well and it took awhile before I was able to see the other actors as "real" again. The uncanny valley is deep and extremely disturbing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lot of the criticism of the CGI characters is due to the knowledge that they were CGI. People that know Peter Cushing was dead and have seen Star Wars with Carrie Fisher 40 years ago are going to be biased. That bias limits suspension of disbelief.

People that have no idea Peter Cushing died or who Princess Leia is aren't going to complain about the spot-on CGI.

<comment><USER18> They recast Mon Martha. It's not inconceivable that they would have recast Leia or Tarkin. In fact, that's what I had expected them to do. I was surprised when Tarkin was revealed and was obviously CGI. It was very distracting. Though, admittedly, computer graphics is my specialty.

On the other hand, I didn't notice Leia was CGI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Who got paid? Can they just rip any dead persons look for free?

<comment><USER20> The Estate of Peter Cushing

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I personally found Leia a bit jarring, but thought Tarkin was perfect.

There's definitely a wide range of reactions.

</comment><comment><USER22> I found on my second viewing the CGI tarkin and Leia were much more believable to me. I wonder if the artists and directors brains filled in the gaps of the uncanny valley as they were very familiar to them.

</comment><comment><USER23> I went to school for animation. Granted, I'm not in that field now, but I thought Tarkin was spot-on. The entire film, I was thinking how well they cast a replacement.

</comment><comment><USER24> Both were deep in the uncanny valley for me, Leia looked worse. To me, animations/facial mimicry is what gives it away. Renders themselves are pretty much perfect at this point, bar barely noticeable fakeness of subsurface scattering.</comment>