Dongle dilemma provokes Apple price cut - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37880723 <comment><USER2> Looks to me like Apple is thinking long term and is willing to tolerate short term criticism over it's decision to remove ports. They've set their future on wireless and USB type C. Apple is the one company that's willing to sacrifice now in order to gain in the future. The port decision aren't being done in a vacuum. They have a reason. And give their size, they have the muscle to lead all the industry to what they think is the future.

I don't know their endgame but given the fact that more and more work is being done in the cloud. Macs will start looking more like Chromebooks as time passes. Ports are less and less important once you have all your data in the cloud and can access it at will.

What else can you expect from a company who's idol famously said, "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish?" They are certainly looking foolish now but their hunger is leading them to future profit and a long life. I wouldn't bet against them.

<comment><USER3> See, I would agree with you, and I definitely agree with their decision on the new MBP to put four Thunderbolt 3, but I don't understand why they didn't use a USB-C connector on the iPhone 7, which just came out.

They removed the headphone jack and called it "courage", but real courage would've been to switch to USB-C. That is the future of connectors, and if you believe in it, why wouldn't you preach it across all your devices.

<comment><USER4> Easy...iPhone 8 won't have a charging port, no point changing it for one generation.

<comment><USER5> I would be pretty damn surprised if they got rid of wired charging completely... unless they get near-field charging _really good_ , where my phone doesn't need to be in contact with the charger. Otherwise that makes external batteries way less useful.

I think going to USB-C is much more likely. That said, a lot of new devices and headphones are using Lightning, so... who knows. Maybe Lightning has more life ahead of it.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, and I need to be able to use my phone (like, hold-up-to-my-ear using) while it's charging.

<comment><USER7> Hell, I need to charge my phone whilst _driving_ because I use the GPS and Google's traffic options. And Internet Radio and often podcasts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple is at risk of losing their pros.

Mac Pro is a failure. The old-fashioned "cheese grater" Mac Pros are holding their price nicely on eBay because many people don't want anything to do with the "trash can" Mac Pro. And the new Mac Pro hasn't even been updated in 3 years.

And if you do buy a Mac Pro, you'll have to buy an ugly third-party monitor since Apple no longer provides any displays.

The latest MacBook Pro is a great looking ultra-portable, but is not a pro computer by most measures. It's a MacBook Air.

I feel like Apple can't walk and chew gum at the same time. They're focusing so much on the iPhone and Apple Watch, their actual computer company is atrophying.

<comment><USER9> I was waiting for the new macbook pros to drop my 11" air and I ended getting a 2009 Mac pro from Ebay. Few easy upgrades and now I have really fast workstation for coding with 32gb of ram, ssd, desktop graphic card for around $500, couldn't be happier!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems like there should be a design principle that the latest iPhone should always plug straight into the latest Macbook.

<comment><USER11> Ever since the iPod Steve Jobs's vision for products always put an emphasis on seamless integration between different offerings. Carrying around a set of adapters for these same-gen Apple products seems pretty contradictory to his original vision.

<comment><USER12> If they'd just made the new pros with 3 usb C ports and one usb B then most of the connectivity headaches would have gone away. Also the 12" macbook could have had one usb C and one B. That's what I would have gone with.

<comment><USER13> And then in 2 years time we have 1 less high speed usb-c port, when everything is using usb-c.

Seriously, you're spending 2.5K on a laptop but $20 on an adapter for a device using a usb-a port is too much?

This is just the typical Apple release bullshittery. No matter _what_ they do, people want to complain for the sake of complaining.

<comment><USER14> This has nothing to do with the financial price, and everything to do with the hassle. You can't just pick up your laptop and walk out the door knowing you'll be able to work with whatever you may run in to (within reason)...

You now have to collect your selection of dongles and stuff them in your pocket, and hope you didn't forget the USB-C to USB-A/B, or to HDMI, or the SD reader.

Having 2 legacy ports would have negated all of this, or build a hub device with the most used interfaces and include it.

<comment><USER13> They literally sell a device that has usb-c to hdmi and usb-a plus usb-c for Charing.

I really don't get the ad card thing. Post pro's use compact flash, and most consumers I'd expect to just plug in a usb cable directly to the camera to download photos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apple did a great job of making tech simple and accessible to an audience composed primarily of novices. They did this by making their designs Pareto efficient, and essentially decided what was best for the average user (you could say they dumbed things down). Now, however, I feel the majority demographic is more informed, more comfortable with complexity, and more confident in making their own decisions. They don't want Apple's restrictive decisions holding them back. Apple's oppression of their users' technical freedom may well be their downfall (a slightly obscure example: my Grandma, who was initially only able to use an iPhone, now prefers her similar sized Samsung, because it's easier to configure, holds more of her music and simply lets her do more for free. Also, it doesn't keep asking for her damn password every ten minutes!).

<comment><USER16> This is an excellent and understated point you've made.

It may be the trajectory towards 'simple and accessible' via simplicity has crossed a line that's moved due to people's increased knowledge of computers. It's moved and its stepping on people's toes. The vendor lock-in strategy via their ecosystem trappings just amplifies the perception.

<comment><USER15> Absolutely, could not agree more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Earlier Macbook models already did away with ethernet ports and the CD/DVD > drive - a move which seemed absurd at the time, but I'd argue Apple was > ultimately exonerated. When was the last time you put a CD into your > computer?

My PC, I put a DVD in almost every week, and has an ethernet cable running to it. If my mac had an ethernet port, there would be one plugged into it. I find it very annoying that it doesn't. Rather than exonerated, they are just things I need to put up with to get my work done (because everyone at work uses a mac).

<comment><USER18> Not trolling: what do you use DVDs for on a weekly basis? I haven't had a DVD- playing device in a few years, and it's been a problem exactly once, when I needed to get some photos from an archival DVD. Never use them at work.

<comment><USER19> I can't answer for RHSeeger, but I like to watch movies on DVD, because the streaming options (particularly Netflix) are so horrible.

<comment><USER20> I ripped my DVD collection years ago, internal storage is so cheap it makes no sense to keep around spinning discs and drives to read them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The dongles are a temporary inconvenience, and yes it is an inconvenience undoubtedly.

The real dilemma is caused by releasing an underpowered new MacBook Air as a "Pro" workstation, which costs a significant premium yet is unfit for many actual professional environments. This leaves many users questioning an already deep investment into the ecosystem, because waiting for a notable upgrade thus far was not rewarded, and waiting another several years at the glacial pace of an Apple release cycles is now feeling like a significant gamble where the next versions could likely be even less professionally geared than these models are.

</comment><comment><USER22> I love this little article by Douglas Adams. This reminds me of it.

[http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-03-a.html](http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-03-a.html)

<comment><USER23> RIP Douglas Adams.

I know he's been gone a long time, but once in a while I read some genius piece by him like that article and feel sad all over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I feel the consolidation of ports is a huge step in the right direction. Now I can plug a single cord and get Ethernet, power, and display, and not jenky Ethernet speeds also, but _fast_ 10G connections. And PCI options open up the possibility of having an external graphics card, something that's not possible without the move to Thunderbolt 3 via USB type-C.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just in case you didn't see this Youtube video (El Risitas meme) yet, making fun of Apple's decision:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSC_UG5_kU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSC_UG5_kU)

I think the subtitling is very well executed.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's not often that Apple admits defeat like this. It's a good move, IMO. And an easy business decision. Cut the very high profit margins on all these dongles, and remain relevant.

<comment><USER27> This isn't "admitting defeat". This is sacrificing profit to help "transition" people to where Apple wants them to go.

An admission of "defeat" would be shipping an iPhone that has a headphone jack again. This is why I don't expect that ever to happen.

<comment><USER26> They're not doing this as a favor. If they intended to do it they would have done it pre-launch. They've had a huge amount of bad press over this, and did this as a response to it. They clearly realize that not doing so puts their business at further risk.

<comment><USER27> That's still not an admission of "defeat". It's admitting they were maybe a bit callous with how they handled it, but they're still "full-steam ahead" on USB-C — until the next magical, panacea connector standard shows up.

<comment><USER28> There's a near future in which USB C will be as ubiquitous as A. It's the first standardized, reversible, durable, and versatile adapter -- and it's not Apple's invention. Apple is willing to annoy the margins to ensure that by the time that near future arrives, they've got a substantial installed base of tens of millions already established. They have the luxury of employing a strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> See what they really should do is have a trade in program so we can all take our redundant thunderbolt 2 dongles in when we upgrade

</comment><comment><USER30> "Its iPhone is still king, but sales have been in decline."

By what metric is iPhone still king? Android phones account for 80+% of the market.

<comment><USER31> Profit..

[http://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple- iphone-...](http://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple-iphone- grabs-104-of-smartphone-industry-profit-in-q3/)

<comment><USER32> That's amazing. Apple captures 104% of the profits in the smartphone market, Samsung is next in line with... 0.9%.

Everyone else is selling phones at a loss in order to gain more market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So Apple's famed simplicity of design has caused them to complicate the lives of their users?

Not good.</comment>


Is this another WolframAlpha joke? - cool-RR http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=price+of+fish

<comment><AUTHOR> Possibly, but this is still my favourite:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+calories+are+i...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+calories+are+in+a+cubic+light+year+of+ice- cream%3F)

<comment><USER2> I just found this one:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+licks+to+get+t...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+licks+to+get+to+the+center+of+a+tootsie+pop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a snowclone of the "price of tea in china" dismissal.

But I've never heard it used in such a poor context.

</comment><comment> cool-RR I was trying to figure out how much the price of fish fluctuates through the seasons. Instead I got this. Is this another geek joke? What's it referring to?

EDIT: Bonus imaginary karma points to whoever can point me to a graph showing the fluctuations of the price of various fish...

<comment><USER4> Have you tried using www.google.com?

<comment> cool-RR Yes I have. It seems you have much better googling skills than myself. If you wish you can try yourself and post your findings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Captain, I don't see the relevance of your question.

\\\//,

</comment><comment><USER6> wolfram alpha is nothing but a joke.

<comment> cool-RR I disagree. It has, in some cases, served me very well. I agree it has a long way to go.

<comment><USER6> you must have lost your ti-89 then.

<comment> cool-RR Jason, I think you are being too snarky.

Here's an example where Wolfram Alpha served me well:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+haifa+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+haifa+and+tampere)

Nothing fancy, but it did the job and gave me a few bits of information I didn't ask for but were good to know.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Useful new features in JUnit 5 - <AUTHOR> https://java.christmas/2019/9 <comment><USER2> Spending the time to add useful display names for our tests has been one of the greatest investments I've ever done. Also, we have no need for those extremely_long_test_function_names_that_try_to_explain_the_test()</comment>


An open letter to Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://sucky.ninja/an-open-letter-to-spotify/

<comment><USER2> This is a really important issue. more so because the product isn't free but charges customers.

On a side note...need a name for my new company...open letters as a service

<comment><USER3> > On a side note...need a name for my new company...open letters as a service

B.Y.O.R. (Bring Your Own Rock)

Slogan: "We'll deal with the paper and scissors"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you get early beata testers (Non Friends and Family)? - <AUTHOR>

I finished my MVP and have had friends and family test it.  Unfortunately you dont always get the most honest answers from F+F.  How have people gone about soliciting early testers outside of their social circle? <comment><USER2> Search for sites like <http://betali.st> and put up your splash screenshot. People who are interested would check it out and try the product.

Post facebook/twitter messages to your followers and ask them to try. Better yet, find some twitter hot-shots who might be interested in your product and send them a tweet. Sure most will ignore you, but if 1/10 tries it out, you've got another power beta user.

Lastly, take a look at my post here ([http://www.geekatsea.com/what-google- must-learn-from-my-fail...](http://www.geekatsea.com/what-google-must-learn- from-my-failed-startup)), will give you some ideas as to what beta users say vs. what they mean.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> …and then after you get one of those "hot-shots" testing your product, create an artificial scarcity by doling out beta invitations slowly. [Of course, this will only work if you set up some kind of website with pretty / cool-looking screenshots.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can advertise. Say, $1-$5 per click (I'm not an expert). It won't really pay off (in terms of value per user), but it will give you feedback.

It won't scale as well as word-of-mouth / viral adoption, but that's a premature optimization issue.

</comment><comment><USER5> You cold call them. You find people in forums, communities, etc. who have complained about the problem your solving, or are active powerusers in the industry, and you message them. You tell them, "hey, I read in your blog that you were having trouble with X, I'm working on a solution. Can I email you to ask about your experience with [1][2][3]?"

Even better if you can skype interview with them. Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Use launchrock to create a splash page with info of what your product does and a signup form. 2\. Create your blog and write about your product & field. Follow SEO best practices and put a sign up link in your blog. 3\. Run a Google adwords campaign with a small budget. 4\. Go to startup events and network with people who might be interested and point them to your launch page.

</comment><comment><USER7> Get out there and talk to your customers face-to-face. If it's something they want, they'll bite your hand off to be on the beta, and you'll learn more about what your product _should_ be by having a proper conversation than you ever could over email.

</comment><comment><USER8> if you're in a niche field (like alot of startups are) try searching for forums etc. in that niche then try reaching out to users on those forums and acquiring them as beta testers. I'm sure others on hacker news are alot like me and would love to beta test a variety of products so posting it on here would not be a bad idea either</comment>


Why I'm Writing in CoffeeScript Next - <AUTHOR> http://blog.koostudios.com/?p=382

<comment><USER2> CoffeeScript changed my attitude toward client-side development. In spite of the significant amount of time I invested in learning Javascript, I felt like I never fully groked the language like I did Python or PHP. As a result, I avoided it wherever possible, and cribbed other people's Javascript code wholesale when I absolutely had to use it.

CoffeeScript has changed all that. It has made client-side development so enjoyable that I am finally starting to write full applications for client- side deployment (using spine.js). I've even gone back and learned the parts of Javascript that previously eluded me. If you've avoided doing much client-side development, or missed out on exploring node.js, all because of your dislike for Javascript, then CoffeeScript is for you. Anyone with a strong background in Python or Ruby can learn to use it fluently in a few days.

</comment><comment><USER3> First of all, thanks for submitting my blog post on this site jashkenas. It's an honour.

And I agree with you, jnbiche. CoffeeScript is a groundbreaking language that makes any client-side development enjoyable. It makes all the JavaScript frameworks so much more interesting and easy, and you can learn to use everything so much faster. Everyone with any programming experience should try it out because it is that easy to learn.

Thanks for sharing!</comment>


My Macbook Pro and Magsafe power adapter are fed up with each other. - <AUTHOR>

Every once in a while, my Magsafe won't charge my mac. The LED stays green, goes out completely, or remains lit only faintly and it sends little or no charge to the battery. This happens intermittently.
All the lights light correctly and the Mac battery receives a charge when I plug in someone else's adapter, so the problem is not my Mac.
My Magsafe adapter works correctly when plugged into someone else's computer (all the lights) so the problem is also not my adapter.
I have a friend who has the same problem, and when it happens we can trade adapters for a while and it seems to fix the issue. I'd love to hear a technical explanation of what might be going on from someone familiar with how these batteries and chargers interact. <comment><USER2> The weakest part of a laptop is usually the AC adapter cable. Been there since day one.

Not sure why over all these years they haven't made that a replaceable component, but it is the cause of failure of many an expensive power supply. Stings even more when even Apple compatible AC adapters are in the $50 range.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, this is _not_ a pc/apple-support site.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did worry that people might feel I was trying to get free tech support. It's not really a problem I need to fix - I bought another adapter. I posted because though the behaviour seemed illogical to me I figured that there were people who could make sense of it.

<comment><USER4> Superuser.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is likely some damage on the adapter plug, and some damage on the port on the Mac as well. On their own they aren't enough to cause a problem, but together--bam--they line up and it stops working.

</comment><comment><USER6> I work in an environment where everyone uses a Macbook Pro and I've seen at least two cases of something like this happening, and the solution has been simply to swap adapters!</comment>


Mail with nmh - <AUTHOR> http://www.circuitousroot.com/artifice/programming/useful/nmh/index.html <comment><USER2> Takes me back... I used mh and later nmh all the time back in the 90's. Combined with some good procmail recipes and spam assassin, I found it really effective. I pretty much moved away from it, though, when rich text and images became overwhelmingly prevalent.

I still would love there to be common usage of text-only emails just between friends (you can't categorize or quote-reply text messages), and talk/ytalk sessions for real-time communication.

<comment><USER3> I use mutt currently, but I find the lack of rich-text and images a feature, not a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, but pretty niche. Targets not just the general "I prefer tty based email", but the more niche "I prefer separate, pipable shell commands to interact with email".

If I'm stuck with tty, I would probably gravitate towards mutt. It can deal with MH type folders if that's already the system default.

</comment><comment><USER5> GNU NMH: [http://www.nongnu.org/nmh/](http://www.nongnu.org/nmh/)

<comment><USER6> I appreciate you linking to the project home page, but it's not a GNU project.

Besides its home page being hosted on nongnu.org, its savannah page ([http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/nmh/](http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/nmh/)) says

> This project is not part of the GNU Project.

and

> License: Modified BSD License

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used mh for a long time, but then I switched my mail folders over to Maildir for compatability with Dovecot. Also, I like how Maildir dodges a lot of file locking problems. So now I use a combination of mutt and iPhone Mail. I wish I could conveniently go back to the mh frontend while having Maildir folders.</comment>


Hyperloop for cargo aims to deliver at over 600 mph - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/04/tech/hyperloop-dp-world-cargospeed-announcement/index.html <comment><USER2> Freight is easier than passengers due to safety concerns (and G-forces). But saving 70-80 minutes on an Abu Dhabi-DXB trip is probably not enough to make that viable. You could already get a ~40-60 minute trip time with traditional rail (which would be cheaper) and I don't know where the demand for that extra 30 minutes saved comes from in Cargo. Passenger transport would definitely be a market but has much higher hurdle. You either have to go through the sea (very long bridge?) or will have some turns in the route, in which case I don't see how they can achieve those speeds.

For cargo to be competitive, this would have to run over long distances that have a lot of cargo traffic, e.g. China-Europe. That would definitely be a killer application but also extremely hard to get approved in all countries.</comment>


Show HN: Interface Lovers – Interviews with designers - <AUTHOR> https://interfacelovers.com <comment><USER3> Whats so thoroughly disappoints me about the design community is that so few of them are actual disruptors. Browsing through these interviews, the questions are almost entirely about their taste --a very superficial understanding of design. And unsurprisingly, their tastes almost always have the minimal Japanese aesthetic, and a lot of talk about 'simplicity'.

As part of my job I have the pleasure of occasionally working with some of the more recognized product designers in the world, and very few of them are anything other than "basic" in their public taste profile. The majority of their concentration is on market psychology, shifting trends in technology enabling new designs to be possible, and the really hard problems of global design. They tend to have out there hobbies focused around building things and their work process is not a endless flow of whitespace and pretty objects.

All this to say -- I am disappointed that the design community has gotten sucked into designing itself more than designing for others -- a process I know is a lot messier than this website shows.

<comment><USER4> It's also the similarities in the people. And what did stand out to me: All of them use MacOS, only one had no iPhone. I don't think that is a statement to the quality of the products, I see something else there - a kind of groupthink and tribal behaviour, the same mechanism that leads to all of them "liking" minimal Japanese aesthetic and simplicity.

I think it is a bad sign. If people in a field define themself over superficial stuff like that, are they qualified to judge the quality of their work? Or will they also judge them by their superficial standards, how it looks and whether it follows the newest fad? Based on how often redesigns go wrong I fear it is often the latter.

<comment><USER5> The design industry is absolutely toxic. It's dripping with this type of stuff. Trends and herd mentality rules everything around designers. It's why I started to move outside of design and into product. There's absolutely no room in the design industry for critical thought or dissenting opinion. It's so wrapped up into itself that any attempts at questioning the status quo are quickly thrown out as hate. I firmly believe that the design industry is a great way to see the deterioration of society at large.

<comment><USER6> Meh. It's toxic in the way development is toxic. There's a ~5% group of pragmatic systems thinkers, and a long tail of dudes on craigslist building vuln heavy PHP crapware for 25/hr.

But everything in the world is like that! Pizza, burritos, laptops, blue jeans, 3d printers.... it's just the way the math of life works out. Most ponies aren't pegasus. I don't think it's representative of the _decline_ of society, I think it's representative of the _distribution_ of society. And that's an impractical thing to get worked up about.

I'll admit, it's a little lonely though, having the groups that are best qualified to talk about the problems you like, but they're totally disinterested/distracted.

<comment><USER7> I think with graphic design becoming a more common skill, the industry's culture has indeed gotten worse. People are more desperate for work and conform to an image and language.

<comment><USER8> Yea many take their "cue" from a few popular designers and sort of use it to justify their design decisions. Often I feel its newer designers who may not feel comfortable taking a more assertive role in the process. I also notice the same sort of trend in concept art where many look like they use the same "photoshop" technique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Designers today laud UX but make the most inaccessible, superflous, gimmicky, unreadable, and yet some how still bland, designs. Minimalism without any of the benefits. Overly garnished designs without any real creativity. Design problems of the flat screen are mostly solved; at this point, they are just creating work for themselves. I can't blame them for that.

<comment><USER9> Some designs are very good. Normally the ones that go unnoticed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Same old bunch of faces talking about the same old bunch of stuff.

Forever underwhelmed with design writing in the digital space.

<comment><USER11> Want an actually fascinating read about the future of interface design? Read the best interface is no interface, by Golden Krishna. It's so good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pretty cool! As a developer who's currently quite lacking in design capabilities, it's nice to hear about the more product-focused side of things. Will definitely be following this site & the interviewees on Twitter.

</comment><comment> shady-lady I ended clicking through to Stripes homepage(as it was mentioned in an interview under 'What pieces of work are you most proud of?').

I'm not a fan of partial images being shown at default browser zoom - <USER2> too inexact compared to rest of Stripe site. Had to zoom out to 80% to have all device images shown.

[http://imgur.com/a/pqFVa](http://imgur.com/a/pqFVa)

album showing

1) stripe homepage at browser zoom 100% ([http://imgur.com/IhhWWLf](http://imgur.com/IhhWWLf))

2) stripe homepage at browser zoom 80% ([http://imgur.com/Jq6a8fI](http://imgur.com/Jq6a8fI))

3) all other content on page seems centered as normal. ([http://imgur.com/KIZSUuL](http://imgur.com/KIZSUuL))

[Not sure if there's a handier way/program to include some kind of measurement ruler on images.]

</comment><comment><USER13> Product Designer here. Agreed that more designers should make full hearted attempts at innovating in Product vs dressings.

We are out there though few.

My last major attempt [1] was to disrupt the desogn process itself, especially in the consumption of lifestyle products.

[1] [http://JuicyCanvas.com](http://JuicyCanvas.com)

<comment><USER14> Your link returns a 403, i.e. can't access it.

<comment><USER13> so strange. its up for me.

[http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/juicycanvas.com](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/juicycanvas.com)

[https://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/293ae9eaa0f9d2a3ded...](https://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/293ae9eaa0f9d2a3ded6c4d46c2809df35d41f44)

can u try another browser?

are u attempting access via https?

<comment><USER14> Yes, I'm using the HTTPS Everywhere extension for Chrome and I'm guessing a lot of HN users might as well.

I'll try another browser, but I suggest to enable HTTPS for your site.

<comment><USER13> fixed thanks for catching that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a developer who just spent the last night building a visualization tool analyzing reddit data, totally appreciate the value of a good designer.

It is very hard to balance 'simplicity', 'usability' and 'features'.

I had to cut short many features and options because the interface was getting too complex.

</comment><comment><USER16> Would be nice to polish the spacings [http://imgur.com/a/So2Uh](http://imgur.com/a/So2Uh)

</comment><comment><USER9> So all designers use a Mac and an iPhone?</comment>


Where is the fashionable mathematics? - <AUTHOR> https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2020/02/09/where-is-the-fashionable-mathematics/ <comment><USER2> Article says:

> 1\. There is a large community of mathematicians out there who simply cannot > join these communities because the learning curve is too high and much of > the documentation is written for computer scientists.

> 2\. Even if a mathematician battles their way into one of these communities, > there is a risk that they will not find the kind of mathematics which they > are being taught, or teaching, in their own department, and there is a very > big risk that they will not find much fashionable mathematics.

> My explicit question to all the people in these formal proof verification > communities is: what are you doing about this?

I think many of the formal proof verification communities are trying to address these. I will focus on Metamath, especially its set.mm database that focuses on classical logic + ZFC ( [http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/mmset.html](http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/mmset.html) ), but much of the following applies to all of them.

I think the main problem is that too many mathematicians expect computer systems to have all the capabilities of a well-trained graduate mathematician. Yet the problem is hard. Computers are much better at some things (they don't get bored or sleepy), and humans are much better at other things (seeing the big picture & having insights into how to combine "unrelated" ideas). Much would be better if the formalization and traditional mathematics communities had more "meetings of the minds" & communication in general.

Focusing on these questions:

1\. The high learning curve is true for all systems, that's true. To be fair, mathematics has a high learning curve, you don't learn how to do it in a week. The problem is that although tools are very good at _verifying_ formalized proofs, they are not great at coming up with the proofs themselves. I do agree that the documentation could be improved so "non computer scientists" could do things more easily. I think much of what's needed is for traditional mathematicians to engage with the formalization community, to make it clearer what's missing. There also needs to be work (and funding) on improved tooling, which implies a need for more funding (I'll discuss that below).

2\. "They will not find much fashionable mathematics." There's a chicken-and- egg problem here. It takes a while to get proofs up to the "basics" of mathematics as expected by people work on "fashionable" mathematics. Here I think the solution is to have many people working to build up those basics. Take a look at my visualization of Metamath set.mm; note that it took many years for it to build up, and only when many people joined did it start seriously growing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC1g8FmFcUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC1g8FmFcUU)

The _real_ bottom line is that there really needs to be more funding on tools & formalized systems. Metamath isn't funded at all to my knowledge. Lean and Coq have some funding, but nothing like the funding of many other fields. We should be impressed about how far they've come in spite of that.

A broader problem is that mathematicians typically accept a proof if a paper _seems_ to be okay to another mathematician. When the math and proofs were simpler, that was probably fine, and since computers weren't very capable that's all we could do anyway. But today's math (and proofs) are far more complex, and it's becoming absurd to leave that as our standard of proof. Computers are available now; we should be using them.

<comment><USER3> If I understand the context correctly, Buzzard wrote this post as a step toward solving the problems you state (mathematicians are unconvinced of the usefulness of proof assistants, many people need to join in to build things up in a proof assistant, documentation needs work, input from mathematicians is needed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kevin Buzzard is doing really interesting work here, and I think that it's quite plausible that having fashionable mathematicians formalizing fashionable math in whatever proof assistant they choose will represent a significant step forward both for mathematical research and for the practice of programming, which is unavoidably formal in precisely the way math historically isn't. By formalizing it to that level, we will substantially increase our intellectual powers and make vast new fields tractable for formal reasoning, which also makes them tractable for programming.

I'm not sure whether the beauty-contest winner will be LEAN (as Buzzard is promoting in this blog post), Metamath, or what. It may turn out that, say, Isabelle-HoTT or HoTT/Agda or something to pull ahead of LEAN, for example — certainly HoTT is a lot more fashionable among mathematicians than the CoC, and that might turn out to be either for a good reason (that manifests in technical advances in HoTT resulting in easier proofs) or a sufficiently strong social push to overcome the added friction.

It's sure going to be interesting, though.

<comment><USER4> One of these questions I never dared to ask; What does formal mean in the area of mathematics? Is it like finalizing a formula / proof?

<comment><USER3> I'm not the ideal person to ask, never having published a novel mathematical result and not having particularly deep knowledge of math, but I understand "formal" in this context to mean "mechanical". A formal manipulation of symbols is, as I understand it, one that you can carry out without attaching any _meaning_ to the symbols you are manipulating.

This is not the same thing as "rigorous", because it's entirely possible for a formal manipulation to be unsound (with respect to some theory). For example, suppose you want to prove that a left multiplicative identity is also a right identity; that is, ∀ _x_ : 1· _x_ = _x_ ⇒ ∀ _x_ : _x_ ·1 = _x_. You can apply commutativity and rearrange the symbols to get a proof — that's a purely formal technique, and it's correct and rigorous for, say, complex-number multiplication. But if you're thinking of some other multiplication operations, like that of square matrices of some size, or of quaternions, that's not a rigorous proof, because those multiplication operations aren't commutative. (But in those cases it turns out to be a correct theorem anyway, because they _are_ associative.)

Compiling a program is another operation that is formal but rarely rigorous.

The hope of using proof assistants in math is that by _formalizing_ our reasoning, we can _also_ make it more rigorous, with the aid of computers and a great deal of cleverness. Most mathematicians are not yet convinced.

<comment><USER5> That's not quite right.

Rigor means not hand-waving about things that a skeptic might doubt, not skipping corner cases, etc.

Formal means doing things like a computer -- strictly symbolic analysis that doesn't claim to do the impossible task accurately map back to our informal ideas of what things mean.

Formality is across a chasm -- it's the most accurate kind of math we can do, but it can't be trusted to say that a formal proof about say complex numbers actually applies to what you are thinking about when you day "complex numbers".

As is said, "It is impossible to pass from the informal by purely formal means."

Here's a better explanation: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-difference- between-rigorous-an...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-difference-between- rigorous-and-formal-mathematics)

<comment><USER3> This is in accordance with my understanding, but since you seem to think I was saying something different, I think your expression of it is clearer than mine was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not very surprising. When it comes to formal verification, you get the biggest bang for the buck (by far) via focusing on what the nLab wiki calls 'synthetic' mathematics, viz. fairly self-contained subfields where the 'rules of the game' may be somewhat complex in their own terms, but can be stated without relying on a massive amount of prereqs. 'Fashionable' math tends to be just the opposite: easy, logically-simple entailments, but building on very complex prereqs.

It's obvious why formalizing the latter is comparatively hard: you need to work on the prerequisites first, since your formalization won't be usable without them! Also, since the formalized-math field is still quite fragmented, large projects (such as formalizing a big chunk of some basic curriculum) are discouraged to an even greater extent - quite simply, it can't be assumed that others will be building upon that work.

</comment><comment><USER7> My comment on Kevin Buzzard's intervention: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/metamath/Fgn0qZEzCko/bvVem1B...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/metamath/Fgn0qZEzCko/bvVem1BZCQAJ)

Link list of the discussion threads: [https://owlofminerva.net/kubota/update- to-the-foundations-of...](https://owlofminerva.net/kubota/update-to-the- foundations-of-mathematics/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The answer is simple: these systems aren't mature enough to formalize the modern fashionable math. They need better ergonomics and perhaps better underlying theory before we attempt that.

<comment><USER3> What would the better ergonomics look like? Do you have an idea what might be wrong with the theory?

<comment><USER8> The biggest pain point with the theory was its handling of equality, which HoTT fixes.

Ergonomically.. well it's hard to describe TBH, the easiest way to see is to just download one of these systems and try using them. You try to prove a theorem and everything just ends up taking way longer than you'd expect. Mostly because you can't gloss over small details the way mathematicians will do informally. Every small turn of phrase like "for large enough N" or "without loss of generality" can become dozens of extra lines of code.

<comment><USER3> I didn't mean to doubt your claim — my limited experience is that proof assistants are totally inscrutable, although I've been inspired by some of the Lean and Agda stuff I've been seeing lately. I just wanted to ask for your perspective, since it's probably more informed than mine!

It seems to me that if you want to _formalize_ the small details, you will necessarily have to do something different with some of those small details, won't you? Maybe a tactic search can find a formal and rigorous proof without you having to _write_ those dozens of extra lines by hand, but simply glossing over them seems like it would defeat the goal of formalization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200721)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20909404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20909404)

</comment><comment><USER10> A little off topic, I'm genuinely interested in diving into Math again. Never appreciated it in college (Comp Sci Engineering, had the first year with some engineering maths) but now i really want to get into it again. (Calculas, trignometry and statistics) Can anyone point me to resources/path on how/where to begin?

<comment><USER11> If you can program you might like Metamath, it feels quite a lot like writing code.

Here is the main site. [http://us.metamath.org/index.html](http://us.metamath.org/index.html)

Here is the book which can help with understanding. [http://us.metamath.org/downloads/metamath.pdf](http://us.metamath.org/downloads/metamath.pdf)

Here are some tutorials for MMJ2 which is the main proof assistant to use, [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1jSu6GGefBm7RBP0Id2S...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1jSu6GGefBm7RBP0Id2Sa9uyVuyhioAC)

it can be found here, [http://us.metamath.org/#mmj2](http://us.metamath.org/#mmj2)

Here are some beginners proof exercises which are a good place to start out

[http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmtheorems289.html#mm28844b](http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmtheorems289.html#mm28844b)

I will warn you though it is a bit like the wild west, it is not easy to accomplish anything and it is exciting to be on the frontier.

The community is really cool, you can chat with them here.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/metamath](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/metamath)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> An article about fashionable mathematics and no mention of category theory?

<comment><USER13> In his famous talk from a few months ago he dismisses it as not-real- mathematics. I found it hard to tell whether he was being unironically provocative, trollish, or just cheeky.

<comment><USER14> I was being intentionally provocative. On the other hand I feel like there are plenty of people in my (mathematics) department who would say that "normal" fields like geometry, topology, algebra, number theory and analysis are where the action is happening, and category theory is just a tool which we use to get "normal" maths done. On the other hand now Scholze is beginning to use infinity categories more in his work, this might change -- but it might not. Maybe in 10 years time there will be a book "infinity categories for the working mathematician" which we all read the first ten pages of and this is all that most of us need. Note that category theorists like Hyland and Johnstone have retired from Cambridge now and have not been replaced -- in the UK now you are more likely to find a category theorist working in a computer science department than a mathematics department. Whether or not it is "real mathematics", it is certainly a fact that in the UK at least it is an extremely small community, whereas our departments are full of number theorists, geometers, topologists, analysts and algebraists all of whom need to know essentially no category theory beyond the basic language of adjoint and representable functors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like Geometric Algebra is something that has been talked about quite a lot lately. (It is "vector algebra done right.")

<comment><USER16> Geometric algebra is something that hasn't found a "killer app," if you will. The largest users of vector calculus are physicists and engineers, and those communities have 1) enormous existing literature using Gibbs-Heaviside vectors, and 2) enormous institutional investment in teaching them across departments. We haven't found a justification for switching that would outweigh the amount of inertia involved.

It's hardly a new thing. David Hestenes has been writing books about its advantages in physics since the 1960's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> HoTT so hot right now...

<comment><USER18> But its inventor is really cold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel like mathematicians should make the same effort for non mathematicians. Why do all these weird terms even matter to anyone else besides a self selected group of mathematicians? If they don't, why should anyone care about such things, just as the author asked why mathematicians should care about formal proof systems? Academia in general is so used to not having to justify their interests to anyone else that many seem to live in their own isolated little worlds. Gone are the days when the 'uni' in university meant a unified realm of knowledge. We should rename 'university' to be 'diversity.'

However, the origin story of academia with Greek philosophy sought to not merely subsist in rapidly fracturing groups of special interest, but to also seek the unifying underlying ideas. Similarly with the scholastics in the medieval era, which actually birthed our university system.

I believe academia has lost its way, which may spell its end. Which is unfortunate for our civilization, as it is so fundamentally tied to the quest for wisdom and knowledge.

<comment><USER20> Mathematics is modern ontology.

We're not great at predicting which parts of ontology are eventually useful in other fields — mostly physics and other hard science, but more recently computer science, economics + finance, and even things like sociology and linguistics.

So we let the people who self-select to be ontologists guide what the field researches — and this has generally been fairly effective. Certainly more effective than if we'd only looked at things which had immediate, obvious use. Complex numbers, widely used in science and engineering, were once regarded as suspect abstract nonsense. That's why they're called "imaginary numbers": it was a pejorative name that stuck.

We have cryptography, computers, modern physics, and modern finance to show for our efforts, among other things.

It simply takes time (like, decades to centuries) for new ontological ideas to propagate to other fields. We're hoping that formalizing into HoTT and other computer friendly systems will allow us to align with software development, and speed the process up.

That seems to be going well, and at an accelerating pace.

The hope is that HoTT and category theory give us a framework to do exactly what you propose — more easily specify and interlink knowledge.

Expect results around 2050.

It took around 40-60 years for category theory to have a big impact — but now it is in fields as far away from mathematics as linguistics. Hopefully HoTT will get there a little faster, but it's still going to take decades to go from niche research to widely used in mathematics to widely used across disciplines.

So, to summarize:

1\. Because we're bad at predicting the future and abstract math has often turned out to be useful later.

2\. Mathematics is trying to do exactly what you propose with knowledge, via exactly the programs this blog is talking about.

<comment><USER19> I disagree that all knowledge, or even the most important items of knoknowledge, are reducible to mathematics.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Open-source language learning app built with React Native - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ulangi/ulangi <comment><AUTHOR> The project is managed using Lerna so that we can reuse code easily across multiple platform. Currently, Ulangi mobile app is built using React-Native. I also decide to build a desktop version using Electron.

This is an offline-first app meaning it can work without internet; however, some features do require internet, such as searching dictionary or images.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you buy it?  How Much? - <AUTHOR> I'm selling magic numbers. They look like an IP address, ex. 9342.7663.0223.434. You put this on your business card as a replacement for all the other stuff (phone, fax, email, website, etc) so friends and customers only need that number to communicate with you anyway you want them too. You can email the number, fax the number, text the number, call the number, IM the number etc. How much would you pay for a magic number? Would you pay a set up fee? subscription? add services as you needed them? <comment><USER2> In a business context if a person wants to call me, I want them to have my phone number. If they want to email me, I want them to have my email address and so on.

The magic number is neither of those and the steps to obtaining my phone number or email address from it are non-obvious because they are not based on decades of cultural practice. They are also dependent on a third party whose servers might go down (even Amazon's servers go down).

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks brudgers. What if the number WAS your email address and the number WAS also your phone number and so on? And there were no more steps. How about then?

<comment><USER2> My email addresses tend to be more explicit and my phone numbers have portions that are normalized by exchanges and country codes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, so you like that better because the phone# would let others know what country you are in and the email address is branding?

<comment><USER2> I use it because it works. Something without an implementation is not an alternative.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>