America is losing the battle against robocalls - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/05/23/america-is-losing-the-battle-against-robocalls <comment><USER3> We need people to post a bond to make a call. Maybe $1. You can't call without posting the bond. If, within 10 minutes of the end of the call, I send a text to my phone company that I didn't like the call, the bond goes to charity. You could even set something like this up as a smart contract on ethereum.

<comment><USER4> Similar ideas were once floated to stop email spam problems.

But it's untenable.

First, think of the impact it would have on lower-income people.

Second, think of how people might "game" the system. Anytime anyone is unhappy with a caller for any reason, they can falsely report the caller for spam.

Third, think of what position this puts phone companies in. They then have to be the arbiter of whether every reported call is actually spam. They'd probably have to set up an appeals process. It would be a nightmare, logistically.

Fourth, who would get to decide which charity the bond goes to? That decision alone is a hornet's nest.

<comment><USER5> I've always wished for this in every communication medium.

Charging someone for calling you would also block them permanently, so almost no one is going to do this to their friends just to mess with them. There should be no appeal: if someone wants to charge every caller, that's totally fine. People will stop calling them pretty fast. Likewise I would let the callee choose the charity, or even keep the money. All that matters is that if you are calling someone who wants your calls you won't be charged, and if you aren't, you should be. If you aren't sure, you pay your money and take your chances that you are in fact imposing on someone else.

I can't see how this would hurt anyone of any socio economic level other than spammers. If you are calling someone who doesn't want your calls, you are a spammer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the solution that works for me:

Numbers that aren't already in my contacts list or outgoing calls list get sent straight to voicemail. I use Google Voice, so when people leave legit messages, I get a transcription and don't have to waste time listening to the messages themselves.

I get about 10-12 spam calls a day but this system works well.

<comment><USER6> Is this a feature built into Android? I also have a Google Voice number, but can't send calls that come to my cell phone number straight to voicemail (iOS).

<comment><USER7> Both iOS and Android have a "do not disturb" mode where, when enabled, only phone numbers in your contact book will ring your phone. I just leave it on all the time.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204321](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT204321)

[https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/6111295](https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/6111295) (see "Option 3: Priority notifications only", and pick Contacts Only.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'Lenny' shattered the previous record of 8:37 in our office today. Had a spammer on the phone for 13:47 trying to send him one of four white papers. As you can imagine, he was very indecisive.

<comment><USER9> gah, if only I had enough spare time to troll spammers for a quarter of an hour

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure they're referring to Lenny the telemarketer bot. [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lenny+telemarke...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lenny+telemarketer+bot)

<comment><USER11> This is amazing hahahahaha. I love it.

Although I still feel bad for the telemarketer operator. I don't think anyone chooses that kind of job. I'd rather just not answer the phone.

<comment><USER12> Their job is actively harmful, because they exist to prey on the class of people that can't see through their bullshit. I agree that they are the low- level operators (and therefore perhaps not worth the effort to punish), but I do think it is high time we start viewing predatory sales as exactly what it is: predatory.

<comment><USER11> I am simply saying that many of the people that work as telemarketers are in that job because it was the only job available.

Would you take that job? No. Would I? No. But if it were the only job available, you bet your ass I will take it and put up with the humiliation of 90% of angry callers to support my family.

Yes, I agree that it's a scummy tactic, but I still make a distinction between their customer (the company paying them to do the job) and the actual operator.

<comment><USER13> > ... I still make a distinction between their customer (the company paying > them to do the job) and the actual operator.

Nope. Lying to someone because 'my superior told me to' is still lying.

> Yes, I agree that it's a scummy tactic

So, how low are you willing to go on the "scummy tactic" scale?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A simple solution for me would be if my phone allowed me to send all calls that are not in my contacts list to voicemail directly, without ringing the phone at all. Seems like very easy functionality to implement, and yet it's just not possible at all (at least not on iOS).

<comment><USER14> This is doable on iOS.

Settings > Do Not Disturb with the following settings:

\- Do Not Disturb: On

\- Scheduled: Off

\- Silence: Always

\- Allow Calls From: All Contacts

You'd lose the ability to use Do Not Disturb to silence your phone, say, overnight, but this would do what you're describing.

Personally, I've opted in to T-Mobile's spam block feature. I don't get any robocalls.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but this also silences your notifications...

<comment><USER14> True. This can by bypassed one contact at a time by editing the contact's text tone. The text tone edit screen has an "Emergency Contact" switch that overrides DND for that contact. AFAIK there's no way to turn on app notifications.

This setup definitely isn't ideal. Just want to share the approach for people who find the tradeoffs acceptable.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, I tried your exact configuration (but added "Repeat Calls: No") and it's been really useful. I think it's actually worth the trade-off for me. Thanks for sharing! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's something I clearly don't understand that hopefully someone can explain: If some customer of a phone company is making tens of thousands of ID-altered calls every day, shouldn't that be glaringly obvious to said phone company that the customer is abusing their system?

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately once you're on the network there isn't much security to prevent spoofing. It's pretty easy to get access as well. I had a personal VoIP gateway and was able to just set the caller ID to whatever I wanted.

It's so bad that you can get into someone else's voicemail just by calling a number and spoofing the caller id to be that same number. No security whatsoever. It's pathetic.

I think the old telephone network is beyond saving and we just need to abandon it and move to VoIP services that provide better controls.

<comment><USER17> Everything already is VOIP. You haven't been able to use a modem on a phone line in fifteen years. The problem is these behemoth telecommunication companies. There's no reason at all for the phone system not to be exactly like using any sane video messenger software of the last twenty years, _except for_ those big ass phone companies that will do anything to keep from becoming "dumb pipes" of this kind of telephony.

<comment><USER18> > You haven't been able to use a modem on a phone line in fifteen years.

I was using a dialup modem in 2013. There are also a bunch of dialup ISPs that still exist today and provide service over phone lines to people with dialup modems. Maybe what you say is true in some areas but it certainly is false as a blanket statement.

<comment><USER19> I believe you can use a modem over G711... I know for sure you can send faxes over it (I've done it) despite it being VoIP.

<comment><USER17> Yes, faxing is done with T.38, and faxing is actually more reliable than using a modem. I spent some years running a fax system over VOIP and trying to get it to work. It's doable (as in some _special cases_ of using a modem over VOIP lines) but it's absolutely not doable in _most_ other contexts on VOIP for various reasons including signal compression and packet loss, and the parent is dreaming if they think they can hook their 14.4 modem up and dump that signal onto a "telephone" line to (for example) a BBS in another timezone and have it work. The key here is non-local, not the copper lines the parent commenter is still using to dial up a local ISP. This is obviously a _special case_ of the telephone company local to their area maintaining the copper lines for whatever purposes, keeping the copper from their house to a local ISP gateway. But Comcast and Verizon have been actively ripping copper lines out wherever they buy up local phone companies that still have them. I have asked the phone companies for an actual copper landline in every major city I've lived in over the last ten years and couldn't get one, specifically trying to make my life easier running this system I mentioned earlier. The special edge case exception is actually having a copper line to your local ISP. It's definitely not the rule. Don't believe me? Take a few minutes to call up the phone companies in cities around the country and ask for a copper phone line. Almost all of them won't have copper. And I'm telling you from years of experience that using a modem across a non-copper VOIP line is flaky in exceptionally good circumstances and impossible in most cases.

<comment><USER19> In my case I was faxing over plain G711 through a SIP to analog phone jack converter. Not saying it's a good idea or reliable, but it worked in my case.

So the parent post could've very well thought he had used his modem on a real copper line while in fact it was VoIP, just the compression was light enough that it still worked fine like in my case.

<comment><USER18> No clue if I had a copper line. I didn't mean to dispute that it was or wasn't VOIP or copper, my point was only that I was using a dialup modem five years ago, in direct contradiction to the statement that they haven't worked for 15 years. This was in Chambersburg, PA through Centurylink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This will be the death of general telephony.

There's no highly-evident replacement, but I suspect that what does supplant it 1. will emerge from a socioeconomic elite (as telephony, email, and mobile did, or letter-writing in an earlier era), 2. will have _very_ cheap unwanted- contact rejection, from a cognitive-load standpoint (by the time my phone's rung or a voicemail's been left, it's too late), and 3. will probably intrinsically include multimedia -- text, likely image & video.

I'd like to see robust crypto in authentication, identity, integrity, and encryption of both data and metadata. Multople independeent peersistent, though at least partially repudiable, identities would be very nice-to-have. I have at best modest hopes.

Both elements may be undermined by an ease-of-use dynamic, though that's short-term gain for long-term cost.

In the near term, expect to see a proliferation of conflicting standards and systems.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was getting 1-5 three second voicemails a day. Robots being detected and sent to voicemail, then detecting and hanging up on my voicemail. I added 30 seconds of music to the end of my "please text or email me" message the voicemails have all stopped.

<comment><USER22> > I added 30 seconds of music to the end of my "please text or email me" > message the voicemails have all stopped.

Everybody has different musical tastes and particularly about what one shares via a VM message, and I'm curious about what you selected. If you don't mind sharing, what segment did you cherry-pick?

<comment><USER21> Instrumental portion of a Lindsey Stirling song.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Fine the telcos per call that gets through, and ramp the fine up in a predictable way, so that it becomes an existential threat after a few years.

This would immediately put an end to caller id spoofing.

<comment><USER16> It would be hard to fine them since they did nothing to encourage this behavior, nor do they have very much control in preventing it.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, but of all the actors in the system, they're the ones in a position to do something. It's like making banks responsible for fraudulent credit card purchases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> my smartphone already blocks some numbers (but I block every one of them), so... shared block lists? just like in adblocking software

<comment> ryan-c Block lists don't work when they can just spoof arbitrary numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> For me it started this year. Once every few days I get a spam call, sometimes in languages I don't understand (chinese, etc). It's always during business hours.

I'm pretty sure my phone is in some do not call database, but that doesn't seem to help much recently.

Our phones need a "this is spam" button, and that data needs to go to the telecom, and they need to do something with it.

<comment><USER27> But isn't the incoming number easy to spoof?

<comment><USER26> It is. But I'd imagine the telecom has lower level information about that connection.

<comment><USER28> You can sometimes enroll in spam detection from your cell phone provider. For some, but not all, calls T-Mobile will tag the call "Scam Likely". The call still goes through. It's not much at all really, because I already don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognize. Still it might be useful for some marks^H^H^H^H^H folks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I appreciate the US has 10x the population, but Australia's Do Not Call Register ([https://www.donotcall.gov.au](https://www.donotcall.gov.au)) has been fairly effective at reducing these calls (with a domestic origin at least).

It works as a central government register with a threat and imposition of large penalties for companies who disregard it.

<comment><USER30> It's international scammers that are the problem, not internal corporations. An internal registry hurts more than it helps because it provides a list of callable numbers, and chasing down scammers is way, way, way too expensive to enforce by any practical measure. Australia doesn't have this problem for the same reason OSX didn't have viruses in the early naughts. Not a big enough target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The powers that be are not properly incentivized to battle against robocalls and in many cases are simply looking the other way.

</comment><comment><USER32> Letting anybody in the world call you any time without any restrictions is absurd.

It should be possible to enforce a mode that requires the caller to send you a request for permission to call first (like contact request in Skype). And unless you explicitly granted such permission all calls from that number should be automatically rejected.

<comment><USER33> You're talking about a system that's over 100 years old and has been in the hands of monopoly companies for most of that time. Ajit Pai has said (surprisingly astutely) that you can solve this problem by requiring some kind of authentication for calls. Even getting that in place seems like an impossible task (though for some reason he doesn't see how someone in his position could force that to happen). What your talking about is more difficult than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Even ignoring unknown numbers got too distracting. My phone never comes out of Do not Disturb mode unless I'm expecting an important call.

I don't know why we have such crappy cell phone audio quality and such an outdated convention. Why not have an opt-in protocol similar to a friend request on social networks before you can call someone?

<comment><USER34> That's exactly it though: PTSN will be dead soon. You barely need it except to talk to the older generation.

<comment><USER33> Right. Oh, and businesses use it too. Just as soon as we get rid of those, everything will be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I try to sell them a compiler.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if I sent out 3.4 billion robo-emails how quickly the law would come knocking on my door.

From what I've read, the issue lies in the amount of money telco is making from all these calls and, if their income would drop to zero from them, robocalls would stop immediately.

</comment><comment><USER37> America has never been a position to be 'winning' the battle against robocalls. I'm in California and currently typically get well over 10 calls a day, many with Chinese language voicemail messages. Hard to see how there is any way to stop this...

<comment><USER38> The laws changed a while ago, I hadn't gotten a single spam call in 10+ years of cell phone ownership.

In the last 6 months, it's gotten apocalyptic. Mostly from calls from from the first 6 digits of my current phone number, and most of them calling to extend my car warranty.

8-15 calls each day.

I've tried ignoring them, I've answered them, I've spoken to the calling humans (English speakers, the minute you ask for a manager or to be removed, they hang-up... often, the next call comes within 10 minutes, same people, robodialing engaged).

I called AT&T to see what options I had to minimize teh pain. Can I turn off calling entirely? No. Can I have ringing go straight through to voicemail? No, but I can make it happen after 5 seconds.

I've installed robonomo, AT&T's anti-spam calling app, Hiya, TrueCaller, etc.

They don't work well enough.

I'm on an iPhone 7. I like the 8, but not enough to upgrade. I don't like FaceID, and I don't like the notch, and I have an iPad Pro, and so I leave my iPhone on silent all the time, automatically deny any incoming calls that I notice, and have a voicemail greeting that says I don't check voicemail nor accept calls on this line.

It's that bad and annoying. I do have a Google Voice number that I give out, and which gets almost no spam calls for now. I changed that setting to announce that it's a Google Voice number, so I take the occasional business call.

But if the new iPhones continue to be engineered around FaceID, and if FaceID isn't better (and work with sunglasses and goggles and helmets) and if the notch persists, when this contract is up, I'm pretty sure I'll nix the iPhone contract and live with Google Voice on my desktop, and the iPad for mobile texting/connecting.

<comment><USER39> You actually _can_ turn off cellular network calling altogether, if you are willing to do that.

Dial (star)#67# (or call 611 if it doesn't show up there) to see what number your voicemail center is. Then dial (star)21(star)1(that number)#. That will automatically forward all calls, at the network level, to your voicemail.

To cancel this, dial #21#.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for that, very cool. Giving it a shot.

Are these documented somewhere? The response screen is pretty clear on what's going on here, lots of interesting things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wait until

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bd1mEm2Fy08](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bd1mEm2Fy08) Google Duplex Demo from Google IO 2018 - <USER2>

Is launched.

<comment><USER41> How many business answer the phone by saying "How can I help you?", are they lying? Are they not even close to have a system like that?

<comment><USER40> Google shared they removed personal information from the calls like the names of the locations.

They already have the TTS aspect out in beta. It uses something called WaveNet.

Here this might help.

[https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw- audio...](https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-generative-model-raw-audio/)

and

"Introducing Cloud Text-to-Speech powered by DeepMind WaveNet technology"

[https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/03/introducing- Clo...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/03/introducing-Cloud-Text- to-Speech-powered-by-Deepmind-WaveNet-technology.html)

Testing will start on the rest later this summer.

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for- natur...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural- conversation.html)

On the link some more examples of calls. Pretty cool stuff. Really just shows how far ahead Google is in the AI space at every layer of the stack.

The TTS at scale required the TPUs. Doing 16k cycles through a DNN in real- time is a really intensive compute task but then to offer at a competitive price to using the old way needs custom silicon.

<comment><USER41> I missed [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17094231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17094231)

Ah I was not the only one finding it suspicious, Thank you for your links, pretty interesting research quite far away from a real product though.

This Weekend was the bay area makerfaire, where the Google stand was in front of the one of Nintendo, they were showing the exact same tech, but the Google one was really underwhelming, it was actually interesting to compare it.

I don't trust Google, ok let's wait for a product I guess.

<comment><USER40> The voice part is already in beta and on the Google Home.

[https://cloud.google.com/text-to- speech/docs/wavenet](https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/wavenet)

That is the part that freaked out people as you can not tell the difference between humans and computers any longer.

Google is using a DNN at 16k cycles a second in real-time. Suspect that was only possible to do at scale and at a reasonable cost with the TPUs.

They are competing with a much less compute intensive approach. But Wavenet gets a much better result.

The other aspects of Duplex will enter testing later this summer. So not long to wait.

"Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real-World Tasks Over the Phone"

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for- natur...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural- conversation.html)

This is the type of thing that contributed me buying the Google Home. Google is just so far ahead of everyone else in AI. Really every layer of the stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Isn't the problem the FCC regulation prohibits carriers from taking serious action like blocking robocallers?

How can this not be taken care of with gmail style spam rules?

<comment><USER43> The fcc literally had a competition to identify to robocalls.

It's not trivial - gmail identifies spam by bayesian filtering coupled with the amount of duplicate spam sent to numerous different addresses.

Identifying spam/robocalls requires being able to parse arbitrary spoken word. People keep thinking its a matter of blocking a number, but the reality is that the security of phone networks is laughably broken with respect to number and identity spoofing. It essentially renders the id useless for identifying spam

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Fortunately, it's still at a tolerable level on my cell. Though it does force me to use Do Not Disturb so I don't get awakened when traveling.

Landline is mostly a lost cause. I still keep one for various reasons but I mostly ignore it for inbound calls. If things get much worse I may just shut off all the ringers.

</comment><comment><USER45> Yeah it's getting worse too. I've had the same number for about 18 years and I definitely get about 5-12 calls per day. Usually weekdays and during work hours. Our business line is awful. Constant calls all day long. About 25% robocalls

</comment><comment><USER46> Should I answer Is a Bazooka in this battle.

[https://www.shouldianswer.com/](https://www.shouldianswer.com/)

</comment><comment><USER47> rather than complain I'm curious what a solution would be. It seems pretty clear we need to get rid of the current phone system to fix this.

</comment><comment><USER48> the solution is easy: end unlimited calling. make unlimited plans $10/mo cheaper but start charging 1 cent for every call. legitimate companies and regular people with normal usage will have no complaints but these charges will put robocallers out of business real quick

<comment><USER38> The robocallers aren't calling from cell phones.

<comment><USER48> doesnt have to be a cellphone. they are connecting to the rest of the telephone lines somehow and do have get account to do it. Im pretty sure technicality of implementation is not that hard. Its the enforcement of something like this that people desperately need is close to impossible with the dysfunctional shit show called the government we have.

<comment><USER38> oh, you're suggesting all calls are per-minute, including landlines and VOIP.

realistically, wouldn't that logic extend to all the internet, we should all pay for traffic, to and from servers?

i think "phones" are a dying tech, and proper legal constraints and controls on the tech we pay for would be easier.

i don't see why i can't pre-approve callers, or limit inbound calls to my Favorites/VIP list. Treating phones like "telephones" is one of the problems, treating phones like tech would make solutions easier to implement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


if (osName.startsWith("windows 9")) - <AUTHOR> https://searchcode.com/?q=if%28version%2Cstartswith%28%22windows+9%22%29 <comment><USER2> Now it makes sense why they are calling it Windows 10! To avoid OS String detection edge cases against "Windows 95/98"

<comment><USER3> Plus they had to catch up with OSX.

I imagine future versions will be Windows 10 II, Windows 10 III, Windows 10 IV, Windows 10 V, etc.

<comment><USER4> Windows 10 is supposedly going to be the "last major version" of Windows. [1]

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-christens-the-next-version- of...](http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-christens-the-next-version-of-windows- as-windows-10-7000034196/)

<comment><USER5> Also DirectX 11 was originally supposed to be the last major DirectX version with only some minor updates planned, since Microsoft saw no additional parts of the graphics pipeline that could additionally accelerated by hardware (Source: some AMD talk a few years ago).

A few months ago DirectX 12 was announced (and it's quite probable that AMD's Mantle was the reason for this roadmap change).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Readers of Raymon Chen's blog The Old New Thing may be familiar with exactly this sort of thing, which forced windows 95 to have the version number 3.95, instead of 4.0 [[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/02/13/72476...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/02/13/72476.aspx)].

Making the libraries cope with bad programming is not good practice, but it is what keeps businesses using your software for decades. The Old New Thing really should be standard reading, because this sort of thing is barely the tip of the iceberg.

Other similar API avoidances that Microsoft have found programmers using to check things include obscure undocumented registry keys, API implementation bugs (seriously!), the padding data in tangentially related structures returned by API calls, and more

<comment><USER7> Ugh. I would hate to have that job.

At some point you just have to let some idiot's poorly thought-out idea blow up in his face.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't blow up in _his_ face; he may not even be in business any more. He's the guy who wrote the driver for the crap scanner your customers use. The only person to blame when an update makes their scanner stop working is you, the company who shipped the update.

<comment><USER7> You're right in the sense that the only person _the customer_ will blame is oftentimes you, and there is some merit in that, and some merit in the idea that you should add dodgy hacks to your code to provide for some backward compatibility.

However, the more accommodating you are with this stuff, and the more you clutter up your code base, and the less easily-maintainable your stuff gets as a result, the less you are able to deliver later on. And while, contrary to your argument here, you actually stand a fair chance of the end user realizing it's the printer drivers that suck and not your OS, the cries of "Windows sucks now" are the fault of nobody but Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Broader search:

[https://searchcode.com/?q=startsWith%28%22windows+9%22%29](https://searchcode.com/?q=startsWith%28%22windows+9%22%29)

<comment><USER2> I have come to realize that 99.9% of these string comparisons examples are in Java. Does Sun/Oracle not trust developers to check `os.version` as well?

<comment><USER10> Because startsWith is a Java function, and most other Windows applications would be in C or C++, which has a few more variants is a bit harder to search for (especially with the lack of any public regex code search engines).

<comment><USER11> searchcode.com actually did have regex support for a while. Nobody used it. Probably down to how I implemented it more than anything else.

I am looking to add it back in sometime in the future once I roll out SPDX support and a few advanced filtering options (number of lines of code, multi languages etc...)

<comment><USER10> Back when it was searchco.de? I think I might have used it during that time... don't remember. Just know that it would make me extremely happy if you added it back, since I can't find such functionality anywhere on the Internet anymore.

<comment><USER11> That's the one.

The moment its live ill let you know via twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> same thing happened with Opera 10. you were notified that your browser is 'too old'

<comment><USER13> Yup.

I'm using Opera 12.16. The User Agent starts with Opera 9.80 (the last version before 10 was 9.6x). Apparently, too many sites would use a regex to parse the first digit after "Opera" and check if it was higher than 6 or 7. Opera was thus forced to identify itself inaccurately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are many ways that could have dealt with this problem that wouldn't have involved changing the name of the product as it appears in on the box. It's silly to think that this is the reason for skipping version 9. They did that for marketing reasons.

<comment><USER15> Such as?

App compat's out (ie. "Run this program in compatibility mode for"), too many libraries. They'd never get an accurate enough list of affected programs.

They can't change the reported OS name, too many apps display it; and it'd be crazy weird (a bug for all practical purposes) to have programs claim they're on "Windows 10" while the box says "Windows 9".

Probably can't change the format of the name either, ie. "Windows(tm) 9" or "Microsoft Windows 9" or whatever; I bet tons of apps just check for "Windows " as well.

It's an unfortunate choice, but I don't really see an alternative if they wanted a numeric version number.

<comment><USER16> How about "Windows Nine"?

<comment><USER15> Localization probably kills that, since this is displayed to users a not- insignificant amount of the time.

"9" is pretty well universal (I know, not strictly, but for software Arabic numerals are kind of assumed knowledge); "Nine" on the other hand isn't something you know without being able to read English.

(Having been through a pretty big localization project recently... this stuff sucks. So much. All your assumptions start breaking.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone explain this? Does this _really_ have anything to do with why they are calling it Windows 10? Is there really any known rationale for skipping?

<comment><USER18> Notice the "startsWith" function. It has nothing to do with "Windows 9" and everything to do with Windows 95 and 98

<comment><USER19> Yes, and "Windows 9" starts with "Windows 9". So the function will see that, "yep, the string's there" and throw it down the path of handling antique versions of windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, by this versioning logic, Microsoft would also have to skip Windows 70-89, and many versions after 99, since 10-69 and 90-99 would be used by that time. They'd also have to skip 95 and 98, of course.

Am I missing any other versions, or can we expect 11, 12, 13, etc (all the way until 69)?

<comment><USER21> The point is that checking of the OS name starts with "Windows 9" is a common thing that apps did.

Its not about Microsoft logic, its about breaking existing apps.

They are badly written, but the only person who will pay is the user, not the dev.

<comment><USER20> No, I get it. I was just extrapolating, since presumably devs are still checking if the name starts with "Windows 7", "Windows 8", etc. But maybe they're not. Either way, if it's the user's problem, it's Microsoft's problem.

<comment><USER22> People only checked for the 9 because 98 and 95 both start with 9 and it was easy to support both at the same time. Other versions can be more explicitly checked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Windows 10 makes more sense now!

</comment><comment><USER24> "Windows 9" would have started causing confusion by the time Microsoft released patch version "Windows 9.5"

</comment><comment><USER25> And that's just the open source stuff...

</comment><comment><USER26> Wouldn't it break even if the control goes to the else part?

I mean, how does the programmer know that Windows 9 will not break in the else part? (and only break when clubbed with Windows 95 or Windows 98)

</comment><comment><USER27> and this one to: [https://searchcode.com/?q=indexOf%28%22windows+9%22%29](https://searchcode.com/?q=indexOf%28%22windows+9%22%29)

</comment><comment><USER28> So MS fixed Windows 9x (remember y2k? :-) ) problem by renaming its new OS as Windows 10? Jokes apart, Imagine if they had to release a patch for that or for god sake, a new OS :-)

</comment><comment><USER29> Not unprecedented. They skipped Office 13.

</comment><comment><USER30> That is very scary...</comment>


Major rackspace datacenter is down (and sadly, so is xobni.com) - <AUTHOR>

45 minutes so far <comment><USER2> [http://valleywag.com/tech/breakdowns/truck-driver-in- texas-k...](http://valleywag.com/tech/breakdowns/truck-driver-in-texas-kills- all-the-websites-you-really-use-321881.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> Come on, give us a link or something.</comment>


Tony Fadell: What will Google's $3.2bn guru do next? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33551340 <comment><USER2> As a Glass developer and owner who spent $3k on devices for my wife and I, he sured turned us off to ever working on the line again. No more updates and corporate only purchases, basically killed every single consumer targeted app any developer was working on. Many others have had to move over to working on watches, like LynxFit, even if you can't really do anything new there.

They could have been the original PC of wearables, being the first consumer device thousands of developers first worked on. Instead they ditched everyone who paid the huge price tag just to go compete in industry where there are already a dozen different HMD companies, often already specialized for many fields like police, military, and fire fighting.

Glass was something new for consumers, it isn't even very good compared to older enterprise offerings. For enterprise work I'd much rather go with something more capable like an ORA that can do augmented reality by moving the display down, or Moverio or other entry.

<comment><USER3> Why did you buy 2 glasses for your household? I sympathize with your situation, but it seemed always clear to me since the beginning that this was a device that Google was putting on sale mostly as a PR statement ("hey look, we don't do just ads, we can do innovative hardware too!"), with no future beyond the 6 months hype cycle.

I'm curious to hear what you saw in it. Don't get me wrong, I also own early devices that turned out to be useless pieces of plastic (cough cough leap motion), but the price of Google Glass was just completely insane.</comment></comment>


Dig into Nearly 30 Years of Free Classic Science Fiction - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/dig-into-nearly-30-years-of-free-classic-science-fictio-1797738492 <comment><USER2> Direct link to the Archive.org collection of Galaxy Magazine: [https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine&tab=collection](https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine&tab=collection)

<comment><USER3> and brief HN discussion from about a week ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14994630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14994630)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great - thanks for the link.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 7 still searching for the ghost floppy - <AUTHOR> http://www.memfill.com/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu/windows-floppy-love/

<comment><USER2> You can assign A: to a removable drive if you do not have floppy disks [such as the DVD-RW]

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844>

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, well, the alphabet still starts with A, so ...</comment>


Ask HN: Should I create a file-and-metadata-oriented version control system? - <AUTHOR>

I'm tempted to create a file-and-metadata-oriented version control system, but I first wanted to see if any good ones already exist.  Are there any out there already?  Or should I create my own?  (These questions require a bit of context, so please read ahead and bear with me...)
There already exist many version control systems for managing source code.  I've used a couple myself (Subversion and Bazaar) for my programming projects.  However, I've also tried using them to keep non-code-related data and projects under version control.  Some examples of such data would be a directory full of images, or articles, or e-mail mailboxes (such as Thunderbird's), or a directory on a web hosting account.  I've wanted to track much of these files' metadata (timestamps, modes, owners, permissions, etc.) and be able to restore old files AND their metadata when desired.  I've tried using Subversion and Bazaar for this, but they don't seem to make it easy to record, version, and/or restore files' metadata (assuming that's even possible with these tools).  Furthermore, I'd like to keep directories I track clear of any revision control tools' own data (such as .svn or .bzr directories).  (There are other features I'd like such a system to have, but we can cover that later...)
To reiterate, my two questions are:
1) Does such a file-and-metadata-oriented version-control system already exist?
2) (Assuming that the answer to question 1 is "no" or "not a good one"...)  Is anyone else interested in such a system?  I'd love to create it anyway for my personal use, but I'd be even more motivated if it'd also be useful to others.  If so, I'd love to get in touch with potential users, as well as reading the experiences of others who have tried using a source-code-oriented VCS to track general files and directories (especially if they're not fully satisfied with the results).
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> You might be able to adapt one of the versioned-backup tools like rdiff-backup to your needs; they tend to focus on both being able to get a "clean" restore (no .svn/etc. scattered around the filesystem), and on storing metadata as well as data. They tend not to have as much in the way of history-navigation, though (commit messages, etc.), but to be more about keeping incremental snapshots and being able to restore from any point.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think before you start you should look at the newest version systems like git and Mercurial.

My brother is a 3D modeler/animator and I know that he doesn't use a versioning system, may be you can make a good one for this niche market, but you should talk first with your future users and find their needs.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you apply Agile principles to software with long lifecycle? - <AUTHOR>

I work for a company that produces software with long lifecycle - our customers are big companies that can not/dare not install updates overnight, instead they install update after extensive testing  every 6-12 months. How do I apply agile principles to the development if I can not bring something of a value to the customer every sprint? Is agile even suitable for long lifecycle software? <comment><USER2> The goal is to have a _potentially_ shippable product increment at the end of each sprint. You don't have to release it to production; but it should certainly be made available for review/feedback by stakeholders and either customers or a representative of the customer. There's no reason you can't use all agile principles (or, say, Scrum as-is) on long release cycles. You will have to break that pattern of months of development without testing and a final "stabilization" phase.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that makes sense.</comment></comment>


PostgreSQL 9.2 - Improvements to pg_stats - <AUTHOR> http://www.databasesoup.com/2012/09/postgresql-92-out-gate.html

<comment><USER2> I'm badly aching for this feature. Running log aggregation are such a pain when a statistical understanding of what is slow is as useful and extremely cheap (in terms of compute power) to gather. Adding some of the detailed information to that log would also be quite expensive (such as detailed timing of queries in a handful of dimensions), but are cheap to aggregate on the fly.

Even though it is a mere contrib and as such not included in the top of the release notes, I predict pg_stat_statements will be a huge leap in productivity in terms of tuning database indexes, which nobody gets around to getting time to do because it's a total pain to do the reporting about what is actually slow. Now it'll be pretty easy by comparison and I hope people will write even more reporting tools to make it trivial to do a reasonably good job.

An index suggestion tool may be more credibly in the cards of the moderately distant future in the future now that this critical work is done.

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like a fantastic feature! So much easier than checking logs and running explain manually. Plus it also looks like something you can trivially run in production.

Is there any close equivalent for mysql, which we use at $work? The slow query log is the closest I know about, but doesn't seem nearly as useful (or detailed).</comment>


MailTrap .io TLD has gone into dispute - <AUTHOR> http://mailtrap.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Temporarily available here: <http://mailtrap.railsware.com/>

Does anyone have any info on this?</comment>


Family robbed after cash photo posted to Facebook  - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/302612,family-robbed-after-cash-photo-posted-to-facebook.aspx

<comment><USER2> "...Police inspectors were unanable to disclose how the girls' family address was known. However, dozens of potential avenues of attack exist..."

just guessing here... exif geotag data?

<comment><USER3> Good old fashioned social engineering? The attackers already knew where she was going to be from other location based apps or just investigating the address of the grandmother. Also, the attackers could have access to the daughter and she is just pretending not to know anything to help the grandmother file an insurance claim.</comment></comment>


Parallelising Your OCaml Code with Multicore OCaml - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ocaml-multicore/ocaml2020-workshop-parallel <comment><AUTHOR> The related talk is here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7YZR1q8wzI&list=PLKO_ZowsIO...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7YZR1q8wzI&list=PLKO_ZowsIOu5fHjRj0ua7_QWE_L789K_f&index=5)</comment>


Net Neutrality Rules published. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/09/net-neutrality-rules/

<comment><USER2> > discriminate in transmitting

So, QoS is now banned in US?

There's another side to this. Consider an ISP, which policies traffic in 3 queues: realtime (VoIP, games), normal (ordinary browsing) and bulk (file sharing, big downloads). No per-queue packet shaping or dropping, just putting packets in different queues, with different priorities - but some still could consider this "discriminating", even though such policing is done to improve the experience, not worsen it.

Gaming traffic is relatively low, compared to file sharing. Obviously, if there are enough file sharers on the network, the latency will rise and gamers may experience "lags". On the other hand, BitTorrent users do not care about latency, but only about steady downloads (and uploads), so they won't lose anything if their packets would be put somehow further in the output queues.

Sure, users themselves could put wanted policy in DSCP field of the packet, but sometimes they're too incompetent (rude, but true) to put the proper value (and wrong values will screw the idea, making it worse, not better, than not having any traffic priorities). Sorry to say, but things won't work this way.

Obviously, if there's not just a latency increase, but packet loss - it's a sign that hardware upgrades are required. On the other side, even when hardware is operating normally, and uplink channels are not saturated, latency still matters.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the solution to networks throttling certain traffic isn't regulation, but competition. Rather than have a lot of rules governing what kind of traffic ISP's can and can't throttle, make federal regulations that require the last mile of cable be public property, lease-able to everybody. If the barrier to entry to becoming an ISP goes down, then the problem should solve itself.

<comment><USER4> The last time the government tried that, we got the Telecom Deformation Act of 1996. Given the spectacular success that was, what exactly makes you think that trying to do the exact same thing now would lead to a better outcome? Is the idea that Comcast and Verizon will, out of the goodness of their hearts, abandon all lobbying efforts and fire all their lawyers instead of lobbying and suing like crazy? Do you think that large corporations LOVE competition?</comment></comment>


Elliot Soloway (from UofM), pitching Computer Science to Freshmen. (iTunes U) - <AUTHOR> http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/umich-public.1740836090.01740345217.2743208090?i=2056282854

<comment><USER2> I had Soloway for two consecutive semesters when I went to UMich. This is a cool lecture by a wonderful teacher.

</comment><comment><USER3> Golden. Apple. Winner.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sweet!</comment>


Ask HN: please review RentMethod - <AUTHOR>

RentMethod allows landlords/property managers to quickly and easily screen potential tenants by just entering in a tenant's email address. The tenant verifies their identity and pays for the screen directly, and the landlord/manager receives a detailed report (credit score, background check, eviction notices, etc).
We would love to hear what the HN community thinks of what we've built. With limited UI/UX expertise in-house, we hacked together the front-end of the application and would certainly appreciate some feedback for future direction.
http://www.rentmethod.com
Thanks in advance for taking the time to check out our stuff! <comment><USER2> This is an awesome idea.

I'm not a landlord and have no use at all for this, but I really like it so I've decided I'm qualified to weigh in. Instead of being specifically designed for landlords, you should be more agnostic about who uses it. There are many reasons to screen people. You probably have horizontal expansion built into your future plans already, but I wouldn't sit that idea long as it is basically usable to other markets already, it's just not easy for them to find because they won't be typing anything about rental property into google.

I think your FAQ comes off as a bit greedy. It should focus on answering questions about the service not recommending policy to individual landlords. See the following:

Q: "Whom should I screen?" A: "EVERYONE"

At worst this reads as, "Send people here to give me money." At best it's unsolicited advice on how to run my business. There's nothing wrong with wanting money for your service, but don't punish the readers by slipping things like this into FAQ's. If I'm there to read about RentMethod, it's likely that I already have an idea of who I should screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words. Good point on horizontal expansion - I think our name might limit us for now ;)

Also, we certainly agree with your point on the FAQ and will address it soon. Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What might be cool is if I can direct my prospective tenant to you to fill out a digital version of my rental application (standard form), then I get a copy of that 'signed' application, and how they answered all the questions on rental history, employment history, references, key questions on bankruptcy, felonies, etc, as well as your credit screening result.

Otherwise it seems I'm still managing a paper-based application for the info I need, then applicant has to redo part of that effort directly with you to get the credit screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> That integration would be cool and certainly time saving. We'll look into it for sure. Thanks for your thoughts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really great job overall. One minor issue with the accept/reject buttons on the report.

When you hover over the buttons, they appear grayed out. This may be an intentional way of signaling that you can't actually perform those actions. But if not, I'd encourage you to just use a different shade of red/green.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for catching that. I'll look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Click: <http://www.rentmethod.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> If I'm a perspective tenant and fill out the form for one apartment, do I have to do it again if I apply to another property that also uses rentmethod?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, every tenant application is specific to a single property and landlord, as income-to-rent ratio and other property specific data is used as part of the rental recommendation. This would certainly be a value-add feature for the tenant and is something we will look into for the future. Thanks for taking the time to look through our site!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Beautiful UI

<comment><USER8> The target="_blank" on your top nav links makes me want to throw my monitor at the wall. Don't force the users interaction with your website.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Is the New Google, Google Is the Old Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/02/18/microsoft-google-swap/? <comment><USER2> > Furthermore Google appears to be making another old Microsoft error: > deprioritizing mobile.

> Just as the evolution of Windows got sluggish once Microsoft had domination > of the computer space, so Google looks to be resting on its laurels in > mobile with Android. I'm a huge fan of Android 5.0 Lollipop but in hindsight > was prioritising 'Material Design' (illustrated above) over combating > performance, battery life and fragmentation issues really a wise move? After > all Android's native UI is the first thing most handset makers throw out the > window.

What? Project Volta focused on Battery Life. They changed the entire runtime to ART for performance. Material design was a much needed solution to coherent UI across Google's properties.

Also remember that Google brought us HTTP/2 when Microsoft and Apple were completely ignoring the web.

GMail is great but they are still bringing Inbox which I find to be a good step towards better Email management. I understand it might now work well for everyone but still, they are trying to evolve it.

And they are focusing on moonshot projects while continuing to improve existing successful products in a meaningful way for exactly the same reason - not to be complacent. How otherwise do you not rest on your laurels?

The article is a bunch of baloney really.

<comment><USER3> It's not a bunch of baloney. If you have used Nexus 5 post-lollipop you will experience significantly decreased battery life. [http://blog.gsmarena.com/benchmarking- android-5-0-lollipop-b...](http://blog.gsmarena.com/benchmarking- android-5-0-lollipop-battery-life-samsung-galaxy-s5-lg-g3/) Project volta doesn't mean improved battery life. There are many factors to battery life that are not addressed by Project Volta.

<comment><USER4> Since there might be a bunch of Nexus 5 "me too" users reading this. The immediate solution to the memory leaks and battery issues are to reboot into recovery and clear the cache every 2 weeks or so. This is what I've been doing for a month and it hasn't been so bad as before.

<comment><USER5> >"The immediate solution to the memory leaks and battery issues are to reboot into recovery and clear the cache every 2 weeks or so."

This reminds me so much to Windows 95 ...

<comment><USER6> "This reminds me so much to Windows 95 ..."

That statement is so wrong... I switched to linux from Win95 because the bluescreens sucked so bad. No comparison really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Interesting take and I have to say I agree with it. Microsoft recent (1-2 years) moves have been pretty exciting and are coming to fruition. Google hasn't excited me in a while and the last few times they have the results have been less that stellar (Glass, Google Plus, Wear). It's great to see MS buy startups and keep them alive. Much more interesting to me than Google's purchase and kill strategy. e.g. MS bought Acompli, rebranded, and have a great mobile email solution. Google bought Sparrow (at the time the best mobile and desktop Gmail solution), killed it and didn't come out with anything better.

<comment><USER7> Like buying nokia?

About the only thing I've seen that is remotely interesting is supporting docker in Azure.

<comment><USER8> Putting .NET Core on Github? Visual Studio free for small teams? Surface Pro? Office across all platforms, many of them completely free? Giving away Windows 10?

Maybe none of those are things you'd use, but to other people they're a pretty big deal.

<comment><USER9> The writing was on the wall for MS's dev platform since open source dominates startups and the cloud. Nobody builds the next facebook or twitter using MS tools and Windows. If anything the rise of open source and linux put MS in a position where open sourcing their tools was the only option left to them to stay relevant. Making a show of 'loving' Linux was done in an attempt to give themselves a chance of getting a slice of the huge cloud computing market for hosting Linux. Make no mistake, Linux has put MS in a very uncomfortable position.

<comment><USER10> > Nobody builds the next facebook or twitter using MS tools and Windows

Well, then again: [http://nickcraver.com/blog/2013/11/22/what-it-takes-to- run-s...](http://nickcraver.com/blog/2013/11/22/what-it-takes-to-run-stack- overflow/)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, but I'd love to see how long it would function if they took away open source tools like Redis and HAProxy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Windows 8 was actually a very brave move by Microsoft, and even if looked upon as a misstep, was really what brought the company to where it is today.

Before Windows 8 we just had years and years of incremental "sameness." Vista was meant to be a big shake-up but instead that got shelved and we got a very modest improvement over XP (driver issues and memory consumption not withstanding), the same with 7, it was a very incremental improvement over Vista (even if coming from XP directly made it look bigger).

Windows 8 was where the company decided to really try something new. It was the largest UI shakeup since Windows 95/NT 4.0. And I think that shakeup helped shake some cobwebs loose because since then Microsoft are continuing to take bigger (welcome) risks.

Even just looking at the Windows 10 technical preview feedback program should tell you this is a new Microsoft. In previous Windows pre-releases, they would fix bugs in alpha/beta releases, but never made UI or functionality changes just based on feedback. They ARE with Windows 10.

If you go look at the feedback Windows 10 has received, several major pieces have been actioned.

Seems like the company has a fire lit under it again. It is welcome.

<comment><USER13> It wasn't something new, it was their same tired old strategy of copying Apple without any understanding of what they were copying and with level after level of managerial air-brakes on doing anything right.

The user experience of 8 is _hated_ by long-term Windows users. Microsoft have never been a consumer software company, their customers were OEMs and corporations. They shouldn't be giving away Windows 10 for free, they should give Windows 8 users a refund.

Desperation doesn't make a company inspiring or trustworthy.

<comment><USER14> What about Windows 8 do you feel is copying Apple? The big changes are utterly unlike anything I see in OS X but maybe I'm missing something.

Personally, I like Windows 8. I don't use the Metro apps (or whatever they are called now) but it's basically Windows with a lot of incremental improvements. It seems like most people complain about the new Start Screen replacing the Start Menu. I've long used the Windows button as search rather than as a drawer for apps that I wade through* so the Start Screen is just a bit nicer looking with no functional difference from Windows 7.

* If you aren't doing this you need to try it. Hit the Windows key, type what you want, hit Enter. It's a huge improvement over hunting through the Start Menu.

<comment><USER15> > What about Windows 8 do you feel is copying Apple?

Well, they made it more touch friendly, so they were obviously copying Apple... /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Microsoft is not the new Google. Microsoft is the new IBM. They lost their dominant position and now they are unbundling like crazy, having realised that they need to be where the users are, not the other way around.

I get some of the criticism he has for Google when it comes to their OS strategy and Google+. But on the other hand, Google is making real progress in some of the core AI areas, and they are applying it so well to the tons of data they have.

I've been travelling a lot recently, and I found that Google Maps is towering head and shoulders above its competitors. Not only does it have a lot more high quality information (about public transport for instance), it is also much better at guessing what I mean when I search for something, which is even more important when you're not sitting behind your desk.

Google Maps feels like it is getting fanatical attention from the people behind it. They don't seem to be distracted by any moonshots at all. And if anything, the driverless car has to be an additional boost to their motivation. I feel that all kinds of projects that apply AI to tons of data are converging really really well at Google right now.

<comment><USER17> The maps itself are stellar But the app itself is horrendous to me (especially on Android) - a lot of advanced functionality was simply gutted out of it

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In a way I'd argue that Google suffers from the same real underlying issue that started to cause Microsoft to fall: complacency. They see themselves as a king of the world that can't be beaten. And in a way they aren't strictly wrong right now. So many people will still jump up and defend and support everything Google for no reason other then "because Google!". But that's also starting to change. In my opinion the best thing that could happen to Google right now would be for them to take a market share hit.

<comment><USER19> While Google might be complacent. I don't know of a single Google product that I use that has a reasonable alternative.

And that's not to say I've tried. I had a blackberry, used Fastmail.fm, switched to Firefox. Just none of them really hold up against Google's products. They all work, just nowhere near as well as they should.

If there were alternatives I could switch to, I would. Especially their cloud services, but I'm not the one controlling the purse strings on that.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "I don't know of a single Google product that I use that has a reasonable alternative."

They might not cover all of your personal needs but for most people:

\- iOS is as good as or better than Android

\- Office is better than Google Docs

\- Gmail is still the best web mail but Google mobile/desktop clients are no where near as good as the alternatives

\- I find Safari 8 (on Mac) much faster, more efficient, and pleasant to use than Chrome. Firefox is close to Chrome but there are still a few (little) things with it that annoy me.

<comment><USER20> I've resently made the switch back to Safari from Chrome and I can say that it seems faster and more responsive (which is why I went to chrome in the first place).

Memory usuage is also less and I don't get a bunch of non responding Chrome Worker processes.

<comment> k-mcgrady I've switched between Chrome and Safari for years - always preferring Safari. However Safari was always too buggy to use consistently. The latest version is very stable in my experience which was it's biggest drawback previously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My biggest pet peeve with Google has always been their slow roll out of non- search and ad products. They could have shook the ISP world with Google Fiber. They carry the clout necessary to get stuff done. Rather they did a slow roll out and that lottery style is less hopeful and more aggravating.

A lot of the products Google has released were either terrible, stupid, or makes you go "WTF?". Google Glass was so worthless that I often wondered why they even bothered. I think Hololens will move the market regardless of its success. It might take MS one or two iterations to get it right, but if MS is willing to become bellicose on its strategy, people will take risks and develop. If Google had pushed out Fiber to more cities in a shorter period of time, I think Google could easily expand its product line beyond search and ads.

<comment><USER22> Would you argue that Glass did not move the market, regardless of its success?

<comment><USER23> It may have moved the market backwards in terms of public image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would say Microsoft has more in common with 1990 IBM i.e. huge entrenched profitable companies that missed the biggest shift in technology in the previous decade that they should have dominated (IBM: PCs, Microsoft: mobile). I still don't think people appreciate just how much Microsoft blew it by not owning the dominant mobile OS.

</comment><comment><USER25> Google does not fulfill quarterly numbers and now they are doomed? They have $100 billion in cash and are in a position to expand into so many other markets and spends 15% of their top line revenue on R&D. Meanwhile Apple is attempting to build a car from scratch?

<comment><USER26> $64.4 billion in cash as of the latest quarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great. More 'X is the new Y' articles. I wonder if there's a list of cliches somewhere that get repeated by tech journalists every so often.

<comment><USER28> Clickbait is the new journalism

<comment><USER27> Not just clickbait either. The whole article is a mish-mash of bad tech history analogies.

<comment><USER29> Thank you guys, I thought the whole world goes crazy if such a crappy set of "tech words" as this article can be upvoted to 250+ on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What I found most interesting is how Google and Microsoft are in the process of swapping places with regards to open source: Microsoft is taking formerly- closed projects open (particularly their compiler and development tools), while Google is taking formerly-open projects closed (particularly Glass, which was a closed-source fork of Android).

<comment><USER7> A free compiler and dev tools? Revolutionary.

Or, completely the norm in Ruby, Python, Java... um, every other language.

Did they OSS the IDE?

<comment><USER31> You mean the Java for which the reference VM (Hotspot) and compiler were not open-sourced until November 13, 2006 [1], roughly corresponding with the Java 6 release?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJDK#Sun.27s_promise_and_ini...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenJDK#Sun.27s_promise_and_initial_release)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Rather uninteresting article. Microsoft still has a lot to do before becoming relevant again, and Google has to lose a lot before spiraling out of control.

That doesn't mean Microsoft isn't doing well. Their recent announcements and PR has been great (something they've always been good at). Microsoft just still has a big hill to climb

</comment><comment><USER33> The biggest complacency is in Google's search results, which are dated, scattershot, and the opposite of "The Old Google's" simplicity. Here's some of my thoughts: [http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black- hole/](http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-hole/) Moonshot projects are fine, if the core business is strong. When investors realize the core search business is brittle, Google will be in a lot of trouble.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been saying this for over a year now. They've very much reversed roles. Market dominance has a huge effect on how a company acts, and Google is acting like the old monopoly trying to hang on.

</comment><comment><USER35> No. Microsoft is still the old Microsoft.Opensourcing a few libraries here and there dont make Microsoft the champion of open source. Microsoft is still forcing people to buy Windows licenses over and over again which each PC,and businesses using MS products are still subject to license audits.

On the other hand, Google is becoming more and more like Microsoft.

<comment><USER36> Some of us are quite happy to pay for it.

And yes we did get an audit and had to fork out a couple of average developers' salaries but to be honest we're fucking rolling in cash thanks to them, so meh. Time to market is stupid low - we can have stuff up on Azure and making cash before the Java guys have started Eclipse and the python guys have provisioned their virtual envs and written their first wsgi handler.

(for ref, we do run some Linux kit on Azure but it's memcached and ops stuff)

<comment><USER37> What tools are you using to gain such advantage?

<comment><USER36> Azure PaaS and VS. Azure allows us to sidestep a lot of iteration 0 and devops stuff and just hit the metal. VS is just pretty good at what it does.

<comment><USER38> How are those reboots upon Azure host OS updates working out for you?

<comment><USER36> Fine. You do know about availability sets right?

Plus we were on AWS before and that went down. We had our own racks in a DC on Linux+Java before and that went down.

Shit happens. Architectural decisions are the way around it.

Bar one unusually large fuck up, most of the whinging about Azure comes from not RTFM and assuming it's a magic unicorn poo launcher and not a bunch of servers in a building somewhere with a light abstraction over the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a completely different view of how Microsoft behaved when it was dominant, vs Google today. Back in the day, most of the tech industry feared Microsoft. MS had a monopoly over hardware and software companies and bullied everyone. Google today doesn't have this monopoly that Microsoft held. Even the author's description of Google's strengths, "Google's pillars of ads and search have become its Windows and Office", aren't as dominant as MS' products and definitely not for as long either. So I think it's incorrect to say that Google has become the MS of old. Those were the bad old days, when MS dictated how things were done in the industry.

While Google has tried to push the rest of the industry to its way of thinking, it doesn't always succeed, whereas MS in its heyday was quite capable of strong-arming the rest of the industry, time and time again. Google has generally pushed and supported an open source approach which MS is finally beginning to move towards. Quite a change for MS, nothing new for Google.

Kelly's article uses some poor examples and paints a glowing picture of MS. I think he's correct in that there's been a shift in MS getting a lot more positive press, but I don't think he's correct at all about how poorly run Google has become.

I realize this is short on specifics, but I don't want to make this too long. I'll agree with the critics of Android that there are problems, but in my view, Android has always been rough on the edges and is finally getting better overall. Especially compared to the early years.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's probably more accurate to say that Google has joined Microsoft as being a fast follower more than an innovator. Just look at Google+ attempting to follow FB's lead, and now GCE being a very obvious attempt to emulate AWS and EC2, similar to what Microsoft is trying to do with Azure. Then we have MS OneDrive and Google fast following Dropbox.

<comment><USER39> Google Search vs Alta Vista, Gmail vs Hotmail? Not saying they didn't innovate, but not much comes out of a clear blue sky.... Buzz and Wave didn't get Google very far.

<comment><USER40> I don't understand why we're so keen to criticise tech companies for copying one another. Companies doing similar things are competing, and we generally consider that a good thing.

And sometimes a copy with some difference can be a lot better. Google+ hasn't taken off, but it wasn't ridiculous to think that grouping your contacts in circles for separate discussions could have been a significant improvement in social networking, like grouping emails into conversations was for webmail.

<comment><USER39> Agreed, and I'm not criticizing them for improving on one another's products.

Re Google Plus, however, circles don't actually do that (ie they don't work like Facebook groups). People have no idea which circle you have put them in.

Circles are also incredibly slow and clunky to the point where they become unusable for more than small numbers of followers.

It's not ridiculous to think that someone could do a better social network than Facebook, just as Facebook did a better social network than Friendster, Google Orkut and others that were around at the time.

You could say the same about Google Search, of course, or eBay, or Amazon. However, it's tough taking on properties with more than a billion users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I see the comparison, and in some sense it's true. I do think that if we zoom out a bit, you could make a high-level comparison and have it hold some water. But I think that to do so would miss a really big point and give this article too much credit, since it focuses on small details.

One of their big strategic errors of the past few years is to try to be more like Apple when it does not fit their corporate culture or product set, which is the opposite of Microsoft's mistake. Not only that, but Google has pushed hard in social, and not halfheartedly either--in fact, they've pissed off their employees by pushing too hard on Plus. Lastly, Google is pushing hard in artificial intelligence, making big leaps. Their moonshot projects aren't totally stupid and dead. Maps' StreetView started as something similar.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is complete crap! Look at the pipeline of awesome products - Inbox by Google, self-driving car, Project Loon, etc. etc. As long as Larry is on the helm, Google will never be Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft is becoming better under Nadella but is nowhere near Google

</comment><comment><USER43> So says a site that still forces full page ads before allowing content (with ads in it) like it were still 2001.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't understand how Microsoft expects to keep developers working for their ecosystem when they're not building anything marginally better than their existing competition.

<comment><USER45> Have you heard about .NET? It's one of the best frameworks out there, very well supported, has been improving steadly for the last years and now that it's open source, I only expect more.

Yes, there are some minor things that other new frameworks do better, but this is normal, any framework needs time to adapt. But in general, there is not a single thing that .NET is not attacking in all the current trends of development.

In fact, a lot of things are being based on .NET, including javascript 7 features like async functions and Netflix's RxJava that is a port of .NET Rx.

I'm not saying it's the absolute best framework out there, but it is pretty good. Saying Microsoft is doing nothing in this area is just crazy.

<comment><USER7> dotNET is an MS only platform.

Is dotNET better than the collective JVM language ecosystem from a feature standpoint? Probably not. Sure you want to limit the debate to Java, which is basically a legacy language.

The JVM software ecosystem is still much better than dotNET, which took forever to get Hibernate and other framework ports over to it, and the typical developer still takes all microsoft-dictated "best practices" as canon from the holy see.

So sure, it's better than C++.

<comment><USER46>
      dotNET is a MS only platform.

These people would like to disagree: [https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr](https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr) [https://github.com/ajensenwaud/coreclr](https://github.com/ajensenwaud/coreclr) [http://www.mono-project.com/](http://www.mono-project.com/)

And does Java support unsigned integers yet?

<comment><USER28> Are there any major projects built using mono?

<comment><USER47> Unity is: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_%28game_engine%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_%28game_engine%29)

<comment><USER48> Unity has been using an old version of .Net for licensing reasons.

Also, about a year or so ago, they started porting to an LLVM-based solution and Unity 5+ is expected to be discontinue the Mono runtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Big companies making small mistakes is good for little guys :)

</comment><comment><USER13> No, Microsoft are the new Lotus.

</comment><comment><USER50> yes, Google is new ms. but ms could be either new Google or new Palm. I wish ms the best, since Apple is not fun anymore.

</comment><comment><USER51> Take a drink if this article critical of Google is at a lower rank than we would expect. Currently:

Rank 11 129 pts, 2 hours ago

vs

Rank 5 115 pts, 5 hours ago</comment>


List of features removed from Internet Explorer 9 - <AUTHOR> http://xpwasmyidea.blogspot.com/2011/02/features-removed-in-windows-internet.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Slightly easier to read version over here but put the source for this post:

[http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-9-doesnt- please...](http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-9-doesnt-please-all)</comment>


My CS50x Final Project: Organizer – Bookmarking Web App - <AUTHOR> https://organizer.franciscosta.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just finished CS50x! It was a wild 3.5 month ride. I'm a digital product designer learning to code. All thoughts and feedback are more than welcome! :)</comment>


Welcome to Project Soli - Google ATAP Team - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0

<comment><AUTHOR> "Project Soli is developing a new interaction sensor using radar technology. The sensor can track sub-millimeter motions at high speed and accuracy. It fits onto a chip, can be produced at scale and built into small devices and everyday objects."

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625786)</comment>


SHOW HN: Hypothetical art project for my fine arts class I made today. - <AUTHOR> http://everybodyshomepage.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN. Thought i'd share this with you. I am in a fine arts class and we were supposed to make a hypothetical art project. I wanted to make something I could make so I put this together today. Give it a try.

Go to <http://everybodyshomepage.com/edit> to edit the page and the changes should show in real time on the main page.

Also the code is available here: <https://github.com/Jonovono/everybodyshomepage>. Might be useful for someone learning Node (which I am still) and working with Now.js.

<comment><USER2> Hey, I gave EverybodysHomepage.com a new look :) (I used CSS from a free web template I like). Your site works really well and in real time. Thanks for the nice platform.</comment></comment>


Coffee in Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150728-coffee-the-bitter-end-of-our-favourite-drink?ocid=twfut

<comment><USER2> It's strange that an article about the potential scarcity of Arabica doesn't once mention the country where most Arabica is grown: Brazil. Not only that, the expectations have been improving because of improved conditions this year: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-21/coffee- dec...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-21/coffee-declines-to- lowest-in-15-months-on-global-supply-outlook)

<comment><USER3> It does seem like the article may have conveniently evaded that news. However, that doesn't mean there isn't a looming threat to the coffee supply.

The fact that Brazil may have an exceptionally good year, only means that it is likely to have a less-exceptional year after that, due to regression to the mean. If the climate does start to negatively impact the more tertiary coffee growing regions, Brazil will not be able to bolster the entire coffee demand.

Also: I can only assume that growing overall population = higher demand for coffee

<comment><USER4> > The fact that Brazil may have an exceptionally good year, only means that it > is likely to have a less-exceptional year after that, due to regression to > the mean.

Isn't that a Monte Carlo fallacy? One outcome in a sequence of tests does not mean that others are more likely in the future. If you flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row, your likelihood of getting a tails on the next flip (assuming a perfectly-balanced coin) is still 50%. Brazil's good year may be another case of climate change for all we know, and could very well persist for awhile; or, you might be right and next year things will balance out again. We don't know either way yet.

That isn't to say that we shouldn't be concerned regardless; you're correct in your observation that having all our figurative, coffee-flavored eggs in one basket - even if that basket is the size of Brazil - is rarely a good idea.

<comment><USER5> > If you flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row, your likelihood of getting a > tails on the next flip (assuming a perfectly-balanced coin) is still 50%.

If you flip a FAIR coin, your odds are still 50%. If I flip a coin and get heads 10 times in a row, I'm betting heads for that 11th flip.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, sure, but also the bookie will give you crappy odds on that bet! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it not possible to grow coffee plants using vertical farming? It sound ideas like this => [http://cargocollective.com/dellabosca/Vertical-Coffee- Farm](http://cargocollective.com/dellabosca/Vertical-Coffee-Farm) are going to need to become a reality in the future if we can't stop climate change, where it can protect the plants from heavy rainfalls and allow farmers to control their growth.

<comment><USER8> A challenge would be that coffee trees have very deep roots [1].

[1] [http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/ad219e/AD219E05.htm](http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/ad219e/AD219E05.htm)

<comment><USER4> So we build deeper farm levels.

Even more conventional greenhouses, however, should help somewhat. I reckon the point of the parent commenter is less about the _vertical_ nature of such farms and more about the climate controllability of such farms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At the same time, demand for coffee is growing rapidly, especially since more traditionally tea-drinking nations are making the switch to coffee.[1] Maybe if coffee prices increase significantly we'll see more milk-tea places opening up and Starbucks incorporating more of its Teavana products at its stores.

[1] [http://time.com/3711436/global-coffee- increase/](http://time.com/3711436/global-coffee-increase/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This page made my laptop scream. It never stopped trying to load something. I run ABP, perhaps that's the "fault?"

I also tried to find a sensible place to point that out to the BBC, but nothing was obviously (to me) the right place.

<comment><USER11> You could try using Ghostery ([https://www.ghostery.com/en/.](https://www.ghostery.com/en/.)) For me the page loads slower than most, but not problematically so.

<comment><USER12> Seems to work fine on my MBP. I'm just annoyed by the dumb parallax scrolling which covers up the title when you're trying to read it. Parallax was cool on Amigas in the 80s, but today in web pages it's just flashy and annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't there a way to produce synthetic caffeine?

I mean, there's been a shift recently for nicotine and the market for e-cigs, I'm sure we can somehow find a way to do the same for caffeine.

<comment><USER14> You know, some people drink coffee because they like the flavour, not because they need caffeine :P (As a matter of fact, I consider caffeine to be an undesirable side-effect of delicious coffee...)

Coffee isn't the only natural source of caffeine, and yes, it can also be made synthetically.

<comment><USER15> It's especially unfortunate because decaf coffee is usually gross.

<comment><USER16> Unsurprising when you look at the method they use for removing the caffeine.

<comment><USER17> Supercritical CO2 extraction is gross? The solvent evaporates without a trace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > For one thing, we can expect coffee to become more of a luxury, with prices > shooting up by around 25% by 2050 according to Bunn's calculations

A 25% rise in price over 35 years qualifies as a crisis now?

</comment><comment><USER19> In accordance with Betteridge's Law of Headlines[1] the answer is no.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

I don't know how people do links and stuff on hacker news

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the link, haha. Sensationalist title.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you buy an Amazon Kindle tablet for an 11 y.o.? - <AUTHOR>

You've heard about it. It is coming out soon. Will you buy one? Why or why not? Considering buying one for my daughter because she wanted a Nook Color, but I've heard the touchscreen on the Nook Color is a pain. She is 11 years old, so I don't think I'm going to let her have a generic Android OS device (as I'd like it to be more limited and easier to control). <comment><USER2> I don't think I would. I guess it depends on what sort of apps run on it. If I wanted to get them something to play games on, it'd probably be an iPad... kindle software runs on there so you get the book aspect. Very expensive gift for an 11yo though, in my opinion.

I'd more likely get an e-ink kindle, not just because I think the screen is better for reading, but because it's essentially limited to books. The built in "experimental" browser does a good job with Safari Online Books now, so I've been very happy with mine.

<comment><USER3> _The built in "experimental" browser does a good job with Safari Online Books now, so I've been very happy with mine._

I'd love to hear more about that. That's one thing that has kept me from getting a Kindle. But if I could use Safari reasonable well with it, it would be a no-brainer.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Dimensionality reduction – upload a CSV and explore structure in data - <AUTHOR> https://dimensionalityreduction.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is currently the minimal (maybe even less) viable project. Would welcome feedback on:

\- Is this useful?

\- Killer features

\- Bugs</comment>


Coding without a keystroke: The hands-free creation of a full video game - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/coding-without-a-keystroke-the-hands-free-creation-of-a-full-video-game/ <comment><AUTHOR> Demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGPNs5C1Lp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGPNs5C1Lp0)</comment>


Simple java program to generate random numbers - <AUTHOR> http://frndslink.in/java/simple-java-program-generate-random-numbers/ <comment><USER2> Not to harp, but your set is better defined as [0, 100), that is, [0, 99], not the [1, 100] you mention in the article.

nextInt(int):

        Returns a pseudorandom, uniformly distributed int value between 0 (inclusive) and the specified value (exclusive)

[https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Random.h...](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Random.html#nextInt\(int\))

<comment><USER3> More or less what I said, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So now you're just posting links to all your articles to... drive traffic? I mean, it's not even _correct_ \--it will print out random ints from 0-99, just like it says in the `int nextInt(int)` Javadocs.

:(

</comment><comment><USER3> After corrections it's still wrong: as discussed, it will return 0-99.

</comment><comment><USER3> How did this get upvotes.</comment>


Making sense of euphoria and despair about emerging markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21699885-making-sense-euphoria-and-despair-about-emerging-markets-long-road <comment><AUTHOR> The article is an extract from just released book:

The Rise and Fall of Nations: Ten Rules of Change in the Post-Crisis World, by Ruchir Sharma [https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Nations-Forces-Post- Crisis/...](https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Nations-Forces-Post- Crisis/dp/0393248895?ie=UTF8&ref_=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_dp)

A very deep, data driven analysis of growth in post crisis world. Inequality "good vs. bad billionaires", ability to change, immigration, technological progress...</comment>


The Zen TV Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://daghlian.net/scrapbook/zentv.html

<comment><USER2> I think I might give this a go over the weekend, if circumstances permit...</comment>


The sun does not rise - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-fossilised-ideas-live-on-in-language-and-science/ <comment><USER2> It's not an inertial reference frame, but I don't see anything wrong with choosing a reference frame where the earth is fixed, and noting that in such a reference frame, the sun does move around the earth, and can seen to go "past" the horizon?

I mean that's just the title, but still.</comment>


Ask HN: Does the use of 3rd party services affect valuation of a startup? - <AUTHOR> Today, there are many companies offering API's for integration which allow for entire businesses to be built mostly on top of 3rd party services.<p>How does the dependency on these 3rd party services affect the valuation of a startup? <comment><USER2> I'd say Amazon AWS is all about 3rd party services, and their users are doing OK.

You can check [http://stackshare.io/stacks](http://stackshare.io/stacks) to see who's using what</comment>


Chinese hackers have (allegedly) stolen Taiwan's chip designs, SDKs and source - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/chinese-hackers-have-pillaged-taiwans-semiconductor-industry/ <comment><USER2> The original title is "Chinese hackers have pillaged Taiwan's semiconductor industry"

Why was the HN title changed to add "(allegedly)". Of course it is allegedly since such things are rarely proven, but HN generally sticks with original title.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's me – trying to perhaps add a bit of balance & avoid the moderation for politics. Apologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is plain war. Not IT. Not trade. Not just stealing. Wake up before it is too late.</comment>


Running a startup on Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR3Jirqk6W8

<comment><USER2> This is pretty old. Bryan O'Sullivan is currently at Facebook and he's not running a startup on Haskell. One well known company that is actually running a company on Haskell is Galois, Inc. Another one is FPComplete ([https://www.fpcomplete.com/](https://www.fpcomplete.com/)).</comment>


Ask HN: Which Functional Language to Implement for Learning? - <AUTHOR>

They say the best way to learn about things is to just go and implement it. That being said, I'm looking to implement an interpreter (or maybe a vm and compiler) for a functional language to enforce the ideas I've learned in the past few months.
In the past, I've written interpreters for a few basic languages and Scheme (not fully r4rs compliant, but close enough to learn what I wanted). Of course, I wrote these in languages that provided garbage collection, and without any type-checking. Basically as AST-walkers.
I want to establish more expertise with these topics and create something that I can actually use, maybe even extend, but to build a new language from scratch and make real design decisions isn't in my cards yet.
So, the question, does anyone know of language specifications for functional languages that aren't entirely crippled that would be interesting to implement as a learning project?
Please don't suggest scheme. I love scheme, but it's been done to death, and is the language I've studied the inner-workings of the most. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Haskell is probably a good option.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of playing with a lazy language, but am a bit intimidated by Haskell. Oh, sure I've written some trivial programs in it, but there's this aura surrounding it that makes me put Simon Peyton Jones, Philip Wadler and the rest of the crew on this pedestal. I kneel before them.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps a strict Haskell 98 implementation? I really like Haskell but i'm still not convinced that laziness should be the default. It would be interesting to see what the trade-offs are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I've been thinking about laziness a bit lately and am wondering why _not_ to make it the default.

Of course my thoughts haven't produced much and I haven't went in search of arguments yet. But, the only argument against it that I can see is efficiency assuming your in a pure functional language. Obviously, laziness when the surrounding environment is changing can lead to unpredictability, but compiling memoized thunks to implement laziness seems like it could be optimized very well.

Edit: In regards to your actual suggestion, I'll take a look at the spec and the idea. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't you try Sche.... Oh. Never mind.</comment>