Veteran Boeing manager warns of 787 problems - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/12/02/razor-sharp-metal-shavings.html <comment><USER2> > Barnett's description of the safety issues is terrifying. For example, the > process of tightening the titanium nuts on the floorboard-bolts caused > 3"-long, razor sharp titanium slivers to cascade into the compartment where > all the sensitive avionics wiring ran.

> "For the titanium slivers, [the FAA] wrote a DAI – a designated > airworthiness inspection requirement. That DAI is for Boeing only. They told > Boeing – you are not allowed to deliver any more planes with these metal > slivers. And during that process, Boeing came back and determined that the > slivers were not a safety of flight issue, so they did not notify the > customers of the planes that had already been delivered that those slivers > were on the plane. And at the time, I think we were up around 800 airplanes > that had been delivered. Every 787 out there has these slivers out there."

This is all pretty bad-sounding. The article also says:

> Some of these shards have already caused fires in 787s.

Though I can find lots of stuff about battery fires [1], nothing seems to mention anything about titanium slivers or shards. It seems the direct cause of these fires remains unknown, so maybe there's a connection here, I just can't find anything about it. Anyone have more insight to this?

[1] [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boeing+787+battery](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boeing+787+battery)</comment>


Ask HN: how can a small book suggestion site make money? - <AUTHOR>

I made a site this weekend, foxblot.com that recommends amazon books based on tweets. The obvious extension is to make it a facebook app too. But what are ways I can make this profitable? I am looking for suggestions that do not involve a lot of work, as I can only dedicate time on weekends.<p>related post with functional details: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4212994 <comment><USER2> The most obvious approach would be affiliate links. I'm not sure that it would be the best, however.

<comment><AUTHOR> foxblot does use amazon affiliate links

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The creator of <http://anynewbooks.com/> is an HN regular - so hopefully he'll comment - and that service is similar to yours. I'm pretty sure he only uses Amazon affiliate links to make it pay.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out <http://hn-books.com/> created by this forum's own DanielBMarkham

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> have spent some time tweaking the algorithm for relevancy.

the thing that i find most annoying at this point is the slow speed</comment>


How Apple dodged a bullet - <AUTHOR> http://gdgt.com/discuss/this-is-something-wrote-about-how-apple-aa3/?utm_source=gdgt+newsletter&utm_campaign=fa6184a82c-Newsletter+/+2010-10-01&utm_medium=email

<comment><USER2> I don't think Apple would've had a problem handling the PR, even it it said "Apple" instead of "AT&T" next to the missing bars. Every geek would have known which network backs Apple's network and word would have spread quickly enough.

Still, not going the MVNO route was a good choice - why divert your attention and resources so much when a carrier will let you do almost everything you want.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple may have dodged a bullet, but I'm not so sure the whole virtual network business was ever in the cards. If anything, it may have been a bargaining chip used to grease the wheels of early conversations with carriers.

Think about it. If you're a carrier, do you want to sell a bunch of high volume, low margin commodity pipe each month to one company? Or would you rather enjoy subscriber growth, reduce your churn, and sell a bunch of high margin data plans? Unless I'm missing a huge piece of the puzzle, I think carriers would rather have direct billing relationships with high value subscribers.

So that's how you chum the water, if you're Apple and you want to get away with murder, relative to normal manufacturer/carrier relations. Make it look like this is going to do down no matter what, so line up now and join the fun or watch from outside. They can do this very credibly at that point – the iPod nano was heating up and people were noticing Apple's consumer mojo.

But would Apple really want to be an MVNO? I say not in a million years. Consider: Apple has spent a lot of time explaining their position on vertical integration. They like to have complete control over everything that exists between themselves and the user experience. Whether it's _Thoughts on Flash_ , their position on licensing their OSes, or internal antenna testing facilities on their campus, this is a resounding theme.

Being an MVNO completely runs counter to that. For all the control they gain cutting the carrier out of the customer experience, Apple doesn't even control the most essential component of the business – the wireless infrastructure. That leaves them entirely at the mercy of the carrier for the _wireless phone experience_ they are directly selling to the user. This isn't like the manufacturing relationships they already have to build their stuff – if a manufacturer doesn't work out, the worst that happens is a batch of iDevice X doesn't reach US shores. Consumers never see the gaffe, except as buzz-worthy " _omg they're out of stock_ " news.

The outcome they chose makes it clear who sells what, letting Apple pass the buck when they're not involved in a shitty portion of the iPhone experience.

Apple made the right move, but culturally, I don't think they'd have played it any other way.

</comment><comment><USER4> this author misses the point completely.

if apple would have gone the MVNO route, the iPhone would be multiband, and have tethering. it probably could have connected to either sprints/verizon tech, or to ATT's network.

it could have been the phone with the best connection. apple could have also made deals with people to route calls through wifi, 3 years ago.

think of how much time apple has lost to ATT being slow.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wasn't Sprint the bigger player in the MVNO market?

<comment><USER3> Using Sprint would have been a lot of trouble for Apple, though. They'd have had to manufacture two iPhone variations – one that works with Sprint's CDMA network, and one that used GSM for every other market in the world. Not that this is impossible, especially if the tradeoffs are right, but it's probably much easier to only have to worry about one type of cell phone chipset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nowadays, Apple could buy Sprint (market cap: $14B) with their cash-on-hand (over $25B).

If they wind up making CDMA iPhones anyway...</comment>


The Changing of the Guard (1991) - <AUTHOR> https://tricycle.org/magazine/changing-guard/ <comment><AUTHOR> These are related and I also found them interesting.

[http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/exegesis/sex-shoes-and- calif...](http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/exegesis/sex-shoes-and-california- zen/)

[https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/encounter-shadow-buddhist- am...](https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/encounter-shadow-buddhist-america/)

Those are historical articles but this one is about recent events:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/nyregion/shambhala- sexual...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/nyregion/shambhala-sexual- misconduct.html)</comment>


Ask HN: What is your opinion on Web Monetization? - mr-developer Web Monetization - https://webmonetization.org
Content websites such as Hackernoon, Dev.to are adopting Web Monetization to enable content creators to monetize their content.
Will Web Monetization destroy the likes of Google Adsense? <comment> jim-jim-jim I'm never going to pay for anything I can't hold. And even that I do reluctantly.</comment>


Some Internet Explorer Innovations You Probably Forgot About While Waiting for IE6 To Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.drunkenfist.com/304/2008/08/11/some-internet-explorer-innovations-you-probably-forgot-about-while-waiting-for-ie6-to-die/ <comment><USER2> Er. Who forgot about those, they're trivial web capabilities I suspect every web developer knows. That's like saying "Some programming innovations you probably forgot about: functions, variables, assignment"

</comment><comment><USER3> No offence but most of these innovations are .. not innovations (atleast not in this day and age) and have been around for a long time.

<comment><USER4> So? Back in the day they were. That's his point. And IE, that people hate so much, came up with them.

Would you way wheels aren't innovations because they've been around for a long time?</comment></comment>


Patent Exhaustion and Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/780078/ce7871081c7e3e8c/ <comment><USER2> It's been mentioned here before, but judges are rarely amused by the kind of "overly clever" deductive reasoning that smart people like to use to claim that they've defeated the text of some law. The law is not code for you to exploit... If the judge thinks you're trying to pull a fast one, you're going to have a bad time.

I realize the Microsoft-now-owns-github-so-a-clever-multi-way-merge-could- exhaust-every-patent-ever argument was a bit of a joke, but still, everything related to that 1993 case seems murky enough that I wouldn't want to rely on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> While this is a nice hack the usual protections of having patents belong to an non- practicing entity would still work, i.e. this sadly won't work against patent trolls, only against honest companies.

<comment><USER4> Unless the trolls had bought the patents from a company that had assigned themselves a license.

As far as I'm aware, its quite common to retain rights to a patent portfolio, when selling it on.</comment></comment>


Windows 8 designer: Why Microsoft forced Metro on us all - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/windows-8-designer-why-microsoft-forced-metro-on-us-all/ <comment><AUTHOR> The article is actually a summary of "pwnies" comments on a Reddit thread. [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1xvbsm/windows_8...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1xvbsm/windows_8_sells_100_million_fewer_copies_than/cff3y35)

I found it kind of interesting as I've often tried to figure out what Microsoft were thinking when they did 8.

<comment><USER2> Eh, where was this line of reasoning when I was hand editing autoexec.bat and config.sys files to find an IRQ and DMA channel that would work with my soundblaster?

Sounds like a steaming pile of BS to me. MS could have done a far better job supporting both user levels by leaving the win7 gui alone, and adding in the start screen, and allowing this specific option during setup.

Don't believe the arguments of "individual contributor" level employees. They are lied to as much as we are.</comment></comment>


Minimize Code, Maximize Data - <AUTHOR> http://database-programmer.blogspot.com/2008/05/minimize-code-maximize-data.html? <comment><USER2> Good advice, but I don't know if I would call it a best kept secret. Maybe I've just been reading all of the right books.

Fred Brooks: "Show me your flow charts and conceal your tables and I shall continue to be mystified, show me your tables and I won't usually need your flow charts; they'll be obvious."

Rob Pike: "Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming."

Eric S. Raymond: "Fold knowledge into data, so program logic can be stupid and robust."

Peter Norvig: "Use data-driven programming, where pattern/action pairs are stored in a table."

<comment><USER3> > Maybe I've just been reading all of the right books.

The sad thing is, by reading books _at all_ you're already way ahead.

The flexibility data-driven programs have is why people say that "data is code" (the flipside of Lisp's "code is data").

Also, I found working with ML (OCaml, in my case) made thinking in terms of types and overall data-structure design much clearer. It's a major strength of the language, and spending some time with it will probably give you insights usable in most other languages. ML was designed by people who knew Lisp quite well, and felt that (for some problems - in their case, theorem proving) it would be greatly improved by having a better type system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think he's endorsing "data driven development", i.e. if you focus on capturing the right data, you can simplify your application logic immensely. In his magazine example, by encoding the magazine regulation rules as table columns, the owner would have been able to modify the behavior himself. Instead the rules are encapsulated in complex program logic that neither the author or owner are willing to modify for fear of breaking.

I think DSLs (or domain specific language) would probably be too difficult for the magazine owner. If it was database driven, he could use a gui tool such as phpmyadmin to edit the magazine regulation rules.

<comment><USER5> > If it was database driven, he could use a gui tool such as phpmyadmin to > edit the magazine regulation rules.

This is great, but it's also worthwhile keeping in mind testability.

Now, your code is more robust, so that helps counter this a little - but by increasing the number of data points/variables you introduce more boundary cases. You don't want the magazine owner modifying something basic with an unexpected consequence.

I've worked recently on a lot of projects that use Business Rules Engines - similar concept - externalise your logic into tables of data/rules. End users can modify these rules to change the way the system operates.

The lesson I learned is that the causal downstream user isn't as cognizant of change control than someone who's been in the development cycle. This led to a lot of unexpected conflicts - for example, a certain threshold was lowered considerably as part of a campaign. This made 90% of submissions eligible for automatic (Straight-Through) processing as opposed to 10% before... Unfortunately the downstream systems weren't prepared for a 9x increase in the amount of load. So it fell on it's face.

Not to say this isn't a good idea - but something to keep in mind.

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of the "The Customer-Friendly System", where all of the "data" was taken out of the program and out into a Visio diagram.

[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Customer- Friendly_System...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Customer- Friendly_System.aspx)

The thing is, "data" and "code" are the same thing, it's just a matter of presentation. Sometimes data is easier to read if it is in if blocks, sometimes in tables, but very rarely in Visio diagrams...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author seems to be advocating DSLs unknowingly.

<comment><USER8> Nope. kqr2 had it right, the approach was to move parameters into tables that the user could edit. Asking the user to spell anything out is not in the cards for that example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "All programs are compilers for data."

<comment><USER10> All your compilers are programs for us!!</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs, NeXTSTEP, and Early Object-Oriented Programming (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-deep-history-of-your-apps-steve-jobs-nextstep-and-early-object-oriented-programming/?key=the-deep-history-of-your-apps-steve-jobs-nextstep-and-early-object-oriented-programming <comment><USER2> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328302)</comment>


How to Handle HTTP 500 – Internal Server Errors - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackhunter.com/2014/01/28/5-ways-to-handle-http-server-500-errors/

<comment><USER2> This page is _actually_ returning HTTP 500 ("Error establishing a database connection"). Wow.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair comment, thanks for pointing it out.

I'll update wordpress/php to do what I've described for Java apps.

Thanks, Dele</comment></comment>


Microsoft releases a free version of Office - <AUTHOR> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2011818423_microsoftoffice09.html

<comment><USER2> Has anyone tried this? When I first heard about this I thought they meant running in a browser, not some download that only runs on Windows (with, it sounds like, Ads on it?).

Or is there a separate online/web office that's coming later?

I mostly run open office or iworks, but it would be helpful to be able to run ms office on occasion (and without firing up a windows VM first...).</comment>


Bigger than Google+, MySpace isn't dead yet - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/01/12/bigger-than-google-myspace-isnt-dead-yet/ <comment><USER2> Why do people write, "XXX says a lot about YYY", but then don't elaborate any further? What does "myspace has more visitors than Google+" say about Google+? That it's newer? That there's less network effect? I'm not sure, but the author thinks I am.

The goal of writing should be to provide information, not to confuse me with FUD.

</comment><comment><USER3> The number of users is the wrong metric to measure in this debate, its the _trend_ that tells the story. One service is growing, the other is in free fall.

<http://www.woorank.com/en/www/myspace.com>

Is MySpace growing exponentially? No. They are continuing to hemorrhage users while services like Google+, Tumblr, and Pinterest see explosive growth.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think there is still space (heh) for MySpace out there. Focus on music. Bands interacting with fans, posting new music, concert dates, that sort of thing. It's possible on Facebook right now but I really think the experience could be better (and probably plugged _into_ Facebook).

I thought/hoped we'd see that when the group containing Justin Timberlake took it over. Nothing so far.

</comment><comment><USER5> People love to declare things "dead" and then be surprised when they find out, 5 years on, that the "dead thing" is still there, still generating revenue and still maintaining a user base. The radio, billboards, Second Life, MySpace...

They should simply call it "not hip enough for me anymore"

</comment><comment><USER6> I think its worth noting that many people (like myself) do a lot of things such as commenting on posts and checking notifications from within other Google services such as Gmail and Docs rather than directly on Google+.

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't the focus completely different, I thought MySpace became a hangout for small bands and the likes? (Though I assume MySpace still _wants_ to be more than that)</comment>


Why Milton Friedman Supported a Guaranteed Income (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/basic-income/why-milton-friedman-supported-a-guaranteed-income-5-reasons-da6e628f6070 <comment><USER3> It's not clear from this _how large a guaranteed income_ he supported.

If he was thinking that the total amount paid out by the state would remain unchanged as existing welfare programs were replaced with a _universal guaranteed income_ , then he was imagining an income so small as to be of very little use to anyone.

If he was imagining a universal guaranteed income large enough to fully pay for everyone's basic needs, then I wonder how much of the extra expense he imagined would be paid out of his own pocket.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was wondering how this was different from regular income tax that we pay now and found that it's unclear because there are different models proposed by Friedman . However, the idea seems to have a

1\. A base tax rate,

2\. An income cutoff - with those above paying and those below paying)

3\. A subsidy rate (the % at which those above the cutoff pay on the income above the cutoff and the % at which those below receive to the extent that their income falls below the cutoff)

I found this really helpful example on wikipedia:

The income tax rate is 50%.

The tax exemption is $30,000.

The subsidy rate is 50% and equal to the income tax rate.

Under this scheme:

A person earning $0 would receive $15,000 from the government.

A person earning $25,000 would receive $2,500 from the government.

A person earning $30,000 would neither receive any money nor pay any tax.

A person earning $50,000 would pay a tax of $10,000.

A person earning $100,000 would pay a tax of $35,000.

So it is sort of a basic income scheme, but it seems more workable than the ones commonly proposed. Although it seems like it would be very difficult to get governments on board this scheme because Friedman advocated this as an alternative to all welfare programs of any sort. This sort of basic distribution without the vast bureaucracy seems like something governments would perceive as a threat.

</comment><comment><USER5> The idea of a negative income tax is one that is new to me, but very interesting. I'm curious as to how it works for those who don't have jobs, though, which is arguably what something like welfare benefits was designed to address. Do those without jobs receive money, or nothing at all?

As I understand it, NIT is designed to supplement the income of those earning below a certain level (perhaps falling prey to the "lack of incentive" argument that propertarians like to use), but can it supplement no income at all? And if not, doesn't NIT therefore serve a different purpose to the welfare benefit system?

It would be nice if someone could correct me on this; I tend to disagree with Friedman on most topics, but this seems like a rather good idea. I've read that it was proposed by the US Green Party, too.

<comment><USER6> Highly recommend watching this to get answers from the man himself: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM](https://youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM)

<comment><USER5> I watched it, and I learned that his answer is that such people who do not work would have their income (of $0) supplemented.

Although I am not really in favour of the free market, or capitalism in general, this does seem like a fairer system.

<comment><USER7> Serious question: what would you replace the free market with?

Near as I can tell capitalism is not like Marism and friends in this respect: capitalism wasn't some guy's idea that then got forced on the rest of us by governments. No, capitalism appears to be an emergent phenomenon, emerging when people are given a high enough degree of freedom. If that's the case (and I think it clearly is), then what do capitalism's antagonists propose to do with the freedom whence it comes? You might reject the premise, in which case please explain. Or you might reject freedom, which is what capitalism's antagonists generally do when given the chance. What am I missing?

<comment><USER5> >capitalism wasn't some guy's idea that then got forced on the rest of us by governments

Marx has interesting words to say about that.[0]

>given a high enough degree of freedom

Except for the freedom from having to sell labour-power for a wage in order to receive means of sustenance at a rate below the value you create? Sure. You also get the freedom to choose between which capitalist you work for. Now _that 's_ what I call freedom. (I'm being facetious :))

>is not like Marism and friends in this respect

It's worth noting that Marx's own vision of Communism is not that of one that is forced, but rather one that comes naturally from history, it is a stage of development like any other. By the time capitalism has reached the end of its life, there will be no need for force, other than to overthrow those owners of capital, and to return that capital to the people who gave them value - <USER2> workers. That said, Marx and Engels did specify a governmental policy program for revolution, that is, to enact policy either by revolution or within the current state apparatus (bourgeois democracy), to the point where the state must wither away.

The free market has its origin in capitalism, or by extension the pre- capitalist class systems, and with the end of what capitalism requires (the class system, owners of property) so will end the need for the free market. The Hegelian Marxists use dialectical historical materialism to show that (though I don't know enough myself).

The freedom I talk about is much beyond what is available now, it is the freedom afforded only by Socialism, as Oscar Wilde noted, which many people do not have today. His words from the 19th century ring as true today as they did then.

 _" Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand 'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this."_[1]

[0] [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm)

[1] [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde- oscar/soul-...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul- man/)

<comment><USER7> > >given a high enough degree of freedom

> Except for the freedom from having to sell labour-power for a wage in order > to receive means of sustenance at a rate below the value you create? Sure. > You also get the freedom to choose between which capitalist you work for. > Now that's what I call freedom. (I'm being facetious :))

That's not freedom. Nowhere in nature do we see animals receive the minimum means of sustenance just like that, for nothing, out of thin air. You might argue that we can do better than other animals, and it's true, and look! we _have_ done better than other animals.

Redefining "freedom" does get you out of this bind, but only if your interlocutors don't catch that slight of hand.

As to Marxism not being forced, unlike communism, well, let's say marxists are right that true Marxism will arise naturally, without resort to force, from the ashes of capitalism. I'm willing to wait for that. Marxists have been waiting a long time (when they don't go forcing the matter). I've no problem with them (and all of us) waiting much, much, much longer for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing I haven't seen addressed regarding Guaranteed Income: what sort of assurance is there that, when everyone has a guaranteed amount of income coming in, the market for necessary items (rent, for example) won't inflate to account for this, in order to maximize revenue?

A similar corollary (not perfect, but should serve to illustrate) would seem to be student loans - with a federal guarantee, and no way to get out of them through bankruptcy, the cost of education has far exceeded normal inflation. I can imagine similar things happening with Guaranteed Income.

<comment><USER7> Great question. My take is that we already manage to supply basic needs for 99% of the population, so inflation doesn't seem likely. But also, the idea is that by eliminating the welfare trap more people will work to supplement that income, so we can expect more production and more demand in general -- any inflation for basic goods should tend to increase the pressure to work to supplement the basic income, which would be good.

That said, it almost certainly is the case that ever-increasing student loan guarantees caused the massive tertiary education inflation of the past three decades. Which is why yours is such a good question to ask here.</comment></comment>


DEAD: Domain Emails Are Dead - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2018/06/dead-an-attack-vector-on-web-services-due-to-e-mails-faults-due-to-dns/ <comment><USER2> I'm unable to access this site due to my work's blanket ban of any public VPN/Proxy sites. Can someone post an alternative? By the name alone, this sounds like it could possibly concern me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a copy paste of the main text:

PROBLEM DEAD is a potential vulnerability in the DNS system that exists due to the poor method in which it was implemented in totality. DNS, which is largely controlled by ICANN, is susceptible to third-party takeover and simple expiration.

Modern e-mail utilizes DNS extensively. E-mail users create e-mail addresses with the form firstname.lastname@example.com.

Websites, all over the world, utilize e-mail to verify people's identities (many let you reset your password with just an e-mail).

Since DNS is susceptible to third-party takeover and simple expiration, it is deterministic that many e-mail address domains will expire (e.g., death of a person and expiration of said person's credit card), leaving people's accounts on websites, all over the world, susceptible to account theft.

Additionally, this theft may be legal in many jurisdictions as control of an e-mail address, often times, also signifies control of an account.

STOP GAPS The suggested stop gaps, below, are simply workarounds in lieu of properly creating accounts for people using a different identifier than e-mail. However, these may help.

Securing Content Client-side PGP E-mails encrypted with PGP will be unreadable by an unintended recipient, even in the event the domain/e-mail is hijacked, unless, the intended recipient was already completely owned (had their private key stolen) by the unintended recipient. Detecting Manipulation Server-side DNSSEC Implementation Keep a cache of certificates provided by root and checking for change. Requires DNSSEC to be implemented on all recipient e-mail domains which is far from the case in 2018. Server-side Domain Ownership Monitoring: Compile a list of all domains in an ephemeral dataset from all users' emails. Check if any of the domains may have changed ownership. Check if a domain expired. Check if a domain was newly purchased post creation of the user's account. Additionally, check if MX records, including IP addresses, changed. Ideally, attempt to 'fingerprint' the MX as even an IP can be BGP hijacked. In the event ownership changed Block password resets for accounts that may have changed ownership. Notify user that the reset was blocked due to the above reasons and get in touch with the domain vendor and attempt a different verification method Send a message to user's secondary e-mail if one exists. FIX Don't let your critical infrastructure rely on e-mail and the currently unverifiable version of DNS.

<comment><USER2> Ah, this is in response about the guy who "hacked" the legal emails and the concerns it raises potential issues from 3rd parties that I already need to place some level of trust in. I can safely disregard, I'm not too concerned about this or my emails being readable after I die and my domain expires.

Thank you for posting! I appreciate it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should a Startup in the messy middle change TOS on every turn? - <AUTHOR> We seem to closing in on market-fit. Should we book a lawyer every time we change routes to update our TOS and contracts? If not, what is best practice to go about this? <comment><USER2> It's a colossal waste of time. An obvious failure mode.

But I think you already know that.

The reality is, as a programmer, you're never going to convince your non- programmer cofounder to stop wasting time and money on dumb shit.

At least it's just $10k on a lawyer. Some people blow $100k on branding. Other $60k on executive recruiting. Wait until you get bigger and these people are booking $240k a year in expenses, putting their wives and girlfriends on payroll, renting offices and apartments downtown...

<comment><USER3> Are you ok bud?

<comment><USER4> Literally nobody who remembers programming before the startupocene is ok anymore.

<comment><USER5> > startupocene

You've coined a term. I love it.

<comment><USER6> Google says it has only been used once before: [https://medium.com/@arunabhdas/2020-the-golden-age-of- startu...](https://medium.com/@arunabhdas/2020-the-golden-age-of- startups-5f5c62d2e39)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Probably depends on your deal size and risk. If you are selling puppy photo software for $10/month it is a different situation to 200k enterprise deals.

Your contracts and insurance coverage exists to protect yourself from risk. Identify your risk (severity and probability of adverse events) and act appropriately.

<comment><USER8> > _If you are selling puppy photo software for $10 /month it is a different > situation to 200k enterprise deals._

Coming from the latter. We build custom turn-key ML products for enterprise. Usually, meetings are with legal, security, strategy, and CEO/COO/CIO/CFO. We constantly push to get end users and subject matter experts to the table, for they are who we are building for. Lawyers to fine tune the contracts, clauses for support, exclusivity periods, geographic locations, and defining competitors. Non disclosure agreements, etc.

Repeat clients are frequent, which simplifies things as we already had gone through the process, had clearances, and built trust, relations, and a reputation.

Deal size in the ball park on average, but we're building tooling that considerably reduces the time a project takes us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When you say "change routes" do you mean changing your API or application? Or change the direction of the business? Either way your initial ToS should be _way more resilient_ to these types of changes at this stage of the business.

Resiliency + risk profiling for these changes are the name of the game. There are no hard rules, just overlapping bands of probabilities. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. You're right, our TOS should be more resilient than this. With "change routes" I actually mean "experiment with business models" and maybe some directional adjustments.

It's the "overlapping bands of probabilities" (sounds like a Boards of Canada album) that seems very hard to put in black and white...

<comment><USER9> Drop your contact info and Ill connect with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unless the answer to "What would you say y'all do here?" is constantly changing I don't see why the TOS should be changing. To use Patreon as an example, while the details of how their systems are built and the business is promoted is likely in a continual state of flux, _what_ they do is somewhat fixed so the terms by which someone interacts with the business should be somewhat fixed as well. Unless you're making a big change to features or the nature of how users are to relate to your business (eg: when Slack pivoted from being a video game company to a group chat company) I think making TOS changes (even if it's what everyone else is doing) speaks to instability, leads to a lack of trust, and generally gives the impression that the company doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It's not so much the TOS (should've phrased it better) but more the contracts. We're combining hardware with a software service and are experimenting with one-off sales with life-time (basic) service, premium service subscriptions, no-sale just subscriptions, deposit + subscription, etcetera. There are things, like the obligation to return the hardware at the end of a subscription, that we now have in the TOS. But if we want to experiment further we might need to add the obligations of every new business model in the TOS. Thanks to all the comments here I now understand this should not be in there but in the contract. This is exactly one of those "best practices" I'm looking for!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all your answers. It really helped to create a framework of what legal mumbo to put where.

We've decided on the following stack:

\- General Terms of Service. This will describe what benefits customers can expect from us and by which general means we deliver this e.g. our core service but also support, the amount of effort, etc; what requirements customers need to fulfill before we can deliver our service (like a working internet connection), that customers may only use our service for what it is meant for and shouldn't try to hack our shit; that customers will have an obligation to pay for these deliverables and how long we are willing to wait for payment, what we do when they don't pay and other nasty stuff; How we communicate, where you can find pricing information and what happens in case of disruptions and calamities, what liabilities we accept and how we promise to handle complaints and disputes; other stuff that needs to be said like how we handle privacy sensitive data and which legal jurisdiction applies.

\- Terms of service concerning generics for a certain type of business model. This can be quite short and wil lay on top of the general TOS. E.g. in case of a subscription model, how subscriptions can generally be started, how we prolong them and how customers can cancel. Which requirements a customer should fulfill before a subscription can be delivered. (like a working internet-connection) Where to find the equipment that can be used to receive our service.

\- Customizable customer contracts for different target markets and business models. Again these lay on top of the business model TOS which lays on top of the general TOS so this can be really short for a simple contract and expanded at will.

I'm convinced this is a very workable method for us and will give us the flexibility that we need in this phase while still adhering to our lawyers advise.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes. If you are making promises to users in your non-TOS site text, you might want to run that by a lawyer too. Patreon is getting its butt handed to them because they didn't understand that. Getting your TOS checked after the legislature has met might not hurt either.

<comment><USER12> > Patreon is getting its butt handed to them

In what way specifically?

Also, assuming they are "getting their butt handed to them" it's only because they are huge and successful. If they were a failure nobody would care. And if they had kept up with TOS updates and still ended up a failure would they be saying, "boy glad we dropped that $5k on a lawyer."

If you get big enough you can overcome _any_ legal misstep you made in the early days whether it was accidental or malicious.

<comment><USER13> > In what way specifically?

Patreon said disputes had to go through arbitration, and couldn't go through class action law suit.

Patreon removed a creator. That person's patreons all went to arbitration. Patreon declined the arbitration, and went to court to convert all those individual arbitration cases into one big class action.

The court said they couldn't do that, and the reason the court said that was because of the ToS drawn up by Patreon.

So now Patreon has to go to arbitration on thousands of cases, and has to pay the fees. The fees bill is a couple of million dollars.

<comment><USER12> Facebook paid the Winklevoss twins like $50 million. Had they gone to a lawyer on day 1 and asked what to do the advice would've likely been, "don't steal their idea."

Get big enough and then use somebody else's money to pay off your multimillion dollar mistakes. Or go out of business and it won't matter anyway.

<comment><USER14> The trick is getting big enough and keeping the mistakes small enough. What if $50 million was enough to bankrupt/kill Facebook?

A risk that has a 1% chance of wiping out 100% of your company, vs a risk that a 10% of chance of costing you 10% of your company, are not the same even though the net "expected value" is nominally 1% for both.

<comment><USER12> > What if $50 million was enough to bankrupt/kill Facebook?

If if's and but's were candy and nuts then we'd all have a merry christmas.

If $50 million could bankrupt FB then the Winklevoss twins would have never got that much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Obligatory not a lawyer disclaimer. How much is changing to require constant changes to your TOS? And, what contracts are you trying to change? Contracts with your customers? You want them to resign a contract with you every time you change something? You say "closing in on product market fit," but its not clear if that involves small iterative changes that are boosing traction or big product and direction pivots, and those probably involve very different approaches

</comment><comment><USER16> Should? Yes.

Do the means of not doing it justify the ends of moving super quickly and likely never encountering problems and getting liquidity and cashing out all the liquidity leaving only an empty shell for customers to sue and never be able to collect from? Yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> jŭs′tə-fī″: To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid. (I guess you're going for "valid") ;-)

Spoiler: We're naive and want to make the world better! (yes, I've seen all Black Mirror episodes AND we have weekly drinks where we think up scenario's where our company is the villain) But we need to protect our business not swindle our early customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You should have a ToS from the start that can cover every business model from ExxonMobil to Apple. Just some bog standard bullshit to throw up on the site while you do whatever the hell you want to.</comment>


Fast Haskell: Competing with C at Parsing XML - <AUTHOR> http://chrisdone.com/posts/fast-haskell-c-parsing-xml <comment><USER2> Without correct UTF-8 decoding, DTD, entity expansion, CDATA sections and who know what else, this is not XML. Claiming it is harms everybody.</comment>


Kipochi launches first Bitcoin wallet in Africa with M-Pesa integration - <AUTHOR> http://kipochi.com/blog/kipochi-launches-first-bitcoin-wallet-in-africa-with-m-pesa-integration

<comment><USER2> This is where the potential of bitcoin shines through. Congrats to the team at Kipochi, this is what the promise of an online currency is all about.</comment>


Ask HN: Making money teaching Programming online - <AUTHOR> There are a lot of people who just need the initial push to plunge head first into programming.
 i.e Learning Git. Using the right editor. Learning basic concepts. They just need the right amount of help to get them done with a basic first project.
Let's say you have 25 people interested in learning Python from you. 1 hour a week each Sunday for 10 weeks. i.e around 2 months should be enough.
If you charge just $250 per student. If you take 25 students per cohort and you take in 4 cohorts every 2 months, you make 4 * 6 * 25 * 250 = $150,000 for less than 10 hours of work. <comment><USER2> > There are a lot of people who just need the initial push to plunge head > first into programming. i.e Learning Git. Using the right editor. Learning > basic concepts. They just need the right amount of help to get them done > with a basic first project.

I'd disagree that learning Git or using the "right editor" are prerequisites to learning how to program, or learning the basic concepts of programming. You can learn a lot of useful things about Python (or another language) without getting bogged down with this stuff. You really don't need Git or a fancy editor to write your first 50 programs that have 10 or 200 lines of code. It's just a lot of extra stuff to keep in your head while grappling with programming concepts that may already be new or difficult for you.

If you decide you like programming and want to get a job doing it, sure, learn Git. But learning how to program is more fundamental.

> If you charge just $250 per student. If you take 25 students per cohort and > you take in 4 cohorts every 2 months, you make 4 * 6 * 25 * 250 = $150,000 > for less than 10 hours of work.

If it's really 10 hours of work (only about a half hour per student), then you're clearly not offering any significant personalized instruction. Would that really add $250 of value over just watching free tutorials on Khan Academy or YouTube?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> Finding 600 people willing to pay $250 for a part time course is likely to be non-trivial. Getting those people to sign up at a regular rate will be harder. Assuming those things are possible, there will be less revenue while growing to that point and the growth phase is probably many months even if working very few hours was not in the mix.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Modern web design resources? - <AUTHOR>

What are some modern web design sites/resources?<p>It appears nettuts has some good stuff, as does themeforest... most of my searching led to crappy, outdated resources, worlds inferior to these. (I'm looking at you, SitePoint...) Where do I go for the good stuff? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean by web design. So lets start there.

a. The look: the graphic design of the page.

b. The interaction: Usability and UX

c. Designing and coding with good software design principles.

d. Some thing else?

I can point you to some good books for b. or c., however a. is the holy grail. I have never found a good book on web design from a graphic design perspective. That said Ill share with you what I would consider the closest I have found.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

 _a. (Web site Graphic Design)_

* The non Designer's design book - [http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...](http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Williams/dp/0321534042/)

* Visual Language for Designers - [http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Language-Designers-Principles-U...](http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Language-Designers-Principles-Understand/dp/1592535151/)

* Tuft's Envisioning Information - [http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte...](http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte/dp/0961392118/)

* I have found some good online articles <http://delicious.com/csmeder/ux>

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

 _b. (Usability and UX)_

* Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks - <http://www.lukew.com/resources/web_form_design.asp>

* The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites - [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Sites-Patterns-Creating-Winning...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Sites-Patterns-Creating-Winning/dp/0131345559)

* And again Tuft's Envisioning Information - [http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte...](http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte/dp/0961392118/)

* Information Design Workbook [http://www.amazon.com/Information-Design-Workbook-approaches...](http://www.amazon.com/Information-Design-Workbook-approaches-inspiration/dp/1592536271/)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

 _c. (software design and coding)_

* Bulletproof Web Design - [http://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Web-Design-flexibility-pro...](http://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Web-Design-flexibility-protecting/dp/0321509021/)

* Handcrafted CSS - [http://www.amazon.com/Handcrafted-CSS-More-Bulletproof-Desig...](http://www.amazon.com/Handcrafted-CSS-More-Bulletproof-Design/dp/0321643380/)

* jQuery in Action - [http://www.amazon.com/jQuery-Action-Second-Bear-Bibeault/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/jQuery-Action-Second-Bear-Bibeault/dp/1935182323/)

<comment><USER3> For (a) I would recommend Mark Boulton's book, Designing for the Web, which is available free online:

<http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/book/index.php>

It has really competent sections dedicated to aesthetics: typography, color, and layout. That he made it free is unbelievable. It's a resource I always recommend to the developers I work with (I'm a designer) who want to understand more about design.

<comment><USER4> Here are some other related websites that might interest you:

[http://www.moreofit.com/similar- to/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdesigni...](http://www.moreofit.com/similar- to/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdesigningfortheweb.co.uk%2Fbook%2Findex.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pattern tap (<http://patterntap.com/>) is great for finding examples of individual design elements.

<comment><USER4> You could also try any of the sites listed here:

[http://www.moreofit.com/get_matches.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpat...](http://www.moreofit.com/get_matches.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpatterntap.com%2F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps HNers could share general design tips as well?

These are the two most important to me:

1) Don't use Adobe Photoshop. Use Adobe Fireworks. It's faster and simpler and everything you need for web stuff (gradients, masks, etc.). Use PNGCrush on any PNGs to remove all the extra info and layers before deploying.

2) Spacing\padding is one of the most important things that determines how professional a site looks to users, even if they can't verbalize it. For navigation buttons or tabs, a background height to inner font-height ratio of 2:1 looks way more professional than 1:1.

<comment><USER7> > Don't use Adobe Photoshop

I'll disagree and say that Photoshop is faster and simpler, why? Because I'm better with it.

Use whatever graphics program you're best with.

First of all if you're only using gradients and layer effects like multiple borders most of that stuff can be done with CSS now.

The links below are for buttons and shapes but you can apply those effects to anything:

[http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/2010/03/creating-a- realis...](http://blog.anomalyinnovations.com/2010/03/creating-a-realistic- looking-button-with-css3/)

[http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css- techniques/build-...](http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css- techniques/build-kick-ass-practical-css3-buttons/)

[http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css- techniques/quick-...](http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css- techniques/quick-tip-practical-css-shapes/)

Also photoshop is just as competent at saving images with those effects if you convert it to a smart object and rasterize it first.

<comment><USER6> CSS3 or webkit extensions or mozilla extensions != CSS. I would never use any of those methods (for say, the next 2 years or if it was only a personal site I didn't care about and not a customer site).

Also the learning curve to do stuff faster with Fireworks than Photoshop is maybe 30 minutes, it's that simple.

<comment><USER7> I wish I had enough karma to down-vote you for insinuating that the current browser implementations of the CSS3 draft aren't CSS.

<comment><USER6> 1\. CSS==CSS1, CSS3==CSS3. CSS3!=CSS1. 100% of users see CSS1, 50% see CSS3.

2\. Everything was explicit, there were no insinuations.

3\. You aren't allowed to downvote replies to your own comment even if you had higher karma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (This was an intentionally vague question, but I'm talking about visual design of websites and applications. That could be anything from principles/theory to reusable elements/templates to Photoshop/HTML/CSS tutorials. There seems to be less trash floating around in the usability world.)

</comment><comment><USER8> A pretty sweet site our design intern pointed me at was: <http://siteinspire.net/>

It has some really nice designs that are more trendy now a days than ever before. UX less tried as usual, but looks visually cool and super modern.

</comment><comment><USER9> The newest I've seen is <http://forrst.com>, I love it there.

<comment><USER10> Invite-only

<comment><USER11> email kyle at forrst.com with the subject HN invites and I'll hook you up.

<comment><USER10> Thanks I sent out an e-mail, here's mine just in case mirsad.saci AT gmail.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've heard very good things about Steve Krug's 'Don't Make Me Think': [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/0321...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Make-Me-Think- Usability/dp/0321344758)

<comment><USER13> This is perhaps one of the best books on usability that I've read. Steve Krug also walks the walk and makes this book super usable to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> ColourLovers, 0to255.com, css3please.com, Smashing Magazine

<comment><USER15> Smashing Mag's Twitter feed I find to be be more useful than the site itself. There's a fair bit of fluff but there's a lot of good stuff too. Plus, it's updated at a furious rate.

<comment><USER16> I can't stand Smashing Mag. Yes there are some good articles, but seriously most of that is simply linkbait articles, 10 this and 25 that.

<comment><USER15> That's why I like the twitter. It's more "look at this X" and a direct link without all the padding that would go into justifying an article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's Smashing Magazine and Six Revisions that I follow.

</comment><comment><USER18> _The Smashing Book_ is good

</comment><comment><USER19> What exactly are you looking for, and on which development platform?

</comment><comment><USER20> If you like UX philosophy and principles, <http://www.UXMovement.com> is a great resource for learning about user experience.

</comment><comment><USER21> You come to me for the good stuff...</comment>


Ask HN: Why is CSS animation still choppy on the improved Firefox on mobiles? - <AUTHOR> A recent thread on HN spoke very positively about the new Firefox. While I agree wholeheartedly that the nightly build looks clean and efficient on mobile, I have to say, the performance of GPU accelerated CSS animations is still pretty choppy. On Chrome and Safari, the animations I tested were very smooth, but not so with Firefox. Any ideas why this might be? <comment><USER2> I can't promise that you won't ever have choppy CSS animations anymore, but it is currently the case that the desktop version of the "new Firefox", so the upcoming Firefox 57, ships with a new, written from scratch and highly parallelized CSS engine (Quantum CSS, or also called Stylo), whereas the Android version will probably get this with Firefox 58, maybe 59.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the update - I hope the choppiness issues get sorted soon!</comment></comment>


The US Space Force now has a flag. Here it is - <AUTHOR> https://www.space.com/space-force-flag-unveiled.html <comment><USER2> Wait it actually has a Federation insignia?</comment>


Ask HN: How to help fight climate change as a developer? - <AUTHOR> Is our profession doomed to function in a profit-only niche or are there ways to join  the fight against the already obvious next global crisis? <comment><USER2> You could use a pencil and turn off your electronics. You could also stop reading fake news. The countries that cause the most harm are not interested. The virtue signaling counties could turn off everything and still not make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a rather famous blogpost by Bret Victor on this topic [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really great post, thank you!</comment></comment>


Flaws in Scrum and Agile - <AUTHOR> https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150304-agile <comment><USER2> So true.

After working remote for a year now, I stopped asking my coworkers much stuff about code.

I often don't even read documentation anymore.

I just open Github and search the code myself.

This is a bit slower the first time I search a repo, but not that slow and I get faster the more often I do it and the answers I get are definite and not "Well, I think I did....". Also it makes me more comfortable with using libraraies, frameworks and such.

I also started doing this with my own code, because me from last month isn't me now haha.

Face-to-face is good to talk about requirements, bugs and intentions, but not for talking about code.

</comment><comment><USER3> Legit</comment>


Show HN: 571,000 product variants visualized with 417kb configurator - <AUTHOR> http://fabnik.com/products/bookbinder-bifold-wallet-kit

<comment><USER2> Impressive. I would just hype the configurator itself. The 571,000 variants is cool, but it appears to mostly be color or image differentiations which is why it fits in 417kb. None the less it's a nice configurator.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - and you're right, almost all of that size is the leather texture and thread images. The rest is just svg and some css tricks. Visualizing what their choices would look like together was a big problem for customers, and we were excited to solve it in the size of a large jpeg.

<comment><USER3> I'd really like to see a write up of how this works and what you did.</comment></comment></comment>


More People Will Die as a Result of Texas' Red Light Camera Ban - <AUTHOR> https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/06/05/more-people-will-die-as-a-result-of-texas-red-light-camera-ban/ <comment><USER2> AND WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE.

Pretty shrill piece. Absolutely no mention of previous investigations showing that the perverse incentive (ticket revenue) of the cameras was killing people by using extremely short yellow lights.

Example:

> 2) Dallas, Texas

> An investigation by KDFW-TV, a local TV station, found that of the ten > cameras that issued the greatest number of tickets in the city, seven were > located at intersections where the yellow duration is shorter than the bare > minimum recommended by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

[https://www.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught- sho...](https://www.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening- yellow-light-times-for-profit/)

I find the cameras irritating, and sketchy for due process reasons, but I'm not affiliated with either side here.

However, as a developer I do have some mixed emotions about how much money these cities are being charged by the people who developed these systems (it's a lot, but software, like remodeling, always costs more than you expect due to unknowns).

If they had made a law that cameras can only be used on intersections with yellows longer than the DOT's recommendation, many of these lights would be turned off anyway unless the cities accept the lights as a preventative measure (ie a cost center).

</comment><comment><USER3> If the cameras had been placed only at locations that were dangerous and where it would be important to have video evidence to be used in criminal or civil proceedings, and done in a revenue-neutral way, then I might agree with the article. Unfortunately, they were used as a way to screw as many people as possible out of money and generate as much profits as possible for the companies. And that business model is one that I violently disagree with.

<comment><USER4> It entirely seems fair to me that those that are driving in a way that increases risk for others should give something back in the form of a sort of extra tax. If the companies are making too much money then the solution would be to have the city take over the operation of the cameras or have the city do better in negotiation.

<comment><USER5> It's not up to the city, this was a Texas state-level legislative change just like when the Texas state legislature in recent years pre-empted municipal regulations regarding plastic bags, tree removal, ride-hailing, time-off from work, and other municipal enacted regulations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More people still will die as a result of Texas's refusal to lower the speed limit on all roads to 5mph.

<comment><USER2> It would take six days to cross Texas. Is that a typo or are you being funny?

<comment><USER7> It blows my mind that you don't get the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I personally feel that driver assistance systems (unrelated to red lights) provide a substantial increase in driver safety over revenue generating traffic camera systems. Red light cameras increase accidents[0], and currently only serve to generate revenue. Redflex[1] is a notorious offender whose CEO is actually serving time[2] for his company's malfeasance.

Excerpt from the executive summary of [0]:

"The results do not support the view that red-light cameras reduce crashes. Instead, we find that RLCs are associated with higher levels of many types and severity categories of crashes."

[0] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253044721_A_detaile...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253044721_A_detailed_investigation_of_crash_risk_reduction_resulting_from_red_light_cameras_in_small_urban_areas)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redflex_Holdings#Bribery_inves...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redflex_Holdings#Bribery_investigations)

[2] [https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/former-redflex-ceo- sent...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/former-redflex-ceo- sentenced-30-months-corruption-awarding-chicago-s-red-light-camera)

<comment><USER9> I've gotten 3 red light camera tickets in Chicago and each of them was for a no turn on red that I didn't see, where both streets had long unobstructed views of oncoming traffic and similar roads nearby allowed turn on red. The video recorded showed that it was raining, obviously late at night, and with no other cars in the shot for the duration of the video. Also my speed was at most 5 mph and I came to a full stop.

Those cameras do nothing to promote safety and are nothing but a hidden tax on drivers.

<comment><USER10> I spend probably 30 years thinking off and on how to remove the moral hazard of government using bogus fines to raise revenue.

I basically have it; fines have to be paid to the social security administration and booked against their account as a contribution.

<comment><USER8> I like it. Aka remove local incentives for corruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like a very one-sided write-up. Other cities/states have done away with red light cameras based on fraud or because they turned out to just be revenue generators (installed at intersections with few/no fatal accidents).

Knowing that and reading this, it makes me wonder what someone would say on the other side.

<comment><USER12> My sense in Los Angeles is that traffic laws mostly go unenforced. This allows persistent, continuous safety hazards for pedestrians and compliant drivers.

We have a situation where running stop signs and red lights, speeding, reckless driving and gridlocking behaviors are rewarded and very, very rarely penalized. State laws require revenue from traffic violations to flow to the state of California rather than to the locality so the LAPD's incentive to spend costly officer time on traffic enforcement is quite weak.

In this particular situation, automated enforcement measures would seem to be worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's something to say about how statistics can be interpreted.

Using their their own data on Houston [1] when the cameras were in operation there were 10 fatal accidents, and with them banned there were 13 fatal accidents despite there being over twice as many overall accidents reported.

That's plenty within margin of error or normal variance which doesn't say much about the red light camera's effectiveness as far as fatalities are concerned (the article says "people will die").

Says nothing as to why people would run a red light as well. Are there new distractions between 2010-2014 that weren't as common in 2006-2010? Are they distracted by cell phones? I don't know, but there's more variables at play than just "is there a red light camera here" when it comes to people running red lights.

[1] [https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/08/12/crashes-doubled- after...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/08/12/crashes-doubled-after- houston-banned-red-light-cameras/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Just increase the yellow light time in the name of safety and everything else will follow. I know when cities were installing red light cameras in California they would decrease the yellow light time in order to ensure revenue to pay for the cameras. Then the state raised the minimums and many places dropped the cameras because they become too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this a paid placement? It goes against what I've read in the past showing that these cameras increase risk of accidents because people are so worried about not making the yellow.

Red light cameras are a simple extortion racket. In the US, people blowing red lights on purpose isn't really an issue. Accidentally yeah, but the cameras don't help with that.

</comment><comment><USER16> The 'more deaths' conclusion comes from cherry picking the only data that might support red light cameras. The reality is that red light cameras do great deal of harm with increased accidents overall which means a greater number of injuries and property damage. [https://phys.org/news/2018-07-red- light-cameras-dont-traffic...](https://phys.org/news/2018-07-red-light- cameras-dont-traffic-accidents.html)

Folks who like red light cameras and the profit they bring are perfectly fine the wrecked lives that come with them.

</comment><comment><USER17> It is better to have 100 guilty men go free than to have 1 free man jailed. I'd rather have no traffic cameras than any that have even one false positive.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really don't get it. Most countries don't have red light cameras and nobody is stating that it's less secure.

Red light cameras sound for me like a "solution" for an effect which is happening but not the cause. Are really so many people driving on red lights? Is there some other problem like a very short phase of yellow light like someone already stated? Anything else?

<comment><USER19> Here in the US traffic fines, being the victimless crime they are, seem to be a backdoor taxation method.

in AZ to have a crime you have to have a victim, ask the nice officer who the victim is when you go 5mph over ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Surprised nobody else commented but there's a bunch of studies that suggest red light cameras greatly increase rear collisions.

This is because the second the light turns yellow people freak the fuck out and stand on the brakes. I've even seen times in NJ when we had the pilot program... someone would slam the brakes on, be concerned they were still sticking out too far into intersection, then throw car into reverse. Now imagine if I'm the guy following behind on a motorcycle. Yeah, I can probably stop as fast, but I'm not going to get away from them backing over me.

Example of some studies: [https://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras- increase-ac...](https://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras-increase- accidents-5-studies-that-prove-it/)

<comment><USER2> My googling also turned up a motorists.org article.

If anyone working on SEO for motorists.org is reading this: you should ask for a raise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> More people will die because Texas does not forbid driving to people older than 60.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sorry don't care. If that's the cost of not being watched everywhere then so be it.

<comment><USER23> A red light camera doesn't watch you everywhere, it watches you at a traffic intersection where you are already watched by highway cameras, other people. It only retains a photo (of a car, usually the back) if you run a red light too.

<comment><USER24> The letter I got in Oregon had a zoomed in photo of my face squared also with an algorithm, a pic of my license plate, and a link online of a video of the actual rolling right turn and the state of the lights in the video. I had no out after seeing it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Typer, the FastAPI of CLI Apps - <AUTHOR> https://typer.tiangolo.com <comment><USER2> Compare to Googles Fire?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are similar.

Google Fire does what it can, automatically. But there's no much room for customization, for building a CLI the way you want it. Google Fire can build a CLI from objects like dicts, lists, classes. Typer only with functions, but allows you to customize the CLI.

Fire would be great for quick hacks. Typer for CLI programs that you want to use more than a couple of times.

Also, more similar to Fire is Typer CLI [https://typer.tiangolo.com/typer- cli/](https://typer.tiangolo.com/typer-cli/) , that will give you a CLI for any Python file with a function (with or without Typer), with shell completion in all the shells. And that one doesn't even need you to import another library (like Fire or Typer).</comment></comment>


GitHub.com with black ribbon – what happened? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> mdo says it's the first of many "iterative design changes"[1]

[1]: [https://twitter.com/mdo/status/830138373230653440](https://twitter.com/mdo/status/830138373230653440)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was asking myself the same question. Raymond Smullyan? Redesign?

<comment><USER4> Amazon style ? ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best linux laptop for developers - <AUTHOR> So you're disappointed by the new MacBooks, lots of us feel the same way, myself included.
So what's the best, most high-powered Linux-supported laptop on the market today?
Ideal specs: quad-core cpu, 16GB+ RAM, 1TB+ SSD. <comment><USER3> Similar Ask HN asked in the past.

Refer the links here:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=best%20linux%20laptop&sort=byP...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=best%20linux%20laptop&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><USER4> Most of those links are several months to several years old, up until you get back to a link to this article, and your comment coming up first.

The fact they arent initially sorted by stagnation/date further invalidates really breaking a sweat looking up this kind of thing.

<comment><USER5> Algolia's default search is by popularity. Getting a search sorted by date is literally one click: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=best%20linux%20laptop&sort=byD...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=best%20linux%20laptop&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

This question (or variations on it) has been asked several times in the past few days.

<comment><USER6> It would be convenient if the UI would give feedback like that on the submission page. Maybe some kind of plugin API or JavaScript tool? Same with dupes. Not prevent you from posting, but just maybe asking Are you sure? Or Have you seen this previous post?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recently decided not to purchase expensive laptops any more. It's cheaper to buy a good cheap laptop and a workstation than it is to buy a top of the line laptop.

I bought a Dell Chromebook 13 after trying one out for a few days. I'll be upgrading the SSD and installing Crouton (with Ubuntu/Debian) to run along side ChromeOS. The benefit of this over installing a Linux distro by itself is that ChromeOS has the right drivers for the hardware. As a result it can do certain things like hardware video decoding which are poorly supported on Linux.

Pros:

\- Cheap (~550 USD with promotions)

\- Core i3 + 8GB RAM (powerful enough for me)

\- Upgradable SSD

\- Excellent glass touchpad and keyboard

\- Matte 13.3 inch 1080p IPS display

\- 12+ hours battery life

\- Good build quality / materials (carbon fiber + magnesium alloy)

\- ChromeOS :-)

Cons:

\- Max display brightness is under 300 nits (somewhat countered by matte display)

\- Default resolution of 1080p is too high for such a small screen, a smaller scaled resolution (~720p) works better

\- Lower spec integrated graphics (HD 5500 not Iris Pro)

\- Lack of HiDPI screen

\- Proprietary charger

\- No USB-C, no display port (HDMI only), single USB 3.0 port (other port is USB 2.0 only)

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, what would you use a stronger graphics card for on a Chromebook? I thought all the video codec acceleration was on the CPU. Do you use a lot of WebGL?

<comment><USER7> Gaming on Linux, maybe? A lot of games in my Steam library are Linux compatible.

Re: video decode acceleration, ChromeOS on Broadwell should support GPU accelerated h264/VP8 decode and hardware assisted h265/VP9 decode. (I might be completely misinformed about this though.) I'm not really concerned about the GPU performance with regard to video decode.

<comment><USER9> Can you actually use the gpu properly through curton?

<comment><USER7> There are two modes for X11 under Crouton: GPU accelerated output (called "xorg" mode) and unaccelerated output to a chrome window (called "xiwi" mode). Both seem to work fine based on my limited testing with Gnome on Debian Sid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Laptops are extremely subjective, so it's an awkward question.

If your primary concern is Linux support, then look to the places where you can buy Linux laptops:

\- [https://system76.com](https://system76.com)

\- [https://puri.sm/](https://puri.sm/)

\- Dell "Developer Edition": [http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux- lapt...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop)

\- others??

For me, the primary metrics are: excellent keyboard, touchpad WITH buttons (limited options nowadays), portable size/weight. It sounds like you're more concerned with performance, so you probably need to be in the 14"\+ category.

<comment><USER11> The purism devices look fantastic. Does anyone have one and can recommend / !recommend them?

<comment><USER9> They are overpriced, falsely marketed and are severely outdated.

<comment><USER12> I really like my Librem 13" ... it's very hard to find a system approaching modern that runs flawlessly with no closed firmware required. Coreboot is available for those willing to take on a fairly serious hack but it's not shipping yet from what I can tell. I honestly don't think they deserve the hate I see leveled at them. I needed a replacement and they provided it no questions asked.

<comment><USER9> No hate, they just are marketed falsely and in all honesty they aren't any more secure than any other device as long as you wipe it.

You can install coreboot on other machines, there will still be closed source microcode in the CPU and closed firmware in some of the controllers.

And the hardware is simply out of date, you can get a dell xps 13 with more modern hardware for the same price and in essence the same level of assureance.

If you are worried about state level actors exploiting bugs or backdoors in your hardware Librem isn't what is going to stop them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a current Apple user with similar needs, I've been looking into alternatives myself. The Lenovo ThinkPad P50 [1] is looking great. Can be configured with a Xeon quad-core CPU, up to 64GB of ECC (!) RAM, 2 x 1TB PCIe- NVMe SSD and an NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (performance similar to a GTX 960M or 950M [2]). I've been considering to get a Xeon/64GB non-ECC RAM/512GB PCIe- NVMe SSD/Quadro M2000M configuration myself for around $2,600 (before taxes), which is much cheaper than Apple's offerings.

The Dell Inspiron 7510 can be specced similarly [3] and looks also interesting but apparently throttles the GPU under load [4], which is a huge no-go for me (I had a laptop that throttled under load at some point and it was a pain).

[1] [http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/)

[2] [http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA- Quadro-M2000M.151581.0.h...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA- Quadro-M2000M.151581.0.html)

[3] [http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstatio...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstation/pd)

[4] [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Precision-7510-4K-IGZO- Mob...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Precision-7510-4K-IGZO-Mobile- Workstation-Review.167586.0.html)

<comment><USER14> You can find a code for Lenovo employee discounts if you Google around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anandtech run a periodical series of articles of the best laptops available at present:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/9798/best- laptops](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9798/best-laptops)

as long as you run a modern distro, and they are intel throughout, it should be relatively painless. Of course you have to do a little more background checking once you settle on a machine you intend to buy, much like the Lenovo Yoga 910/710 explicitly disabling ahci disk access and hence requiring a time sink (on your part) in order to get that resolved.

I intend to grab either an XPS, a Precision or a Lenovo t560. The x1 carbon is a very nice machine that most of my buddies (Linux people) gravitate too, but I purchased one which appeared to have a CPU fault and would start exhibiting visual artifacts (and instability) at 50 degrees Celsius, which does not require much of a workload. Pegging the fan helped to a limited extent, but chrome finds ways to skirt that.

I personally avoid discrete GPUs; Intel is good enough, I like running gnome on wayland (today) and having card switching work correctly is both a time sink and a maintenance burden best reserved for the devouted

<comment><USER4> Turns out the 910 works perfectly once you fix somes niggles with the wifi and the i915 module.

[http://chaos-reins.com/2016-11-14-arch-yoga-910/](http://chaos- reins.com/2016-11-14-arch-yoga-910/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Swapped from MBP Retina to the 2017 Lenovo X1 Carbon about six months ago, could not be happier.

It weights massively less than the Retina did, looks slick as hell, got great specs, half the price of a similarly specced MBP and good battery time. Linux Mint runs without a hitch on the hardware.

[http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon/)

<comment><USER16> i looked at the carbon when i was purchasing a xps 13. i saw that the xps was much cheaper for the specs i wanted - i7 + QHD display.

both are very cool looking... but the recent lenovo spyware and the fact that thinkpads still have hardware whitelists turned me off.

plus i got the 950 pro ssd on my xps 13 which is where the performance comes from... not the cpu or ram anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm very pleased with my Dell XPS 13 [0] (the 8GB ram, non-touch screen version). They even have a developer edition [1] that comes pre-shipped with Ubuntu, with Dell sending their fixes upstream (meaning that the vanilla Ubuntu works great out-of-the-box).

The one annoying downside is the camera, which they had to locate below the screen due to the uber-thin edges they have above it.

[0][http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-13-9343-la...](http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-13-9343-laptop) [1] [http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-13-linux](http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-13-linux)

<comment><USER18> > The one annoying downside is the camera, which they had to locate below the > screen

I think that might acutally work better for the receiving party, since the sender will be looking 'eyes up' in relation to the camera, to see the video window on the screen, rather than the usual 'eyes down' position.

<comment><USER19> Because the receiving party likes to look up your nose?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dell Precision: up to 64GB ram, 3 X SSD, top of the line mobile CPU/GPU, etc. For lightweight MBP-like offering check out the 15" model[1]

Have been running Precisions for 7 years now on stripped down Fedora (minimal install + tiling window manager and VirtualBox for Windows/Mac) and will likely continue to do so for many years to come ;-)

[1] [http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd)

<comment> vladimir-y Dell Precisions have always been decently made, heavy and solid laptops, but now they got XPS models chassis...

<comment><USER20> Right, still on an M4700 here. Was going to bite the bullet on the 5510 for Dell's 35% off sale, but held off due to:

1) CPU clock speeds having stagnated

2) unsure about thermal issues with the ultra thin chassis

3) will it significantly outperform existing setup?

Ideally there will be 6-core mobile processors landing in the next year or so, but likely will have to wait until 2019+

Would be nice to shed some weight with 5510 though, and the power adapter would actually work on planes to boot (180W adapter draws too much).

<comment><USER21> What makes you think Intel will do 6-core mobile processors anytime soon? Their core count has been pretty constant at least since the introduction of the Core i3/i5/i7 brands.

<comment><USER20> "Ideally", thus, not happening soon enough for me as I'm going to upgrade within a year.

According to this article[1] in mid-2018 Intel will release a 6-core mobile processor.

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-cannon-lake- lat...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-cannon-lake- late-2017-coffee/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was also disappointed by these macbook pro, especially the path Apple is taking toward power users. I searched for a laptop equivalent in quality and performance to the macbook pro and I realised that it is not easy to find at all.(I'm doing Machine Learning so I need compute power.)

If you consider the pro of the mbp:

      -performance : Overall perfs are great on 15", but other laptops are better, especially grahics (but for developpers ?)
       Maybe for cuda in ML. But think of external graphic cards with TB3. Memory big - :(
      -battery : big + for mbp, no competition.
      -screen : big + for retina and ecosystem adapted to it.
      -quality : big +, you can expect a 5y+ lifetime, the quality is amazing compared to the competition.
      -design : big +
      -connectivity: today it's a - for mbp. But in 2y ? Cleary we are switching to all-usbc devices. TB3 gives you such
       bandwidth that even external gpus are possible.
      -storage: big - for mbp, even if it is fast, too small.

So the conclusion is less immediate. If you have in mind that you can sell you mbp with a good price even after 4y, you realise that it is a good investment. For the same quality, screen, battery, perfs the competition have same price or don't even offer an equivalent.

So for myself, as long as macos is poweruser friendly, I will stay with the macbook pro, if it changes, I will move to Linux...with a mac :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Since you are looking for high powered quad core, may I suggest Oryx Pro by system76. [https://system76.com/laptops/oryx](https://system76.com/laptops/oryx)

<comment><USER24> This is my next laptop. Spec'd well, reasonably priced, good size.... Wish it bad a longer battery but it will be docked most the time clams-shelled to my external monitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> System76 maybe? They are expensive, but you'll likely be able to build exactly what you want.

<comment><USER26> Unless something changed or I'm mistaken, I believe that System76 are just rebranded Clevos ([http://www.clevo.com.tw/](http://www.clevo.com.tw/)). In the U.S., Sager has the contract for distribution ([https://www.sagernotebook.com](https://www.sagernotebook.com)) and I believe they're the ones who resell to people like System76, XoticPC, etc.

As far as these computers, I own and use a Sager NP7338 (Clevo W230SS) that I purchased through XoticPC. Works perfectly great with Linux and Sager has been pretty easy for me to contact directly and get replacement parts (a keyboard so far.) Mechanical quality is only fair. Had some problems with the hinges, which I ended up drilling out and putting in some bolts, but other than that I've been extremely happy. I've three SSDs in a 13" computer with replaceable batteries, so I've gotten plenty of good use.

<comment><USER27> For a supposedly Linux-oriented vendor, System76 does less than you would expect to pick open-source friendly components: they offer NVidia discrete GPU options but not AMD, and use Intel WiFi instead of Qualcomm-Atheros. I wonder how much effort they put into ensuring that the rest of the system works well out of the box with Linux, especially where power management is concerned.

<comment><USER21> Is Intel Wifi bad? All my notebooks use some sort of Centrino chipset and I've never had trouble with it, although I recall friends having trouble with their Atheros chipsets. (But that was nearly a decade ago...)

<comment><USER27> Atheros 802.11n chipsets are the only WiFi devices that don't require any proprietary drivers or firmware (since 2008). Consequently, they're the first and sometimes only devices to benefit from new features added to the Linux WiFi stack. Qualcomm-Atheros 802.11ac chipsets require closed-source firmware like all 802.11ac chipsets, but the QCA firmware is actively maintained by people who have source access under NDA, and they generally try to make sure that the firmware exposes the functionality the open-source Linux driver wants. Atheros and Qualcomm-Atheros chipsets are also the most common WiFi chipsets with open-source drivers to find in routers and access points, so those drivers get QA and widespread testing in both client and AP roles.

Intel WiFi is in a lower tier of support, where you can't count on having access to the full capabilities of the hardware (eg. apparently power management hasn't been working for quite some time, and AP mode is only available on 2.4GHz). But at least Intel WiFi drivers are open-source, so it's clearly a better choice than Broadcom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am using dell xps 13. Although specs are nowhere near to your ideal specs but it gets the job done. Arch Linux runs buttery smooth on it.

<comment><USER21> To be fair, Arch Linux probably runs buttery smooth on a potato (given the right choice of DE), so that's not much of a statement. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Chromebook plus Mosh over to a highly specced desktop. Best bang for your buck if you can guarantee a fast, stable connection.

</comment><comment> vladimir-y Is there a problem to get any decently built laptop and put Linux on top of it in your own? You can argue that it's better to get laptop with Linux pre installed, but I don't 100% agree since Linux means freedom in choosing stuff you need, so it's better to install distributive you like than default Ubuntu. Also don't count much on the customer support when it comes to the Linux laptops, it's common for Linux user to handle possible issues independently. So I don't see a strong reason to get laptop with pre installed Linux limiting yourself in other terms, such as accepting worse hardware and build quality (since there are not a lot of Linux based laptops on the market, and so you won't have many choices, so don't even compare for example system76 vs hp x360) and limiting yourself by Ubuntu distributive.

<comment><USER24> If you want to buy a laptop that almost certain to work out of the gates yes the OPs question is perfectly valid. Can you take anylap top and get it to work? Of course, its just a matter of how much time you want to invest, vs investing that time in actually developing. Both is time spent well, however only 1 will make you money.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately it still feels cheaper to purchase a Windows laptop, and simply scrape Windows off its boot.

I object to being gouged for opting to run a certain system. The amount of invested time required to get modern Linux up on a non-psychotic (psycho like the Yoga 910) is a solid investment to the required baseline of competence required to be a Linux dev.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have a Lenovo T460s running XUbuntu 16.04 and I'm extremely happy with it. I have 20GB RAM and 512GB SSD and the WHQD screen (2560x1440). Very reliable, current uptime with 4.4.0 kernel is 62 days. The only downside is somewhat poor battery life. Under heavy utilization, I get 3-4 hours out of it.

</comment><comment><USER16> you cannot use the MacBook because you need a dual drive setup.

The only laptop that fits everything is the XPS 15 - you can have a hdd +ssd and go upto 32gb ram.

you might find the precision 5510 (same as xps 15,with a cheaper graphics card) to be better.

Another option is the Lenovo p50... but its not very common. But a great machine.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think the new Macbook Pro is awesome, say what you will, I can just imagine myself during debugging pressing "step over, step into, and continue" on the touch bar.

If you earn money through development, its only fair to buy the best product.

<comment><USER8> Not sure how this contributes to a discussion of Linux laptops, especially when OP has specifically called out not liking the new Macs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love my System76 Lemur.

Similar Macbook would have been $800 more, and I was able to configure it with 32GB Memory (which Macs still can't do).

I can run a full stack of services in VMs without breaking a sweat, it's perfect for me.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ubuntu on a T4*0 (14", rugged upgradability over slimness) has kept me happy for years. It seems to be the most common Linux hardware, so tends to be well supported.

\- Best keyboard you'll find on a laptop

\- Upto 32GB of RAM (T460)

\- Removable, hotswappable batteries

\- Desk docking is useful

\- Replace / upgrade whatever you like, yourself

\- If you want to save money, a 1-2 year old model will have specs similar to the latest MBP and be going for $500 refurbished

\- They refuse to die. I have 7 year old ThinkPads on the latest Ubuntu LTS, working like a dream as media servers, etc

\- They use Debian on ThinkPads on space stations!

\- No garish logos / aspirational consumer lifestyle marketing

<comment><USER34> The recent T4x0 are not quad-core.

<comment><USER35> [http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460p...](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460p/)

<comment><USER34> Nice, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In my search for a powerful laptop I came across the ASUS ROG Strix line. They have all the specs one expects plus gtx 10x graphics (there is a huge generation leap from 9x to 10x so buying one of the more mainstream laptops with a 9x cards does not feel right) Some of the models are slim enough and its cheaper than its competitors with a similar price.

The only problem is that is way too flashy. Black and orange the the wasd keys are also bright orange. Right now I'm pondering to ignore the looks and go for it or wait for something cleaner to come out

</comment><comment><USER37> I think the new razer blade stealth [1] is a really good alternative to a macbook pro. It has all the hardware the macbook lacks and apparently the trackpad is really good. It has all the ports you need and a really nice touch screen as well.

The only thing that worries me is that the laptop is made by razer and as such is targeted to gamers.

[1] [http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade- stealth](http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth)

</comment><comment><USER38> I've recently bought a Thinkpad 13 (base model & QHD screen) and manually upgraded RAM to 32GB. All-in-all <$1000 with a 1920x1080 IPS screen. Battery life isn't great (6 hrs) however everything else is.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've got a 4th Gen Thinkpad X1 Carbon with Debian Testing. No issues.

</comment><comment><USER40> I was thinking of doing a kickstarter for a single run of aluminum laptops when I need a new machine.

It bugs the hell out of me that I can't buy a non-apple metal computer.

<comment><USER8> Other than from Dell, System76, Asus, or HP you mean?

Edit: forgot Razer sells aluminum laptops as well

<comment><USER40> Razer looks like exactly what I was looking for, I guess I could settle for a 14" screen. TBH I forgot about them.

I didn't see any Dell, System76, Asus or HP laptops that were all metal and on par with a MacBook, only an Asus netbook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Asus i5, ubuntu, mainly for a CD-ROM and every port Apple has taken away - <USER2> know like Ethernet. Bestbuy 350 on sale for 200 at some point.

</comment><comment><USER42> Asus Q534UX looks pretty tempting. Metal body, nice specs. Unknown how well it'd do witn linux though.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have a Skull Canyon NUC(desktop) that I carry to work. Also a Thinkpad E460 if I'm travelling.

</comment><comment><USER44> Dell XPS 13

</comment><comment><USER45> In my opinion system76.com does the best Linux laptops.

</comment><comment><USER46> Lenovo Thinkpad series has been great for me.

</comment><comment><USER47> MacBook pro, the new ones look great.

</comment><comment><USER48> Lenovo Thinkpad X or T series.

</comment><comment><USER49> Asus ZenBook is nice

<comment><USER34> 4-core, as OP requested?

<comment><USER50> The Zenbook line has dual and quad core machines, high-resolution screens, up to 16Gb of RAM, aluminum bodies, the ports you want, a great touchpad (and often touch screen), and an NVMe SSD. It's wonderfully supported by recent Linux releases (4.4 and up).

I switched from a MBP to a Zenbook about seven months ago, running Ubuntu 16.04, without any issues.

This is the model I have: [https://www.asus.com/us/Notebooks/ASUS-ZenBook-Pro- UX501VW/](https://www.asus.com/us/Notebooks/ASUS-ZenBook-Pro-UX501VW/)

<comment><USER34> Didn't know they ship them with i7 hq CPUs, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Lenovo T460p

</comment><comment><USER52> Since you want a desktop replacement and the desktop replacement is not up to the job then you should consider getting a desktop.

Investigate the small form factor PCs, e.g. Intel NUC.

I was able to get 4Tb of super fast storage into a NUC by making my own SSHD with bcache, a 256Gb SSD and a 4Tb laptop drive. It has a lower power i7 that is no Xeon and a mere 16Gb of RAM but it is plenty fast enough for me. It has plenty of NFS mounts, rsync scripts and version control things to always be up to date. Sometimes I take it home with me, other times it just sits on my desk.

I travel with a laptop or a Chromebook or nothing at all. I can work from anywhere. I believe client server apps need testing on different boxes, by using low end normal hardware I get the consumer experience, my 'above the fold' is their 'above the fold'.

I imagine that a gaming rig style NUC might be more what you are after rather than low power. With synergy keyboard/mouse sharing and plugging monitors into the NUC rather than the laptop I get freedom from having to cable up every time I get to my desk. Going home is quicker too.

I do have a bluetooth keyboard for phone/laptop/NUC so I can travel really light and can leave all computers at home and still work effectively. Obviously my laptop has a repository too.

So, if the NUC works for you then you might want to then look again at what laptop you use on a day to day basis. In my case the laptop has been relegated to a stay at home alternate dev environment. I don't bother lugging it around.

Instead I find myself carrying the Chromebook and my bluetooth keyboard/mouse. I use DNS for mapping my dev domains as ChromeOS cannot map the local network and see my NUC otherwise. I have all kinds of crouton things and remote desktop things but I just use the browser for everything on the Chromebook and may even get rid of the Ubuntu install. If I am on a train journey I can still take the laptop I relegated to home if I really need terminal windows.

I can and do take the NUC home at weekends if I want to do linux things with it to further improve its seamless integration or get it running lots of interesting virtual machines etc.

Think again about what machines your customers use if you are building web applications. With a remote dongle sized box doing your server side stuff you can go for a tasty ultrabook that works well with linux. Make sure that the wifi, mouse, touchscreen and the audio is going to work.

My laptop is some consumer Lenovo model, despite it being deaf to wifi and with no ethernet, it compares very nicely to the posh Thinkpads my colleagues use. The screen is nice and bright, it is touch screen and it even folds back - yoga - they call it. The keys are lit up chicklets and there is just the one trackpad. It now has 768Gb of SSDs. It does the job despite its consumer roots.

Meanwhile, the corporate specced Thinkpads my non-Apple colleagues use have slower SSDs or even spinning things, what appears to be two extra rows of keys, six more mouse buttons than are needed, some nipple in the middle of the keyboard and just a clumsy form factor with all kinds of dated port connectors.

Despite the millions of extra keys none of them are backlit and the screens can't be touched. People with these machines then plug in to a docking station and use an external keyboard/mouse. I have a feeling that these guys really should have gone for the consumer grade Lenovo rather than thinking they needed some extra executive features.

Developers can be the same to end up with cumbersome beasts that may have the specs you are after but are not nice to work with, e.g. over-Thinkpad-ised.

<comment><USER53> Yeah, that nipple on Thinkpad keyboards really bothers me. Why is there only one? I have two hands, so I expect two conveniently placed nipples on each side of the keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> These specs seem like overkill to me for some simple development work

<comment><USER55> I didn't see where the original poster said "simple."

I have a laptop with similar specs and it's definitely taxed when running big monolithic projects and (particularly) their big test suites.

Also, when buying a laptop, most people like to buy something that can last at least a few years into the future...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Ask HN: Vim or Emacs?</comment>


Unified autoplay - Chrome to mute sites with autoplaying sound - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2017/09/unified-autoplay.html <comment><USER2> This is great news, and I hope it works better than the anti-autoplay plugins I have installed. It seems amazing how many sites that don't seem to be related to video go to extreme measures to try to get videos to autoplay even when the users have plugins installed that try to stop them.

At least for me, it's a pet peeve, and a great way to make sure I never return to your website.</comment>