Should array length be stored into a local variable in C#? - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/post/454582/ <comment><USER2> This is good to know, but fairly unsurprising. The interesting case is List<T>. The .Count property is actually a function call, and the value could change during the loop. If you don't mutate the list, is it smart enough to both inline the function call and hoist the value out as an invariant?

<comment><USER3> There's no mathematical way for it to know that you won't modify (especially remove). The developer would have to express that by, say, iterating over the internal array directly.

<comment><USER4> This is veering into C and undefined behavior territory, but with List<T> there's a guarantee that you cannot modify the list while enumerating over it, so could the compiler theoretically assume that when using foreach?

<comment><USER5> I assume it does, if you try to do so it throws an exception. It's a rather common footgun with multi-threaded code until you've lost a few toes to it. People are always writing naive producer-consumer queues with an unlocked List<T> backing it until they learn better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice benchmarking on Microsoft .Net CLR. Looks like the JIT compiler is smart enough to recognize that array.Length is an invariant and hoist it out of the loop, which is awesome for the common use cases!

One nitpick about the title: C# runs on more runtimes than Microsoft .Net CLR, and those may behave very differently. For example: Mono CLR, or Unity's IL2CPP which is an ahead-of-time compiler.

Specifically, I'd expect IL2CPP would _not_ hoist length out, because it would not recognize it as an invariant. (Some great examples of IL2CPP cross compilation are here: [https://jacksondunstan.com/articles/4749](https://jacksondunstan.com/articles/4749) )

TLDR: the Microsoft JIT compiler makes the local variable unnecessary, but this is a property of the JIT, not of C#. Developers on non-MS platforms shouldn't assume this.

<comment><USER7> > those may behave very differently

They shouldn't behave any differently should they? There's a single language spec.

<comment><USER8> "Behave very differently" is meant with regards to performance, here; or in other words, things that are not observable in the language semantics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Always accessing array.Length is defensively coding. In the event your array is mutated, always accessing array.Length ensures you won't run into an Index Out of Bounds exception.

Even better is to just avoid accessing the array's length. I almost always use foreach or Linq.

<comment><USER10> That is orders of magnitude slower and allocates. Of course you can use: [https://github.com/jackmott/LinqFaster](https://github.com/jackmott/LinqFaster)

<comment><USER11> Wrong

From the article:

> It also turned out that Foreach often walks through the array faster than > For

<comment><USER12> 1\. `ForEach` is slower. 2\. `foreach` is faster. 3\. Linq is slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not a C# developer, but this kind of thing seems to permeate almost all languages in one form or another.

Maybe it is just a style and readability thing; or maybe (as suggested elsewhere as well) it is meant to be reused elsewhere in the system, so it is cached in a variable for later use.

Or, it's possible that at one time - maybe early in the early days of .NET - doing it this way was more optimized, and the habit stuck with developers (perhaps they all read the same article in the knowledge base about it?). If that's the case, it's a bit of "premature optimization", but one that doesn't apparently harm anything.

What I do wonder is if certain other changes could change the speed?

At least it might be interesting to see in these trivial cases; I admit that in more complex loops it might not be advisable.

But - for instance, what if rather than iterating thru the array from the 0th element to the length of the array, you instead started from the last element and iterated backwards, until you hit zero? That way, you wouldn't be checking the length of the array, but rather for zero?

The code for such a test might look like:

        public int WithoutVariable() {
            int sum = 0;
            for (int i = array.Length - 1; i > -1; i--) {
                sum += array[i];
            }
            return sum;
        }

I'm not sure that a "with variable" version would make much difference (or sense), but here it is for completeness sake:

        public int WithVariable() {
            int sum = 0;
            int length = array.Length - 1;
            for (int i = length; i > -1; i--) {
                sum += array[i];
            }
            return sum;
        }

Again - I'm not a C# developer - maybe my code is wrong above, but hopefully it gets the idea across.

Would this work better? Would it be faster? What would the JIT compiler create? Maybe it wouldn't be any faster or better than the ForEach examples?

I honestly don't know - but if anybody wants to give it a shot, I'd be curious as to the results...

EDIT: I noticed that I said "checking for zero" \- but I modified my code to check for -1 as the boundary; I suppose the check in the loops could be modified to be "i == 0;" instead. I'm not sure if whether doing an "i >= 0;" vs "i == 0;" vs "i > -1;" which is faster - another thing to check, I suppose...

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't naturally think about summing lists in reverse so it becomes more cognitive effort to understand the code. I've seen plenty of termination condition bugs on reverse iterations that might back that up.

A related thought is how modern code clean-up tools are doing things like reducing if-nesting e.g. turning this:

        if (open)
        {
            stuff();
            close();
        }

into this, with early returns:

        if (!open) return;

        stuff();

        close();

My feeling is that the first more naturally represents the idea I have of the behaviour and the second, like your reverse iteration, is an encoded version of that idea. I feel I have to make an extra cognitive step decode and reassemble it to create an idea of the behaviour.

I suspect the further you stray from the natural idea, the harder the code is to read, validate by eye and the more likely errors are to crop in. I'm don't know how subjective this is. I generally don't have a strong feeling about early returns it's just I have been noticing the slightly greater cognitive effort they are causing me compared to the logical chunking that nested-ifs provide.

<comment><USER15> I personally find early returns to be easier to understand (I think of them as exit conditions) than nested if statements but to each their own.

<comment><USER14> There are definitely cases like pre-conditions and validation that are natural early exists. There are other situations where it would sound really off and confusing to phrase instructions for a human that way. Not an easy task for an automatic code-clean-up tool to discern!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Saving the array length to a variable is one of those things that inexperienced programmers love to do, thinking it will optimise something.

<comment><USER17> It honestly depends on the compiler.

<comment><USER18> It's a great default assumption when you don't know all the quirks of the specific language or compiler, because either it will help you or at least won't hurt you.

<comment><USER16> It might hurt if you add this extra variable to every loop and at some point the array length changes within the loop. It also makes the code more verbose. This optimisation should be done like all optimisations: first you benchmark and then see if it makes sense to make this change. Most of the time there's no point doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Use Linq and forget about array length.

It's an interesting analysis and all, but why bother when the language has such an elegant collections API.

<comment><USER10> Linq is orders of magnitude slower and allocates. It is not always an appropriate choice.

<comment><USER20> Do you have data for that?

Whenever I tried to find actual data for this Linq seemed to be slightly slower, but not too much.

Examples: [https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/14197/is- the-...](https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/14197/is-the-linq- version-faster-than-the-foreach-one) [https://wheresmykeyboard.com/2015/06/linq-lambda-loop- perfor...](https://wheresmykeyboard.com/2015/06/linq-lambda-loop-performance- test/)

<comment><USER10> Yes. The total slowdown you get will depend on how much of the work being done is the actual iteration vs the work inside the loop. If you are doing a long running thing each time you go through the loop, then the overhead of the linq iteration is not so bad

But something like:

        var sum = values.Sum(x => x * x);

will take ~10x longer than an for or foreach loop equivalent.

(260ms vs 36ms on 32 million float32s on my machine, measured by benchmarkdotnet)

plus a small allocation

<comment><USER20> Thanks for your reply. I'm fairly new to C#, and was hoping that linq would make my life easier. Oh well.

I made some benchmarks myself: [https://pastebin.com/5vQNpbPC](https://pastebin.com/5vQNpbPC)

And esp. the Sum is a lot slower in linq. Not quite an order of magnitude, but pretty bad.

Even worse:

            float sum = 0;
            arr.Select(x => (sum += x * x)).ToList();
            return sum;

This is somehow still a lot faster than the normal linq Sum. What does .Sum() do to be this slow?

Edit: I just noticed you also wrote this blog post on the topic: [https://jackmott.github.io/programming/2016/07/22/making- obv...](https://jackmott.github.io/programming/2016/07/22/making-obvious- fast.html) I should have read that earlier!

<comment><USER21> You're doing more work though. You're converting to a List<T> (in order to caox the lazy enumerable to enumerate). You should use Aggregate for a more (generalised) way to reduce/fold collections into a value:

        var sum = arr.Aggregate(0, (t, x) => t + (x * x));

On the whole though it's better to use Linq until it's not. It's more declarative which will lead to more reliable code. Optimise when you find performance issues, don't write bad code just because you may gain a few nanoseconds here and there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> At the university, every time i put the array length into a local variable for a loop, i got 2 points deduction on my Homework.

<comment><USER23> Why?

<comment><USER24> Probably because his teachers arrogance to life experience was too high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ahh, nice to see some c# without a new line before the braces.

<comment><USER5> That is probably my least favorite thing about C# coding. The preeminent style wastes so much vertical space. K&R braces for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> archive.org has a mirror in case the site is still hugged to death: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190606120130/https://habr.com/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190606120130/https://habr.com/en/post/454582/)

</comment><comment><USER27> If I remember correctly, the runtime keeps size of the array in the header of the object along with sync block, etc. If you have VS, you can view the object in memory to see the sync block value, array size value, etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> It is very possible the reason is not speed, but readability. If you simply named it 'length', then sure, there is no point. If it is given a better, more descriptive name, and then gets used in an equation elsewhere in the code, then it may be very useful because it is easier to read.

<comment><USER29> something like:

        var widgetLength = widget.Length;

    ?

<comment><USER30> I think that's confusing - it could be referencing a different object names "widgetLength" how about widgetDotLength to be more clear?

<comment><USER29> You're right. Let's go with yours. When can you push that?

<comment><USER30> Oh that'll be at least next week, I'm currently busy changing all the "int" declarations to "wholeNumberDataType" for clarity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> TL;DR: Yes & use foreach rather than for to skip array bound checks.

<comment><USER32> It is odd, that C# needs foreach loop for bound check elimination.

Java supports this optimization for a wide range of loop types... since Java 7, I think. Normally I would argue, that Java is just ahead of curve, but Android has also gained supports for bounds check elimination in 2014-2015.

Either article does not tell us whole truth or Microsoft JIT is subpar by modern standards.

<comment><USER10> c# does not need a foreach loop for bound check elimination.</comment></comment></comment>


Real name policies and ruling the world - <AUTHOR> http://theartificialintelligenceblog.com/real-name-policies-and-mapping-the-world/ <comment><USER2> I've had a clearly fake name on Facebook for years. A couple weeks ago I got message from one of their reps, letting me know that there was an issue about my name, and that it was currently being reviewed. I had no intention to link that account to my real name, as it was mostly political whining and interaction with a few close friends. I basically told them that I wouldn't change the name and that they should just delete the account. A couple days later they responded by telling me that my name did not break TOS and that I was free to use my fake name. So I'm not even sure that policy is even enforced, steered... maybe.

<comment><USER3> It's enforced if people choose to report you, and 'proving' your name to them can be somewhat involved

It's also more likely they will hassle you over it if your name isn't white. Maybe those sorts of names tend to be fake more often, but probably not.

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure I was reported by someone I disagreed with in the comments of a political post. My point was that I bypassed "proving" because I refused to comply to their rule.

I've seen no evidence of different treatment based on race. Would you mind citing your source?

<comment><USER4> I've been told Native Americans often have problem with the "real names" policy because they often sound "fake" to people used to European names.

<comment><USER5> Yes. For example, Begay is a common Navajo surname. Others use traditional names (such as Standing Bear, for example). Odds are the people at facebook making these decisions have never known anyone with such a name.

<comment><USER6> Well odds are that these people at not even in the USA and would have even less idea or impose there cultures pov - this may explain why the is real name policy seems to be targeted at LBGT people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's been known for a long time that the "authentic name" policy is dangerous and is used as a device of suppression on many people. [1] [2] But Facebook, in its desire to target ads and network connections based on real names, has not shown much interest in removing that policy and allowing pseudonyms. Even now the policy and its enforcement are not clear, and what happens depends on the flagging system and who reviews the account.

Coming from Facebook, this news about moderators' details being shared with suspected terrorists is neither surprising nor shocking to me. Frustrated and upset? Yes. But, shocked? Not even a bit! I personally would be shocked if I found that Facebook had taken preemptive measures to not allow this to happen or if Facebook responds quickly to allow these people to use pseudonyms or not even sharing their information with the suspects. We know none of that will happen because Facebook's outlook has never ever favored better privacy and protection for Facebook users. If it has, that's probably only an accidental one and not the result of any kind of introspection that produces a different vision, which in turn drives and sustains positive changes. Facebook has made it quite clear through its actions and responses where its priorities lie and where it just doesn't give a damn.

Though termed as a "social network", I'd call Facebook "a net antisocial network for humankind" based on its policies and actions.

P.S.: I realize this may look like a bad rant reflecting my personal views strongly. But this is how I see and understand Facebook through the years.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/5/9455071/nameless- coalitio...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/5/9455071/nameless-coalition- facebook-real-name-policy)

[2]: [https://act.eff.org/action/dear-facebook-authentic-names- are...](https://act.eff.org/action/dear-facebook-authentic-names-are- authentically-dangerous-for-your-users)

</comment><comment><USER8> Forcing moderators scrutinizing terrorists to use their real identities was a stupid, stupid idea that I hope facebook will change going forward. Perhaps facebook can look into getting some sort of anonymous identity for its moderators.

At the same time, it seems a false equivalency to use a story about people using real identities to scrutinize terrorist to support a position that it is dangerous for anyone to post real identity and photos online.

Certainly it is dangerous for children, teenagers, or people involved in dangerous work to post their identities online. As to ordinary adults who not involved in dangerous lines of work and with sufficient discretion . . . any danger inherent in this is a much weaker position that this article doesn't give much in the way of support for.

<comment><USER3> Domestic violence and sexual assault are extremely common, and this policy results in victims getting isolated since their attackers can use FB to locate and pursue them.

<comment><USER5> In addition to these sorts of serious, immediate dangers, certainly others of us prefer to never use our real name online because it is so uncommon. It's one thing to be Jim Smith, it's another to have a unique name and have your entire online history available to google. I figured this out in the 90s (via dejanews, before google even existed), and have never ever used my real name online since.

Further, I don't understand why some feel the need for me or anyone else to justify this position. It's real simple. I don't use services that try to enforce real ID or sometimes I use a fake name. It's extraordinarily creepy to me that facebook and google can not only determine my real name, but want to force me to use it online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I can go to a bar and talk to people without revealing my full (or real) identity, then why can't I do the same online? "Real name policies" don't make any sense to me. The meatspace analogies are all flawed. The pretty server at the bakery doesn't know my name, and she doesn't need to. We can be perfectly civil to one another without crossing that boundary.

<comment><USER10> You can't behave badly in meatspace and expect to maintain anonymity either.

Say for example if you cause damage? You might be arrested, ordered to provide compensation etc.?

<comment><USER9> Depends on how badly I behave. It's perfectly well within my rights to call anyone in the bar a cunt. Some might be offended. There might be an argument. I might be asked to leave. There might even be fisticuffs. But at no point during any of that will my real identity matter an iota.

<comment><USER11> But if you were able to come back into the bar in a disguise a minute later, they would want to know your real identity to prevent you from coming back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The real irony of these threads on HN: no one has ever run a social network. If they did, they would realize that mixing pseudonyms with real names is a formula for disaster. It's probably the easiest way to continuously bother someone and troll groups to no end.

<comment><USER13> Seriously. Twitter gets crucified for a lack of accountability, now Facebook gets criticized for having too much. You can't embrace online anonymity only when it benefits you.

<comment><USER14> I don't see why it's confusing.

Bob can have whatever name they want. They don't get to threaten to rape and murder another user.

<comment><USER13> So what do you do with Bob when he re-registers as Dave?

<comment><USER15> You allow people to block anyone with account younger them a year. And in general, you allow people to mute everyone from purple they did not approved, mute threads etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 There is a funny anecdote about this.

A friend of mine has "Bastardo" as her real last name. Facebook didn't let her use it, so she was actually forced, by Facebook, to use a fake name.

<comment><USER16> A clbuttic mistake. I hope they manage to resolve it. It's not like people don't have weird names. E.g. Semen is a popular Russian name with an unfortunate latinisation - the original is spelled Семён, but the umlaut is not always written, since it's clear from context, and the pronunciation is Simyon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Despite the assurances from Facebook, I've seen no evidence that these policies help anything, and plenty of evidence that they cause problems. Here are a few things that Facebook could answer that might help clear this up:

1\. What specific kinds of abuses are primarily due to someone's name, and what percentage of total abuses do they constitute?

2\. What criteria does Facebook use to determine if a name is "real"?

3\. Under what authority can Facebook compel government issued identification to release suspensions on accounts that are "under review"?

There are many more things that need to be answered, but having data points to answer those questions would be a fantastic start.

<comment><USER18> Facebook can ask for identification under the same authority that you can ask to see someone's identification before letting them into your house.

<comment><USER17> The difference is that I'm not retaining any data when I do this, which opens the door to questions about data use and data retention. I've seen no statements from Facebook about how the data is used, how it is stored, and how long it is retained.

Another difference is that Facebook suspends you when you are _already_ using Facebook. The analogy would be more apt if you let someone into your house, they hung out for a few hours, and then you physically remove them, and don't let them back in unless they show you an ID.

<comment><USER18> Do you agree that you would have the authority to ask to take a picture of someone's identification before allowing them into your house?

<comment><USER19> Do you agree that a web service is not a private residence?

A coffe shop, a supermarket, a bookstore, etc. doesn't have right to check your ID.

Heck, from what I know, in the US even the police cannot ask you for an id without "reasonable suspicion" that you did something illegal.

<comment><USER20> >Do you agree that a web service is not a private residence?

For all purpose and effect, it equals a private residence. After all the web service is run by somebody on servers that somebody either owns or pays for.

If I don't want you on my web service I have every right in the world not to let you in/use it because you have no right to demand usage of my private property (servers).

>A coffe shop, a supermarket, a bookstore, etc. doesn't have right to check your ID.

While I'm not 100% sure about the legal situation in the US, I'm pretty sure regular householder's rights apply.

They have the right demand all kinds of things before allowing you on their private premises and you have the right to say "Nah" and not enter their private premises as a result of that, their club, their rules.

>Heck, from what I know, in the US even the police cannot ask you for an id without "reasonable suspicion" that you did something illegal.

In theory, the same was true for German police until... you guess it: 9/11 and the big push for the "war on terror" happened. Since then many countries have adopted additional legislation to allow police more "freedom" with ID checks.

Germany adopted this by declaring certain zones as "higher risk", like near government buildings, public transportation hubs and so on. Police can demand ID from pretty much anybody in a certain radius to such zones, this process is then called "verdachtsunabhänge Personenkontrolle" which loosely translates to "identity check regardless of suspicion".

I'm pretty sure the US has adopted similar legislation, just like the US (supposedly the country of the freest of free speech) adopted the usage of "Free speech zones".

<comment><USER9> > While I'm not 100% sure about the legal situation in the US, I'm pretty sure > regular householder's rights apply.

Not sure about that. Some places (like malls or train stations, possibly others) are considered public places to some extent.

<comment><USER20> But isn't the mall privately owned? At least the shops inside would be. Do different rules apply to them compared to private homes? Afaik the sovereignty of one's own home is held in very high regard in the US, why doesn't the same apply to a private business?

Train stations, as part of the public infrastructure, are probably held to a different standard. Locking somebody out from those would present quite a constraint to that individual, so that's probably for the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would be fine with whatever policy they like, if they stayed in their own walled garden. But building what amounts to a commercial intelligence/surveillance firm that is very difficult to avoid is, yes, evil.

And the true names policy is a big part of that.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Naive, dangerous and evil" is a good description of most things involving Fb and its founder (maybe not Naive in the latter case)

<comment><USER3> FB seems like an example of how a team can go from accidentally naive to intentionally naive because it has advantages for engineering or revenue. :(

<comment><USER23> I'm pretty sure all naiveté is accidental. There's a word for intentional naiveté: manipulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I understand the concept of a click bait headline, but "inherently evil" is a bit strong for a service that is completely optional.

<comment><USER25> "Do not use the Internet. Do not use phones. Do not use bank accounts. Do not travel by plane. Do not enter public spaces. Do not show your face.

Otherwise you accept our Terms of Service.

Thank you for trusting us."

(C) QuantumRoar, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958035)

<comment><USER24> Still use all those things to your heart's content; just don't create a Facebook account...

<comment><USER25> When 99% of your friends use Facebook, it becomes very hard to avoid it [0]. If you want to advertise your new book among them, what would you do, for example?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect)

<comment><USER26> Through one of the many other sites those friends probably use. Facebook probably isn't the only thing on the internet you and your circle of friends have in common.

<comment><USER27> Yes, but the other sites/services they use are also all pretty much similar walled gardens. It's becoming rarer and rarer these days for ordinary web users to have their own domain and site, or meet upon a completely unrestricted communications medium, like the Usenet of old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there some reason I'm not aware of that makes "leaving Facebook" not the reasonable, default, option? If they REALLY are "naive, dangerous, and evil", just... don't use their service. Hit them where it hurts and take your eyeballs elsewhere.

<comment><USER7> For many people, not being on Facebook is neither a choice nor an option because their social network - the ones they depend on - are all there and nowhere else (except probably WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook and where the contact metadata is shared between the two).

In my opinion, only some privileged people are able to really have this choice and act on it. The rest don't know (not privileged enough to know/understand) or don't care (because their social network is already on Facebook).

<comment><USER28> It's a 'privilege' to not be on Facebook? On Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs, nowhere is there any mention of 'online services' or 'Facebook access', or even 'Internet access'. If ever there was a textbook "Sh*t HN Says" comment worthy of the moniker, yours is it.

Facebook is a business, just like your local grocer, just like any number of restaurants, just like a bookstore. If any of the above aren't giving you the service you desire, you are welcome to pack up and take your custom elsewhere. Rinse and repeat this pattern enough times, and the 'giant' will either go out of business or change their behavior as to woo you back. That's commerce. If your friends will only ever interact with you on Facebook (or any single online service), my suspicion is that they aren't really your friends and it's time to find some new ones.

<comment><USER29> You might want to educate yourself on concepts called monopolies and network effects before you make yourself look even more clueless.

Also, ever noticed how Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs also doesn't mention electricity or gasoline? You are kindof at the wrong level of abstraction there.

<comment><USER28> Facebook is not a monopoly. I'd rather make the argument that Microsoft, today in 2017, is a monopoly (protip: they arent) than try to argue that Facebook is one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My dog never had any trouble from the Facebook representatives. But then, he did use his real name....

</comment><comment><USER31> Im pretty critical of aspects of fb, but it's hard to take this blog seriously. The same author has a recent post ( [http://theartificialintelligenceblog.com/being- overheard/](http://theartificialintelligenceblog.com/being-overheard/) ) referencing the terrible WhatsApp guardian article written in January, something declared as false journalism by several researchers: [http://technosociology.org/?page_id=1687](http://technosociology.org/?page_id=1687)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't blame you, I don't even take myself seriously. But going back to the point, is anything in my article inaccurate – as far as you know? The being overheard thingy isn't scientific research, one would reckon. Do we agree that trying to inform and empower people is a sensible way to progress? I could argue that our blog is probably doing better than FB and the philanthropist Zuckerberg.

Going back to WhatsApp, some of the aspects of its encryption layer are still unclear, to quote your link:

"The threat is remote, quite limited in scope, applicability (requiring a server or phone number compromise) and stealthiness (users who have the setting enabled still see a warning–even if after the fact). The fact that warnings exist means that such attacks would almost certainly be quickly detected by security-aware users. This limits this method."

This paragraph alone, when put in context, would at least ring a bell and make you question the security and encrypted statement. Especially when it's coming from one of Zuckerberg subsidiaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The web was originally invented and gifted to humanity to promote individual > freedoms and knowledge.

Thank you. This is indeed what web was all about, until the suits showed up to make money!

</comment><comment><USER3> I was already really unhappy with their real name policy (to the point of deleting my account and not going back), but recent incidents - like the policy resulting in moderators' profiles & names getting exposed to terrorists) - just blow my mind. Such a broad impact from a policy that may have no real upsides.

I hope recent events lead them to reconsider this policy but at this point it seems like they never will.

<comment><USER33> Of course. It's money. Or does anybody thinks that $40 per IPO on user just happens?

It's real money to state you advertise to targeted audience by names, jobs and all that.

It will never change because FB likes money more than it cares about its users being harassed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "In practice, the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable. People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment."

Yonatan Zunger, former chief architect of Google+, writing after thevservice had rescinded its Real Names policy.

[https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq](https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq)

</comment><comment><USER35> By requiring real names, Facebook is trying to combat the sort of social discord that occurs on sites like Reddit where people routinely abandon identities, or create throwaway identities to participate in specific fora.

Imagine if car license plates had our name and home address on them, would we be as likely to commit road rage, pick our noses, double park, etc.

Facebook sees itself as a commons first, and the product vision seems to be to incorporate as many of the kinds of constraints common in meatspace to nudge specific kinds of behaviors and discourage others.

Recall in its origin the biggest difference between Facebook and Myspace was Facebook's calming blue, un-customizable color scheme. Blue is commonly used in police uniforms and hospital scrubs.

Facebook also reinvented the feed, moving very early on to an algorithmic feed when competitors were still under the impression that people just wanted to see all updates from all friends. Facebook very quickly understood that the right algorithm can turn a boring feed into engagement dopamine.

Consider that unlike a purely online forum, posts on Facebook are much more likely connected to people we met first in real life where our status is already well-established. Nonetheless people use Facebook to signal activities, pictures or beliefs that they feel will increase their status.

When normal meatspace dynamics matter so much to a site's content, allowing fake names pretty much breaks voyeurism, which is a feature, not a bug.

It is precisely the dark pattern of being able to look up anyone on Facebook and peer into their life that creates Facebook's opportunity to arbitrage between the feeling that what we are posting is mundane, yet it being far from mundane when assembled by Facebook into a complete dossier for anyone who wishes to look us up.

But these are side-effects. My interpretation of this is that Zuck has a strong conviction that meatspace and online life should fully merge. I think he believes this as part of the same utopian conviction that led him to envision Facebook as a "social utility", and I think the same one that is leading him on a path to holding public office.

In his ideal world, politicians would not be two-faced, and internet users would not have multiple avatars and identities to flippantly switch between to avoid facing up to reality or to explore a part of themselves that they do not put on display for all to see.

I think the question Zuck must also ask himself in his moments of reflection is "How can Facebook truly do good?". The good that needs to be done in the world needs to be done by (and for) real people, not screen names and throwaways. Thus as building blocks of that utopian edifice, we must all bear the weight of social responsibility that goes with our actual name being attached to everything we do.

<comment><USER36> > Imagine if car license plates had our name and home address on them

Dunno about where you live, but in the UK the registration authority maps license plates to registered owners addresses, and you can ask them to look it up for you: [https://www.gov.uk/request-information-from- dvla](https://www.gov.uk/request-information-from-dvla)

The UK of course still has road rage and double parking.

WRT online abuse and "hate preaching", some of the most insidious stuff is done in public by people proudly using their own names. Like Katie "Final Solution" Hopkins.

<comment><USER37> > WRT online abuse and "hate preaching", some of the most insidious stuff is > done in public by people proudly using their own names. Like Katie "Final > Solution" Hopkins.

This. Also, if you look at the Facebook comments for a post or article anywhere online, you'll also realise how many people simply don't care if their real name is tied to their trolling/hate.

The percentage of people who only bully/attack others under anonymity is likely far lower than people expect it to be.

<comment><USER27> I can confirm this from my own experience too. Merely requiring real names does nothing to stop hate & trolling because people create throwaway accounts with real names (which are however not their real name) and troll. And there is no way FB can verify if these are the actual names of the operating user without requiring some ID or meatspace verification. And that can be faked too.

Although yes, the barrier for misbehaving becomes bigger and bigger as we move from a scale of total and easy anonymity towards something tied to real life identity as much as your passport or bank account is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If we had some valuable online identity that persisted across multiple sites with a reputation attached that mattered, it wouldn't need to be linked with real identity to make people care enough about it not to soil it.

</comment><comment><USER39> 1\. You don't have to use Facebook. You really, really don't.

2\. Facebook is under no obligation to provide societal benefits for you. It doesn't even have a moral duty to act upon your complaints. Why? See 1. It's not a government program, you are not forced to use it, you are not even buying anything from it. You are just complaining about free stuff. So. Seriously. Just stop using it.

PS. I'm not defending Facebook here. Facebook is objectively abhorrent. I'm just stating facts. They best way to fight Facebook is to stop using it.

<comment><USER40> In Europe there is a mindset that companies can become so big that you can not avoid them anymore. Nobody forces you to use Google or Facebook, but you are put at a disadvantage if you do not use them.

Facebook is not free. You trade your data for usage.

<comment><USER41> Google? Maybe. Facebook? I would argue that using Facebook is a net negative and you're at an advantage if you ditch it.

<comment><USER42> For uk students Facebook is almost a requirement of the social life. Few people have other contact lists, if you aren't on Facebook you can't be contacted. Event invitation is done through Facebook - the event is rarely advertised elsewhere nor is it a deliberate topic conversation.

The few people I knew who didn't use Facebook at uni ended up using it through others whether they are were willing to admit it or not.

<comment><USER39> >For uk students Facebook is almost a requirement of the social life.

So, are you telling me that _students_ , people at the stage of life when they are most rebellious, and their minds are most flexible, just won't be able to find any replacement for Facebook, if they wanted to?

(◔_◔)

<comment><USER42> You've taken something that said 'almost' and taken it to the extremes.

> any replacement for Facebook, if they wanted to

That requires organising several thousand people who _don 't want to_ to change platform.

Perform whatever gymnastics you want and break all of the rules - that task ain't getting easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Quora has among the more civilized discussions due to its real name policy.

<comment><USER44> As has HN which does not have a real name policy. We're in unproven territory, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Without real names, Facebook would be as junky as Myspace was.

<comment><USER46> Here's just two examples as to why online anonymity is so critical, there's cases like this every single day. You might think, so what? You're free to keep on thinking that right up until you're the one going to jail for criticising your boss. [http://www.eutimes.net/2016/12/facebook-bans-german- woman-fo...](http://www.eutimes.net/2016/12/facebook-bans-german-woman-for- posting-picture-of-migrant-rapist/) [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thailand- woman-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thailand-woman-prison- two-word-facebook-message-reply-a7022116.html)

<comment><USER26> Facebook does not represent the end of online anonymity because Facebook is one single site. There is nothing objectionable about one site having a rule to use your real name or not at all, and it is the height of entitlement to claim otherwise. (It's popular, so now they have to do X Y and Z)

Doubly so given how granular the controls are regarding who can see what. Sharing on Facebook is a completely opt-in process, so if you don't want your boss seing your pictures, you have a litany of options, including lists, person-to-person sharing, blocking, and not friending them in the first place.

The problem is that this requires a modicum of effort, and people don't want to have to expend that effort. They want to be able to blast everything out there and just kinda hope that it doesn't get them in trouble. It takes effort to use stuff that's not Facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being naive means refusing to recognize that most people confuse the internet with facebook. Most true in developing countries, where facebook's plan for universal internet access includes setting facebook as their homepage.

<comment><USER26> > _most people confuse the internet with facebook._

Citation needed.

<comment><USER47> "Most" is an exaggeration. But it's a ton of people. [https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no- id...](https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre- using-the-internet/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> anyone remember Orkut ? One of the reasons why I quit Orkut was because they didn't care about real names. so people started using weird characters and unicodes instead of their real name. This won't be a problem when you're not friends with them but once you're friends with them and your friend changes their name to some weird characters, you don't know who you're talking to. I hated that.

I think the article is looking at an extreme scenario and calling the policy naive. This case wouldn't matter to people in the developed nations (and most developing countries as well).

<comment><USER29> How the fuck does stability of names require that it's from your government ID?

How about you simply allow users to put labels on their contacts to identify them for themselves? No need to introduce a police state in order to keep you unconfused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't know why there are special rules for popular websites. If there was some building in town where you had to show ID to get in and participate in whatever activity was going on, imagine when the ankle biters showed up and announced that it was 'dangerous and evil' to require people to have to use their real identity to come inside the building.

If you have some reason to not go on facebook, don't go on facebook. There is basically nothing worthwhile there anyway, you aren't being personally attacked because they want to run their community the way they think is best.</comment>


Creating CSS3 opening effect for music gallery + PlacerAnything - <AUTHOR> http://javascriptisawesome.blogspot.com/2012/11/fast-developing-of-pretty-html-desing.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, that is cool. I want to eventually learn Node.js. Is it difficult?

<comment><AUTHOR> No; is extremely easy man; specially if you have experience using Javascript in browser; I will post some tutorials in the future about how to be efficient debugging and developing in Node.JS</comment></comment>


Single-family homes cover almost half of Los Angeles - <AUTHOR> https://la.curbed.com/2018/9/10/17827982/single-family-houses-los-angeles-zoning-rules-explained <comment><USER2> >As Morrow points out, Los Angeles was zoned to hold up to 10 million residents in 1960. By 1990, the city had capacity for just 3.9 million residents.

That single line sums up a huge source of problems in Los Angeles from high rents to homelessness to traffic to lack of public transit. People want to move to, live in, and work in the city, but its zoning laws have unnaturally restricted growth for decades.

<comment><USER3> Surely part of the problem is that so many people love or want to live in a place that long-term, can't get water, is subject to deveststing earthquakes, and is overpopulated in terms of what can be sustained in a sane manner over time? It seems like the last thing to do is fill the place up with more people. Even if you reject that premise, what you call "unnaturally restricted growth" is being applied to a truly massive city. What would unrestricted growth look like exactly? After all was said and done, would it still be such a desirable place to live?

I get the impression from CA property discussions (of SF especially) on this forum, that anything which drives up rents and makes it hard for the typical person on this forum to live there is de facto, wrong. It's _obvious_ and the received wisdom that the solution is to build build build. Are you so sure the solution for everyone who isn't looking for a high-end techie salary (i.e. most people) isn't for the industry to be less concentrated in one city?

Plus the whole water poured into a desert and earthquake things.

Now I realize this is all a massively unpopular viewpoint around these parts, but these parts are at their most "in a bubble" around this issue I think. It's no shock that the people who stand to benefit most from their preferred solution are fanatically in favor of it, especially when the alternatives involve (in the short term) sacrifice, and ideologically undesired outcomes like continued regulation. The thing is, between people who spent a lifetime in a city not wanting it to turn into blocks of high-rises, and an influx chasing VC money, there really is more than the dichotomy of "the virtuous" and "the NIMBY."

Everyone here would benefit from reading _Cadillac Desert_ by Marc Reisner.

Edit: I knew going in that this was going to be downvoted to death, but I hold out some hope that it can get some thoughtful rebuttals too. Preferably light on the glib "Natural disasters happen in many paces" canard.

<comment><USER4> I think there is a sort of millenial grudge that prevents otherwise intelligent people from realizing that unrestricted population growth in a desirable area can lead to bad outcomes.

I usually use an extreme example to make my point: if 100 million people want to live in Hawaii, should current Hawaiians be forced/guilted/compelled to accommodate them? Is there any point at which you say to people 'no, you have to live somewhere less desirable'?

I'm not saying LA is free of problems, but I'm pretty sure there aren't too many problems that can be solved by cramming more people into LA. I would like to see the density increase, sure, but then return areas to open space(as if that will ever happen, but a boy can dream).

<comment><USER2> This type of zoning restriction only protects current property owners. They don't protect all current residents. If 100 million people wanted to live in Hawaii, almost every renter would be forced off the island in favor of one of those 100 million who was willing and able to pay more. Many of the property owners would also end up leaving once it became clear how much their property had increased in value. The current Hawaiians wouldn't be "forced/guilted/compelled to accommodate" the new residents. They would instead by "forced/guilted/compelled to" move off the island completely.

Similarly the 4 million people who live in Los Angeles are not the same 4 million who lived in the city 20 years ago. The actual makeup of the city is constantly shuffled around as prices of rent change and different sets of people are willing and able to afford to live there. "Cramming more people into LA" would actually lead to more stability for current residents as it would stall the price increases of real estate by keeping the supply of housing more in sync with the rising demand for housing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find most of LA really hard to spend time in. The mangled road network (Grids? Nah bruh, lets have lots of dead ends!), constant drone of traffic everywhere, and few things being walkable makes it not the most enjoyable place to visit.

Seattle is up there on the traffic scale, but at least in the neighborhoods there aren't 6 lane monster roads criss crossing every which way, with few pedestrian crossings and no lanes for bikes or busses. Traffic calming has helped quite a bit too, though I imagine reducing a 4 lane road to a 2 lane road with parking, a center turn lane and bike lanes would get the average politician recalled down in LA.

<comment><USER6> Los Angeles is a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit.

That being said, the revitalized downtown, the slowly growing metro system, and uber/lyft to fill the gaps have made it better than it once was. It still is a massive monstrosity of a city, so it's never going to be as "walkable" as compact city like SF.

<comment><USER7> This is a perfect way to put it

"Los Angeles is a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit."

Once you understand how to travel the city, it's hard to live anywhere else because quality of life is so ridiculously high. It's why people tend not to leave if they make it past their two year mark.

<comment><USER8> Genuinely interested - what makes LA a great place to live?

<comment> 8f2ab37a-ed6c As far as the larger LA area goes, it's a few hours from Vegas, next to the beach, Santa Barbara and San Diego next door. Access to various Mojave type deserts and national parks (Joshua Tree is amazing). Big Bear / mountains nearby. Various price points of housing, anything from affordable-ish family homes to expensive upscale condos (downtown) and ridiculous mansions (Hollywood hills, Malibu, Belair etc). Great for all stages of life, whether you're young and want to mingle, or have a family and want to live somewhere safe (Pasadena, OC). Access to decent UC schools. Absurd amount of entertainment all day every day for whatever taste you have. Food from every corner of the Earth. Ethnic diversity. Major airport next door. If you're into fashion, arts, cinema, music, tech, real estate, science, there's a place here for you with that interest. Tons of people from all walks of life. Oh yeah, shorts and t-shirt weather all year round.

Only big downsides are commuting and cost of living. Also homeless everywhere unless you're locked up in a suburb, but not as bad as SF since they stick to certain areas. Skid Row is both fascinating and terrifying to visit.

Please don't come here though, rent is going up as it is.

<comment><USER9> Was visiting LA a couple years ago, originally from Prague. Absolutely fantastic city to visit if you do your homework first and know where you wanna go. Wander about like in a European city - not going to work.

I was set on relocating there but real estate prices, taxes and distance from relatives forced me to backpedal. I think LA has a fantastic fuutre, especially once efficient public transit system will fully emerge. Recently I was shocked to learn that LA has better air quality than Prague. Can you believe that? Everybody drives fucking diesel on a stick here while you guys are migrating to hybrids. Go LA.

<comment><USER10> Excellent breakdown. People are quick to hate on LA. You cannot think of it as a traditional city. If you do your homework LA is an amazing place to visit with a ton to do and lots of friendly people to engage with under sunny skies most of the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I found Los Angeles pretty unpleasant in that it combined all the least pleasant parts of suburban living with the least pleasant parts of urban living; I guess this is part of why.

<comment><USER10> I actually find it a benefit that you can have a house with a yard in the middle of LA.

Compare that to New York where people are stacked up on top of each other like ants.

For the cost of a studio apartment in Manhattan one could rent a free standing house in Los Angeles and with year round beautiful weather.

<comment><USER12> But then you have no choice but to get everywhere by car. It's an awful life for some people.

<comment><USER13> You mean people without a car? Because the freedom of having a car and being able to go literally anywhere relatively quickly is pretty great. I've lived in both LA and NYC for a number of years. In both places you can easily live 10 minutes from where you work, or an hour away. Where you live/work is up to you.

<comment><USER14> Not having a car is freedom. I'm 35 and have never driven and hopefully never will. Can't imagine having another expense and hassle to deal with.

I have a nice bicycle, live near work, and can get to the beach or mountains fairly easily by either bike or mass transit.

<comment><USER13> Pick any 2 points in LA and compare the time between driving and public transit.

Thinking of all the places I travel to around here like the desert, mountains, Vegas, beaches, etc.. I can't imagine not having a car.

<comment><USER14> Believe it or not there's a world outside of LA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And 14% of it is parking! [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/12/parking- los-a...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/12/parking-los-angeles- maps-study/418593/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've never lived in LA, but if I did it seems like the neighborhood you choose to live in would drastically impact your experience in a much more severe way than other cities because of how long it takes to get from point A to point B i.e. if you chose to live downtown then basically forget seeing friends or dating someone who lives in Venice. The only condition in which I could see myself living there is if my average commute was < 30 minutes, if I had a core group of friends that lived in the same neighborhood as me, and if I enjoyed the social aspects of the neighborhood I lived in.

<comment><USER17> Venice to Downtown is 25 minutes if you make the drive after 8:30-9pm, where on the weekends it can be the same the entire day. It does suck when you have a concert you want to get to that starts at 8, but you do get used to it. Note that this distance is close to 15 miles anyways, where virtually no one in NYC is traveling that distance in less than an hour.

<comment><USER18> All of NYC except Far Rockaway and parts of Staten Island are within 15 miles of midtown, as well as the densest part of NJ including Newark, Jersey City, and Hoboken. And also the three large airports in the region (JFK, LGA, and EWR). I rarely travel more than a couple miles on a daily basis.

My point being, distance is relative to the density of the city. When the city is dense you don't need to travel long distances, so comparing travel time per distance straight across isn't a relevant comparison. But you're still off anyway; the average subway speed is 17 mph, and LIRR/MetroNorth are considerably faster since they make fewer stops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's important to not forget that half of the land in Los Angeles is the Santa Monica Mountains (hollywood hills, ect), and the San Fernando Valley.

Now, there are still neighborhoods in central areas that don't have much multifamily housing, but these are the areas that need to be targeted. Multifamily sprawl is just as bad if not worse than single family home sprawl, as it only feeds into traffic. The real problem in LA is a lack of proper transit oriented development, especially around employment.

I should also add that LA is the densest metro area in the US, largely because even though LA has so many single family homes, subdivisions are far smaller than you see in NYC suburbs.

<comment><USER19> > Multifamily sprawl is just as bad if not worse than single family home > sprawl, as it only feeds into traffic.

I agree. Constantly intensifying car traffic is at the heart of LA's (and Southern California's) problems.

LA (and Southern California) will not improve its car traffic density problem for at least another generation (and probably multiple generations).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was just flying over LA on sunday and had to take a picture of this "single house ocean":

[https://imgur.com/a/iMWExcv](https://imgur.com/a/iMWExcv)

Very unusual view.

<comment><USER21> Is there a reason you are flying in a HighVis vest?

<comment><USER20> Lol

It was cold! And it's Gore jacket :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> To be fair you can subtract out "almost half of Los Angeles" and still be left over with an entire Chicago... with room to spare.

</comment><comment><USER23> IMHO what happened is that several cities appeared 150 years ago, they grew and are still growing. Suburbs have grown but there are few cases of cities starting to emerge in the last 40 years and that is also a way to grow.

</comment><comment><USER24> Still though, LA is the densest metropolitan area in the country. Also from curbed (source being the census): [https://la.curbed.com/2012/3/26/10385086/los-angeles-is- the-...](https://la.curbed.com/2012/3/26/10385086/los-angeles-is-the-most- densely-populated-urban-area-in-the-us)

If you've been to LA, you know that those single-family homes are nearly touching each other and that the cityscape is very built, with hardly any empty space.

Yes it's overall not transit friendly, but it's still a huge area that you can reasonably call urban.</comment>


Patent Program ideas from SCIFI? - <AUTHOR>

If you got an idea for a software program from a SCI-FI book, and you create that program. Would you be able to patent it? <comment><USER2> Depends exactly what you mean by "got an idea ... from a sci-fi book". If you mean "copied directly from a sci-fi book", you shouldn't be able to patent it -- the USPTO has accepted science fiction as prior art in the past. (Naturally, it's only prior art if it describes the _method_ \-- Star Trek transporters aren't prior art for anything, because the mechanisms behind how they work were never specified.)

The most famous example of fiction being cited as prior art is probably the method of raising a sunken ship by filling it with ping pong balls, where a 1949 Donald Duck cartoon was cited.</comment>


Verious - The Mobile App Component Marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.verious.com/ <comment><USER2> I like <http://cocoacontrols.com> better, but I'm also a bit biased :)</comment>


Why Peter Thiel is wrong about search being a natural monopoly - <AUTHOR> http://www.brekiri.com/blog/405/why-peter-thiel-is-wrong-about-the-search-monopoly/

<comment><USER2> Monopoly search is bad because it is easier to game. People have gotten so good at manipulating Google rankings, that there is room for competition. Merely being small has some inherent advantages. Being bigger and more popular can be inherently bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think of it as the Google uncertainty principle (after Heisenberg). As soon as Google measures a search signal, just the fact that it goes into the rankings means that it degrades in quality. People start reverse engineering the ranking and trying to game it. So it's kind of an arms race between Google and the text ad industry they've created.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This video has Thiel's comments:

<http://bigthink.com/series/62#!selected_item=4845>

He starts at 8 mins in, and although the whole video is 2 hours long, he makes a bunch of major points in the first 3 to 4 minutes of his talk, after which he answers questions for 3 to 5 minutes.

His central point is that there is a lot of potential value in getting the fixed costs of the search business down, and that he would prefer to invest there, rather than in playing the zero sum game of trying to take away make share in the $25 Bln search business.

Also worth noting: anybody who can lower the fixed costs of search by an order of magnitude is also going to be in a position to make money from businesses that have similar cost structures.

</comment><comment><USER4> 80/20 doesn't really apply here. The whole point of search is to handle the obscure stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes and no. Pretty basic spelling correction is pretty good, and as Google makes its spelling operation more sophisticated, I actually find myself needing to reverse their corrections more often.

Indexing is more complicated. You could argue that 20% of Google's index contains at least 80% of the information people need. The problem, like the old advertising saying, is figuring out which 20%. So if you have a clever way to address content quality and uniqueness, suddenly your crawling and indexing costs plummet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The idea that costs for a search engine go down with time is false. Bandwidth, CPU, memory and disk sizes you have available to index and retrieve information do get cheaper. And this means they get cheaper for information- producers too. So the need to increase the amount of data you index eats away the decreasing cost of hardware.

Naturally this holds true for general search engines. Vertical ones are a very different beast. And I think Peter Thiel was not talking about specialized vertical searches like patent search.

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on whether you think you need to index the same fraction of web content over time. I think that's one of the unexamined principles of the search engine industry. Also, software costs are in some ways decreasing even faster than hardware costs because of open source infrastructure.

To go back to the Blekko example, I'd say it's pretty clear you couldn't build something like that with $10-15 MM (assuming they've gone through maybe half their funding) a few years ago.

<comment><USER6> It seems like you really need to keep up the index on the same %, but I guess dropping all the "designed for Ads only" sites would drop your number. I keep wondering if one of the shortening companies would come up with a search engine based on their links and some metric on repeats / reputation. Also, it might be work trying some touch setup with a person going good/bad for some % of your index.</comment></comment></comment>


Your Crypto Kitty isn't forever – Why DApps aren't as decentralized as you think - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/loom-network/your-crypto-kitty-isnt-forever-why-dapps-aren-t-as-decentralized-as-you-think-871d6acfea <comment><USER2> Most people assume that Ethereum decentralized = DApps decentralized... But as this shows that's not necessarily the case.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah this is why I think side chains are going to be the future, the main network is to limited</comment>


Microsoft's patch for the .LNK vulnerability (2286198) is out *now*  - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-aug.mspx

<comment><USER2> Any background on this?</comment>


Reddit Is Failing at Being "The Front Page of the Internet" - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/orlando-shooting-response-shows-reddit-cant-be-the-front-page-of-the-internet?utm_source=vicefbus <comment><USER2> We seem to be witnessing increasingly desperate journalism by Vice. It's an ambitious and somewhat self-mocking strapline, nothing more.

<comment><USER3> Vice is really terrible nowadays. It was edgy and cool when I was in university (>15 years ago) but it has really shifted in recent years.

If I were to speculate, I'd say it was probably related to the "founder split" that happened between Gavin McInnis and Shane Smith.

If you look at the editorial angle that vice has now, it is pretty one sided with respect to their "social justice" bias, with _everything_ being presented as a fresh outrage or cultural appropriation. (With tumblr teen angst quality arguments)

When you look at Gavin McInnis' twitter, he is pretty much "batshit crazy" on the other side of things. Trump supporter, Men's Rights hero... and so on.

The theory that I operate on (which has the amount of research effort you've read above put into it, so virtually none) is that the mix of two diametrically opposed leaders produced some form of catalytic reaction which resulted in a super-edgy publication which presented nuance to the world.

Without the internal checks and balances, they've presented as "one man's treasure" (and everyone else's trash).

There are other problems at vice too though ... $30k to publish anything you want... have a search for "Nutella"

Vice is basically native advertising pretending to be cool.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: iPhone as WiFi base station? - <AUTHOR>

Given that the iPhone has WiFi, how hard would it be to use it as a (semi-)broadband connection bridging to a laptop or desktop computer? This would enable me and probably quite a few others to scrap their current ISP's. <comment><USER2> A simple matter of programming. Just add AP mode to the wi-fi driver and enable NAT routing in the network stack. I have a feeling AT&T wouldn't allow it, though; they'd probably prefer that you get a more expensive plan if you're going to run a stompbox.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, what part of unlimited data do they not understand?

PS: thanks for the word: I'd never heard of stompboxen before, neat stuff.

<comment><USER2> We're talking about the phone company; "unlimited" means whatever they want it to mean.</comment></comment></comment>


Safeway, Theranos Split After $350M Deal Fizzles - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/safeway-theranos-split-after-350-million-deal-fizzles-1447205796 <comment><USER2> Some important points from that article:

> Current and former Safeway executives said Theranos missed deadlines for the > blood-testing rollout. They also said several Safeway executives questioned > the accuracy of results Theranos gave to Safeway employees tested at a > clinic in the supermarket chain's headquarters in Pleasanton, Calif.

> Theranos often drew the same employee's blood twice, first with blood from a > finger prick and then the traditional method of a needle in the arm, > according to one former Safeway executive.

> The former executive said he worried that Theranos's finger-prick process > was still a work in progress. "If the technology is fully developed, why > would you need to do a venipuncture?" this person said, using the term for a > traditional blood draw.

> The concerns deepened when Theranos's test results for several Safeway > employees differed from the results the same employees got from other > laboratories, according to the former executive. Another former Safeway > executive confirmed those recollections.

> One Safeway executive got a frighteningly high result from Theranos on a > test to gauge his prostate-specific antigen, according to two former Safeway > executives. They said the test suggested that the executive had prostate > cancer. Retesting by another lab came back normal.

<comment><USER3> The positive predictive value for the prostate-specific antigen test for prostate cancer is only 30%. This means that only 30% of people who test positive for elevated levels of prostate-specific antigen actually have prostate cancer. This is an intrinsic problem with testing for prostate- specific antigen not with Theranos' testing.

<comment><USER4> The issue is not how accurate the PSA test is for detecting prostate cancer, but that Theranos' tests give wildly different results to everyone else's FDA approved tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Read the informed comments on Derek Lowe's blog about Theranos [1]. This is the money shot quote from johnnyboy

 _" @Pete: it is entirely justified to have doubts about the validity of blood results obtained from finger pricks. The blood you get from a prick will be a mixture of blood from small venules, small arterioles, capillaries and lymph vessels, mixed with whatever loose tissue and cells have been cut by the prick and carried over into the blood. No way you could ever get a reliable CBC from such a sample. Since the kind of general blood tests that this company is targeting are usually CBC + chem panel, even if you could get your chem results from the prick, you still need a normal blood draw for the CBC, so the competitive advantage that they are trying to push (quick sampling by patient at pharmacy, without need for phlebotomist) is lost. On top of that, the variability inherent in chem results from prick blood will be significant for several analytes, like CK and AST (present in muscle so could be raised from prick injury), glucose and lipids (different levels in venous or arterial blood or lymph), etc… They are focusing on their fancy technology without much consideration of the underlying biology, typical error of engineering types."_

1\. [http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/10/15/the...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/10/15/theranos- and-its-blood-test-machine)

<comment><USER5> No doubt that a blood sample from a finger prick is different than from a vein.

That said, diabetics just use finger pricks for their blood glucose tests. Is the result calibrated for a finger prick test or do we just assume it's close enough?

<comment><USER4> You don't need the accuracy that you need for the other tests plus glucose is in really high concentrations relatively to the other compounds they want to measure. If you are out by 20% on the glucose concentration in diabetes it does not matter too much, but it does for everything else. It is not like the current machines are 100% accurate anyway even though the ISO threshold is +-20% [1].

1\. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3317395/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3317395/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The anecdotal evidence is absolutely overwhelming at this point: Theranos simply doesn't work. Books will be written about this company...

<comment><USER6> I agree. It will likely be seen as a massive scam. Ideas are cheap. Technology is hard.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I've been working in MEMS for 15 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's now been two weeks since Theranos said they were going to release clinical data.

<comment><USER4> Sam I think we can safely say at this stage that there is no favorable clinical data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What options are there for founders to liquidate shares in the process of fundraising but before going public? Are founders typically able to liquidate some amount of shares in funding rounds in order to take home cash, or do investors disallow that entirely until a company is sold or goes public?

Theranos is 12 years old at this point, and raised $400 million at a $4.5 billion valuation. Would a founder of a company in those circumstances have been able to liquidate - let's say - 1% of their ownership along the way, or in the last fundraising round, for cash? Or is that out of the question and founders are expected to retain their ownership aside from investment dilution until sale?

I suppose the answer depends on the terms the company is able to work out with their investors. But perhaps someone can comment on what terms are common in such situations.

<comment><USER10> Biggest example is Snapchat, they got and keep asking for millions of dollars money when fundraising.

Last year's big drama was Secret app's founder taking $6MM when they raised $25MM then proceeded to buy fancy cars. The product growth stalled and the company shut down in less than a year.

Happened with Buffer.

<comment><USER11> Happened with Basecamp (formerly 37 Signals), too -- they're bootstrapped but they took a small investment from Jeff Bezos so that they could cash out a little bit and enjoy themselves.

<comment><USER12> Funny how they dedicate their blogging to attacking Bezos's business model, then make their living off of it.

<comment><USER13> The very definition of disruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> to anyone that doesn't have a wsj subscription, use the link from the google results:

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAGoVChMI8_XZ1ayHyQIVQcFjCh20CAnN&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fsafeway- theranos-split-after-350-million-deal- fizzles-1447205796&usg=AFQjCNH0VFmzVZNRQHli7qd2DDXu6umZBg&sig2=etQXPu4uSowWZeJZYjGUbA)

<comment><USER15> Or just click the web link stories have now under their title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Theranos often drew the same employee's blood twice, first with blood from a > finger prick and then the traditional method of a needle in the arm, > according to one former Safeway executive.

> The former executive said he worried that Theranos's finger-prick process > was still a work in progress. "If the technology is fully developed, why > would you need to do a venipuncture?" this person said, using the term for a > traditional blood draw.

> The concerns deepened when Theranos's test results for several Safeway > employees differed from the results the same employees got from other > laboratories, according to the former executive. Another former Safeway > executive confirmed those recollections.

> Theranos also backed away from putting its blood analyzers in Safeway's > clinics so patients could get the results quickly, the current and former > executives said.

> Instead, Theranos said blood samples collected at Safeway would have to be > shipped to a central lab for analysis, according to the former executives.

Wow. The Theranos story just keeps getting worse.

<comment><USER4> Yep. I think this unicorn has a broken leg.

<comment><USER17> Where is the line between grossly exaggerating ones product and criminal fraud drawn?

Personally I view things where you give someone a false health diagnosis to be among the most egregious deceptions possible, a step beyond running a Ponzi scheme and in line with other things where users are severely hurt or killed.

<comment><USER4> I will be very surprised if Elizabeth hasn't crossed the line over to fraud at some point. She is pulling down some very well connected people - she had better like orange.

<comment><USER6> I'm not even sure it's her fault or the fools who gave a 20 year old billions of dollars to startup a healthcare company. What could go wrong?

<comment><USER18> It should be pointed out that she never got billions of dollars to start Theranos.

She was 21 or so when Theranos got a $5.8m A round. She's now 31.

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/theranos](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/theranos)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >Safeway Inc. spent about $350 million to build clinics in more than 800 of its supermarkets to offer blood tests by startup Theranos Inc.

>The $350 million price tag was equivalent to more than half of Safeway's net income of $596.5 million in 2012. Safeway had revenue of $44.21 billion. Safeway also invested more than $10 million in Theranos, one former Safeway executive said.

>Two of the former Safeway executives said they told Mr. Burd, Safeway's chief executive, about the varying employee test results.

>The former executives said Mr. Burd told them he had been reassured by Ms. Holmes. Mr. Burd continued to support the partnership with Theranos, according to the former Safeway executives.

If he hadn't retired already, he should be fired for incompetence.

<comment><USER20> Well, Holmes _did_ reassure Burd. We cannot rule out the possibility that she is an exceptionally deft reassurer.

In seriousness, Safeway gets durable capital improvements to their stores for their $350mm, still useful without Project T-Rex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is having blood tests in grocery stores / pharmacies a newish thing in the US, or it existed for a long time? I lived in the US in 2004-2007, and had blood tests regularly, but it would have never occurred to me to go to a grocery store for one.

<comment><USER9> No, that's not typical. Blood tests are not usually offered in pharmacies either, and are reserved for clinics and hospitals. Blood tests typically involve needles, privacy, etc. They're the wrong atmosphere for a casual grocery store or pharmacy.

Theranos's vision was to make blood tests easier and more accessible by requiring only a finger prick instead of drawing from a vein and by giving results quickly instead of hours or days later from a lab. It sounds like Safeway got on board with that vision as a forward-looking opportunity.

If a full panel blood test was as easy as a finger prick, then I could see blood testing going mainstream in the way that Theranos is hoping, and Safeway was hoping, but it all depends on the technology actually working as advertised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Have the people who funded Theranos been calling the critics haters? That seems to be common with some VCs. Like calling HN "Hater News" because of harsh criticism of questionable claims of innovation.

<comment><USER23> [https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/651634611357790208](https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/651634611357790208)

If it comes out that Andreessen backed Theranos, I suspect there'll be a lot of schadenfreude in the Valley.

<comment><USER22> We all understand that the VC narrative is about potentials. Sometimes we don't buy into the potential, may even have legit reasons to believe it is bogus. But if we don't support the narrative we are haters. Seems beneath someone in that position to resort to name-calling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is what happens when the CEO of a startup is a liar. It is a shame, but it is unsurprising.

</comment><comment><USER25> Could a kind person summarize the article for us that don't have a WSJ subscription?

<comment><USER26> Click the "web" link in the header at the top of this page and it will google search the article, click on it in google and you'll see the whole thing.</comment></comment>


For Sympathetic Ear, More Chinese Turn to Smartphone Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/science/for-sympathetic-ear-more-chinese-turn-to-smartphone-program.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> From the article:

> _Xiaoice, whose name translates roughly to "Little Bing," after the > Microsoft search engine, is a striking example of the advancements in > artificial-intelligence software that mimics the human brain._

"Striking example"? "Artificial-intelligence"? "Mimics the human brain"? From the example chats, it seems to be just a chatbot, maybe a little more convincing than ELIZA. If there is a piece of news here, it's not about Xiaoice but about people feeling so lonely they can pretend a chatbot is their "friend". I realize this is standard journalist exaggeration, so I'll ask: is there any technical info on Xiaoice that explains how this chatbot stands out from the rest? Is this the current state of the art?

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this on a whim because I found the article in conflict with itself. Saying 'it remembers conversations' and then later 'no data is saved about the user' just shows how conflicting. That lonely people are using it is even worse - they could be adding to their suffering by sharing their personal details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When these chat bots will become good enough there will be many people choosing to have relationships with them. I think people will also have sex with them if they were built as androids. There is an anime called Chobits which explores this angle.

Other uses: personal tutoring, personal assistant and taking care of the elderly, when they can get robotics up to par. The Japanese consider this a possible solution to their aging society crisis.

We could also delegate a lot of our social interactions to our bots, let the bots handle between themselves the details of our daily dealings.

The problem is, what will happen to our society when people will start preferring the bots?

</comment><comment><USER4> previous submission:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9984142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9984142)</comment>


This is Mozilla heading in the right direction - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2012/11/30/webrtc-makes-social-api-even-more-social/?+1

<comment><USER2> I heard one of the Google guys say in an I/O video on WebM that VP9 will be ready for "streaming" in Q4 this year. I wonder if he meant for WebRTC, too. The sooner we can have WebRTC with VP9 and Opus, the better.

<comment><USER3> They said that explicitly a few times in diffetrent talks. Realtime encoding for WebRTC is targeted for Q4.</comment></comment>


A 48Khz digital music player for the Commodore 64 - <AUTHOR> https://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-music-player-for.html <comment><USER3> If you think that's impressive, look at the demos thealgorithm pulls off On a stock c64 with no expansion. Advance to the 11minute mark: full screen streaming video and audio from a floppy

[https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA](https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA)

He also has a 22khz demo that plays back a full song on stock HW.

Seeing full screen video and audio on an 8-bit machine in 1982 would have seemed like alien technology, it would have blown people away. Years later people would be impressive by simple black and white QuickTime movies on far more expensive and faster HW.

<comment><USER4> This is on stock C64 too :-). I guess the achievement here is using compression at such a high frequency. Once you get down to lower frequency, you can implement fancier compression schemes and add more stuff on display. The same author has compressed video plus compressed digi streaming from floppy disk here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIRww2a59lE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIRww2a59lE) But of course, that's not 48Khz and it sounds like that :-)

<comment><USER5> Not really. Stock C64 plus 1mb cartridge.

The big innovation was Pex's discovery of a way to output 8 bit samples by a single register write on the SID chip. The chip was never designed for outputing digital samples, and the approach leverages basically a bug in the chip design to achieve this.

The only innovative bit in this new demo (besides presuming to use a cartridge for storage) is the vector quantized compression technique.

<comment><USER4> This is running on an Ocean type cartridge as a storage, which is considered stock Hardware in the demo community, as stated in the article. If no additional device can be "accepted", then all of the demos mentioned in this thread should be disqualified too, because they use a disk drive.:-) In general, the technology showcased in this demo of course would work also playing the song from RAM, it would just be a bit too short :-)

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree that commercially available REUs were fair game, but a vanishingly small number of C64 owners had them, while a very large number of C64 owners had either datasettes or 1541s.

This doesn't take away from the demo, but if say, EA, Epyx, or Activision were going to ship a game that played music like this, they would have had to fix it in 64k. So it's even more impressive when I see stuff that a typical home computer could have seen in 1983.

I remember the first few times I heard digi-mods on the C64, like Rob Hubbard's Skate or Die game intro ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqRXxPl6bXA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqRXxPl6bXA)) and it absolutely blew me away. Full screen video + audio like that Onslaught Demo would have given me a heart attack.

<comment><USER4> We are not talking about REUs here, as clearly stated in the article. We are talking about Ocean Type Cartridges, which were available in the 80s. And yes, they where ROM, not RAM, and yes, they came in those sizes. 16Mb ram expansions did not exist, 1Mb ROMs did exist

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Commodore (the company) had a fraction of the dedication and ingenuity of today's Commodore users we'd all be using their machines still, and reading about Apple enthusiasts who managed to squeeze another ounce of juice off their old Macintosh, or some fringe PC zealots who got their XT to display a different shade of green.

<comment><USER3> The thing about the VIC II and SID is that they have just enough flexibility by exploiting the HW to pull off an astonishing number of effects, like stretching sprites/screen/characters by tricking the VIC to redisplay lines, this allows cool HW scaling effects. Or getting the VIC to delay displaying lines, which allows shifting the screen by more than 8 pixels in vertical and horizontal directions (the scroll registers normally only allow 8 different pixel positions)

People have exploited interlacing/sub pixel/NTSC/PAL effects to generate new colors, or simulate hi-res. They've combined changing color palettes per-line with sprite overlays to breach the barrier of 4 unique colors per 4x8 pixel block.

The list of surprising effects I've seen on the C64 never seems to end. Some crazy people have also managed to get the C128's VDC to do demo-scene effects as well.

One trick I was working on in the 80s before I quit the C64/C128 to go to the Amiga was to try and use the C128's MMU chip to run high speed 8502 code. The C128 MMU could remap the 0 page addresses ($00-$FF) into other memory regions. Because 0-page instructions run faster (e.g. STA $C000 vs STA $C0), if you could remap zero page, you could write code in a style that is significantly faster.

I wanted to use this to write a fast line drawing/poly-filing routine. Since the VIC could also be remapped by the MMU, in theory (I never go to to test it), you could map the zero page to a VIC mapped address, and do pixel block operations at 2-3 cycles per write.

<comment><USER6> Hat off to you sir. I learned programming on the Vic20 (my first computer) and I still cannot surpass the level of excitement it got me then. I didn't dream to squeeze the hardware back then, I just accepted it and used a tiny amount of it. What I see done now is nothing short of amazing. If these talents of optimisations would apply to modern hardware, we wouldn't need modern hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow. Remember that this on a machine that isn't actually designed to play digitized sound at all! (Though ways to hack the chip to do just that have certainly existed for a while, as mentioned in the article.)

<comment><USER8> makes you wonder what our current machines could be doing in 20-30 years, that was not intended. Maybe some quantum emulation.

<comment><USER9> The massive complexity, diversity and general black-box nature of modern PCs leads me to believe that we won't have a similar scene of enthusiasts to develop amazing hacks for, say, 2009 Dell Inspiron laptops.

There's an elegant simplicity in these old pieces of hardware, it's relatively easy to study them exhaustively and if you're clever enough you might find a new way to fit the pieces of the puzzle to do something nobody had though possible before. If you want to hack a modern PC you'll probably first have to spend a few years reverse-engineering the various parts to figure out how they work exactly and what you can do with them. Even getting a basic understanding of the low level details of a modern GPU is quite a massive undertaking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You could never do this on an Apple II. The Apple II hardware was limited to a one-bit click of the speaker (in part due to a dispute between Apple Computer and Apple Records?).

But there was a modem for the Apple II, the Novation Apple-Cat II that contained a tone synthesizer and could be used to play music out over the line. To this day, I think that modem is one of the neatest peripherals ever made:

[http://www.jammed.com/~jwa/Machines/cat/](http://www.jammed.com/~jwa/Machines/cat/)

<comment><USER11> For what it's worth in early 90's people were playing PCM audio on PC speaker, which is single bit DAC that is in turn controlled by programmable interval counter and thus effectively cannot even directly produce single bit PCM. Norton Commander (5 or so) even included PC-speaker WAV player.

Edit: also having only one bit can be offset by larger sampling rate. In fact this is how probably every non-audiophile audio DAC manufactured in last 25 years works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish people would learn how to abbreviate the units correctly. Hertz is abbreviated as "Hz". The kilo prefix is "k". Thus kilohertz is "kHz" and not Khz.

</comment><comment><USER13> Impressive piece of software building on the already impressive technique to play 8-bit that Mahoney invented.

A good moment to remember [https://github.com/marioballano/emudore](https://github.com/marioballano/emudore) so I can experiment with this thing on the weekend.

<comment><USER14> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem to use Mahoney technique, it's just doing the plain old technique of writing SID volume register at 0xd418:

      l:      nop
      sample: ldx $8400 + i*$100
              ldy $8000,x
              lda sidtable,y
              sta $d418
              inc sample +1
              bit $ea
              ldy $8100,x
              lda sidtable,y
              sta $d418
              inc $d020

...

<comment><USER15> It is based on Mahoney technique. Achievement is in added decompression routine that works in those 21 cycles per sample. Lot's of cool info in that article. Nicely done !

<comment><USER14> Yeah, you're right.

Found a very good description here: [https://livet.se/mahoney/c64-files/Musik_RunStop_Technical_D...](https://livet.se/mahoney/c64-files/Musik_RunStop_Technical_Details_by_Pex_Mahoney_Tufvesson_v2.pdf)

Interesting story about accidental discoveries and using oscilloscope to get compensation tables for different types of SID chips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool! I did something similar for the Game Boy Color recently - <USER2> 18kHz ~7bit audio while also updating the screen at 60fps, using "hi-color" techniques where you change the color palette before each line is drawn. It was a ton of fun with a lot of problems like "aha, if I use this register for this value, it saves 2 extra cycles!".

My code's here: [https://github.com/ekimekim/gb_music_video](https://github.com/ekimekim/gb_music_video), and you can get a finished demo rom (which doesn't actually use any of the graphics stuff due to lack of assets) here: [https://ekimekim.itch.io/steamed- hams-but-it-plays-on-a-game...](https://ekimekim.itch.io/steamed-hams-but-it- plays-on-a-game-boy-color-audio-only)

I should note that the technique I used for audio on the Gameboy was taken from this excellent video: [http://tasvideos.org/5384S.html](http://tasvideos.org/5384S.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Sound could be produced by PWMing an i/o port to an integrator, so no need for the SID, and PWM could be generated through a register loaded with the desired value then decremented setting that pin to a 1/0 ratio according to its value, that is, turning the value into a duty cycle which once fed into the integrator becomes a voltage. It's simple in theory, but being the parallel byte serialized into essentially a single bit that would require some speed the 6502 could hardly be capable of.

</comment><comment><USER18> Imagine hearing that in 1982

</comment><comment><USER19> I wasn't expecting to be blown away by what they could do with the SID chip last time let alone now. Could you use the C64 as a hi-fi sampler with an analog filter or it's not possible anymore to use the LPF?

</comment><comment><USER4> Playlist with the three demos:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFeDsJqcV6DhwH16fVp_a...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFeDsJqcV6DhwH16fVp_aizjIG7qur6Gu)

</comment><comment><USER20> Everyone seems entranced by "wow this would have been cool in the 80s", but the compression is a necessary part of the puzzle. How fast could you do k means clustering on 80s hardware?

<comment><USER4> That's a very good point! And also one to keep in mind for a possible additional demo. Use only hardware from the 80s also for the encoding!

<comment><USER20> I think the demo is still really cool. I mean more to push back against the "programmers are lazy look what you can do with limited resources" ignoring the fact that the limited resources were only used for the playback part. Still awesome, just not possible in the 80s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I'd rather listen to Costello with 16 bits at 24 kHz ... this is a very cool hack - thanks for sharing. Makes me (once again) sorry I gave away my 64!

</comment><comment><USER22> where do the visual effects (those blinking bars) come from? Are they deliberate, or some sort of side effect?

<comment><USER23> You get a bit more speed out of the C64 if you disable parts of the video chip. It also avoids cycle inconsistencies every 8 scanlines (where normally, the chip would block the bus for an additional cycle).

To avoid making it a dull monochrome screen, devs tend to push the data that they process into the border color register (acting as background color in this mode). You also see this with decompressors at the beginning of (cracked) games. So the background color gets updated every few multiple of 8 pixels (1 character), and there's where the patterns come from. The slow shift of the pattern to the left indicates that the code isn't entirely balanced, but the article states as much (is it moving every 1.28 secs? I can't tell).

<comment><USER24> Yes, it does jump every 1.28 seconds :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Practical Career Advice for Software Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.algodaily.com/lessons <comment><USER2> Not SHow HN. Please read rules</comment>


Decimal comma or decimal point? An interactive world map. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.datacamp.com/?p=245

<comment><USER2> I couldn't find the reference of the colors in the map:

* Green: Decimal Point

* Blue: Decimal Comma

* Red: Other (more details hovering over the country in the map)

* Light Grey: Unknown (by the author)</comment>


Want an internship at a startup? Offer something - <AUTHOR> http://neiljoglekar.com/want-an-internship-at-a-startup-offer-something/

<comment><USER2> I don't know if I should be upset about this or not. If he's talking about unpaid labor he can go fuck himself with a chain saw.

<comment><AUTHOR> not sure what about this post made it seem like an internship should be unpaid

<comment><USER2> Sadly these days that has to be specified. Carry on.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple patent blocks your iPhone from recording video at gigs - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/apples-new-patent-will-block-your-iphone-from-recording-video-at-gigs/?ftag=COS-05-10-aa0a&linkId=26091847 <comment><USER2> This could be useful if one could acquire beacons to disable recording. Being an IR broadcast, it shouldn't be very difficult.

Just think of all the people and places that would like to prohibit recording.</comment>


Uber sides with driver who refused to take wheelchair user - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/wheelchair-user-slams-uber-after-driver-refused-to-take-her-20170831-gy7tia.html <comment><USER2> Uber didn't just have a cancerous head; its entire body is filled with selfish elitists. Their response and excuses to this are pathetic.</comment>


F5 networks announced SPDY gateway - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/f5dotcom/f5-ado-slide-share

<comment><USER2> Since SPDY is layered beneath HTTP it's relatively easy to roll out. At CloudFlare we plan to roll out SPDY when it is available as part of nginx because it will mean that can enable it for our customers with a simple on/off switch in the control panel (as we did for IPv6) without them making any backend changes.

<comment><USER3> Does that mean we'll get TLS 1.1/1.2 with an upgrade of OpenSSL when Cloudflare gets Spdy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The associated press release, with more detail: [http://www.f5.com/news-press- events/press/2012/20120508b.htm...](http://www.f5.com/news-press- events/press/2012/20120508b.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's one huge accomplishment for Google</comment>