The Free and the Antifree - <AUTHOR> https://nplusonemag.com/issue-20/the-intellectual-situation/the-free-and-the-antifree/

<comment><USER2> The question of how to get paid for writing has always struck me as a real "insiders'" debate, that ignores the truly revolutionary effect of the Internet. There is a group of people who self-identify as writers who claim to speak for a much broader population of people doing most of the writing.

It's useful to separate three constituencies: readers, writers, and publishers.

Readers have never had it better. Not only is it easier to find good new writing online, as well as vast archives of stuff, but the Internet has made it possible for millions of people who never would have made it through the traditional publication system to write to their hearts' content. Most of it is terrible and a small fraction is amazing. But when you multiply the small fraction by the huge numbers of people who would not otherwise have published anything, it's pure gain.

Similarly, writers have never had it better! It's always been hard to get paid for your writing, and that hasn't changed. But you no longer have to fight to get published. You can write on your own, or in collaboration with others, and put what you've written in a place the whole world can see. We've grown used to this revolutionary fact, so we don't appreciate what an advance it is over what came before. Check out an old writer's guide from the 1990's and you'll discover a world of stamp-licking, envelope-stuffing, and waiting weeks to get a rejection letter from yet another obscure literary journal or in-flight magazine.

Over the last twelve years, I've written about four hundred thousand words that I never would have bothered with if there hadn't been a potential audience. At the same time, I enjoyed the writing of hundreds of people who wrote for the same reason. Some of them wrote as a hobby, some of them wrote as a study aid (researching a technical article is a terrific way to really learn something), and some were domain experts who had a knack for explaining their work to laypeople, and got a kick out of doing it after hours. Some of these people got 'real' book deals, but the books were inevitably watered down versions of the kind of stuff I could find for free online.

That leaves the publishers, the people who are really getting squeezed. In some cases, they are big companies that are easy to hate, analogous to the record companies. In other cases, they are earnest magazines run by wonderful people on a shoestring budget. My problem is that they present the debate as being between giant corporations and the heroic small publishers, fighting for the rights of the journeyman writer. This ignores the vast mass of writers outside the system, and the many new forms of writing that the Internet has created for us to enjoy. Writing is in much better shape than pieces like this suggest. But it is just not a viable way to earn your living, unless you are in a tiny group of truly extraordinary people. And that's perfectly fine.

<comment><USER3> I think technology has obsoleted the role of publishers.

Transmitting text is so trivial for the average person in 2014, that publishers are exclusively a marketing vehicle.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't say that they're exclusively a marketing vehicle.

Large publishers also hire, vet, and retain editors. It's hard as an independent writer to find a good editor -- not just someone who can proofread your manuscript, but someone who can offer serious constructive advice on the flow of the story and tell you what should be fleshed out and what should fall under the shadow of the hatchet.

<comment><USER5> Internet is not only making it possible for writers to make it without publishers, but without editors too since writers can involve their readers in proofreading and get serious constructive advice this way. This also makes readers more active and involved compared to traditional passive consumption of content.

I've seen a number of technical ebooks and short sci-fi stories get very good advice from HN.

<comment><USER6> I think one of the biggest misconceptions (after cost being driven by printing) about what the editorial process is in the case of large publishers is that it is dominated by proofreading.

The traditional publisher editorial process does include proofreading (and other QA processes), but it is more about what we would call project and product management. Like a good product manager, a good editor doesn't get involved with a book after it is written, they are a central part of the writing process. They are the people who understand market trends, and are experts in their publishing niche. They don't just make suggestions about phrasing, they deal with high level complex issues like flow and structure.

Can you write good books without them? Of course, you can write good software without product managers as well, but good ones are A) Hard to find and B) very very valuable.

<comment><USER5> Good to know, thx. Traditional publishing does indeed seem to require cooperation of a number of different people and organizations to write the text, design the cover, prepare the layout, proofread the manuscript, size the issue, print the copies, market the book etc. Given the complexity of the process and large number of participants the overhead of additional management layer is necessary. However, a lot of these activities are being automated and/or simplified by technology and can now easily be done by the writer herself with a few online self-service tools. Once the process is streamlined and made easier management is no longer necessary.

<comment><USER6> Again, I think you are discounting the part a good editor plays in the creation of the book (and by book I mean the text, not the finished artifact).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I appreciate such a thoughtful summary of recent history from a position I completely disagree with. I think the $50 is really just $50. There was never a time when regular writers and musicians had significant economic power, and getting people to buy albums and magazine subscriptions won't give it to them. That's not to say that art can't be powerful, it just historically has found its power in affecting the thinking of people who do have economic and political power. At a time when it can be difficult to see a long-term strategy for getting paid for creative work, I think we have an opportunity to come up with better models for creative people than exploitative contracts with publishers.

<comment><USER8> I'd agree with the basic sentiment, but would like to add that n+1's long-term strategy idea of "perhaps we could create and strengthen a union" is a think- inside-the-box 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem... and probably won't work.

<comment><USER7> I took the ambiguity of that statement as acknowledgement of what I'm saying, that just getting paid by traditional contracts is not the end-game for artists. They need to find a way to collectively work toward common goals outside of their employer's intentions for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> " _FOR A YOUNG WRITER who hopes to produce literature, the greatest difference between now and twenty years ago may be that now she expects to get paid. Twenty years ago, art and commerce appeared to be opposing forces. The more you were paid for your work, the more likely you were to be a hack._ "

Being a… tad… older than twenty years this is just nonsense. Unless you redefine any successful author — or author that receives payment — as, by definition, not writing literature.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yet another site that uses adobe typekit and doesn't work with ghostery.</comment>


Billionaire, Board Game God and Tech's Hidden Disruptor (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/04/29/meet-matt-calkins-billionaire-board-game-god-and-techs-hidden-disruptor/ <comment><USER2> Matt Calkins' comments about Tin Goose:

[https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1528214/things-i-about- tin-...](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1528214/things-i-about-tin-goose)</comment>


The Ideal Mathematician (1998) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://users-cs.au.dk/danvy/the-ideal-mathematician.pdf <comment><USER2> I don't think any of the research mathematicians I know exhibit a degree of ignorance like the one depicted in the article towards the philosophical underpinnings of their field - the implied attitude towards rigorous proof in particular seems to be an egregious strawman. It is generally accepted that any research mathematician, given an arbitrarily chosen section of a high- level proof, should be able to convert it to a structured step-by-step proof (though possibly at the expense of a prohibitive amount of time), and the same generally holds for any half-decent graduate student by the time they've spent a year or two in their field.

The choice of title makes it even more questionable - imagine a similarly uncharitable piece titled "The ideal [racial category]".

(That being said, the insinuation that mathematicians tend to play the motte- and-bailey game with formalism and platonism does ring true.)

</comment><comment><USER3> On a whole, I found this article somewhat condescending. It starts out declaring that it will try to create an "impossibly pure" mathematician in order to display paradoxical & problematic aspects of his role, but it really does neither. It shows a (negatively) stereotypical mathematician hopelessly confined to his field, and by this example uncovers nothing paradoxical or self-contradicting, but rather pokes at the perceived societal shortcomings of the mathematician in a way that could be interpreted as flippant.

And this "pure mathematician" is even contrived in an unrealistic fashion: no _ideal_ mathematician would say that a proof is simply "an argument that convinces someone who knows the subject." This entire student-mathematician exchange is facetious at best.

This article really reminds me of a strawman: it pretends to paint a picture of an "ideal mathematician," but at points like the above simply resorts to vaguely offensive stereotypes (in most of the exchanges, the mathematician is stereotypically bad at explaining just about anything).

The final point the authors (who, by the way, are reputable mathematicians) make about mathematicians and their relationship to the outside world is a deserving one. There are many humorous and correct insights in this article (for example, the convention of concealing any sign that the author or intended reader is a human being is one that I find to be quite unfortunate and worthy of address), but I really found the pseudo-platonic dialogues to be nothing but off-putting. I think this might have been much better delivered as an earnest essay.

<comment><USER4> As a former mathematician, I found it quite entertaining :-)

Plus, not only I would not find absurd the claim that a proof is simply "an argument that convinces someone who knows the subject." I actually agree with it!

For an egregious example, look at Perelman proof of Poincaré conjecture. According to a few experts, it is a complete proof, and it is just a matter of sketching out the details. According to Yau, it is more like a plan of attack, and the actual proof is due to his students.

We are talking about two field medalists talking about one of the most famous problems in mathematics and disagreeing whether something constitutes a proof

<comment><USER5> Yau is wrong. Perelman proved it just fine. Hamilton made the plan of attack. Perelman executed it. Mere mortals could finally follow the argument, Yau & his students transparently tried to steal credit from a man who doesn't care for formal recognition.

<comment><USER4> I did not check it myself, so I cannot tell, but this is what I have heard most often.

Still, it was just to highlight the fact that there is a certain degree of subjectiveness when evaluating whether something constitutes a proof

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some of that's pretty silly.

An unquestionably rigorous proof is indeed "I know it when I see it", give or take a few differences. (E.g., my adviser Andy Gleason told me to take a theorem that had been proved by Tarski-Principle hand-waving and see if I could find a constructive proof for it. I did, by invoking a theorem from Vol. II of van der Waerden. He was pleased.)

A published proof is a claim that if one tries to flesh it out to an unquestionably rigorous one, one will succeed. (Errors are however distressingly common.)

The accusation of Platonism in the article is mainly hogwash.

</comment><comment><USER7> >No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.

\- G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

(Yet here we are, applying the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in biology, and the Hardy–Ramanujan asymptotic formula in physics)

</comment><comment><USER8> The ideal mathematician could be a female.

<comment><USER9> 1998\. Language usage has changed. Gender-neutral 'he' was more common then.</comment></comment>


Why Apple mice suck, and what they could do to fix it. - <AUTHOR> http://troysimpson.co/mice-made-by-apple

<comment><USER2> There mice may suck but I am in love with the multi-touch track pad. I don't use a mouse at all anymore. For me at least they have killed the mouse.

The 2 finger slide to scroll, 3 finger slid to page up / down, 2 finger right click make it an amazing tool. My productivity has skyrocketed on the track- pad. They have now released a peripheral track-pad for desktop machines. I recommended to a friend of mine that I freelance with and he was sold almost instantly. It is night and day.

Anyway, the point is I agree mice may be the one area where I prefer Microsoft's offerings to Apple's. I have never met an Apple mouse that I liked, but for me the mouse is dead I could never go back after using the track-pad.

Link for those of you unfamiliar with it:

<http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/>

<comment><USER3> This is pretty interesting, my own personal experience with trackpads on laptops have been quite poor. Not the quality of the trackpad itself just it being highly annoying having to move the mouse around with one, i always like to plug in an external mouse.

One of the main things i dislike is it not naturally being on my right, obviously all laptop makers couldnt do this because of the lefties of the world. The other issue is the actual size of the trackpad on a laptop, its too small, again, not easily fixable on a laptop.

So i suppose the external trackpad would solve both these problems, but until i try it out, i'm not sure if i'd like it or not. Certainly interesting though.

<comment><USER4> You say "on a laptop" in the general sense, leading me to wonder if you've tried Mac trackpads recently. I used to feel just like you do, but Apple's trackpads honestly are vastly superior products to any others that I've used.

I know this sounds like fanboyism, but that's just been my experience. FWIW, I agree completely that Apple's actual mice are awful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Apple mice seem to be the canary in the coal mine. If Apple starts designing > mice we all want to use - it is a sign their engineering practices have > turned upside down and their products will not have the same minimalistic > qualities that make them incredibly popular.

Apple mice suck. Period. They're practically unusable, poorly tested, unreliable, overly expensive garbage. Problems with their pointer devices are noticeable to anybody withing the first 5 minutes of using the device. To make matters worse, the way mouse inputs are handled is similarly bad. Unusable and unpredictable acceleration curve with no exposed configuration to tune it, and decades of trying everything possible to avoid having a second button has created all kinds of nonstandard ways of handling right mouse clicks and all kinds of legacy keyboard gyrations for simple actions that could just be handled through a right-click context menu. Option-Shift-Command-Delete really, so I'm modifying a modification or a modifier key? Wow, that's totally discoverable. The semantics of such a command astound. (it's slowly improving, but right-click context menus are not really in the Apple culture).

It's bizarre because Apple is really the first company to design their devices around non-keyboard input, even going to far as to remove arrow keys off of the keyboard in early devices to force people to use the mouse, their touch devices have reinvented mobile computing, and their interface standards are extremely high, why is it then that the mouse I had with my original single body black and white Macintosh is more usable than anything the company has produced since the ridiculous hockey puck mouse in the 90s? Does nobody in the company actually use their products? Is everybody just walking around with MBPs using the trackpads?

One lesson to be learned though is that there simply is a certain amount of complexity you have to deal with in modern computing. You can shift that complexity around (eliminate the right mouse button, but then you have to have awkward and non-discoverable four key combinations), but it's very hard to eliminate it. Trying to find the optimal balance point that allows the best possible management of this complexity is _hard_.

<comment><USER6> I can't use a mouse on a Mac for extended periods of time due to the mouse acceleration curve problem. I've never experienced them as unreliable or garbage, but I just don't like using them.

Using synergy and an external Linux PC to drive the mouse solves the problem. But I like the Mac touchpads so much that the mouse problem sort of disappears, especially now with the new external touchpad. Now, I find even using a mouse (or touchpad) on other Windows / Linux computers is slightly annoying.

<comment><USER7> The acceleration is easily disabled. Just run this command in terminal.

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't call the secret preferences macs have easily disabled. The vast majority of users encountering this problem won't be able to take advantage of this!

<comment><USER8> True it's not the easiest to do manually but there are plenty of preference panes that can open up this feature if you are motivated enough to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> His rant about the magic mouse are unfair. He's making claims about it that sound like he hasn't even used it.

> The most innovative mouse in recent history - the top is a touchpad. The > problem is it is difficult to hold the mouse and perform the two finger > scrolling necessary. Clicking doesn't give you the feedback you would like > and again there really is only 2 buttons available (left and right). It is > difficult to use a touchpad on a device intended to slide around your table, > and tough to click a mouse on a touchpad.

You don't need two fingers to scroll. One is sufficient. Clicking is an audible and you can very well feel it with your finger. It's not a touchpad nor is it intended to be used as a touchpad. It's just that instead of scrolling using a tiny nudge on the top you can use way more surface (anywhere in the top 2/3 of the mouse) to scroll in any direction you want.

<comment><USER4> Be that as it may, it's still not, in my experience, a good mouse. Nifty idea, cool looking design, but I found the ergonomics of it really uncomfortable. It's just awkward trying to move the thing around at all compared to other mice, and the "2 buttons masquerading as 1" thing remains an unpredictable annoyance. I've wished for a long time now that Apple would just give up, admit their mistake, and accept that 2 button mice are the superior option.

<comment><USER10> I like my 3 button mouse. At least how the third button is used in X.

<comment><USER4> Dunno why you were downvoted, my fault for not clarifying: I just meant 2 buttons is superior to 1. I make no claims about other button counts.

<comment><USER10> I agree. And for some users three buttons is even better than two.

<comment><USER11> Some people (Gamers, CAD engineers) wouldn't even consider a mouse with less than _4_ buttons.

<comment><USER8> I am both a gamer and a CAD user. I love my magicmouse though as I spend a lot of time using the internet and scrolling on the magicmouse is amazing. I have jitouch + magicprefs to enable tap/swipe gestures and middle mouse button. if I need to do some hard core gaming I will just use a different mouse. Gaming with the mm is actually good enough for government work most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have used, extensively, every single mouse Apple has ever released. Including the very first mouse for the Lisa and original Macintosh. Every single last one of them is terrible. Some were so terrible it boggles the mind (the hockey puck, _shudder_ ). Before the optical mouse, it always amazed me that Apple mice tended to gum up and get clogged far more than any other brand.

When Microsoft first released their first optical mouse (was it the very first optical mouse? I don't know, but it was the first one I knew of. This was about '98 or so) I eagerly paid the $80 for the behemoth (the thing was huge). Not having to deal with an Apple mouse getting clogged all the time alone made this mouse worth it, nevermind actually having more than one button.

People always point out the magic mouse. I hate it just as much as any other Apple mouse. I have a magic mouse about 2 feet from me as I type this. It seems like Apple can never get everything right. The Magic Mouse is fine on the top side of it, but the bottom has so much friction that moving it around on the desk is a stuttery, frustrating chore.

Interestingly, I've always found Microsoft makes the best mice. My current favorite is the Arc, which is meant to be a travel mouse, yet I use it as my daily mouse. The whole "Apple can do everything right except mice" and "Microsoft often gets things wrong, except their mice" thing has always boggled my mind :)

<comment><USER13> Microsoft makes my favourite mouse which is the Laser Mouse 6000. When I heard that they would no longer be in production I bought a second one as backup in case my first ever failed. It is light, has two extra buttons one on each side and is an absolute joy to have.

Yes, it looks weird next to the rest of my Apple gear, especially since it is this silver black, but overall it is way better than any mouse Apple has ever released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You can take my Magic Mouse when you pry it from my cold dead hand.

That said, regarding the geek fascination with multi-button mics - IMO Apple got it right with one-button (and pseudo-one button like the Magic Mouse & Might Mouse) mice. Yes, you guys/gals can handle multi-button mice. I can handle multi-button mice. But I've witnessed far too many people (even today!) who have a hard time distinguishing between right/lift clicking. Add to that the propensity of many Windows-software authors to provide options that can only be accessed via right-click (some Mac software does this also, but IME much less than Windows software) and you have a recipe for confusion.

Provide one-button mics for everyone and allow advanced users to upgrade to multi-button mice (which is what the Magic/Mighty mice do without having to buy additional hardware) is a good compromise IMO.

<comment><USER15> Have you tried Better Touch Tool (<http://blog.boastr.net/>)? If not, you really should.

<comment><USER8> An alternate that I like is magicprefs for the middle mouse button click and coupled with jitouch for the tap and swipe gestures. I LOVE IT!

<comment><USER14> Dammit! I tried magicprefs and the first thing it did was change the mouse acceleration curve to something more Windows-like.

Into the trash it goes...

<comment><USER8> Apple disabled mucking around with the acceleration curves if I recall correctly. The only thing that they do that is different than the normal mouse prefs is allow you to change the speed of the mouse to a super fast rate which minimizes the effect of the acceleration curve. Try slowing the mouse pointer speed down and see if it is normal.

<comment><USER14> I played around with it a bit and couldn't find a tracking speed that I was comfortable with. I also remember that (supposedly) Apple removed the acceleration curve API but some sites (including <http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/25/mouse-acceleration/>) seem to suggest that it can be turned off.

At this point I'm not going to waste the time to figure it out.

<comment><USER8> fair enough. you should do the jitouch thing though as that is such a win for gestures I was looking for this exact thing. If it did the middle mouse click it would be all that I need.

<comment><USER8> The fact that it disables itself sometimes after waking the computer up from sleep drives me crazy though. I wish the jitouch people would fix this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd say mostly accurate up until the Magic Mouse which I own two of. Really the only bad things about these mice are a) the astoundingly stupid name, b) the poor battery-life (which is exasperated by the fact that apple claims it's exception).

In both cases it's a moot point; the name, yeah I can laugh at it and make fun of it, but really it makes no difference in the usability of the product; and the battery life issue, while annoying, is easily managed by having 2 sets of rechargeable batteries - pretty much a requirement with any wireless mouse.

Other than those two fairly insignificant issues, this is a great mouse and I can't imagine using anything else right now.

<comment><USER17> Poor battery life? My Magic Mouse would last 3 weeks of constant use with NiMH batteries on average.

However, this was only the case after I applied the software update for my aluminum bluetooth keyboard. The first few weeks with the mouse would get me only a few days worth of use, at best.

Maybe there's another bluetooth device nearby that's causing your Magic Mouse to work too hard, and suck up too much juice?

(Note: I don't use my Magic Mouse anymore because I've since fallen in love with the Magic Trackpad, which has survived even the most precise work with Photoshop for mocking up pixel-accurate UIs.)

<comment><USER16> Interest and thanks - maybe I have something going on there, I'll investigate.

I'm also comparing it to my old bluetooth mouse (a small laptop mouse by MS), and I only changed the AAA's in that maybe twice a year. Seems odd to me that a device running 2 AA's would need replacing twice as often.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I have the same mouse - GREAT device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The sad thing is that logitech doesn't make the MX Revolution anymore -- the replacement model is the Performance MX, with less functionality. My MX Revolution got drowned in water and though the Performance MX is still a really good mouse, it's a noticeable downgrade. You can still buy the Revolution online but it comes with a $20-50 markup since it's not being made anymore.

<comment><USER19> Take a look at the Razer Deathadder. Comes in lefty and righty versions, looks pretty clean, and performs very well with great feedback.

[http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_GB/DisplayCateg...](http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_GB/DisplayCategoryProductListPage/categoryID.40946100/parentCategoryID.35208800)

Don't let the lights put you off (in the rollerball and under the hand), you can turn them off.

What I love about that mouse... feel, sensitivity, drivers for mac as well as windows, instant-change sensitivity, tactile feedback is lovely, buttons where you expect there to be buttons (but no more... there aren't buttons all over the thing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If the author had wrote this article pre-Magic Mouse, pre-Magic Trackpad, I would have fully agreed but both of those devices are quite good. I don't find gestures on either one to be difficult but of course there's a small learning curve if you've got 20 years of muscle memory on a regular mouse. For the MM and MT there is a solid physical button click and with various utilities you can configure more than 2 buttons. On my MT I have actions setup for 3 finger click and 4 finger click. It really comes down to personal preference. I'm not sure anyone can make one mouse that is perfect for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER21> I may be sometimes an Apple fanboy, but it's true that Apple mouse sucks, and hard.

Luckily the magic trackpad is now my input device of choice, but I spent a to much time cleaning the small ball of my mighty mouse (without opening it): [<http://www.brendanfenn.com/cleanmouse.html>]

And then again, if I have to use a three button mouse I've to choose a better mouse, something like a Logitec or, argh, Microsoft mouse. Both of them are cheaper and better than any Apple one.

</comment><comment><USER22> The Magic mouse was the one big disappointment when I moved to the iMac. Far, far too small to grip comfortably... but I do love the trackpad scrolling.

I wish I could get a "magic" logitech (thumb) trackball. I saw yesterday that Logitech are releasing a new version of the trackman wheel which I bought 7yrs ago and now use with my iMac. Unfortuntely, it looks like the only difference is a blue ball instead of a red one

</comment><comment><USER23> I have used all previous versions of the mac mice(previous to the magic mouse) and they are all terrible.

That being said , I'm not sure if the author has used a Magic Mouse or not, but I love mine. Sure it doesn't have a million buttons or anything, but in my experience it works great for things I do at my computer(Write Software, surf the internet).

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a Logitech MX Revolution. Initially I was very pleased with the feel of the scrollwheel. And then a year passed, and it became inconsistent; not in the smoothness but in the mechanism's ability to detect motion. I'm not alone in this complaint, it seems to be a relatively common defect.

The worst part of that mouse, though, is that it requires a special USB transmitter. Originally it was quite long, but subsequent versions have reduced the size. No matter, though, because the range is still terrible on the RF transmission. If you have a big, roomy desk (or keep the transmitter on a KVM off to the side), then you're going to frequently run into the mouse pointer freezing as the mouse and transmitter re-establish a correction. Unless it has line of sight, it _will_ happen. I found it maddening, and had to stop using the device.

Oh, it's also obvious that he never used a 2009-style Apple "Magic" Mouse. It _does_ click, it is _way_ better than the Mighty when it comes to detecting a right click, and the scroll and expose gestures are _fantastic_. I wish he had never covered it rather than blatantly and transparently lie to us like this.

<comment><USER25> I've had my MX Revolution for over a year without experiencing the problems you describe. While I'll admit that I've never been the biggest fan of the locking/unlocking of the scroll wheel, it's never had an issue detecting motion. Also, the fact that it requires a transmitter is a bit annoying, but I've never run into an issue where it stops working or goes out of range, line of sight or no.

I've actually had all the mice listed in the article and I still keep coming back to my MX Revolution. The problem is that none of them are two-button mice that I can rest my hand on. The older mice simply did not support right-click functionality, and the newer mice require that your left finder can't be on the mouse while performing a right-click.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One note about their recommended mouse, although i think logitech make excellent products, he writer seems to think the abundance of buttons is a good thing, i do not.

Personally i find the forward and back buttons on a mouse to be highly irritating, whenever i use a mouse with them i always accidentally press them.

<comment><USER26> Forward and backward buttons can actually be extremely handy, when not used for that purpose.

If you map them to something else (say... modifier keys), you can do all sorts of useful things. Like hold down one of the buttons and click on files to select more than one. Or activate Spaces if you click the middle button, but activate Expose if you click the middle button while holding the back button down.

If back/forward buttons had to stay back/forward buttons I'd agree that they are pointless. They don't though; they can be super useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The last Apple mouse I used prior to the Magic Mouse was the clear single button thing. Until now, I don't think anyone took the apple mouse serious. You've already spent $1000+ for the Mac so paying $50 more for a proper mouse wasn't a big deal.

Since getting this thing it's been great. Once you install better mouse or magic menus the versatility really takes off. Forget 1,2, or even 10 button mice. I have configured 12 different gestures I could do more but they get hard to remember. While the hump could be higher the weight is perfect, and it feels solid.

Due to so many comments in this discussion I'm even contemplating getting the touchpad now.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you're thinking about mice, _apple mice are not for you_. Apple know damned well that geeks who want lots of buttons will go out and buy a Logitech. They have tested the acceleration curve to destruction and know that it results in faster navigation; They also know that if you know that it exists and are annoyed by it, you are nerdy enough to use USB Overdrive.

To call Apple mice lousy is to completely miss the point. I really like the basic set of hardware buttons that an Android handset requires for navigation, but my mum can never remember which one does what. The iPhone has one button that does one thing.

The average user is not like us. Our biggest failing as developers and designers is when we forget that.

<comment><USER5> It's not just the curve. It's the usability and reliability of the things. The hockey puck mouse was noticeably unusable within seconds of putting it in your hand. Pretty much the first time you tried to move it, or click, and the mouse had rotated to some indeterminate angle...it's like it went directly from the designer's drawing into production with absolutely no use-testing.

The Mighty Mouse is likewise an unreliable piece of garbage, yet with no way of fixing its primary, and easily noticeable problem, the clogged ball. It's like the purpose for the entire transition from balled mice to optical mice was never a lesson Apple learned. And again, this is noticeable within a very short time-frame under use-testing. And this was a $50 piece of hardware!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Magic mouse is decent. Only problem is it drains batteries like crazy. Plus side is no sleep time.</comment>


How can I better motivate people to constribute chat rules in the Chatbot Game? - <AUTHOR> http://chatbotgame.com/?cmd=chat_rs

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the main issue is that they may not find the bot particularly impressive as is and just leave.

They don't consider the potential of wisdom of the crowds in creating a compelling chatbot.

They may also not consider that contributing chat rules and seeing how well they do in practice is fun.

As an additional motivation, I will probably add the capability to personalize the bot's chatting to your site so that embedding it in your site makes more sense.</comment>


Business Insider is the extreme version of every online news gathering operation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shaneferro/thoughts-on-business-insider-ad4bc291ad8a#.abb0527se <comment><USER2> The trick Blodget managed to get his 20-something year old writers to do was at once cynical and awesome - write like you have know everything about a subject. Top 10 greatest students at MIT, Best angel investor you have never heard of, etc. Most of it was really just fluff but it also created an interesting and weird cottage industry - for smart founders and VCs who aren't well-known, nothing works better than getting to know a BI writer and getting in his/her good graces so you get repeat mentions - you can't buy press like that. BI is basically Buzzfeed pretending to be WSJ.</comment>


Nexus 4 Review: Beautifully Crafted, Premium Android Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/11/07/google-nexus-4-review-the-beautifully-crafted-premium-flagship-phone-that-android-deserves/ <comment><USER2> After my blackberry died around 4 months ago I've been grappling with the issue of what to replace it with. I really enjoy my Transformer Prime tablet and am 100% sold on Android, but the major issue for me is phone size.

Why on earth is every decent phone so bloody big? Now, I've never had a "large screen" phone before so my concerns may be unfounded but I feel that as I don't carry a handbag/manbag and my phone resides in my jeans pocket 99% of the time i'm on the move, anything over say 80/90mm long is just going to become an utter liability with respect to falling out and/or breakage? That aside from the fact that anything larger than that must be a pain to lug around?

Is this something anyone else has struggled with? Are my impressions unfounded?

For now I'm sticking with my old flip style Motorola Razor (beside it has the totally brilliant "Hello Moto" ring tone :)

<comment><USER3> The 4" Galaxy S3 Mini might be the phone for you. With the smaller size and packing the same punch as the main S3, it's a clever move by Samsung to cater for individuals such as yourself, at the other end of the market.

<comment><USER4> That's incorrect. The S3 Mini has not the same punch as the S3, actually it is much weaker.

"First off the Samsung Galaxy S3 has an Exynos 1.4GHz quad-core processor (1.51GHz Snapdragon dual-core for US variants), 4.8-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display with resolution of 1280 x 720 and 306ppi, LTE (regional), 1GB of RAM and16, 32 or 64GB internal memory expandable via microSD to 64GB. It also has a very decent 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, autofocus,1080p HD video recording and the ability to simultaneously record video and images, along with a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera.

(...)

The Galaxy S3 Mini on the other hand has a 1GHz NovaThor dual-core processor, 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display with resolution of 800 x 480 and 233ppi, no LTE connectivity, 1GB of RAM, and 8 or 16GB of internal storage expandable via microSD to 32GB. There's also a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, autofocus and 720p video capture plus a VGA front-facing camera, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, WiFi Direct, WiFi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, microUSB 2.0 and a 1500mAh battery."

[http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/10/13/samsung- galaxy-s3-v...](http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/10/13/samsung- galaxy-s3-v-galaxy-s3-mini-jelly-bean-advantage/)

<comment><USER3> I stand corrected, but for anyone wanting a smaller phone the Mini might be the phone for them. I'm all for 'bigger is better' and will be getting the Nexus 4 when it comes out - at that list price, you can't really go wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one that finds it somewhat funny that a phone with no LTE, non- removable battery, no SD card slot and glass front and back is the most talked about Android phone to date?

<comment><USER6> As an iPhone user (4S) that all sounds pretty standard!

On a more serious note, I don't understand all the fuss about LTE. IIRC it's something like 20Mbps in practice, which is faster than most Internet connections in the US.

What is the use case for such bandwidth on a phone? YouTube already plays just fine with HSPA+.

<comment><USER7> Wow 6 replies here and nobody has specifically called out latency.

I have a verizon LTE device that I tether with from time to time, and the ping times I get to my home server are insane, usually around 20ms. When I tether on my HSPA galaxy nexus, ping times are usually around 100+ms.

Now this could be verizon vs t-mobile and not LTE vs HSPA (or some mix). Verizon is the only/main LTE-supporting provider right now, so LTE and Verizon are conflated in my mind, for better or for worse.

<comment><USER8> Do you have a more convincing measurement than ping times to some other location?

Do you have real-looking latency data for the first few hops from your phone? (...keeping in mind that latency information for intermediate hops is not always accurate.)

100ms vs 20ms could be t-mobile peering with your home ISP in some far away city, while Verizon peers locally. Based on only pings, you'd never know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The other complaint I've heard is that this phone has a glass back, and it > will break if you drop it. This is true, but guess what? Every phone will > break if you drop it. Electronics aren't made to be dropped.

Say what you will about their recent problems, but Nokia made phones that were solid. I dropped them on numerous occasions without problems.

I've been pretty happy with the Samsung phone that replaced my Nokia (wanted Android, not due to a fall!) - it seems well made, and I figured I'd get a new Samsung when the time came. This looks pretty compelling, although getting one in Italy might be a PITA.

<comment><USER10> I've dropped my galaxy nexus plenty, and its still getting by without a kink in the screen or the body, albeit scratches on the corners.

<comment><USER11> My screen broke somehow when it was sitting in my backpack. Not the best construction ever.

<comment><USER12> Considering that the Galaxy Nexus doesn't have Gorilla Glass, the fact that this doesn't happen to most people speaks to its quality construction.

IIRC, you couldn't get curved Gorilla Glass back then so Google decided to go with regular glass rather than give up the subtle curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the biggest announcement this year IMO. Google is finally playing to its strength here (really Amazon showed the way). They make money on services and so they want to cut the hardware margins as much as they can. This hits Apple exactly where it matters since Apple only thinks about making money on hardware. This is a significant change in strategy and could be the most important one this year. Will be interesting to see if Apple sees this and how it counters.

<comment><USER14>
      > Will be interesting to see if Apple sees this and
      > how it counters.

How dumb do you think people at Apple are? And I don't see how it hits Apple — apple has been operating in low margin markets for ages, except that they have high margins and products good enough for people to pay the price asked. The dumb move would be to join the race to the bottom. And frankly, I am so sick and tired of the world where everything is paid by advertising that I am gladly paying premium. OTOH I think advertisers start to think what are they really paying for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It hasn't caught much attention or focus but could this be the first phone that makes any sort of headway in the US against the two year plan/subsidy model? If yes, that has ramifications for the overall industry much greater than any one phone. Anyone in the US know how much you'd save on a realistic smart phone plan if you bought your own vs doing the two year subsidized model?

<comment><USER16> Not sure what you'd 'save' - any major carrier you want to use with a data plan doesn't offer any (at all?) savings on monthly service plans. Prepaid pricing sucks for data.

Do you want to pay $199 plus $90 month for airtime and data? Or $299 for an unlocked phone and... $90/month for airtime and data?

<comment><USER17> T-mobile offers $30/month plan: 5GB data, 100 minutes ($.1/minute overage). Straight Talk is $45 for 2GB, unlimited minutes. $300 for phone, 24 months at $30 is $1020. Most phone plans are $200 for phone, $80/month = $2120. That's a huge savings.

Since the Nexus 4 doesn't support LTE, there's no reason to pay full price for ATT or Verizon.

<comment><USER18> That T-Mobile $30 plan is unlimited data, just throttled after 5GB

<comment><USER19> Plus, it's DC-HSPA @ 42Mbps. Which has been shown to beat LTE speeds in some areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've never been so conflicted between the choice of two phones before: Nexus 4 or Galaxy Note II. Although, I tend to trust AndroidPolice more than most other outlets in terms of Android expertise, and I'm comforted more by their assessment of the Nexus 4's battery.

<comment><USER21> For me at least, the nexus brand's long OS support time is more than enough to pull me in. The fact that nexus S got Jelly Bean sounds a very good reason to go for Nexus.

<comment><USER22> And for me, the expandable storage on (most of) the Galaxy series is infinitely more important than official OS updates (which Samsung is pretty good at on their major phones).

<comment><USER23> > official OS updates (which Samsung is pretty good at on their major phones)

On what planet? The Galaxy S II was certainly a major phone (just one short generation older than current) and yet it's still officially on 2.x. The only good thing to say about Samsung's OS updates is that the CyanogenMod community behind their phones is diligent.

<comment><USER22> Eh? Wikipedia says that 4.0 is the current version for the S2, and my S2 variant (the E4GT) is on 4.0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The only "serviceable" camera and lack of LTE are deal breakers for me on what otherwise sounds like a pretty awesome phone. I really wish more android phones (especially high end ones) would realize that, after basic phone functionality and maps, taking pictures is one of the things that people do most with their phones these days and there's a pretty huge difference between a good and bad phone camera. After owning a HTC with a pretty terrible camera for the past few years and comparing its pictures to those taken by friends with iPhones, I can confidentially say that a good camera is going to be one of the first things I look at in my next phone...

</comment><comment><USER25> Of course androidpolice.com downplays the phone's biggest problem: No 4G LTE.

Sure the phone has better build quality. Sure it has more RAM and processing power. Both of those are important, but I don't think they're the biggest limiting factor in android's smartphone sales.

Right now I'm using a Verizon Galaxy Nexus with a custom stock ROM and kernel and I've had zero problems with speed. Sure the build quality could be better, but I don't think anyone ever bought an android for its build quality. It's the 4G speeds that made this phone better than the iphone 4S for a whole year before the 5 was released. I'm really disappointed in Google for not getting this right.

<comment><USER26> I think it's unfair to say that androidpolice downplays the lack of LTE support. I completely understand if this is a big issue for you. But most people do not have access to LTE networks anyways, so isn't it understandable if a reviewer does not make a big deal out of this?

<comment><USER27> Most people DO have access to LTE. Verizon's network covers 250 Million people in the US, and their 4G footprint will equal that of their 3G network by next year sometime (2013).

[http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizons-shammo-well- fin...](http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizons-shammo-well-finish-lte- buildout-mid-2013/2012-11-08)

<comment><USER26> There are about 500 million Android devices out there and 410 million iOS devices (both numbers are from Wikipedia). We now at least from Android that most devices are smartphones equiped with a radio.

So 250 million people can not be most people. And as I read it, the number of current LTE users must be much, much lower than that, since Verizon states that it had 111.3 million customers (using LTE or not) in Q2 2012: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57505803-94/competitive- wir...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57505803-94/competitive-wireless- carriers-take-on-at-t-and-verizon/) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm considering getting this to replace my Nexus One. However, the lack of an sd slot and LTE really has me hung up. I'd be using it on T-mobile, though, so the LTE probably won't matter for a little while.

I love the community support for Nexus devices and the only disappointment about the Nexus One for me was that I didn't get until it was already out for 6 months.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER29> I've no idea what the bandwidth caps are like on t-mobile, but the google music streaming service is pretty nice on android, so it's not like you have to fill up the phone SD card with every song you've ever owned.

If you love watching films on your phone (something i never do), I can see the 16GB limit getting annoying though.

<comment><USER30> Bandwidth caps on T-Mobile vary from plan to plan. The $30/month prepaid option that many people are going with for the N4 offers 100 minutes of voice coverage each month, unlimited text messages, and unlimited data, but only the first 5GB of data is available at HSPA+ 42Mbps speeds. After you exceed 5GB your bandwidth is throttled down to "3G" speeds (but you're not actually cut off).

<comment><USER31> I think you actually get throttled down to EDGE/2G speeds. I've had this plan for a while and never hit the limit, but I'm pretty sure the limited speeds are slower than 3G.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm sorry. I don't think the GNex vs. Nexus 4 decision is as cut and dried as this reviewer makes it.

Storage: The Nexus 4 has only 16GB of storage, with no way to expand (GNex had 32GB). That's a step backward IMO.

Screen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. AMOLED has fewer sub-pixels. So what. The blacks are blacker, and the screen is more vibrant. I know the color gamut is different, but the contrast is better. The Nexus 4 looks washed out next to the GNex.

Network: Sorry, lack of LTE is a deal breaker for me. Verizon LTE is solid where I live, and very, very fast. That may not be the case for everyone, but I'm sure as heck not going back to 3Gesque speeds. And for what features? A slightly faster processor? More RAM? and a breakable glass case?

Fahgetabahtit.

<comment><USER32> Is the Nexus 4 not a GSM-only phone? I don't recall seeing any CDMA bands listed in the specs. I suspect, then, adding LTE wouldn't be beneficial to a Verizon user, unless they didn't use the phone (right?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Its LG... I used some older LG android phones. I dont have good experience with it. And the author says that galaxy nexus users should upgrade? Yeah if money grows on your back yeah. (thats a dutch saying :p)

</comment><comment><USER34> Not a single mention of how it compares to an iPhone. I know it's androidpolice.com, but it's weird to have such a long review without making ANY comparisons to the most-popular phone in the world....

<comment><USER35> Agreed, the iPhone is a bit of an elephant in the room here. Particularly when the author waxes lyrical about how nice it is to have front and back made of Gorilla Glass (exactly like the recently-superseded iPhone 4/4S).

<comment><USER36> Apples to oranges. iPhone 5 is severely limited when purchased in the US: you can't unlock and put a different (overseas) carrier's SIM when you're out of country, until you complete your 2 year contract.

Unsubsidized, the iPhone is $699. Unsubsidized Nexus 4 is $350.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "Keep in mind this is an AT&T/T-Mobile phone. T-Mobile doesn't do LTE at all, and AT&T has just started their build out. On their website, they still measure it in cities; that should tell you how limited the coverage is."

I don't think AT&T's LTE coverage is as limited as stated here. I live about 20 miles outside of Boston and my town and the next town over both have LTE. And it is fast, very fast. On my LTE iPad I get over 40 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. In Boston I get about half that.

</comment><comment><USER38> My cheap HTC has a bezel that comes forward at the front, so even if you drop it front-first it's plastic rather than glass that makes contact with the floor. I've dropped it at least five times and it works. So no, a phone that breaks when you drop it really would be a downgrade.

<comment><USER39> I have a Hero and it's like that. Part of the reason why it's so robust is that when it drops, it splits into 3 parts: the phone, the battery and the battery cover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Andy Rubin, who's the head of Android at Google, said that the point of this phone is to spread the nexus brand to a lot more markets across the world, something that they didn't do with the Galaxy Nexus. Keeping this in mind, they chose not to put LTE since only a limited number of users in one country would actually benefit from it. It'd be great if this phone would actually go on to be a huge hit, say, like the galaxy series. A lot more people would get to use stock android that way, and see how good it actually is.

</comment><comment><USER41> Unfortunately the nexus 4 is also large, heavy, and made of plastic.

[And what's with the stupid chrome ('d plastic) strip, given that they were apparently at least _aiming_ at a quality feel?! Why on earth do manufacturers feel the need to add tacky chrome "accents" to otherwise reasonable designs??? Guys: it doesn't make your phone look classy, it makes it look cheap.]

The iphone 5 really nails the physical phone; it's simply beautiful. Unfortunately it also features apple's wackymaps™... :(

</comment><comment><USER42> With bluetooth and induction charging, can we now make beautiful, fast phones with no flaps to cover the ports? I've had two phones broken through water damage; surely the time has come for a manufacturer to add such an obvious feature to its high-end devices?

</comment><comment><USER43> I've been looking into switching from Sprint to prepaid since our contract is up. From the looks of it, Straight Talk has the best coverage for the price. Anyone recommend other MVNOs over ST?

</comment><comment><USER44> This is the first Android phone that I'm actually excited about using.

</comment><comment><USER45> That's a lot of talk about the clock?

<comment><USER46> As Apple has taught us so well, details matter.

<comment><USER45> True. It's also seemingly a well executed clock.</comment></comment></comment>


Behind the scenes of a successful eBook launch ($26k in 24 hours) - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/behind-the-scenes

<comment><USER2> So... plans for another book?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not right now. It's time to really focus on building software for a while.</comment></comment>


OS X El Capitan's Disk Utility is a mess - <AUTHOR> http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-el-capitans-disk-utility-is-a-mess.1894047/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty old... Jun 21, 2015. Also it was using a developer build.</comment>


Unemployment at 4-Year-Low as U.S. Hiring Gains Steam - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/business/economy/us-added-236000-jobs-in-february.html?hp&_r=0 <comment><USER2> A lower headline number is nice, but the real question is, where is the u-6 rate going? <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm></comment>


Band in China Banned in China - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/south-parks-latest-episode-band-in-china-gets-banned-in-china-2c3ed47e8461 <comment><USER2> This happened last year...[1]

[1] [https://www.newsweek.com/south-park-band-china-why-banned- ch...](https://www.newsweek.com/south-park-band-china-why-banned- china-s23-e02-23x02-1463762)</comment>


Fedora 20 Will Be Named Heisenbug - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fedora-20-Will-Be-Named-Heisenbug-380298.shtml

<comment><USER2> An improvement over "Beefy Miracle".

</comment><comment><USER3> If there's something I love about Fedora is it's names... not sure what was wrong with "Beefy Miracle", honestly, I liked that one too.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was really hoping this was a "Breaking Bad" reference (Walter "Heisenberg" White and his fedora).

<comment><USER5> Walter White wears a pork pie hat, not a fedora.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now that we know its name variable, we can have no idea when it will be released.

</comment><comment><USER7> This should be subtitled: "why you should name your own releases".

</comment><comment><USER8> I hate code names, they are meant for the developers but still get used after release. Then you get support calls from people saying "Oh, yes I've got that Lion computer."

Stick with a simple number, people generally can count and know how old something is by its number. Who knows (without looking it up) how old Oneiric Ocelot is?

<comment><USER9> Fedora chooses silly names on purpose so that people outside of the development team don't refer to them.

That said, I actually prefer code names. I know my desktop computer is running Lion, and my laptop is running Ubuntu Quantum something (I just looked it up, Quantal Quetzal, but really I only need to know the first letter, because Ubuntu releases are alphabetic.) I have no clue what version number I am using (I guess it is OSX 10.7.something, and something between Ubuntu 11.10 and 13.04).

(I also don't know what CentOS version I am using at work, because it's really hard to find out (stashed in some file in /etc, of which I don't know if it is up-to-date or leftover from a previous installation), but it's something ancient.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> By the way, this was the original announcement: [https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2013-Sept...](https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2013-September/003181.html)

I love how "20" only got 1 vote;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Are they certain?

<comment><USER12> Yes, but they have no idea where the release is, or when it will happen.

<comment><USER11> We should send the dev team a hungry Leopard in a box :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Heisenbug is a kind of bug that exists and doesnt exist at the same time. Morever, the moment you think you caught it - it slips out from your fingers.

Interesting choice of name for an operating system.

</comment><comment><USER14> We should stop linking to Softpedia. It's a spammy site that mirrors tons of software projects (e.g., most if not all new releases on PyPI) unofficially in order to serve ads.

</comment><comment><USER15> Aw, I wanted it to be "Geometric Troglodyte."</comment>


Jupiter's Moon Europa "Likeliest to Have Life" - <AUTHOR> http://www.france24.com/en/20130216-jupiters-europa-moon-likeliest-have-life

<comment><USER2> It is "most likely", learn proper English first!</comment>


Two complete, working, useful Raspberry Pi projects - <AUTHOR> https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/71093.html <comment><USER2> Please don't play Unicode tricks with titles. HN is supposed to be a plain- text site.

Submitted title was "Not one but 𝘁𝘄𝗼 complete, working, & 𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙛𝙪𝙡 Raspberry Pi projects". HN users will flag that kind of thing, and did so in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, noted for future reference.</comment></comment>


Ninja Object Properties in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.patrick-wied.at/blog/ninja-object-properties-in-javascript

<comment><USER2> It isn't unknown, or even bad practice, to have string values with dots in them when needed in Java to avoid collisions. For example, the package names of Android apps use that format, even though the dots in them mean nothing. Often a constant in a class will have the exact same String value as it's location:

package blah1.blah2; class Blah3 { private static final String BLAH_KEY = "blah1.blah2.Blah3.BLAH_KEY"

Which helps a lot when you see the value somewhere else as well. Often if you are told to put some String keyed values into a general purpose message container going to another program, the string keys you use again use values to look like that to avoid collision, as recommended by the Android documentation itself. Similarly used for persisting application values to a single XML file. Then of course we also have technologies like GWT, where programmers write in Java, and it is compiled to JavaScript. I could easily see that generating property names with packages in them.

So anyway, you see dots for sub-objects, but you also see dots simply as part of a way to avoid name collisions, as in Java package naming and sharing String key namespace best practices. Just because it isn't used for sub- objects or method calls or properties doesn't mean it is wrong or bad.

<comment><USER3> hey, I'm the author of the article. I didn't write that using dots in the property name is a bad practice, but rather that other parts of the code let me assume that they didn't know a lot about js

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Remember, \u200B is also valid in property names, making it immune to

for(i in x){ console.log(i, "_"); }

as well. That said, this is the worst idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> It gets even more weird when using Unicode imperceptible characters

        x = {}
        x[String.fromCharCode(1)] = "1"
        x[String.fromCharCode(2)] = "2"
        x[String.fromCharCode(3)] = "3"

And obligatory reference to namespace function (to easily create namespaced modules): [http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/19030/Namespaces-in- Java...](http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/19030/Namespaces-in-JavaScript)</comment>


UK Affirms That Photographs of Public Domain Art Are Fair Use - <AUTHOR> http://hyperallergic.com/261496/uk-affirms-that-photographs-of-public-domain-art-are-fair-use/ <comment><USER2> In the USA that is already the case. A picture of a public domain image, no matter how much difficulty there was taking it, is still considered public domain.</comment>


Building modular applications with Riot.js, the 1kb MVP library - <AUTHOR> https://moot.it/riotjs/docs/

<comment><USER2> Riot.js has a big advantage, being very tiny and fast, unlike any other bloated MV* solutions. In fact, everything you need is included in pure JavaScript + a little of glue code which this library provides. Moot proves that there is no need for overcomplicated large frameworks to make a fully featured web app. Speed is the king. That is why I think this microlibrary approach has a future.

<comment><USER3> Until you application is tens or hundreds of thousands lines of JavaScript.

And when you have gone and reimplemented every single operation from some "bloated" library.

Then you will be enlightened.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wrong. Please read the docs.

<comment><USER3> I have, what am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> The demo application [https://moot.it/riotjs/demo/](https://moot.it/riotjs/demo/) uses Riot and jQuery only and it has all the major features of a single page application. What operations are you talking about? What additional benefit the current frameworks offer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the older post about riot.js: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653024)

<comment><USER2> Yes, but most of comments under that post are irrelevant since Riot.js no longer depends on jQuery.

<comment><USER5> Is that why there's a whole section in the linked article talking about jQuery and how great it is and how it works really great with Riot.js?

And, sure, you can use something lighter-weight than the full ca. 100Kb jQuery reference implementation, but "1Kb MVP framework", while it sounds awfully nifty, still lacks something in basic honesty by comparison with "1Kb MVP framework, oh, and you have to write a ton of jQuery glue to make anything work with it."

[Edit: Don't believe me? Take a look at the Riot.js TodoMVC example[1]. This isn't a framework; this is jQuery with extra hair.]

[1] [https://github.com/moot/riotjs/blob/master/todomvc/](https://github.com/moot/riotjs/blob/master/todomvc/)

<comment><USER2> There is nothing wrong in using jQuery if you wish, but you can get rid of it as well and just use document.querySelector() and el.addEventListener(). Riot.js is standalone.

<comment><USER5> Great, so I can write a bunch of document.querySelector() and el.addEventListener() glue instead. That's a real improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like jQuery. Which library do you prefer for DOM manipulation?

<comment><USER5> I don't have anything against jQuery _per se_ , but part of the idea behind a client-side framework, or so at least I had gathered in my usual imperfect fashion, was to relieve the developer of the need for a bunch of hand-written DOM-fiddling code, by both attending flawlessly to the common cases and giving the developer flexibility enough to handle the rest as and when it's necessary to do so.

That's the point I'm making: I _prefer_ , inasmuch as possible, not to do manual DOM manipulation at all, which renders your question somewhat moot.

Perhaps it's different for someone who hasn't written that kind of code enough times to grow thoroughly tired of it, but I _have_ written it that many times, and I am therefore very much open to the suggestion that there's value in a framework which handles the great bulk of such cases automatically, and in so doing gives me more time and effort to spend on whatever project I'm actually working on. Angular, in particular, I've found to be quite good for this; Riot.js, on the other hand, not only doesn't bother with it at all, but takes what I consider to be an unduly snobbish attitude toward the whole concept.

For a tiny chat app that's designed to be embedded in third-party pages, I can see some sense in taking the lightweight microframework-style approach. But when its developer and its devotees promulgate it as the prescription for every problem, while denigrating much more capable and general-purpose solutions as "bloated" and casting veiled aspersions upon the competence of the developers who employ them? That's a real problem, and I strongly misdoubt I am the only one to think so.

No doubt Riot.js is quite useful in a specific subset of cases, albeit only those closely similar to the one in which it found its origin. But this sort of behavior, on the part of those who already have a stake in it, can only make it less likely that anyone who _doesn 't_ have a stake will decide they want one.

Certainly it's had that effect on me! -- I was quite interested in Riot.js when it first appeared on HN a few months ago, but that initial interest quickly cooled when I saw how the developer behaves toward his critics. The choice to use any framework, but especially any of the relatively new Javascript ones, implies almost of necessity that the developer so choosing must participate in the community around that framework -- and a community led by someone, who behaves as I've seen the Riot.js developer do, is no community in which I desire to take part. Of course it is that developer's prerogative to behave as he does -- but it is equally the prerogative of anyone else to decide that interacting with someone, who has such an unpleasant attitude toward anyone not unreservedly laudatory of his work, is best avoided.

That's precisely the decision I made upon reviewing the original Riot.js thread on HN, and this latest article from the Riot.js developer, in which he arguably outright lies both about the drawbacks of his competition and the benefits of his own entry in the great framework shootout, only reinforces that decision -- and, again, I much misdoubt I'm the only one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I'm the annoying developer :) I'm sorry if I came out in a bad way. It's not my intention to be harsh and I'm trying to be open to the critics. It's just a damn hard to point out that the current frameworks are mostly unnecessary and you can make large scale apps with Riot that only has 3 extra methods. It can totally understand that people don't take it easily. And it's especially hard if you are already using a certain framework and feeling good with it.

I can see from your comment that you are biased towards MVVP and Angular in particular. You prefer to express the logic in the HTML template and use two- way data binding and avoid using jQuery (Official Angular suggestion). It's a very different approach and you cannot really compare Riot and Angular directly. It's a much broader comparison between MVP and MVVM patterns. A massive topic.

I strongly think that MVP scales much better than MVVP and is better for bigger applications/teams. It's easier structure the codebase in modular fashion. Riot documentation focuses solely on this topic. Moot is not a "tiny chat app", it has pretty vast feature set and the code is split into 50 different files. MVP definitely scales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I honestly first read this as "1kb Minimum Viable Product library", which would admittedly be kinda cool.

<comment><USER7> A list of guidelines and short advice to build a Minimum Viable Product could certainly fit in 1kb of plaintext, but like all JS microlibraries, most of the hard work would be left to the user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The semicolons are still randomly used.

The demo application has several scripts after /body. `navi` should be `nav`.

> _Pure HTML is cleaner and passes W3C validator._

The demo does not pass the W3C validator.

<comment><AUTHOR> The demo now passes W3C validator. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm... now, I'm curious about using this with React for super responsive UI's with decent separation of concerns. I might have a play and see how they go together.</comment>


Google Maps Open-Source Challenger MapBox Raises $10M From Foundry Group - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/10/16/google-maps-open-source-challenger-mapbox-raises-10m-from-foundry-group/?mod=WSJBlog

<comment><USER3> Stupid title. Even MapBox might agree they don't compete with Google Maps. They are here to make OSM awesome, and hats off to MapBox for what they've done so far.

<comment><USER4> They most certainly do. I got a quote from Google for commercial maps use a few weeks ago. 17.5k/yr an up. Mapbox seems like a good alternative for serious web mapping. Google Maps is still pretty week in B2B type mapping though. Esri is the real competitor here.

<comment><USER5> Only 17.5k/yr? You got off easy! Our first quote at $work was 6 figures, though we ended up settling on a figure more than yours and less than $100k/yr. We've now switched to OSM + MapQuest open tiles + leaflet and couldn't be happier with the result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Their TileMill software is great. You don't have to sign up to have them serve your maps, you can use all of their tools to generate your tilesets and do what you like with them (obviously attributing your data set source). The MapBox iOS SDK is another stand out contribution from these guys.

<comment><USER7> Some of their free offerings are so great that i sometimes worry they might be (maybe unintended) in a "embrace, extend" phase, extinguishing competitors left and right. Their uprise is insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love MapBox -- I am a happy paying customer -- but the title seems a little misleading: what is open source about them? They source their data from OpenStreetMap, which is open-source, but MapBox themselves is not. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER9> They open source a lot of their software. Check out tilemill:

[https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/](https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/)

<comment><USER8> That's really awesome. But I still don't think describing MapBox themselves as "Open-Source" is accurate. There are LOTS Of other companies that open source a lot of their code, but certainly wouldn't be considered "Open-Source" themselves: Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, id, Novell, Oracle. The list goes on.

I certainly don't want to take anything away from MapBox. I really love what they offer. I just don't think it's fair to describe them as "Open-Source".

<comment><USER10> MapBox does not sell any software or hardware -- all the tools are open source. Unlike Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, id, Novell, Oracle. The list goes on.

<comment><USER8> Sure they do. They are a SaaS provider. At least I presume that's what they're charging my credit card for every month.

<comment><USER10> Right, but the software used to do it, and the tools to integrate, are open source, which is the original question above. You can do everything MapBox is doing yourself, on your own, but good luck scaling and making it georedundant at super high volume -- that's MapBox's value add.

<comment><USER8> I did not realize that. This is exactly what I was asking for clarification on when I first posted. Not sure why we had to get 6 levels deep into the discussion to get to the point, but here we are. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how much this is simply about startups not wanting to rely on Google. Even Apple felt uncomfortable relying on their maps product. So much smaller startups probably hate that dependency too.

<comment><USER4> I am sure it is partly due to the fact that this is way cheaper than google maps or esri for heavy commercial use.

<comment><USER12> Out of curiosity, how much does the Google Maps API actually cost for a business license?

<comment><USER4> 17.5k/yr for the lowest package was what I was quoted a couple weeks ago. It was actually not a terrible deal compared to most of the alternatives as far as value goes... but the starter package is way larger than you would need for most things. They essentially price segment the small startups out of the market. OTOH, many of the other GIS server licenses push 100k+, so that is why something like mapbox is getting people excited.

<comment><USER13> I'm doing a Foursquare/Yelp clone/mashup for my country with two friends, and we're using OSM + Mapbox because we figured it will be much cheaper than Google (and it's very easy and developer-friendly too).

We're still using the free version so we could have gone with Google, but we wanted to plan ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If your app uses maps, it's time to get on board the MapBox rocket. Resistance is futile.

</comment><comment><USER15> The mapbox team is fantastic, this is totally great news for all of them, the mapping community, and map users. Can't wait to see what they come up with next

</comment><comment><USER16> That's going to seriously shake the mapping space. MapBox is quite an unstoppable force now.

<comment><USER17> I saw their CEO speak at an event in Geneva last month - went in having not heard of MapBox, came out impressed. It's a really cool model - <USER2> the way that corrections made to a map by a FourSquare user, for example would be instantly reflected to a user on Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What happened to OpenStreetMap?

<comment><USER19> MapBox is to OpenStreetMap as Ubuntu is to Linux.

MapBox provide hosted tiles, beautiful designed custom tiles and a bunch of nice tools (including iD, the in-browser editor). OpenStreetMap provide the community-maintained dataset. MapBox have been very supportive of the OSM community in terms of donations, sponsorship of events, use of office space and so on.

The point is if you are Foursquare and you want to start using OpenStreetMap, MapBox will give you commercial support and design services and so on. OpenStreetMap (the community, the non-profit Foundation etc.) won't.

<comment><USER20> As someone who sits in #osm and #osm-dev on irc.oftc.net and helps at least one person a day, I'd like to point out that the community will most definitely give you support. MapBox certainly makes it easier to pay someone, but the community isn't completely shut off from the world :).

<comment><USER19> Oh, sure. We're a pretty friendly and helpful community, but I think the analogy holds. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mapbox is awesome. Speaking of their tile maps, there are two things that make them less competitive compared to Google: geocoding and street view. While nominatim is fantastic, it is nearly not as good as google maps search, which has people employed full time to update company listings, etc. There are many companies that depend on search so much they are willing to stick to google maps.

</comment><comment><USER22> I just hope they dont fall down as a option when Google come up with a buy offer..

For users, developers and the society in general, competition and options are a good thing..

I cant say i didnt feel sad when Waze was bought.. with more time and effort no product would bare to stand against it

</comment><comment><USER23> MapBox is a ridiculous joke until they start supporting building numbers.

(Yes, they know of this limitation, but they deliberately cripple their product because of 'typographical clarity' or somesuch bullshit.)

<comment><USER24> Do you mean adding building numbers to the map (similar to the OSM Mapnik tiles?) This is something you can do yourself in TileMill and then overlay onto MapBox Streets or other tiles.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to store sensitive keys? - <AUTHOR> I was wondering if there is a safe way to have different API/private keys stored on my machine, this helps creating helpful deployment and automation scenarios. however, having the keys reside in files seems to be a bit dangerous to me, maybe there is a better secure way to store them? <comment><USER2> Hashicorp Vault is simple to run and has a HTTP api and cli.

But you want as little as possible hassle of course. I didn't require high availability, but liked coding to the vault api so i could go there later. I wanted to store and administer secrets in encrypted yaml, which i could then batch load into Hashicorp Vault. I use Ansible Vault to manage the encrypted yaml file with a passphrase.

To this end I created Safe, a tool to run Hashicorp Vault and load secrets from yaml in a single command. See [https://gitlab.com/nerdalize/safe](https://gitlab.com/nerdalize/safe). It requires Docker, the bash script (and Ansible Vault or some other file encryption util).

</comment><comment><USER3> etcd ([https://github.com/coreos/etcd](https://github.com/coreos/etcd)) or one of its variants is an option.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you use Puppet for deployments and management, you could use Hiera-Eyaml: encrypted YAML. Then it's just a matter of managing the master key.

</comment><comment><USER5> Take a look at HashiCorp's Vault

</comment><comment><USER6> Put them in Environmental Variables in the same shell that starts the process.</comment>


How Richard Garriott got started in games - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/features/2017/9/15/16304980/how-richard-garriott-got-started-in-games <comment> et-al Lots of credit goes to the Garriott's high school administrators for being supportive:

> When I got back to Houston, I told the faculty, 'I want to continue working > on this machine. There is no curriculum [for computer programming]. What I > would like is your permission to, instead of taking a foreign language, > please consider BASIC my foreign language.'"

> The faculty gave him its blessing. Over his junior and senior years, > Garriott and a few other students with permission to tailor their curriculum > to their strengths embarked on self-guided journeys.

And later on, the school president's office let him use the new Apple computer. Granted, times were different and records may not have been computerised, so there was no threat of changing grades and HACKING.

</comment><comment><USER2> Garriott, and more specifically, the Ultimas, are the sole reasons I became a programmer. I first played Ultima 5 on a monochrome C64 monitor. Seeing the technological leaps up until the 8th sequel was mind-blowing to a younger me. There was something there that sadly will never be replicated. The lack of an internet connection meant there was nothing available other than a box, a manual, and a map to feed the imagination. I was even further disconnected from the world given I grew up in the countryside where neighbors were scarce.

I remember me and my brothers all huddling around the screen on rainy days, the four of us trying to assume the identities of the default party members - it literally felt like looking into a portal to another world.

<comment><USER3> It was an emulator for Ultima Online called RunUO that ignited my passion for game development. The ability to alter a few lines of code and see that reflected in the game was so damn exciting. Happy to say 15 years later working on my latest game in UE4 that feeling still endures. Thank you Richard Garriott and the RunUO team ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suspect that Richard's first computer was an Apple ][+, not an Apple //e (as claimed by the article), as Ultima existed (published 1981) well before the Apple //e was released (1983).

<comment><USER5> Correct, it absolutely would not have been a //e. Not that it really makes a difference, but still, that was a weird thing for an otherwise-decent article (or rather, book excerpt) to get wrong.

His first Apple, circa 1979, was probably an original Apple II with a language card, equivalent to the II+ that came out in mid-year.

Interesting to note that it was so expensive that even a senior NASA astronaut, probably a GS-13, had to split the cost with his son.</comment></comment>


I Put Words on This Webpage So You Have to Listen to Me Now - <AUTHOR> https://christine.website/blog/experimental-rilkef-2018-11-30 <comment><USER2> This is totally obvious submarine astroturfing. Christine is a paid shill of rilkef, whose VC fund lead investors drink the same brand of organic kombucha as Zuckerberg. Don't be fooled: flopnax, not rilkef, is the consensus way to do containerized federated blockchain service hybrid ML at web scale.

<comment><USER3> flopnax has some very poor design choices, and is not secure-by-default. Also, flopnax has a hard SystemD dependency, whereas rilkef is init-system agnostic. Given the militaristic arm-twisting that went into getting SystemD accepted everywhere, flopnax is obviously a poor choice.

<comment><USER4> This was really good, but you missed talking about how Leannart (systemd author) likes to eat babies and thinks kittens are ugly.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, you are correct - I just didn't want to encourage the trolls...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know, this kind of article pops up on HN every couple of months. And of course this is fine - it's great that people are posting about their experiences using a piece of technology!

But please do take caution to do your own benchmarks. Nothing is more frustrating than working with people who reject technology because they read a blog post about it, rather than delving into the details themselves. Different use cases, and all.

Anyway, great writeup, thanks for posting!

<comment><USER6> :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Totally forgot to sell the fact that you are hiring for developers willing to learn flopnax and that you can also be hired as flopnax consultants.

Also buy my book.

<comment><USER8> That book is seriously out of date. Don't get me wrong it was great at the time, but a lot has happened since Halloween.

<comment><USER9> Halloween? You really should be running the thanksgiving build by now. The dugerbils functionality changes everything... again...

<comment><USER10> The "Thanksgiving build" is just the Halloween build with the version bump and the copyright date change for standard time. Plus the removal of the suspected harasser from the credits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have questions about the methodology of this benchmark. Did you clear caches between runs?

<comment><USER12> Judging from the units on the graph, looks like the author measured the inverse reactive current used by the unilateral phase detractors. Cache purging wouldn't play a role unless your prefabulated amulite is out of sync.

<comment><USER13> The units on the graph are misleading you. Notice that both measurements were multiples of 100. They were probably just measuring the load on the prefabulated amulite.

<comment><USER10> The graphics are misleading in that both values are actually the same but we ran out of toner, so later we changed the numbers to fit the partial graphic. As long as the visuals agree, the datumses are unimportant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Misleading title, should be changed to 'Why we moved from flopnax to rilkef and you should too'.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a foreigner who learned English, one of my most memorable lessons was when we were given "the Jabberwock" as an exaple of _old English_ to explain it even if we didn't understand some words (on the most advanced English level in the school).

After we tried to make sense of it from the grammar, context, word root, etc and gave an explanation of each part and compared notes it was revealed that it was a made up language. Still, it's incredible how much there was to understand.

<comment><USER16> The most importance is in things which cannot be seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Any and all opinions listed here are my own and not representative of my > employer.

I was concerned until I saw this disclaimer.

<comment><USER18> Unless of course the author is self-employed. Then it's time to worry again.

<comment><USER19> For how many femtoseconds should we worry in optimal circumstances? Can we get a metric on that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If they had picked even slightly less obviously silly names than flopnax and ropjar, I might well have taken it seriously.

<comment><USER21> How long until someone creates a useful library with the name flopnax or ropjar?

<comment><USER22> Checking npmjs for availability... Both are available.

Now resisting the temptation...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me that I need to share my static site generator written with rilkef.

</comment><comment><USER23> So I often read the HN comments before reading an article. In this instance the comments gave me no idea what this site is about.

Looking at the site gave me no idea what the site is about.

<comment><USER24> Oh, the comments totally tell you what the site is about. Also, is it Turing complete yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This comparison is totally misplaced, ropjar's default config is not optimized for scale or speed.

</comment><comment><USER26> What's flopnax? Google found nothing?

<comment><USER27> There's no such thing. It's a parody.

<comment><USER28> Of what?

<comment><USER29> of us

<comment><USER30> Bullshit... my rilkef implementation has been stable for nearly a decade. Maybe this experimental version makes a mockery of you, but this "new discovery" is only insulting to me because it ignores my prior contributions to the field

<comment><USER31> hi I have a programming assignment for setting up gumpba with rilkef, can you share the codes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It reminds me of something I already read somewhere else...

</comment><comment><USER24> Flopnax was written at Bell labs so it must be better.

</comment><comment> a-dub I PUT META WORDS ON THIS WEBPAGE ABOUT THAT WEBPAGE SO YOU HAVE TO THINK NOW.

<comment> a-dub I PUT META WORDS IN THIS COMMENT ABOUT THAT COMMENT ABOUT THAT WEBPAGE SO YOU HAVE TO THINK NOW.

<comment> a-dub I META^(N) AND META^(N) IMPLIES META^(N+1) SO YOU HAVE TO THINK.... FOREVER.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The CFP for Flopnaxconf 2019 opens shortly, we're just working on contracting the venue and nailing down a sufficiently hip theme!

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't know what to trust anymore.

<comment><USER35> Words. On webpages. You have to trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> flopnax has a naming collision with flopnax. don't people even google before releasing new products these days?

</comment><comment><USER37> But is there a slack bot for that? I mean, seriously a slack bot that replies this to every blog post linked?

</comment><comment><USER38> This (and the comments here) was a great start to my day.

Favorited =D.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, be sure to check out the reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a1we32/i_put_w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a1we32/i_put_words_on_this_webpage_so_you_have_to_listen/) some great banter there

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The Turning test is getting easier to pass.

</comment><comment><USER40> What's up with grammar.. nobody will take you serious.

Otherwise, great article :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is metalinguistic satire, the grammatical errors are partially accidental but mostly intentional. It's designed to seem ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> so good

</comment><comment><USER42> My friends and i, are the other 4 people experienced in thing. We have been also experimenting with flopnax the ropjar and experimental rilkef. We experimented tool in diferent conditions and used diferent thing to run the test and generate the complete final detailed report about stuff.

The details look very much the same in every diferent condition. Very similar with your results. To our surprise the management intervened to escalate the issue to superiors. At some point, thing reached the CEO of company.

The CEO hired 2 new teams to research in parallel to discover why flopnax the ropjar is femtoseconds slower than experimental rlkef. Now each team does thing difrent ways. We use diferent tool to do thing.

Let me know about your progress on subject. We can thing together, share tool and results.

Good luck friend!

</comment><comment><USER43> Show HN: flopkef - virtual flopnax over rilkef for fun and profit</comment>


Drink Attribute - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms675651(VS.85,loband).aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> Meh, maybe it's just my frustration with trying to find a particular attribute in AD today, but I think this one could have been left out.</comment>