Google wants to get rid of password logins for Android apps by 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidauthority.com/google-kills-passwords-trust-api-694394/ <comment><USER2> > location, and proximity to familiar Bluetooth devices and wifi hotspots

That sooo sounds like a _very_ good idea. /s

In general, i wonder how would they handle all sorts of changes in people.</comment>


A brand new way to browse the web - <AUTHOR> http://www.viewista.com

<comment><USER2> Why would I ever want to view a slide show of web sites? I'm curious.</comment>


To self-publish or not to self-publish - <AUTHOR> https://micaelwidell.com/to-self-publish-or-not-to-self-publish/ <comment><USER2> At least when writing technical books, the difference 10% to 90% or whatever vanishes compared to your increased value and income when it comes to employment.

Also, if you're successful you will probably open up other revenue streams that make your book royalties seem small.</comment>


"I Shouldn't Have to Publish This in the NYT" Doctorow's Op-Ed from the Future - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/06/24/fix-the-net-or-fix-big-tech.html <comment><USER2> Doctorow is an awesome sci-fi writer.

Imagine a world with DRM on Toasters. Doctorow will not just describe such a world, but also will get down to the tiny details. For instance describing at length the corny graphics on a jailbreak package for that toaster.

Few sci-fi writers are as culturally literate in tech and can simultaneously capture the absurdity of it all as well as Doctorow. If you want a good read and a good laugh, check out his books of short stories.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > And the worst part is, the new regulations [for online speech] haven't ended > harassment, extremism or disinformation. Hardly a day goes by without some > post full of outright Naziism, flat-eartherism and climate trutherism going > viral. There are whole armies of Nazis and conspiracy theorists who do > nothing but test the filters, day and night, using custom software to find > the adversarial examples that slip past the filters' machine-learning > classifiers.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the easiest way to write a blog without dealing with front-end - <AUTHOR> Software engineer here. I really love making small, random projects that take a few days to explore and then forget about (not in a bad way, I just think of a problem, spend a few days solving it until I'm satisfied). I always wanted to make a blog so that I can publish these little snippets to my friends etc but I'm always get bored at dealing with frontend. Currently they're in my computer waiting there rotting, I regularly delete them because there is nothing to do with them really... I tried github+jekyll but it still felt like I had to do some HTML/YAML development to get something working. It looks it's gonna work out of the box, but once you need something slightly niche, you have to dive into this rabbit. I'm more than happy to dive into rabbit holes, but I'd rather not spend time on frontend.<p>So my questions is, is there something that just works out-of-the-box? Maybe a paid option? I just want something as simple as "take this Jupyter Notebook and make a blog page goddamit". Features I need: syntax highlighting, normal text, showing graphs, matrices, images etc. Uh I even wish if it could support LaTeX too, but I understand that that might be asking too much. Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> I'm making [https://epiphany.pub](https://epiphany.pub) , a mixture of medium.com and jupyter notebook. The idea is adding programmability to blog.

It's at an early stage, but I will appreciate some feedback.

</comment><comment></comment><comment>=

syntax highlighting, (yes, highlight.js based)

normal text (I don't understand what this means, epiphany is markdown based)

showing graphs (yes, you can write js or python, matplotlib is supported)

matrices (half , there is no official api, but since you can write programs on it, this should be doable),

images .

support LaTeX too, (it supports equations in latex.)

<comment> alok-g This is awesome!

Are all commom programming languages with syntax highlighting if execution within the browser is not required? Can the syntax highlighting in that case be static (precomputed, without requiring Js)?

Are charting libraries included by default?

<comment><USER2> yes, I think the syntax highlighting covers a great range of languages (185 languages according to [https://highlightjs.org/static/demo/](https://highlightjs.org/static/demo/))

No, highlighting can't be static I'm afraid for now. The back-end saves the articles in markdown. This allows users to preserve their editing history. I even implemented github like pullrequest and forking, so you could collaborate with others on blog articles.

[https://epiphany.pub/commit?postId=2684bc94f9fcb9ffe637ebfbe...](https://epiphany.pub/commit?postId=2684bc94f9fcb9ffe637ebfbeba2af8c797c6ad9a66181026ee4bd3806b6f211&commitId=eb1b4762fa28c2057b2e74f1eac01b4b92dd763b)

server side rendering is possible, but it's a bit too much for me. this is still a solo side project. I'd like to make it a startup, but I really need some initial users and feedback to get some confidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use Hugo and GitHub pages. Here's my workflow:

\- Make a new markdown file with the hugo command line ("hugo new posts/my- work-flow.md")

\- Writing, writing, writing

\- Run the server locally with drafts ("hugo serve -D")

\- Check out the post, read through, more writing process

\- Update the post to not be a draft and build the blog ("hugo")

\- git add, commit, and push to origin

\- Check my site in 5 minutes to see it updated

I try to keep it as easy as possible because writing is hard enough as it is. I find it's also very easy to spend time on the things around writing instead of writing, which isn't the point. I've done around three custom lines of CSS to style things differently from the premade theme, but I keep it to a minimum. I do CSS things for my day job and the last thing I want to do when coming home is debugging some custom styles I thought would be slick.

Not sure how you're planning to show graphs and matrices, but syntax highlighting, text, and images are very straightforward in the markdown.

</comment><comment><USER4> Jekyll does have themes which contain the html parts and all you need is the content in markdown.

[https://jekyllthemes.io/free](https://jekyllthemes.io/free)

</comment><comment><USER5> This golden blogpost. Netlify + Gitlab

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19947068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19947068)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to have Jupyter Notebook support then I suggest using Pelican. There's a plugin specifically for parsing Jupyter Notebooks, and you can also write simple md files. It's a bit more complicated to start with than Jekyll (meaning 2 afternoons instead of 1 :)) but it really works for me.

Source: I've been using Pelican with the said plugin for my personal website for the past few months.

</comment><comment><USER7> Check out [https://blot.im/](https://blot.im/).

</comment><comment><USER8> HTML files.

HTML works out-of-the-box, offline, and with any editor. It's deployed easily, works with Git, and is practically free.

<comment><USER9> How do you suggest OP uses html files "without dealing with front-end"?

<comment><USER8> He's a software engineer... Nothing is easier than just opening a text editor and writing HTML. Surely not static site generators and proprietary webapps.

But to each their own. I don't want to have to read documentation in order to write some words using my keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wordpress + syntax highlighter plugin

<comment><USER11> Any recommendations on a particular syntax highlighter plugin?

Also note that you may not be able to run this setup on WordPress.com but there are plenty of hosts at the $10/month level who will be happy to host your wp install. The auto update process is pretty good too.

As far as jupyter, this looks useful:

[https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/2018/05/05/make-jupyter- noteb...](https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/2018/05/05/make-jupyter-notebooks- easy-to-blog-in-wordpress/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just use Hugo. I write a markdown file. Run Hugo. Rsync html files to my host.</comment>


The Most Important Language Feature No One Talks About - <AUTHOR> http://wrongbot.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7:the-most-important-language-feature-no-one-talks-about&catid=11:languages&Itemid=8

<comment><USER3> I agree with the proposition that documentation for available libraries is extremely important. However--isn't there always a "however..." when someone starts by agreeing with the thesis?--anyways, however...

Before I start saying "The most important," I think of a story allegedly about Winston Churchill. At a party, a dowager rebuked him for his inebriation: "Winston , you are disgracefully drunk!"

He steadied himself and glared at her: "And you, Madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober."

My clumsy point being, you can write libraries for a good language. You can document them. If the documentation is missing, someone can and eventually will write it. And _anyone_ can write documentation, just like anyone can write a library. No committees. No endless blog posts debating how the fourth paragraph's third word should be capitalized.

But fundamental language features simply cannot be bolted on. Even if they fit with the language's philosophy and implementation, it is a tremendous investment to get a new feature added to a language.

Some languages do not admit new features easily. Type erasure, anyone? Some cultures do not admit new features easily. Closures, anyone? Both are examples of places where Java couldn't or wouldn't add features cleanly.

There is no such issue with documentation. Anyone can document something, and everyone should. You don't need to make it official, either. Blog about a feature or library, and thanks to Google your blog post becomes an ipso facto part of the library's documentation.

For my money, the measure of a library's documentation is whether I can type the name of a library into Google and find the answer to my questions on the top half of the first page.

<comment><USER4> > If the documentation is missing, someone can and eventually will write it. > ...

> There is no such issue with documentation. Anyone can document something,

Well, in practice, I think it's more like: if the library is there but the docs are not, you're going to be pretty hard pressed to find someone willing to come along, pore over the code, read the mind of the person who wrote the library, and carefully document it. It's very laborious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ermm, _everyone_ talks about the importance of libraries. People have been whinging about Lisp's "lack" of libraries since the 1970s!

<comment><USER6> He's not exposited it well, but he's saying the _documentation_ of the libraries is more important than the libraries themselves [middle, 4th paragraph].

It's an interesting point, like saying that advertising of a product is more important than the product itself. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

But if you don't know about the product, or what it can do, or how it can be used - it is of _0_ use to you. It might as well not exist. No matter how great it is nor how much its creators know about it...

<comment><USER7> Personally I find that the sample code is often the most important part of the library. I like to learn by doing, and rewriting sample code into my own style is a great way to do that.

It needs to be supported by high-quality documentation, of course - <USER2> there should be a walkthrough of the code with relevant documentation links that go into more detail to explain the thinking behind the library.

What I really hate is documentation that's obviously written by technical writers who understand the concepts in the abstract, but have never written any code using it. It's frustrating to wade through pages and pages of patronizing explanations when a real-world example would do the job so much better.

(The worst example of this documentation genre I've ever seen is probably Symbian's C++ API documentation. First they spend an eternity justifying their pseudo-Hungarian type naming convention. Then they introduce a class hierarchy of a dozen classes for basic buffers and strings, dither over all the irrelevant details of the implementation, and claim that it's an "elegant example of object-oriented design". I guess they expect their audience to be of the captive kind that is forced to sit in a class room for a few weeks listening to trivialities, so it makes sense to waste all that time going over outdated '90s buzzwords.)

<comment><USER8> Good documentation _includes_ examples. That's why `man` pages have an EXAMPLES section. The point you seem to be making about documentation organization being driven practically instead of horn-tooting, I completely agree with.

<comment><USER7> Sorry if my point was so unclear. I agree completely that examples are an integral part of documentation. But it sometimes seems that this point is lost on the programmers and tech writers who should be collaborating to produce the documentation (or perhaps management is to blame for treating these roles too separately).

The result is often documentation that's too verbose, too rigidly structured according to the implementation's hierarchies and doesn't match the thought processes and expectations of the target users.

<comment><USER8> Right, and I was similarly unclear. I think that examples should be interwoven with the documentation, and I think that your insights into the systematic reasons for this are spot-on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Documentation is one of the main reasons we are using Django at my startup now : the documentation is absolutely awesome.

On the other hand I remember doing lots of Erlang/OTP two years ago (failed startup that never launched...). Equipped with "Programming Erlang" by Joe Armstrong, and Google of course.

Brilliant book, and lots of documentation available for Erlang. But when it came to the real thing, OTP, its best pratices and idioms, it was much harder to find anything relevant at all.

<comment><USER4> [Werkzeug](<http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/>) also seems to have good docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Part of the reason Java's documentation is so "good" is that it needs to be. If you want to know the length of an array, it's .length (carefully avoiding parenthesis), for a Vector, it's .size(). For Vector's, there's also .capacity() which is different from size. Then there's setSize() and trimToSize(), one of which affects size (and capacity) and one of which just affects capacity. Then you have ensureCapacity() and isEmpty() which do things you could easily check on your own.

In Python, the way to tell how long anything is is the len() function. There is no concept of capacity because there's no reason to care. If you want to check if a list is empty, you just say "if list_variable". Once you learn those two basic concepts, which apply to the entire Python library, you never need to look at documentation for sizes and capacities of anything again.

Python's slice notation replaces an overloaded add(), elementAt(), firstElement(), get(), insertElementAt(), lastElement(), remove(), removeAllElements(), removeElement(), removeRange(), set(), setElementAt(), and subList(). And it works the same for all list-like objects in Python. Java's copious documentation on those functions (some of which are exact duplicates) is not a good thing. It's a sign of a serious design problem.

<comment><USER11> I wish Java would adopt len() and the like. Or perhaps a more general concept like Haskell's type classes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Libraries are extremely important and the major resistance for me to learn more interesting languages (Eg, I wanted to start using a Lisp, but found their lack of extensive, well documented libraries to be a hindrance (I have since started using Clojure, which doesn't have this issue); also wanted to start using Factor for real projects and I needed libraries which it doesn't yet have and I don't have time to contribute..)

But I don't find Java to be as good as the article makes it out to be. The library, IMHO, is a mess and the javadoc documentation, while great most of the time, sometimes just doesn't explain what you need (like when I had to learn JAIN from the Javadoc alone...), personally, I find Pythons library just as extensive and better organised and designed. Seems that documentation is a matter of taste though - I really like Pythons docs. I find them clear, to the point and intuitive, but I've also heard people complain about them. I definitely do agree that libraries with good documentation are important.

<comment><USER6> I was surprised to find that the lack of static types in python made the documentation less clear for me. I had to read through the documentation to get a grasp of what the formal parameters meant (e.g. were they strings, or more complex data structures), and with several parameters, I kept forgetting which was which. I think there are conventions that experienced python programmers would pick up (e.g. in the naming of parameters). but I didn't know them. Sort of, informal static typing, no?

In Java, the types of parameters give succinct guidance (though I hadn't appreciated this til I saw python docs). You can follow the hyperlinks to get the definitions.

In Haskell, people claim that its more expressive type-system enables you to quickly search for relevant functions, without knowing their names. (I can't verify this personally).

For me, it's very much an unexpected benefit of static type systems.

PS: I don't think Python users need the reassurance, but the actual library being explained by the docs was a _lot_ simpler and easier to use than the equivalent in Java.

<comment> loup-vaillant In Haskell, what you are talking about sounds like type-based search. Like, if you know you're looking for a function of type `[Int] -> Int`, you probably want `sum` or `product` (which are of the compatible type `Num n => [n] -> n`). Am I right?

My first guess is that this kind of search is possible in other languages, yet easier and more accurate in Haskell and ML because their type system is paranoid, not because it is expressive.

<comment><USER13> [http://www.haskell.org/hoogle/?hoogle=[Int]+->+Int](http://www.haskell.org/hoogle/?hoogle=\[Int\]+->+Int)

Unrelated to that link: "Paranoid" and "expressive" are... hard to relate to each other. I certainly can't call them opposing forces in type signatures. It's a more complicated relationship. Type signatures that can carry lots of information can be both very "paranoid" (excluding many possibilities) while at the same time being very expressive (permitting many possibilities). In English that doesn't make much sense, but it makes perfect sense in the context of something like Haskell's type system, or other similarly carefully- crafted ones.

<comment><USER6> That's a startlingly awesome search engine, especially in its suggestions ("did you mean: ").

[http://www.haskell.org/hoogle/?hoogle=[a]+->+maybe+a](http://www.haskell.org/hoogle/?hoogle=\[a\]+->+maybe+a)

But it seems to suggest many non-exact matches, like google does. Useful in a search engine, but not for seeking an exact function - though I guess it doesn't hurt to have too many results, provided the exact ones are always first. (I don't know enough Haskell to be certain)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So true - unfortunately Java is still the best language in that respect, and Ruby falls flat big time.

<comment><USER15> Java and all the JVM languages. Is it really a _language_ feature?

<comment><USER14> I don't think it extends to the languages, because that would include jRuby.

I think it is probably because Java was endorsed by a big company that wanted to market it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not just that libraries are important. Platforms that are mature, portable and reliable can get products developed more quickly. Platforms that run on multiple target OSes improve my deployment options.

It's not just lack of libraries that can hinder a language. An immature runtime, or one with platform-specific issues limits your options. I think many more man-hours go into developing a rock-solid runtime library than language developers / advocates might suspect.

Language is nice to have, platform wins.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the main differences between "ngrok.com" vs. "xip.io"? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> ngrok.com is a tunnel service, letting you connect - via ngrok - to computers that are otherwise not reachable from outside.

xip.io is a DNS service, it simply resolves DNS names to IP addresses without handling any of the actual traffic.</comment>


Open source companies to watch - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/open-source/84390/11-open-source-companies-watch

<comment><USER2> The companies: Cfengine, Cloudera, CubeTree, Eucalyptus Systems, Gluster, Likewise, Lucid Imagination, MindTouch, openQRM, Reductive Labs, Talend.

Also unless you like clicking through 11 screens, the "print" version is better: <http://www.itworld.com/print/84390>

<comment><USER3> One paginated page per company is absolutely annoying... Thank you for posting them here.</comment></comment>


Show HN: CodeOnVideo – Learn code with no distractions - <AUTHOR> https://codeonvideo.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> No more getting distracted by youtube recommendations. Make notes in browser. Explore Tools. All in one place.

I made this over the weekend. Let me know what you think guys.</comment>


Researchers decipher how faces are encoded in the brain [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(17)30538-X.pdf <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14481791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14481791)

</comment><comment><USER3> Our brain is becoming less magical one paper at a time....</comment>


Expect IBM to leave Vermont within three years (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/diary/9386/expect-ibm-to-leave-vermont-within-three-years-no-matter-what-we-do

<comment><USER2> This has been happening for a while, ever since IBM remade itself as a consultancy, they've been shifting operations to low-cost countries. Granted, "International" is certainly in their name and the consultancy service is called "Global Services" so you have to admit there's some truth in advertising there.

The funny thing is that their moving offshore seems entirely focused on improving their own profitability. Which is to say, they're not moving off shore to compete on price, they're doing so for their own benefit. So from the customer's perspective, IBM Global Services is all about buying Indian labor at paying on-shore large American consultancy rates for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> IBM has been in the process of leaving Vermont for a decade. The writing isn't just on the wall, they've been actively shedding everything other than the line. If I remember correctly it was blamed on the state of VT not giving them favorable enough treatment. It was so long ago I don't remember exactly what happened with the state, but they were going to axe one of the plants at either Essex VT or Fishkill NY no matter what VT/NY did.

More generically speaking, IBM has been getting worse at seeing past the next quarter. I know people that got the boot in the first big round of VT layoffs that make _much_ more money to keep doing their same old job, for the same plant, just this time as sub-sub-sub-contractors.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article is slightly dubious. I have done a lot of work for IBM, they have been a great client, I admit that, that fact may bias me a bit but from my perspective, what IBM has been doing is reducing permanent workforce with contract labor, that can be scaled up and down on a per-project basis. Is it a cost cutting measure? sure. Does it mean that Americans are loosing jobs? no. But it is easy to skew the numbers when you only show that IBM is shedding jobs. But when it is all tallied some of those jobs are being replaced with US based contract labor. This is the reality of the US technical workforce many times after a project you just don't need specific technical talent. The workers don't want to pasture and the employers don't want to carry them until they have work they can utilize them on. My experience is IBM has been moving to an on-demand workforce model. Their is no doubt that some of that is moving offshore but without mentioning the upswing in US based contractors the article does not paint the whole picture. Another fact not mentioned but that I hear from many IBM'ers turned freelancer is their average take home is higher in this model because IBM is willing to pay higher rates to only have to engage when the deals are inked.

There is a whole argument to be made about their ability to retain really talented individuals with this model, but it's just not the market they service.

<comment><USER5> If so, I find it even more disturbing that the workforce would have limited interest in the long-term success of their team or their company.

<comment><USER4> Enterprise America is very different from small company America, that is why I made mention of talent retention, it is a tangential but related conversation but it does not really fit in the space of what the article is lamenting. I have worked in both, I prefer small business America because their is a stronger focus on quality and individualism but sometimes the enterprise is where the bills are paid. Those of us not in the valley have to split our times between what we would like to do and lucrative contracts that the likes of companies like IBM provide.

The interesting part is it has created a culture of something akin to special forces teams, where groups of caravan style freelancers who have worked together in ad-hoc groups tend to come together on contracts many who have worked together many times over the years and yet other who have worked with others that you know. So sometimes you will go into a contract with guys that you don't know, but you know of them so the relationship develops quickly because it is like you know them. They are very talented individuals, but it's almost a mercenary mentality. They do quality work, but it is almost a robotic professionalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        The direct impetus for this column is IBM's internal plan to grow
        earnings-per-share (EPS) to $20 by 2015. The primary method for
        accomplishing this feat, according to the plan, will be by reducing
        US employee head count by 78 percent in that time frame.  [1]

I work a lot with software platform teams @ IBM and they are absolutely swamped because of a shrinking workforce. Their technology is a decade behind and there is no sign of anything improving. When we've engaged their support team for software and hardware issues, the outsourced engineer barely knows how to operate in TSO/MVS. It's horrible all around.

[1] <http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/not-your-fathers-IBM/>

<comment><USER7> I worked as a software engineer for their CIO division for a little while and the "2015 Deadline" is something everyone was acutely aware of. In fact when I left my manager was most concerned that if he didn't fill the spot immediately he would lose the headcount forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not about offshoring (although some of the work will go overseas of course). This is about IBM's customers growing tired of the endless expense and headaches of dealing with consultant-provided software. Need an upgrade? Hire a consultant. Need a new feature? Hire a consultant. Need to reconfigure? Hire a consultant.

Now that corporations have grown more comfortable using Software-as-a-Service solutions, they're telling companies like IBM to stop billing for consultants and instead just take over all hosting and maintenance. Obviously IBM should try and host as efficiently as possible (that is, with as small a staff as possible) so they'll need to shed consulting labor.

<comment><USER9> I don't think this is the whole story.

IBM is aggressively pursuing growth markets. Growth in the USA is more or less stagnant so they are looking elsewhere to increase revenue.

It doesn't hurt that in many growth countries you can get 2 developers (or support engineers) for the price of one American developer (or even better). This allows IBM to provide local services and support for less cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just wanted to point out the irony that people are surprised when a company with 'international' in its name is becoming truly international.

On a more serious note, these developments are obvious to anyone who has followed IBM in the past few years. IBM has made a huge push to hire outside the USA, and according to some friends who work there have been content with attrition in the USA. I don't think outsourcing and offshoring have been resounding successes for many companies, but it makes sense that a company of IBM's size can do it right. Ultimately I see globalization as a good thing; IBM is adding value by making their operation more efficient (and of course hiring competent people in poorer countries).

</comment><comment><USER11> Having lived within miles of this plant for almost a decade; no one is surprised by this. The vast majority of jobs they offer pay a tiny bit better than the normal jobs around (which are much, much higher than the average of the country); but I don't see it as a huge loss, though a loss for sure.

This says quite a bit about VT as well, which is pretty anti-business, as much as I love Vermont. Personally, I am not surprised by this.. it has been talked about for years that there are less and less things going on at IBM in VT these days, and the end is nigh.

<comment><USER12> _This says quite a bit about VT as well..._

I disagree in this instance. This is about a large corporation acting in an anti-social manner.

In almost a reflexive manner, we've come to blame ourselves or local government for this type of action but that blame is misplaced. Corporations have obligations to society the same as individuals do.

<comment><USER11> idk, I don't really see any reason that it is better to give vermonters jobs at 10% above the median wage for the area than chinese people or wherever these jobs are going. I do think corporations have certain obligations, like not polluting, following the law, etc... but keeping jobs.. that is a hard one for me to swallow. I think redundancy in manufacturing is inevitable and good (in the long run) as everything goes toward automation; I certainly would not want corporations to be forced to hire people to do what robots can do.

Maybe I am taking a leap here. It is undeniable VT is anti-business (high taxes, nearly impossible to build, no billboards, high minimum wage) but maybe this exact same plant would be leaving Florida or Texas as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a pretty crummy submission. This blog post is from three months ago, doesn't really say much, and its only source is a Cringley rumor article from March 2012.

</comment><comment><USER14> What does the 'I' in IBM stand for?

<comment><USER15> What about the M? :)

<comment><USER14> 'Merica!</comment></comment></comment>


An App That Turns Digital Reading Into A Social Activity - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672489/an-app-that-turns-digital-reading-into-a-social-activity#1

<comment><USER2> Andreessen tried to build annotation in the original version of Netscape. His new attempt with something like Rapgenius... not sure about it. This dotdotdot thing seems like a reasonable way. Part Instapaper, part ebook reader, filtering the relevant texts upfront via a human social filter, seems better like annotating directly out of a browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, why are we not using the chance of digital marginalia much more in the web. A concept much older than the book print itself. This could be so powerful.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a service/tool that let's me run my own AWS Mechanical Turks? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm not really sure what it is you're asking. Feel free to clarify.

<comment><AUTHOR> Self-hosted or managed [http://mturk.com](http://mturk.com).

<comment><USER2> I don't get it… What is the point of that? Isn't the whole point of Mechanical Turk to outsource?</comment></comment></comment>


V8: A Tale of TurboFan - <AUTHOR> http://benediktmeurer.de/2017/03/01/v8-behind-the-scenes-february-edition/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to watch the swings and roundabouts in the VM engineering space. I remember many years ago being in a Google engineering all hands where Android was first announced (to the firm) and the technical architecture was explained. I and quite a few others were very surprised to hear that they planned to take slow, limited mobile devices and run a Java bytecode interpreter on them. The stated rationale was also quite surprising: it was done to save memory. I remember being very dubious about the idea of running a GCd interpreted language on a mobile phone (I had J2ME experience!).

In the years since I've seen Android go from interpreter, to interpreter+JIT, to AOT, to JIT+AOT, to interpreted + JIT then AOT at night. V8 has gone from only JIT (compile on first use) to multiple JITs to now, interpreter+single JIT. MS CLR still doesn't have any interpreter and is fully AOT or JIT depending on mode. HotSpot started interpreted, then gained a parallel fast JIT, then gained a parallel optimising JIT, then went to a tiered mechanism where code can be interpreted, compiled and recompiled multiple times before the system stabilises at peak performance.

Looking back, it's apparent that Android's and indeed Java's initial design was really quite insightful. A tight bytecode interpreter isn't quite as awful as it sounds, especially given how far CPU core execution speed has raced ahead of memory and cache availability. If you can fit an interpreter almost entirely in icache, and pack a ton of logic into dense bytecode, and if you can use spare cores that would otherwise be idle (in desktop/mobile scenarios) to do profile guided optimisation, you can end up utilising machine resources more effectively than it might otherwise appear.

<comment><USER3> Meanwhile, iOS has used strictly AOT compilation from the beginning for native applications. And doesn't iOS have a reputation for buttery smooth UIs? Perhaps the original AOT compilation approach of ART wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have to be done on the user's device, taking up the user's time while installing apps or upgrading the OS.

<comment><USER4> iOS's advantage in this is that the hardware range is small. It's feasible to do full AOT away from the end user's device.

With Android there are hundreds or thousands of combinations of various bits of hardware and drivers, with various levels of compatibility. Device manufacturers have a terrific advantage in being able to produce hardware that is more specialised for the purpose, but there are trade-offs. Compiling all possible variations AOT away from the end device is going to be difficult.

<comment><USER2> The Play Store could AOT compile things on the server side. I don't know why it doesn't, it seems like such an obvious win.

<comment><USER5> The binaries produced from the AOT process are too large to download over the network for typical users and data plans.

<comment><USER6> Yet Apple and Microsoft managed to do it.

<comment><USER2> In fairness, they managed to do it only for the highest of high end users. Apple institutionally doesn't care about anyone in places like China, India or Africa where data is expensive. That's why Android completely dominates the global smartphone market share.

I guess nothing would stop the Play Store from AOT compiling binaries just for users with fast connections though.

<comment><USER6> Windows Phones were widely available in India, before everything kind of felt apart, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think there's a lesson for application developers buried in here: If you have the freedom to choose the language and language features of your application, choose your language and language features so as to minimize the risk of performance cliffs such as those that the article discusses at the beginning. This probably means static typing, and static dispatch (i.e. not virtual functions) by default. And of course, a language like that can be compiled to JavaScript, e.g. Kotlin, C# via Bridge.net, or F# via Fable.

By the way, I know this is a tenuous association, but to me, the name TurboFan makes me think of CPU-hungry code that cranks up the fan(s) on a user's laptop.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a huge deal for me. I am creating _server_ [1] for Node.js: " _npm install server_ ". The slowest part I noticed in some initial benchmarks was the promise-based code which is used heavily instead of express' callback based middleware.

While performance is not one of the main concerns for the library (they are simplicity, "batteries-on" and user experience in general) it is nice to see that my hunch was right; V8 would provide a 500% performance boost to Promises.

[1] [http://serverjs.io/](http://serverjs.io/)

<comment><USER8> I've never seen this before and it looks interesting - from a brief scan of the source & about section it looks to me like a wrapper over express to provide sensible defaults to round off some of the sharp corners when setting up a project from scratch.

This could be extremely useful. I've been using express in production for years, and though setting up a new server is not fundamentally difficult, it does involve a lot of common boilerplate (cookie-parser _et al_ ) that I think a lot of people already solve with a boilerplate template. This could be a cleaner, more fully-featured approach.

Is this more or less it, or is there more to it / future aims to do more? I also wonder - did you talk to the express developers about making direct contributions to provide solutions to these problems from within the express library itself, rather than externally via a wrapper library?

I'll keep an eye on the development of this project :-)

<comment><USER7> Thanks! I got started few months back. I haven't really talked to them besides asking a question or two. The thing is, express _used to be like this_ but it was then split up; from what I read it was mainly due to unstability in the subpackages, something which I think/hope will be solved by now. Another point is apparently it's easier to maintain since there have been some problems internally.

The main differences (for the initial or a later release) are:

* A lot of functionality out-of-the-box. Just install it and get to work.

* Websockets as first-class citizens: since they are one of the major advantages of Node.js in itself it makes sense they are trivial to use.

* Error handling: intercept some messages from Node.js and provide a more human-readable version.

* Promise-based.

There's also a single parameter for middleware instead of a _[err], req, res, next_ parameters, since Promises work really well with a single parameter. You might think that this comes from [http://koajs.com/](http://koajs.com/) , but only the name comes from there, I used to call it _inst_ for instance until I found a better name, which I found in Koa's _ctx_.

Oh, I talk about all of this in here: [https://serverjs.io/about](https://serverjs.io/about)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seeing all the problems and wrong assumptions they had, makes me appreciate luajit even more.

100x smaller, multiple times faster and did it right from the beginning.

<comment><USER10> That is irrelevant. On a typed and mostly static language all is 100x easier to compile too.

<comment><USER11> Lua is a dynamic language though.

<comment><USER10> You are right. What is the magic formula to make the JIT so fast?

<comment><USER12> Javascript has some features that makes it hard to be JITed. For example it has no fixed object layout. If you are interested into how language design impacts performance this is worth reading: [http://wren.io/performance.html](http://wren.io/performance.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > From my very personal point of view, the TurboFan optimizing compiler at > that time was probably the most beautiful version we ever had, and the only > version (of a JavaScript compiler) where I could imagine that a "sea of > nodes" approach might make sense (although it was already showing its > weakness at that time).

What were the weaknesses of the Sea of Nodes? Backwards data flow analysis and control flow sensitive analysis being hard?

<comment><USER14> I worked on a Sea of Nodes compiler [0] myself and "backwards data flow analysis and control flow sensitive analysis" has never been a problem.

Changes to the CFG are hard because of the Phi nodes, which have to be adapted in lockstep with CFG changes. However, this is probably inherent to SSA form, but not sea of nodes.

You want a good graph visualization instead of text-based output, because you should actually to see the "non-order of the sea". Text-output with an implicit order can hide issues.

Personally, I believe sea of nodes is better then others, like SSA form is better than non-SSA. There is nothing which makes it inherently more powerful, but it feels more elegant. Unfortunately, there is no objective comparison and anecdotes are apples vs oranges. Similarly, how would you compare object- oriented with functional programming?

[0] [http://libfirm.org](http://libfirm.org)

<comment><USER13> LibFIRM's sea of nodes representation is a bit different in that nodes are tied to a basic block, if I understand it correctly. That would indeed make control flow sensitive analysis easy. Their sea of nodes representation does not have this property, so it is not immediately apparent under what control conditions a node may be executed. Their scheduler will place nodes in basic blocks at the end of the pipeline.

I loved your paper about PBQP register allocation, by the way!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a fantastic write-up!

While I've often felt many of the pain points in the article and they were never explained anywhere (that I saw anyway).

I'd often profile/benchmark something, make sure it's fast enough to use in our performance critical section of the code, only to find that once in the application I'd only get a fraction of the speed I was expecting.

I would then hop over to using --trace-opt only to find that functions were getting deoptimized or never optimized in the first place and I'd start playing the game of trying things here and there to get it to cooperate. And in some cases --trace-opt wouldn't tell me anything that I could usefully understand yet my code would still be slow.

Here's to hoping that turbofan clears up a lot of these weird cases!

And slightly off topic, but what are the plans for the dart VM? Is it going to end up using TurboFan or will it stay with Crankshaft?

<comment><USER16> > And slightly off topic, but what are the plans for the dart VM? Is it going > to end up using TurboFan or will it stay with Crankshaft?

Dart VM is a code base independent of V8, so V8's plans to adopt one or another compiler have no implications on Dart VM.

Dart VM's IR is closer to Crankshaft, but it supports full language unlike Crankshaft (so in this sense it is closer to TurboFan).

We currently have no plans to radically rework the compilation pipeline, because we see no need for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Looking at it naively, it seems to follow the rules for the arguments object in Crankshaft

I've never managed to find a good source on the V8 internals and how to target these optimizations (the "rules for the arguments object" the author alludes to).

Any recommendations?

<comment><USER18> this [1] is probably what you want

1\. [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/wiki/Optimization-k...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/wiki/Optimization- killers#3-managing-arguments)

<comment><USER17> Thanks! The linked repo [1] is also great:

[1] [https://github.com/vhf/v8-bailout- reasons](https://github.com/vhf/v8-bailout-reasons)

<comment><USER19> They are complementary resources, "Optimization killers" helps you avoid pitfalls in practice, "v8-bailout-reasons" tries to document and explain the various Crankshaft bailouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Latest node (7.7.1) uses v8 5.5 I believe: does anyone know what the roadmap wrt to updating v8 to the latest version containing all this new stuff look like?

<comment><USER21> There's a branch of node, vee-eight-lkgr, running the new v8 5.8 compiler chain. You can read about how to try it out (and help test it) here: [https://medium.com/@bmeurer/help-us-test-the-future-of- node-...](https://medium.com/@bmeurer/help-us-test-the-future-of-node- js-6079900566f#.d2iq1i2zq)

<comment><USER20> Works great! On my project full builds went down from ~20s to ~17.5 and dev builds down from ~10s to ~7.8s! Good stuff. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very interesting g.</comment>


The Apache License (v2) has a dangerous interpretation - <AUTHOR> https://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2013/09/the-apache-contributors-license-agreement-is-very-dangerous/ <comment><USER2> Apache has had an FAQ about this for years that deals with exactly this issue:

[http://www.apache.org/foundation/license- faq.html#PatentScop...](http://www.apache.org/foundation/license- faq.html#PatentScope)

Almost every company that has adopted the CLA (which is a _lot_ ) takes this view.

This is essentially a non-issue in practice.

<comment><USER2> Lots of IANAL comments here. IAAL :)

My statement of "non-issue in practice" was based on being an open source lawyer and having talked with a large number of companies who use Apache based CLA's (including the one i work for, though i'm not speaking for them here) over the years.

While there are questions about "claims that later become licensable", i have not seen any lawyers question the scope of the grant and claim it would cover patents implicated by the work except as it existed at time of contribution (and folks are generally aware of the 'ambiguity' that exists here). There are good legal reasons to believe the interpretation would be "as the work existed at time of contribution", and no good legal reasons i'm aware of to believe otherwise.

If it actually goes bad at some point, sure, it should be modified. There are no indications it's worth doing any more than wordsmithing any other part of the agreement.

Hence, my view: This is not a problem in practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to join the discussion on the ASF legal list! :)

[https://twitter.com/taoeffect/status/379227928573124608](https://twitter.com/taoeffect/status/379227928573124608)

<comment><USER2> Sure, but you must realize the ASF changing things would not impact much of anything, since the agreement is reused (with very slight differences) by hundreds of folks.

In fact, in some ways, you are better off with them not changing it, because if they do, now you have to argue they changed it but they didn't really think that change mattered ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is about the ASF _Contributor_ License Agreement, not the Apache License itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Quoting SEMW: Venturing just a little further than the title, into the first paragraph, we come across a (large, boldfaced) edited addition to the effect that "All of this applies to the regular Apache License (v2) as well".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this posting is by someone who thinks software patents are a good thing and still contributes to open source software? How does this cognitive dissonance work out? Is he not aware that many open source licenses have exactly such terms in order to fight software patents? This isn't something new or outrageous.

<comment><USER5> Giving a perpetual royalty free license to anything you may ever patent for the rest of your life because of a subtle loophole in a license that people aren't generally aware of is, IMO, new and outrageous, irrespective of the utility (or lack thereof) of software patents.

<comment><USER6> A "subtle loophole in a license" is practically a contradiction in terms. Courts don't enforce unlikely interpretations that run counter to the reasonable (and documented!) expectations of most if not all parties concerned just because some lawyer walks into a courtroom and announces they want to interpret it that way. Law is not a programming language, and it's not enforced by computers.

If anything, the change that was made by the company here is even worse because it's obviously ambiguous. What exactly does it mean for a patent claim to "exist"? Are we talking about patents already granted? Patents filed? Patents that _might_ be filed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Use the MIT license.

The only thing the apache license gives over that is that derivative works include a notice acknowledging the previous authors.

Honestly, if I'm releasing my code for free, I couldn't care less. If you want to be a douche and pretend you wrote it, go for it.

It's like that quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson: The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

see: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/pick-a-license- any-...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/pick-a-license-any- license.html)

<comment><USER8> The patent grant/license language of Apache 2.0 is actually quite important, _especially_ for those downstream. That's why the FSF recommends[1] Apache over X11/MIT if you aren't going to go copyleft.

[1] [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license- list.html#X11License](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license- list.html#X11License)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article mentions the Apache ICLA (Individual Contribution License Agreement) and not the Apache License v2 as stated in the title.

For further information about the types of Apache license: [https://www.apache.org/licenses/](https://www.apache.org/licenses/)

<comment><USER10> Venturing just a little further than the title, into the first paragraph, we come across a (large, boldfaced) edited addition to the effect that "All of this applies to the regular Apache License (v2) as well".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mirror (in case site is slow or goes down):

[http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/apache/index.html](http://cdn.taoeffect.com/other/apache/index.html)</comment>


What is that Snake doing in my Database? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nielsberglund.com/2017/04/20/sql-server-2017---python-executing-inside-sql-server/ <comment><AUTHOR> We look at Python in SQL Server Machine Learning Services</comment>


Inside Computer Stores of the 70s and 80s - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcmag.com/feature/338749/inside-computer-stores-of-the-70s-and-80s <comment><USER2> (U.S. POV:) There were very few 'computer stores' in the 1970s. Most people who had one -knew exactly why- and -exactly which model- suited their needs. And the address of the factory selling the kit.

"I have a question for you old timers out there: If you're old enough, what are your memories of computer shopping in the 1980s?"

Up through the mid-80s, for most people a visit to the early 'computer store' (selling mainly computers) meant visiting an empty store. Lots of time to gab with the only salesperson. That could be great fun, if they actually knew something about computers. They often were trying to sell machines you'd heard of but never seen, outside of a magazine.

After the Commodore-64 came along (82-84, depending on the boonie you lived in), the 'computer store' was usually a big-box retailer, into which kids dragged their bewildered parents to show them what they wanted, and which games were cool.

<comment><USER3>
      what are your memories of computer shopping in the 1980s?

In SV, before Fry's (the original Sunnyvale location, 2 moves ago) there were small stores all around, mistky dealing in drives and peripherals.

There were two major local, free newspapers (mostly ads): Computer Currents (biweekly) and MicroTimes (Monthly), each with dozens of small advertisers. I bought my first hard drive (30MB!) at some San Mateo hole-in-the-wall. I got my second from my sister's employee price when she worked at Seagate.

There was also a Heath/Zenith store on South Bascom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the 1980's(circa 1981-1984) each middle class mall had at least 1 non- anchor store dedicated to personal computers, peripherals, and software.

I remember splitting my time in malls between bookstores and computer stores.

The first flight simulator software I recall seeing was in a mall computer store approx 1982. Very vivid memory of the software box, with very optimistic visuals and description of its capability.

In retrospect, the mall computer stores in the early 80's seemed unfocused. They didn't seem to be targeting businesses, but they didn't seem to be targeting consumers effectively either.

Even with a father working in semicon, I recall my parents not being able to articulate a compelling reason why to purchase a personal computer.

But they did anyway.

It felt very much like a "because it's the future" rather than "because it can do X".

Our first family computer was a TRS-80 with magnetic cassette storage and transfer.

I remember when Basic code was printed in magazines to re-type like a monkey to play simple games.

</comment><comment><USER5> Inside Computer Stores of the 80s: PCMag.

They weren't in print yet in the 70s.</comment>


Show HN: Hottbox – Higher-Order Tensors Toolbox - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hottbox/hottbox <comment><USER2> Being a physicist in computational (general) relativity, when I read about a "tensor toolbox" I would think about a code implementing some kind of tensor algebra, such as a syntax to do tensor contractions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for misleading. I am aware that the term "tensor" was originally introduced within physics. But then it was adopted in chemometrics, signal processing and machine learning in a context of N-dimensional arrays of data. As such, this toolbox is focused on multi-way analysis and tensor decompositions of N-dimensional data arrays (tensors). However, fundamental operations include folding/unfolding of the data, tensor-matrix product and contration with a vector or another tensor. The latter is not implemented at the moment, but will be in future releases. Not sure whether these opertations carry the same meaning as in physics though.

<comment><USER3> I don't want to jump on top of a pedant pile, because I think it's really cool that you're out there making useful stuff.

The group where I did my PhD was a Numerical Relativity group and I now work in Machine Learning, so I can appreciate where you're coming from.

However, a Tensor has a very precise mathematical meaning, and has done for centuries (dating back to at least Voigt, and arguably as far as Gauss). Even in machine learning, people recognise that they are abusing the term tensor by restricting its use to Tensors expressed in the canonical orthogonal basis of E^n.

I really think we should be discouraging this debasement of our mathematical terminology. It's just not helpful at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do agree that tensors are much more then just an array of data with N-indices and that numerical methods are oftentime forget about that.

<comment><USER4> I am looking for a python library that handles tensors, in the precise mathematical sense. Can you recommend one please?

<comment><USER5> Maybe [https://cadabra.science/](https://cadabra.science/) ? I haven't used it myself, but it's linked from the main page of [http://www.sympy.org/](http://www.sympy.org/) , which would also allow you to define tensor operations yourself if necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What "higher-order" part means here? What is the difference to regular tensors?..

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, order of a tensor is the number of dimensions of an array of data. Vector - one dimensional array or a tensor of order 1 Matrix - two dimensional array of data or a tensor of order 2 Three and more dimensional arrays of data are tensors of higher order.

<comment><USER7> This isn't quite right, but it's a common misconception. Any rank-2 tensor can be represented in matrix form, but not all matrices are tensors, similarly with rank-1 tensors and vectors.

The distinction is important because thinking about the way you have presented leads to confusion about what tensors are...

<comment><USER8> Sorry this is just wrong. Maybe you're trying to get at the "co/contravariant" properties of tensors, in which case your statement can be more clearly stated as, e.g., the space rank (2, 0), and rank (1,1) vectors, admit different interpretations as internal hom spaces of vector spaces. But in any interpretation of your statement the distinction is never important because all spaces distinguished by this distinction are isomorphic via cononical isomorphisms.

<comment><USER7> You might want to think that through a bit more, leaving aside the issue of needing the underlying vector space, are you sure you are comfortable with the statement that all matrices are tensors?

<comment><USER8> Yes absolutely. Given a matrix as an array of numbers there's a number of natural ways to interpret it as a tensor. What are you uncomfortable about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting choice of name? ;)</comment>


Touched (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://mihai.sucan.ro/mihai/blog/touched <comment><USER2> "Medical research campaigns do not really go viral. We do not get a ton of people donating $5. You should consider donating as much as you are comfortable with."

Perhaps today we can make a difference, Mihai. I wish you much happiness and joy each day you have.

[https://www.ebresearch.org/donate.html](https://www.ebresearch.org/donate.html)

[http://www.sohanaresearchfund.org/donate/](http://www.sohanaresearchfund.org/donate/)

[https://www.debra.org.uk/donate/intro](https://www.debra.org.uk/donate/intro)

[http://www.debra-international.org](http://www.debra-international.org) (for donations via bank)

<comment><USER3> Sadly, Mihai passed away in 2015. His twin brother blogs at [http://marius.sucan.ro/](http://marius.sucan.ro/) .

</comment></comment><comment> phoe-krk I have some unexplainable kind of respect and amazement towards people who stay human, honest, communicative and talkative like that, despite (or perhaps because of) knowing that their time is about to run out. They avoid dying _before_ their physical death. They seem not to submit to despair.

<comment><USER4> Mihai was an amazing person to work with. Super sharp, positive and productive. His whole life was an example of how someone can live and make the most of their situation despite being given challenges that most of us don't face.

I just thought I'd mention that because what you see of him from the end of his life seemed to me to always be present (I worked with him for a couple of years at Mozilla).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidermolysis_bullosa_dystro...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidermolysis_bullosa_dystrophica)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidermolysis_bullosa](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidermolysis_bullosa)

TLDR: It's a genetic disorder best known for causing fragile skin. It also predisposes people to certain forms of cancer, which is apparently how the author died.

</comment><comment><USER6> I saw a documentary once about a man who had that disease, I can't recall its name now. Truly a horrible disease. I hope science can make progress on it in the coming years.

Btw, this article seems to be from 2015.

<comment><USER7> You're probably thinking of The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off: [http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-boy-whose-skin- fell-o...](http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-boy-whose-skin-fell-off)

<comment><USER6> Yes, that's the one.

One of a very short list of films that remains with me through life that I think back to every now and then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'Some conclusions' section reminds me of a short piece PG has once written on regrets of the dying. I find it amazing how consistent some of the points are -- happiness is your choice, cultivate friendships, say what you think and don't obsess with work.

</comment><comment><USER9> Such a horrible and sad disease. I was introduced to it through (surprisingly) a Jeep club affiliated charity in the United States called Crawling for Reid. A few thousand off-road enthusiasts get together in South Pittsburg, TN to have a good time and raise funds for a small child with this unfortunate affliction. $120,000 USD was raised last year with record attendance and this year is set to raise even more. In particular, as I understand it, this charity benefits the little boy (Reid), primarily, as well as ongoing research. If you feel so inclined to donate, you may do so here [http://crawlingforreid.com/donate/](http://crawlingforreid.com/donate/).

<comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing link. This mostly goes to just one person? I would like to donate to fund research to help the most people benefit, do you know the foundation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It might be nice to tag the headline (2015). A very moving read, however.</comment>


Left v/s Right Sidebar – which layout works best? - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/left-vs-right-sidebar-which-layout-works-best/

<comment><USER2> Actually, this isn't very conclusive. All it says is that _his_ website's layout doesn't matter left or right weighted.

Jakob Nielsen tested more than one website and came to a very different conclusion: Left weighted sites are preferable.

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/horizontal-attention.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, 100% agree. That is why I wrote in the post:

>(Though it may differ for you – you should A/B test it, it is really quite simple).

A/B testing results (even Jakob's) should never be implemented without testing on your own site. Though A/B testing case studies give ideas and set a good benchmark using which you can compare your own results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it mostly depends on the type of site...if you are making a blog then on LHS or on the Top (not sure why but i think R.H.S doesnot look good in this way) but If you are showing videos or pictures then right side navigation works very well i think....suppose you show a video and then you can show some related videos on the r.h.s...if the user who is seeing hte video on the lhs of the screen keeps the mouse cursor on the r.h.s (mostly he migth keep there since the menu is there)....then if you show related videos there the tendency to click on that side is more... this is what youtube does..

</comment><comment><USER4> Really depends on whether the sidebar is navigation or not. If it's extra stuff like RSS feeds and graphs (as in his example) then right is better. On the other hand, I much prefer navigation sidebars on the left side.

Why? I don't know, it just feels more comfortable that way.

</comment><comment><USER5> I conducted a totally unscientific poll on Twitter a few days ago. About 20 people responded with two-thirds _preferring_ content left, sidebar right.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, I'm supposed to take design advice from a site that gives me horizontal scrollbars at <1440px window width?

<comment><USER5> Really? I don't get any horizontal scrollbars till < 997px browser width, which isn't an unreasonable level nowadays.

<http://skitch.com/petercooper/dyeh8/x>

<comment><USER6> Looks like your font-size is much smaller than mine.

This is chrome with everything on default (I did _not_ increase it), on a 1920x1600 screen.

Seems the design advice site needs some help with CSS.

<comment><USER5> I just tried and Chrome and it's almost identical to Safari. Don't know what OS you're on but this is on OS X (if you couldn't tell :-)) with everything totally default too (I almost never use Chrome so it's just how it came).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a custom-fit face mask adapter? - <AUTHOR> http://maskadapter.com <comment><USER2> I did my graduate work in a tuberculosis lab where disposable n95 respirators were part of our standard PPE, so I have a few opinions on this.

> virtually every person who was on the plane with a facemask on was wearing > it improperly.

Yes, and it drives me crazy. The disposable masks today are excellent and learning how to fit them properly isn't hard.

1\. Shave. Sorry if you love your beard.

2\. Put the straps over your head and the mask loosely in place. The top strap goes at the top back of your head just below the occipital protuberance, not over your hears. The bottom strap goes at the base of your skull.

3\. Starting from the bridge of your nose, gently mold the metal strip to match your face. It should not dig in, but when you exhale, no air should come out from the top of the mask (your glasses shouldn't fog, if you wear them).

4\. Stretch the bottom of the mask down over your chin with your mouth closed.

Now inhale deeply. You should feel the mask's shape crumple slightly from the negative pressure inside. If it does not, you have air leaking in from the sides. When you exhale, the mask pushes away from your face and the positive pressure of breathing out prevents contaminants from entering.

To test your fit, get a bottle of vanilla extract from the kitchen. When you hold the open bottle up to your face with a properly sealed mask, you shouldn't be able to smell it or barely be able to smell it at all. If you can, your mask isn't fit right. If you were being properly fitted there are much better tests, but this is a quick way to check.

If you have a long chin or other unusual shaped face, you may have to try a few models of mask. I generally stick with 3M's masks.

While wearing it, you can't open your mouth wide or work your jaw laterally much. You can't scrunch your nose very much. People have to get used to having the thing on their face. I don't think 3D printing rubber will change that.

That being out of the way, part of the point is that they are disposable. For smoke, it doesn't matter. Just wash it. For biocontamination, being able to autoclave and dispose of the thing is...kind of important.

So, no, I wouldn't buy one.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thinking about pushing this further, but would love some feedback.

After the fires/smoke in the Bay Area for the last few years and now seeing thousands of folks wearing their masks improperly during the Coronavirus pandemic, I'm finally feeling like this is something that could actually come to market and provide significant benefit to many people.

Give me the hard truth, please :)

<comment><USER3> keeping a fit in a face cup requires discipline. a hood or cowl is a better option for those challenged in that way such as children.

depending on the overall physical condition or task the use of an active device may be required.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_air- purifying_respirat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_air- purifying_respirator)</comment></comment>


Facebook big contributor to committees in Congress that will question Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/04/facebook-gave-most-contributions-house-committee-question-zuckerberg-also-got-most-contributions-fac/486313002/ <comment><USER2> I was waiting for something like this to come out. I remember I was thinking how it was so strange that Facebook seemed to be making a big deal out of this House hearing, which seemed to come out of nowhere, even though it was the Senate committee that asked for a hearing first.

Also the Senate hearing was initially supposed to happen on April 12 I believe, but they pushed it to April 10, and the House one is on April 11.

It wouldn't be the first hearing to me set-up where basically instead of actually taking the guests to task, as a committee doing an investigation should, they just basically pat them guests on the back for doing such an awesome job. That's how the Diande Feinstein surveillance hearings end-up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I never understood why contributions by employees that happen to work at a certain company are treated as such a "gotcha" moment by the media. Facebook has 25000 employees. Presumably some fraction of those will choose to donate to politicians they support, largely liberal ones given the political leanings of Facebook's workforce -- over thousands of employees this adds up to a significant amount of money. Does anyone think that these scattershot individual contributions meaningfully influence any national politician in favor of Facebook?

The PAC donations are of course a different story, but honestly the incentives here just puzzle me. The limits on PAC contributions to candidates ($5000) just seem so piddling to a company like Facebook that I don't understand where the ROI comes from, especially after factoring in the negative PR. I doubt a $5000 campaign donation will meaningfully influence my local school board official, let alone a Representative or Senator. The only explanation that makes any sense is that the broad PAC donations are just an expectation for companies before their lobbyists' calls get returned -- an entrance ticket to the Beltway circles. Obviously this is problematic, but in this case Facebook isn't "buying" politicians -- at best it's paying them to be restored to neutral.

</comment><comment><USER4> And this, my liberal friends, is what's "destroying our democracy". Not some mythical "collusion" of which we have zero evidence after a full year of investigation.

<comment><USER5> Is there some other collusion story making the rounds? You're too vague.

<comment><USER4> As far as I know there's only one. The only concrete finding so far is that the guy whom Trump fired for lying also evaded taxes. Woop-de-freaking-do. He sure is in trouble now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> lets say that FB has to "buy" 600 influential people in USA, Congressmen, Senators, Governors, AG etc.

600*$5,000 = $3 million a year. And $3 million is what to FB?</comment>


The Quest to Make a True Blue M&M - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/blue-food-coloring-mars-company.html <comment><USER2> "Scientists estimate that more than half the human brain is involved in processing what we see. Only about 1 percent or so is dedicated to taste. [...] If researchers want you to really taste something, feel its texture against your tongue and smell its subtle notes, they will make you eat it in the dark or under lights that mask colors. Humans are color-seeking animals, and food companies learned to manipulate that trait early."

This is why Heinz's attempts at green ketchup years ago failed to impress. My kids thought it was an awesome idea. And we all agreed it tasted exactly how ketchup should. But that bright green on your food where you expected a rich red ... it was unsettling.

</comment><comment><USER3> In a related but tangential story about the difficulty of getting a blue color, the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to "Ivette Bassa, constructor of colourful colloids, for her role in the crowning achievement of 20th century chemistry, the synthesis of bright blue Jell-O."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#1992)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised this is difficult, since Nestle Smarties have used natural colours in Europe since about 2005, and a blue one based on Spirulina was introduced in 2008.

Is there much difference between Smarties and M&Ms? They're both chocolate covered with a sugar shell.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/11/fooddrinks](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/11/fooddrinks)

Pictures: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarties)

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't be surprised if creating a deep blue shade is far more difficult than a light blue like the Smarties color.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The research part is interesting, but the idea that natural colorants are magically safer than artificial colorants is stupid. There are many natural substances that have colors and are poisonous.

I can agree that the natural red colorant from beet is safe because it's very common to eat a lot of beet without problems. But a weird blue colorant from a bacteria that lives in Yellowstone deserve the same level of test that an artificial colorant, being natural doesn't make it magically safer.

<comment><USER7> It seems to me that there is a higher risk that a large complex molecule synthesised by a microbe is biologically active, and that the risk for contamination is higher.

Anyway, I could probably live a full life without blue smarties actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm reminded of brown M&Ms. There's a surprisingly rich M&M literature [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7754334)

</comment><comment><USER9> > "Unfortunately, you can't just grind up a peacock feather," said Robbins, a > petite woman with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and the empathic, wide-set > blue eyes of a small-town bartender, with what sounded like genuine regret.

Sigh...

<comment><USER10> The author is a woman. We've had this discussion before.

With all the talk about machine learning here on HN, I'm surprised nobody has come up yet with an ML-powered (opt-in) filter to hide these comments away. 'Tis truly the scourge of the Internet these days.

<comment><USER7> The author is a bad writer.</comment></comment></comment>


Norway's Premier Vows to Keep an Open Society - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/world/europe/28norway.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> Interesting bit that I worked out the other day that might be non-obvious for those not familiar with the demographics of Norway:

The 76 people that were killed in the attacks is a larger percentage of the country than the 4000 killed in the US on September 11th. So, despite the absolute numbers being far smaller, presumably the psychological impact is of a similar magnitude.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2876+%2F+%28population...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2876+%2F+%28population+of+Norway%29%29%2C+%284000+%2F+%28population+of+usa%29%29)

<comment><USER3> It's hard to compare the events and the psychological impact, but keep in mind that most of the victims are children, came from all over the country and knew the PM and rest of the parliament, especially the Labour party.

As far as I know, September 11 was an attack that killed people who worked in office and affected people who lived in or near New York the most, and did not hurt Bush administration like the Oslo-attack did.

I would suspect that may make it worse to bear for the Norwegian people, but as stated, it's hard to compare.

<comment><USER4> The September 11 attacks also struck the Pentagon in Washington, DC, which would have the same effect on members of the American administration.

<comment><USER5> Did anyone die in those attacks? Didn't the plane hit a segment of the Pentagon which was under construction and unoccupied?

<comment><USER4> Yes, 125 people died at the Pentagon: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#Casualties>

<comment><USER5> Ah I see, that area of the Pentagon was under renovation but not entirely unoccupied at the time of the attacks. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon#September_11_attac...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon#September_11_attacks)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Give the man a prize. I wish there were a Nobel Prize for Common Sense. Very glad to see that Norway is not following the general (and useless) trend of "more surveillance and fewer civil liberties" after things go boom.

<comment><USER7> It's actually _not_ common sense, and that's what is special about it. The common-sense reaction to terrorism is to be terrorized by it, and to behave accordingly. It is human nature. We are emotional creatures, and we revert to "fight or flight" instincts when violated.

It takes serious resolve and uncommon grace to rise above the gut reaction, keep calm, and remain focused on what really matters.

<comment><USER8> > The common-sense reaction to terrorism is to be terrorized by it

I think it's a learned reaction. Car accidents pose a greater threat than any terrorists, we're not terrified of cars are we? The threat has been played up by our fear mongering media, an extension of our military.

<comment><USER9> Depends on your definition of terrorism. Here's mine: an act of terrorism is an attack designed to elicit a reaction massively disproportionate to the damage directly caused, typically perpetrated by a non-state actor. This is why terrorists target planes, because plane crashes generate tremendous news coverage.

By contrast, if a person found an unnoticeable way to sabotage all cars in a city, making them slightly more likely to crash, and didn't seek credit, this would not be terrorism even if the act killed very many people.

You might say that our tolerance for the danger of driving is logically inconsistent with our expectations of perfect air travel safety. Is that irrationality a learned or innate one? Probably a mix, but certainly at least partially innate, similar to the human tendencies to value immediate rewards much higher than future rewards, or the loss aversion bias.

<comment><USER8> > Here's mine: an act of terrorism is an attack designed to elicit a reaction > massively disproportionate to the damage directly caused

I see where you're coming from, but I feel it's too subjective. The massively disproportionate action is not under the control of the terrorizer, but rather the publicist. The media really controls who we consider to be "terrorists", rather than any empirical metric.

If we have counter-terrorist groups who just go after terrorists, shouldn't we define who terrorists are? We start using words like "cyber-terrorists", and now we're all included. I just find no value in the semantic classification of boogie men except for expansion of our police state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd also like to point out that on Monday, an estimated 200,000 people turned out in Oslo for what was originally planned to be a "rose parade". The parade portion was canceled at the request of the police due to the huge number of people who turned out. --200,000 is more than 1/3 of the population in Oslo. Other cities also saw huge turnouts.

I am very amazed, but in many ways not surprised, at just how different the reaction has been in Norway as compared to 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the UK.

You can read more about it here: [http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/07/26/extraordinary-show- of...](http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/07/26/extraordinary-show-of- solidarity/)

I've been taking pictures over the last week, including at Monday's events: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/tallanvor/sets/7215762713080899...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tallanvor/sets/72157627130808995/)

<comment><USER11> > I am very amazed, but in many ways not surprised, at just how different the > reaction has been in Norway as compared to 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the UK.

I'm sorry, what? Given the context of your statement, this sounds awfully like a criticism. I remember quite a heart warming show of solidarity in the US after 9/11 and indeed an amazing show of solidarity with the US by the whole world after 9/11. I remember being immensely touched. It's irritating to have people using Norway's tragedy to take pot shots at the US. I don't want to get into a debate about whether there's good reason for the US and Norway to respond differently to their respective attacks--now is not the time--but it's hard to avoid when confronted with repeated digs.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I'll be quite clear: I'm criticizing the way the US reacted to 9/11. And although I don't think it should matter, I'm an American citizen, and didn't move overseas until 2006.

So yes, having been in both the US and Norway during their respective disasters, I have absolutely no problem in stating that, so far at least, Norway has handled this act of terrorism - on all levels - political and otherwise - much better, and with much more solidarity, than the US did after 9/11.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's the original: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/world/europe/28norway.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/world/europe/28norway.html?_r=2) \- Boing Boing requotes the third paragraph.

<comment><USER13> I was just about to post that myself. Good call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A more apt comparison would be to the U.S. reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing.

<comment><USER15> I came to say exactly the same thing. The U.S. reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing was pretty muted, and I'm not surprised at the Norwegian reaction.

People are acting all impressed with the PM for saying this, but this was the work of one crazy man, not an organization dedicated to destroying you. No one would let one crazy person influence your county, so I'm not surprised at the PM's reaction.

When you face an enemy group dedicated to destroying you things are far different - it makes you worried there will be more.

No one thinks one crazy person who was caught will do anything else.

<comment><USER16> This.

After 9/11 there were enormous structural issues with the world order that made it easier for terrorist groups to proliferate. That's why the Treasury Secretary was in all the initial planning meetings- there were two prongs to our response, one financial, one military.

The military one was an unmitigated clusterfuck.

The financial one was a rousing success. We forced the world to tighten financial controls, largely ended anonymous banking, seized huge quantities of terrorist funds, and made it really, really hard for the people trying to kill us to get money and to move money around.

There was a financial War on Terror, and we won it. Just because the military side went so badly doesn't meant there wasn't a real threat.

<comment><USER17> I'm very interested in more info on the financial War on Terror - is there are good articles or books you can recommend?

<comment><USER16> Bob Woodward's are actually very good- he wrote a whole set on the Bush Presidency, from 9/11 through the Surge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now if only that freedom was as important online as offline. [http://theforeigner.no/pages/news/updated-parliament- passes-...](http://theforeigner.no/pages/news/updated-parliament-passes-data- retention-directive/)

</comment><comment><USER19> That's how it's done, US.

<comment><USER20> They (Norway) probably learned from their (the U.S.) mistakes.

<comment><USER21> Your implication that Norway learnt how to treat its civilians decently _only when the United States did the opposite_ is offensive and conceitful.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that's what he's implying.

I think he's saying that any Norwegian politician who would want to burden their population with laws styled after the TSA and US Patriot Act would have a hard time because the US is a stunning example of how _these laws do not work_.

So absent strong emotional argument, logically Norway should try to find different solutions.

<comment><USER20> Yes. This is what I meant. Thanks. Sorry if it sounded offensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a nice sentiment, but it's the same sentiment expressed any number of times after terrorist attacks in the US, UK, and Spain over the last decade. The point isn't to just say "we aren't going to let you take away our tolerant way of life," the point is to actually not let enhanced security measures do that.

<comment><USER23> I hope Norway can live up the that promise. We sure didn't back home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I bet that this is just lip service, and that the on-the-ground reality will be that, paradoxically, Muslims in Norway will be under more pressure to prove that they are not terrorists. This is how psychological sublimation works : as long as the Norwegians stick to Christianity (and blue eye + blonde hair) as part of their identity, they will be unable to accept that an avowed Christian did what the "other religion" was supposed to be hated for, and the psychological dissonance has to be released elsewhere. This is what religion does to you.

<comment><USER25> Norway is a very secular society. While majority of people do belong to the state church, they do not practice religion regurlarly. In 2005 poll only 32% said that they believe in existence of God.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> yes, if he decided to increase measures, the life of blonde blue eyes majority would be harder

</comment><comment><USER27> Go ahead and upvote this mindless propaganda. But I really expected more from you.

[http://www.infowars.com/oslo-police-conducted-bombing- exerci...](http://www.infowars.com/oslo-police-conducted-bombing-exercise- days-before-terrorist-blast/)

<comment><USER28> Why is it mindless propaganda? And is that article's point (and I assume your point) that 9/11, the london bombings and the Oslo bombings were conducted by government agencies?

<comment><USER27> In the wake of the bombing and shooting spree in Norway last week, some nations in Europe are now calling for increased Internet surveillance as a possible preventive measure.

Its mindless propaganda because they've already declared they are going to increase surveillance, both Internet monitoring and physical cameras.

<comment><USER29> Some parts of what you are saying is partially true, but first of all, it's yet to be implemented, and like in other European countries, it has been blocked by high court, or similar.

But - linking to absolute bullshit sources that feed upon this idea that everything bad that happens in this world is a covert government operation will get you down voted, you clearly have a delusional viewpoint on the world.

I had a similar argument with some other. And I ended up concluding that they didn't agree with the official statement because it was too boring. They think they are not heard because they are being silenced, but it's actually just because everyone thing they are lunatics.

 _focuses his white gamma rays on everyone, so they agree with him_</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Now That's What I Call Music" goes social (and digital) - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/10/now-thats-what-i-call-music-goes-digital

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the future of music really a cross between a Tupperware party and a pyramid scheme (with a Facebook & Twitter integration)?

Being I never understood "Now That's What I Call Music" in the first place I feel I am unqualified to call it. I really hope that it isn't the future for music, though.</comment>


Ask HN: Maximizing sick benefits in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR>

As a sedentary Silicon Valley guy with 25 years sitting in the damn chair and writing the damn software you're using right now I find myself facing having to take time to deal with newly diagnosed colon cancer. But I'm really not bitter, I'm just not sure how to proceed with maximizing the time that I've got on the corporate books.
This is a huge company with great benefits.  I've got 228h vacation time (!!! Haven't taken any in some time and it's about to pin anyway !!!) and according to my time off page, 625 hours of sick time accrued.
The corporate hr page says that medical leave of absense may incorporate those times, but my question for my hacker brethren is how I can best approach hr and management to take best advantage of the corporate benefits.
I know that every company is different, but any advice is greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Worth just reviewing:

[http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/](http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/)

Item #4: a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job;

It's also worth consulting with a lawyer to make sure you know what your rights are. The above rules have some tricky applications.</comment>


The Non-Technical Guide to Web Technologies [ebook] - <AUTHOR> http://www.discoverbits.com/ebooks/non-technical-guide-to-web-technologies/

<comment><USER2> This is something that the "old" HNers would've eaten up, not because they needed it but because their non-technical employees need it. Mary, the office admin, needs to have a basic understanding of this stuff. I wish there was a better preview version - seems like it would fit that market but I can't really tell enough w/ their crappy Slideshare version.

<comment><USER3> thanks for the feedback. Are you saying the preview isn't long enough or that the viewing format is poor on slideshare?

<comment><USER4> I think you should add in a later chapter to the preview. For example, the chapter on Redis or Memcache. Basically, I want to know how in depth you explain each topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea. I suggest changing the title. 'Non-technical' people don't think that they're not non-technical since they can open a spreedsheet, gmail and use dropbox. I'd actually recommend making the book broader - not just for non-technical staff - but for any stakeholder.

</comment><comment><USER3> thanks for the support! It's currently number 7 on Amazon's best seller in "computers & technology", right below the bio of steve jobs and steven levy's google book. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/886498/ref=pd_zg_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/886498/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_2_4_last)

</comment><comment><USER6> I want the PDF. Why do you need my CC? A PayPal option and I would have bought it already.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, i should have included paypal as an option from the beginning. I just added a link to it.</comment></comment>


Vectrex - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex <comment><USER2> "In the mid-1990s, Jay Smith generously placed the entire Vectrex product line into the public domain, opening up legal, not-for-profit distribution." [0]

This means that you can legally play Vectrex games in an emulator like MAME or Retroarch (with the 'vecx' core). "A complete, curated, hand-tested romset for the Vectrex dedicated console" is available on archive.org at a whopping 184KB download. [1]

[0] [https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131526/a_history_of_g...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131526/a_history_of_gaming_platforms_the_.php?page=3)

[1] [https://archive.org/details/VectrexCollection](https://archive.org/details/VectrexCollection)

</comment><comment><USER3> Vector displays are one of my favorite things! If you ever get a chance to play with one, I highly recommend it. Playing with a friend's Tektronix terminal was stunning for me.

The Vectrex was an amazing little console, and it's a shame it didn't take off.

There's an alternative world in which computing never got overtaken with the urge to put photorealistic pictures on every surface, and that world is so much neater than the one we're living in.

<comment><USER2> I used to own a Space Duel cocktail cabinet, a vector game that deserved to be much better known. Think of a color version of Asteroids with 3D spinning objects and other cool enemies. It has a two player co-op mode where each player's ship was chained together, so one person hitting thrust would propel the other as well. The game's difficulty level was spot on, and it made for some of the most intense gaming experiences I've ever had. Good times.

[https://youtu.be/CwY5znUeaJ4?t=60](https://youtu.be/CwY5znUeaJ4?t=60)

<comment><USER4> I remember playing that game at the arcade as a kid. It was a lot of fun. If I recall correctly, some versions (or levels?) had pretty intense gravity effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you feel like developing for the Vectrex there is a full set of tools and information developed by Malban.

[http://vide.malban.de/what-is-vide](http://vide.malban.de/what-is-vide)

</comment><comment><USER6> A decade ago I got to try a Vectrex at Penny Aracde Expo in Seattle. I was enamoured with it for those few short moments, as it had a unique look and aspect ratio. I'd love to play one again.

</comment><comment><USER7> I had the opportunity of playing with a Vectrex , a month ago on the Gameon exposition. Really interesting machine. and very unique graphics.</comment>


Easier atomic commits in Git - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hashrocket.com/posts/easier-atomic-commits

<comment><USER2> Gary Bernhardt's Destroy All Software screencast series includes some good points on why keeping commits atomic is a good idea, and Wikipedia has a good general description of this SCM "convention": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_commit#Atomic_Commit_Con...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_commit#Atomic_Commit_Convention)</comment>