White House tried to force 3M to send masks from Singapore to US - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/cee34681-5f47-416b-9cbc-d824e9eec68e <comment><USER2> Anybody that thinks 3m isn't doing anything but war profiteering during a pandemic is fooling themselves.

If as*holes buying up pallets of toilet paper can't sell it on amazon, why should 3m be allowed to sell to the highest bidder on a world market.

</comment><comment><USER3> De-paywalled here: [https://archive.is/gS9hB](https://archive.is/gS9hB)

See related HN posts: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769901)

and also

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769288)</comment>


Experts Break Down the Self-Driving Uber Crash - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/video/experts-break-down-the-self-driving-uber-crash/1E24A9B7-0B7B-4FA6-96BD-AD1889B921C5.html <comment><USER2> It is high time the news' eye moved away from the low-paid backup driver and the homeless victim and looked further into holding accountable the managers and the engineers behind the avoidable technical corner-cutting of their "move fast and break lives" culture.

Popular culture still imagines that Waymo's level 4 systems and Uber's not- even-close-to-level-3-no-matter-what-they-say are a single technology. The bad apple is rotting the bunch and it is painful to witness.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DW: Lidar should have cought it. No further info in the vid.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the vid: "experts" saying exactly what all HN commenters said, but in more words and with impressive titles before their names.

</comment><comment><USER5> Speculation without any new data.</comment>


Apple's 2019 Mac Pro will be shaped by workflows - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/05/apples-2019-imac-pro-will-be-shaped-by-workflows/ <comment><USER3> What are Pros supposed to do in the mean time? Keep buying PCs I guess. Why haven't they kept selling the cheese grater is beyond me.

They are spending a fortune to understand what Pros need, while we have been screaming for the better part of the decade: lots of user accessible RAM, storage, PCI & GPU. How much would it cost R&D to update the Mac Pro? Teenagers can do it for peanuts, I'm sure the largest company in the freaking world could manage. If they were truly sorry or marginally "cared", that's what they would have done years ago.

I'm fine with them playing the "let's reinvent the Pro computer" game as a side project, they have this massive amount of money burning a whole in their pockets after all, but some of us need to work.

<comment><USER4> > What are Pros supposed to do in the mean time? Keep buying PCs I guess. > > How much would it cost R&D to update the Mac Pro?

I hope/think that Apple is thinking that bringing back the cheese grater or in other word a PC running MacOS is not going to be enough to bring back the pro. They need to come back with something that has something unique.

The TrashCan failed but you can see where Apple was going. A small, silent, powerful machine infinitely customisable on the fly via TB.

So of course if failed and this attempt has a good chance to fail too. I'm not quite sure that Apple has in its DNA the deep understanding of the type of Pro that are not content with either the iMac Pro or MBP in the same fashion they get the consumer sphere. It is just that for a long period of time the intersection between the 2 world was large but are now diverging. Perfectly happy for me to be wrong though.

<comment><USER5> > I hope/think that Apple is thinking that bringing back the cheese grater or > in other word a PC running MacOS is not going to be enough to bring back the > pro.

Before they can think of "bringing back the pro", they need to stop the bleeding: pros who need to upgrade this year have no choice but to go PC. An upgraded cheese-grater would have been a good stop-gap while they go back to the drawing board on their 2019 product.

<comment><USER6> Certainly.

Right now I program Rails on an old 2012 MBPr. I want to get a faster machine. Possibilities:

1) Spend 5k on a iMac Pro. That's an absurd amount of money.

2) Get a new MBP limited by USB C, new keyboard, and the abominable Touchbar. That's a lot of money for a downgrade.

3) Get a decent specced iMac or Mac Mini. Most viable option.

4) Ditch Rails, start learning .NET, so I can go Windows 100% to build my own PC. I save money. I lose a lot of time.

5) Build PC, install Linux. Viable but might be a configuration nightmare. I just want to work.

6) Run Linux under Windows host as a VM. Second most viable option.

I'm pretty frustrated. Suggestions?

<comment><USER7> > I'm pretty frustrated. Suggestions?

I suggest an upgraded 2009 Mac Pro.

The upgrades would include: flash to 5,1, 3.46 MHz Intel Hexcore proc, 32 GB RAM, SSD on a PMCIA card, and 5770 GPU. This should cost $1K USD or less, dual CPU (12 core) for a bit more. Mine Geekbenches at 3800 (S) and 17,800 (M).

I'm running one of these and it has been bulletproof and 100% hardware/software compatible.

<comment><USER6> That actually sounds fantastic. Can it drive a 4k display?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading this it had me reminiscing about Sun back in its heyday as a workstation vendor. Sun used to do this stuff, they would bring in a partner who had some critical application and the Sun engineering team and the partner's engineering team, and some "power users" of the tool would all work through what it would take to make the tool work better on a Sun Workstation than any other workstation. Sun engineering got a collection of bugs, features, and investigations that would come out of those exercises. When my wife was at Xerox they were doing similar sorts of studies for document preparation and presentation.

You could do that when the workstation cost $25,000, (in 1990 dollars!) I'm not sure how viable it is when the workstation is less than $5,000.

That said, I really miss using software products where that level of thought has gone into its design. The three 'creative' apps I use (other than writing code) are drawing, schematic capture/board layout (EDA), and writing. All systems that benefit from people investing in how the flow of these things work, and all of which have degraded over time.

<comment><USER9> I think there might be some people interested in a 25K machine, but only if it really improves their workflow; don't think adding more money / processing power does much for most people, maybe for 3d rendering but they have specialized hardware for that, which gives them more raw bang for their bucks than Apple could do.

I'm wondering if it'd be viable to have a 'compute unit' shared by multiple users. i/o would probably be a bottleneck, so maybe have it link up macs via usb-c? It might help with e.g. compile times (which last time I did iOS development, two years ago, was kinda slow (>1 minute for our app, CPU bound)).

But that's probably too specialized a thing. Apple wants to sell units by the million, not the hundreds (if that). Which is why they discontinued the mac pro and the 17 inch MBP.

<comment><USER10> Something like the dxg-1/dxg-2?

[https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-2/](https://www.nvidia.com/en- us/data-center/dgx-2/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mac Pro cheese graters going away was a bad move and a missed opportunity by Apple, today they already lost the power pro users and they had them for a while.

Most Mac Pro users have moved back to PC, or iMac's/minis just for iOS/macOS related dev, with most work being done on PCs.

Apple had a window where developers needed a heavy Pro Mac for iOS, nix development like python/ruby/etc, even Unity dev back when it was only on Mac (2007-2010 ish), it was also great to have a Mac after the 2006 Intel processor move as it was the sexiest nix and great for developers from 2006 on, but those days are over.

Somewhere in 2013, they just moved on from the cheese grater and Pro market that included developers and content creators. Now they want to regain it? There was so much momentum squandered here and hearing Tim Cook repeat "Post- PC" and Apple messaging that desktops were like trucks, only developers need them, caused them to move on, so did the pro users and developers. Apple even watered down their developer laptops and Macbook Pros, 17" screens were relegated to being 'lapzillas' and Apple went only mainstream. Content creators and programming were not something they focused on anymore after the iPhone took over, eventhough those influencers were always the focus. I thought they would use the iPhone and iOS/macOS platforms to get more people on their desktops as well, instead they went the other direction.

We used to be Mac Pro heavy now we just have iMacs/minis for the last mile or iOS/macOS export and testing with performance heavy beefy PCs for most of the day to day work. Additionally, taking your jet engine/trashcan new Mac Pro or iMac to the mall for repairs instead of just popping in a new video card or drive also sucks.

Developers can get two performance PCs for the price of one Mac Pro. Usually you can get more power out of both as well since Mac Pros from 2011 on were 1-2 years behind. There is no getting back pro users such as devs/game devs that had switched over and have now gone back to Windows/PC.

<comment><USER12> >caused them to move on, so did the pro users and developers

Wasn't there a statistic from github recently, that 75% of the PRs created in 2017, were done from Macs? They are bigger in the market for devs then ever before, the thing is, that the majority of this peer group is totally fine with a MBP. I see this whole new MacPro story more as a marketing campaign, the driving factor behind this is not the demand from the market, it's only for their long-term reputation.

<comment><USER11> Yeah Apple still owns the laptop market but even their latest Macbook Pro wasn't really, more mainstream. Mac is still a better development environment because it is nix based for most things webdev related and iOS appdev mobile related.

At far as desktops though, even creative/advertising agencies are moving to PC for 3d, photography, graphic design, audio production, video production and more. These were always the target market of Apple but they lost many.

Apple iPhone lost ground to Android and laptops may also do so starting with development. I see many devs that went from Mac to PC desktop go from Macbook Pros to Surface Pros but that is just starting. Eventually it could also start switching people from iPhone to Android/Samsung/Google hardware as well as the hardware has caught up.

Apple being a hardware company, it is strange they did not take more advantage of the desktop inroads they were making in 2006+ with Intel and iOS development.

<comment><USER13> > At far as desktops though, even creative/advertising agencies are moving to > PC for photography, graphic design, audio production, video production and > more. These were always the target market of Apple but they lost many.

I don't think this is really true, all the creative agencies I'm aware of are still firmly mac shops. Do you have a citation or anecdotes to back up your assertion?

<comment><USER11> Most of them are still pretty Mac heavy, I said 'moving to PC'. The agencies I work with and worked at have begun to purchase more and more PCs over Macs.

Adobe Creative Cloud apps tend to work better on PC now so this is a big reason.

The areas I mentioned (video, photography, audio, gamedev, 3d etc) are moving to hefty PC machines that need 64GB/128GB/256GB+ of ram, latest GPUs, many drives and many cores (16-40+)[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], no iMac can do that and Mac Pros have left the building. Many of the PCs are cheaper and more powerful as well, custom built ones especially. Many web developers or graphic designers still on iMacs, but the other areas on PC.

Basically, anyone that needed a Mac Pro, where an iMac or Macbook Pro was not enough, has probably switched/back to PC. You'll see most people do this around 2013-2014 when the Mac Pro was un-cheese grated and put in a jet engine/trashcan, looks cool but too expensive and not for hands-on pros or expanded easily.

One video/photography/3d guy I know is running 40+ core/thread machines 256GB RAM, hard for Mac Pros to compete with that[9][10].

[1] [https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/the-digital-artists- guid...](https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/the-digital-artists-guide-to- switching-from-mac-to-windows)

[2] [https://www.slrlounge.com/apple-is-dead-to-me-trey- ratcliff-...](https://www.slrlounge.com/apple-is-dead-to-me-trey-ratcliff-mac- vs-pc/)

[3] [https://www.stuckincustoms.com/2017/02/10/switching-from- mac...](https://www.stuckincustoms.com/2017/02/10/switching-from-mac-to- windows/)

[4] [https://petapixel.com/2016/12/03/im-leaving-apple- microsoft-...](https://petapixel.com/2016/12/03/im-leaving-apple-microsoft- switching-photographer/)

[5] [https://petapixel.com/2017/07/18/5-reasons-pick-pc- macbook-2...](https://petapixel.com/2017/07/18/5-reasons-pick-pc- macbook-2017-photo-video-editing/)

[6] [http://philipbloom.net/blog/makingtheswitch/](http://philipbloom.net/blog/makingtheswitch/)

[7] [https://uxdesign.cc/designers-workflow-on- windows-57393856ae...](https://uxdesign.cc/designers-workflow-on- windows-57393856ae59)

[8] [https://medium.com/charged-tech/why-i-left-mac-for- windows-a...](https://medium.com/charged-tech/why-i-left-mac-for-windows- apple-has-given-up-b48c0eaac64)

[9] [https://www.techspot.com/review/1218-affordable-40-thread- xe...](https://www.techspot.com/review/1218-affordable-40-thread-xeon-monster- pc/)

[10] [http://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-X399-Dual-Intel- Xeon-E5-...](http://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-X399-Dual-Intel- Xeon-E5-v4-Broadwell-EP-Wo-p/x399.htm)

<comment><USER13> Thank you, that makes sense. I haven't seen any Mac Pros or iMac Pros yet, so I guess I haven't been exposed to that end of the segment yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I switched to Apple product in 2002, because at the time they were absolutely better than Windows 2000 for my needs (mostly Protools, and eventually Logic 7). Windows at the time was a mess and poorly supported most pro hardware and vendors (specifically Avid) were slow to support releases.

It really felt like the best platform. I had a nice G4 tower, and eventually used a G5 and then Mac Pro tower. Things generally just worked, and you could expand things as needed.

Roll around to today, and it's a mess. Apple canceled a lot of their pro products. Aperture? Dead. Final Cut got nerfed pretty hard. Logic is still reasonably well maintained, but Ableton Live took over a lot for me.

The hardware options aren't that great right now for my needs. Last week, I sold my 2011 Macbook Pro to a friend and switched all my audio stuff to my old Windows gaming system. Picked up a Firewire PCI-E card for $20 and I was in business. It's fast, has a ton of ram and is easily expandable. Windows 10 drives me nuts, but eh...

I've still got three Macbook Pros for software development, and they are pretty great for that (minus the new keyboard, and that Tensorflow GPU has dropped OS X support). I don't think I'll be switching laptops anytime soon. But ugh, audio work on them just feels like an overpriced joke at this point.

I really never thought I'd be saying it, but for photography and audio stuff, Windows seems to be the place right now!

<comment><USER15> As someone who uses a MBP as a daily driver laptop: Windows has been a better platform for a lot of the photography software for over a decade. Photoshop and Lightroom just work a ton better on Windows and have since right before the CS days.

But the native terminal, etc, has won me over as a *Nix person for a long time. I don't like Linux desktop interfaces at all, and the new Windows linux/bash stuff hasn't been compelling or integrated enough for me to want to switch (ConEmu and all of the terminal stuff being garbage is a big issue). I'll be sticking with a MBP and OSX for my laptop and work related stuff, but I don't understand why anyone would still be using OSX for a photography workflow. It's just so much more polished on Windows.

<comment><USER16> > Lightroom just work[s] a ton better on Windows

That's not my experience, at least with Classic.

Mine is a Mac house. My parents, though, are long-time Windows users; I only managed to get my parents to run a single iMac, which they gave away as soon as they could financially justify it.

I tell you that because that is where my cross-platform Lightroom experience comes from: almost all Mac, with occasional mentoring/support sessions under Windows at the parents' house. With Lightroom on Windows, I've repeatedly observed:

1\. Windows' brain-dead default-mandatory file locking prevents perfectly reasonable operations, simply because Lightroom is busy working with one or more files in the background. Advisory locking as is default on POSIX type systems allows many things that Windows refuses to allow by default. (E.g. Rename a parent folder while a file in that folder is open for writing. Who cares, the FD is still valid!)

2\. Lightroom can take a long time to shut down when it gets busy, as it too- frequently does. On the Mac, the app icon remains marked "running" while Lightroom grinds away, trying to figure out how to shut down, but on Windows, the app icon disappears from the task bar almost immediately, but Lightroom.exe remains running in the background, so that it is not obvious why reopening the program fails for minutes at a time.

(And why reopen? Because relaunching Lightroom often solves slowdown problems, and has for years upon years, which is a separate rant.)

3\. Some plugins simply won't run on Windows, at least not without dragging along a bunch of compatibility junk. Anything that depends on ExifTool, for example, requires dragging over a whole Perl environment just to run the plugin. If you have multiple plugins dependent on ExifTool, as I do, each one usually comes with its own Perl environment. Compare macOS, where at worst you have the CPAN module alone, and at best, it might simply require that you install ExifTool separately, that being a reasonable user requirement on an OS like macOS.

If your comment was referring to GPU acceleration and such, Adobe's recent focus on that isn't helping me anyway. Almost all of my problems with Lightroom's speed are in the Library module, not the Develop module, where GPU acceleration doesn't help much anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please excuse the venting here for a minute.

After "can't innovate anymore my ass" Apple released their architectural dead- end trashcan Mac Pro in _2013_ we have to wait until _2019_ for an update? What am I supposed to buy? I'm certainly not going to buy anything with a Touch Bar. It's 2018 and I had my job order me the 2015 Macbook Pro for my work computer so I could skip the Touch Bar and still have USB ports.

What's going on at Apple?

<comment><USER18> Don't forget the keyboard on the new Macs, which is the other big reason not to get them (besides ports and touch bar).

<comment><USER19> I really wish I could get the 2015 MacBook Pro with USB-C ports and Touchbar MBP size.

As painful as it was to have to buy dongles and whatever else, having monitors + USB docks using USB-C has been pretty pleasant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hate to admit this, but Apple should sell off its Mac division. They are simply not hungry enough.

For the first time in 33 years, I no longer have access to a Mac. Apple doesn't sell one that my employers nor myself want to buy.

That it has taken so long to course correct would have sunk most companies. It is probably a couple percent hit on Apple revenue at most.

<comment><USER21> Wow, yes they've definitely lost their "eye of the tiger," haha.

Doubt there is a Lenovo waiting in the wings, nor would they allow it, a shame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder who the target market is, though? The iMac Pro can cost £5000, so I assume more performance and hence price than that? The only users who I can imagine willing to justify paying such a premium are those who feel they _must_ remain at the cutting edge of performance and are willing to pay for it, but surely they will have left the Apple ecosystem by then?

It's as if Apple are saying "we're making a computer for people who demand peak performance, but are willing to use cheap outdated hardware until we get round to it."

<comment><USER23> I think this is where Hackintosh comes in. You can buy top of the line, macOS- compatible hardware for 1/3 of the Apple premium.

It takes effort to set up, but not that much.

<comment><USER24> I simply cannot imagine running something like that in a professional context. For me, "maybe this next update will install correctly" is a non-starter.

For consumers who just _really_ want to run macOS, I can see the appeal.

<comment><USER25> I agree, in an educational institution or large corporation, no way. But in a small shop that lives and dies on productivity, where one can't (won't?) migrate away from MacOS, a Hackintosh may be the only option available.

It's the market filling in the gaps of Apple's engineering & marketing plan.

<comment><USER26> > in a small shop that lives and dies on productivity

A computer that takes a bunch of fiddling to set up and might not work if updated doesn't seem like a productivity booster to me.

<comment><USER27> IT does the fiddling. Creators gain performance and productivity.

<comment><USER26> You're a small shop. Do you even have the funds for IT, or is it just one of the hats that your main system admin or reliability engineer puts on?

<comment><USER27> That depends how much your creators' time is worth, i.e. the return on increased performance.

If Hackintoshes have motivated Apple to release a new Mac Pro after a multi- year gap, then Apple-only shops will benefit from the Hackintosh investments of other shops.

<comment><USER26> Yes, that's my point. How much money are you saving? Maybe a couple thousand dollars? Balance this with the time you'd need to spend on setting this up and getting it to work right–a couple days, a week? It's not obvious that this would always work out, especially so if you don't have in-house IT and would either have to get a creator to learn how to do something like this or hire someone that does.

<comment><USER27> Right, so those people keep using Apple and wait N years for a new computer.

Other people use a Hackintosh and help to define requirements for Apple's next computer.

Apple gets free R&D. Those who need performance get it. Everyone eventualy gets the benefits in the next computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> From 2007 to 2016 I was all-in on OS X / MacBook Pros / iMacs for work (software dev.) Since then I've gone back to a Dell XPS 15 and a custom-built AMD Threadripper machine. As much as I like the Mac hardware, I could no longer justify the cost. The XPS is a nice machine and (no touchbar - it's a feature) and my custom-PC is a monster. Windows 10 with all its warts is plenty serviceable especially now with it's Linux Subsystem (primarily because I prefer to use bash as my shell.)

I guess I'm no longer part of their target market for their computer systems.

<comment><USER29> > Linux Subsystem

Wat.I just went googling after reading this comment and at first glance, it looks like this is an officially supported method to run GNU apps in a Windows terminal? Can you boot directly into Ubuntu desktop without messing with BIOS and UEFI?

<comment><USER15> >Wat.I just went googling after reading this comment and at first glance, it looks like this is an officially supported method to run GNU apps in a Windows terminal?

It's hardly limited to GNU apps. Most of your Linux applications should work fine on it. I've had no problem with all sorts of non-GNU releases when I use it on my desktop.

>Can you boot directly into Ubuntu desktop without messing with BIOS and UEFI?

No, it is a Linux userland on top of the NT kernel with an emulation layer written to handle all of the syscalls.

It works well. The only really glaring issue is ConEmu and related Windows terminal ecosystem is still hot garbage compared to any Linux or OSX terminal.

<comment><USER16> > The only really glaring issue is ConEmu and related Windows terminal > ecosystem is still hot garbage compared to any Linux or OSX terminal.

...and that bites you in a surprising number of ways.

I recently tried porting some software that runs just fine under Ubuntu-on-x86 to Ubuntu-on-WSL, and I found _three different failure modes_ in the console/pty mechanism before I gave up. I then tried running it under Cygwin and it ran correctly out of the box.

Perhaps the easiest way to see this is to try to run a program like GNU screen under WSL, but the core problem isn't any specific application. Any program that does anything even moderately tricky with ptys is likely to fail under WSL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reading this article was really annoying. First, there were grammatical issues like these, which may have been intentional, but made understanding the article difficult:

> I saw a bunch of them walking by in Apple park toting kit for an outdoor > shoot on premises while walking

> Is it the OS is it in the drivers is it in the application is it in the > silicon and then run it to ground to get it fixed.

Then, I clicked over my Hacker News tab and when I went back, the content was replaced by another page (!). Apparently it was changed via JavaScript when I reached the bottom of the page. This is stupid and user-hostile.

<comment> ng-user I agree.

When scrolling to the bottom of the article the last thing I expected was the entire content of said article to be replaced by headlines of other stories from TC.

Viewing the article in portrait mode on desktop displays the main contents on the left 50% and complete whitespace on the right 50%.

Overall the TC redesign is god-awful and has degraded usability substantially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think Apple is needlessly re-inventing the wheel here. While their intent to analyze real world usage and optimize every detail by bringing in actual pro users is admirable, I'd prefer them to use a simpler, more streamlined approach and have them release standard, state of the art hardware in a tasteful, quiet case and continuesly work on optimizations on the software side - a process that is required anyway and not exclusive to the Mac Pro, which makes me wonder why it should dictate the Mac Pro roadmap and schedule in such a significant way.

Furthermore it's concerning that the article mentions modularity mostly in ways that involve external hardware and peripherals. If that turns out to be the approach Apple is considering, it sounds worryingly similar to an iMac Pro without the fanatastic display.

</comment><comment><USER31> "And then we take this information where we find it and we go into our architecture team and our performance architects and really drill down and figure out where is the bottleneck. Is it the OS is it in the drivers is it in the application is it in the silicon and then run it to ground to get it fixed."

This approach is reminiscent of Apple's approach to low-latency touch scrolling on the original iPhone; to Quicktime and MIDI a decade and a half before that; and, more recently, to the Apple Pencil.

I knew executives at Palm who were frustrated by the challenges that both the tech stack and the organizational structure (Conway's Law) posed in the (failed) effort to reduce touch latency to where it felt physical. I know that it took Android many years to reach the point where objective observers described it as equally "buttery". IMO this full-stack integration and optimization is one of Apple's core competences. It will be interesting to see what it leads to this time. The effort may be too _late_ , but if the past predicts the future, it will not be too _little_ too late.

</comment><comment><USER32> I waited and waited and waited. I liked the design of the Trashcan but by the time I could afford one it was woefully out of date and I needed Nvidia GPUs for the rendering engine I wanted to use.

In the end I moved my creative work over to PC and currently run a nice compact mATX PC built for GPU computing with two 1080Tis. Still cost me less than half the eventual iMac Pro and presumably this Mac Pro.

If this had been released a few years back maybe I'd never have moved to PC but at this stage they'll have to be still supporting the new Mac Pro in 3 years before I even consider moving back at this point.

Been a Mac only user for 15 years now, I didn't move away lightly, but now I've switched it'll be hard to convince me back.

<comment><USER33> I wonder at what scale has this occurred? Has video editing industry moved away from Apple computers in a substantial way?

They have managed to keep the music recording industry; a new macbook pro or imac is plenty powerful enough to be the heart of a recording studio.

<comment><USER34> Many people in the pro audio world have moved to Windows over the last 5 years. Apogee, who I think Apple paid to only support OsX at one time, now makes Windows drivers and officially supports both platforms. MOTU has been cross platform since like 2006. Logic is really the only audio product that does not support Windows but only because Apple killed the pc version in like 2004. Logic pc was amazing and might even still run on Windows 10.

<comment><USER35> The main reason I'm not using Logic right now on my MBP is that it doesn't run on other platforms, and Apple's behavior over the last half-decade has convinced me that after almost two decades of _knowing_ their platforms were the right choice for me, I can't trust their judgment when it comes to disruptive or dealbreaking changes to both hardware and software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I do not need a Mac Pro, nor could I afford one if I wanted to (I _do_ own one, though, albeit it is 11 years old, I got it preowned from a friend).

But I wonder what the hell the people at Apple were thinking when they put put the "trashcan"-design. It looks awesome, I cannot deny it, and I imagine it is very convenient to handle.

But something deep inside of me cringes when a computer in this price class has everything soldered on and has no real option to extend it. You cannot upgrade the CPU, the RAM, the GPU, nor can you install any additional PCIe cards.

<comment><USER37> It wasnt that convenient when you wanted to put stuff inside it or rack it. Hence the thirdparty rack chassis market.

<comment><USER36> When I said "convenient to handle", I was thinking, small enough to sit on top of my desk, lightweight enough so I can carry it without breaking a sweat (the cheesegrater is really heavy!), that sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I just hope they don't break _any_ new ground with it. Zero. Just make a big tower that does excactly what a HP workstation tower would do, and match the price. No need for _any_ Apple magic of any kind here. Don't make a trash can, don't make a touch bar.

<comment><USER39> That makes zero sense from a business perspective.

"I know, let's put out a boring commodity product that has no unique selling points, doesn't match our ethos, and has a tiny niche market. And we'll sell it at the same razor-thin margin that everyone else does!"

That couldn't be further from Apple's way of doing business.

If you want a cheap commodity tower, just buy one, but don't expect Apple to make one for you.

<comment><USER38> Apples uniqueness here is their OS and the applications that run on it. That's why people would buy a Mac over an HP. Only that. If they want pros to keep using Mac OS for video etc, then they need to have competitive hardware.

Apples other concern is the developer side and the app ecosystem: high end build machines and developer workstations are also relevant for their _actual_ business which is selling apps and phones.

Computer hardware for professionals is just a boring service Apple needs to provide in order to support the rest of their business. It's not even a visible product like a MacBook or an iMac- it's designed to be hidden on the floor because it's huge and noisy (the trash can was a failed attempt at working around that fact)

Edit: to follow up on the "powerful machines are a boring service" idea: If Apple didn't want to risk the brand damage of launching a boring product, they could simply license dell or hp to sell certain servers and workstations with Mac OS to let the highest end render machines and build servers etc run Mac OS. They could easily charge a 20% premium and people would be happy to buy them.

<comment><USER39> _" Apples uniqueness here is their OS and the applications that run on it."_

I really think you're wrong. Even a lot of people who run Windows or Linux prefer Apple hardware.

<comment><USER38> I should clarify that I mean on high end workstations and compute/build servers now. Machines that no one sees or touches, and are only required _because_ you are already in the Apple ecosystem, and need to do e.g. builds using xcode, or video rendering using some OS X software.

Apple make excellent laptops, phones etc. but those are products in a completely different category.

I think lots of people use macs to run linux (especially developers). The number of people that run Windows exclusively on Mac is probably pretty small though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Apple already lost the Mac Pro market when they made Final Cut Pro X, and stopped regularly releasing Mac Pros. They completely disregarded the professional market by killing functionality that was critical to the users. That combined with the lack of powerful hardware made a lot of the professionals go to PC and Avid. They addressed some of the issues in future releases but it was too late.

Creators were pretty much the only people keeping Apple alive in the tough years and they abandoned them.

</comment><comment><USER41> So now, two questions:

\- Will the Mac Pro actually be Pro?

\- Will they ever bring back a Pro computer in a notebook form factor?

<comment><USER42> What's non-'Pro' about the current 15" MBP that was 'Pro' about the previous design? They're practically the same.

If you mean no SD card reader etc, it's my understanding that pro photographers tended to use a USB3/thunderbolt reader anyway, as the integrated reader was connected over USB2 internally and was far too slow for pro use.

<comment><USER43> My 9 year old toshiba has a pci based SD card reader. The possibility for it to be internal and also offer reasonable speeds is not beyond the pale.

Some of the top end cameras use both CF and SD, so sure, it doesn't cater for everyone, but SD has become so ubiquitous it seems odd it's missing.

<comment><USER42> Sure, it's definitely possible to have a fast SD card reader in a Mac laptop, but no Mac laptop, even ones with Pro in the name, ever actually did.

(I'm actually not sure what the reason for this was; iMac SD card readers were PCIe).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This process is a mistake for two reasons.

The first is time. If they were ready to release a simple, expandable, better- everything box a few months from now, _every single person who's been chomping at the bit for a new pro Mac would buy it immediately_. That would fix their market, gain them goodwill and give them plenty of time to explore what all these amazing professionals actually want to do, _later_.

Second, this just doesn't seem like the hardest list of requirements to guess. Heck, there are practically no constraints, not even price! It doesn't have to be thin, it can guzzle power, they don't have to compromise on any ports (put 4 of everything you can think of in, old and new). Theoretically they could build a slightly better box with some analysis but literally _no one_ is asking for that gargantuan task to be done yet, at least not before 2022.

</comment><comment><USER45> If they just make an expandable ATX/cheese grater style case with generous cooling and allow top Nvidia GPUs, I will pay a large premium for this. Ideally there would be the option for high end consumer gear (i7/i9, vanilla RAM) in addition to the Xeons/ECC/FBDIMMs that get so expensive so quickly, but two tiers with different architectures is probably too much to hope for.

</comment><comment><USER46> Still hoping for a professional MacBOOK, but Apple doesn't ever listen to their pro customers or do they?

<comment><USER47> ? Isn't that a MacBook Pro?

<comment><USER41> You mean the one without a real keyboard or the one with only one port while plugged in?

<comment><USER47> I disliked my new MBP at first honestly it's not that bad if you can bring the rest of your hardware up to speed.

My monitor does video, charging, and USB 3 with full size ports with one cable.

And the keyboard is subjective, I got used to it pretty easily. I actually feel like it's more tactile than the old one

<comment><USER48> "it's not that bad"

That is not the most ringing endorsement for a very expensive and supposedly premium laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I wish Apple would just make their own ATX case (or any other standard *TX form factor), their own ATX motherboard with their TPM on it, and then use commodity components for everything else. I'd pay a huge premium for that product, but Apple is so far up their own ass trying to imitate themselves they can't see what their customers really need.

<comment><USER50> They tried that in the past.

It was one of the first things Jobs "fixed".

<comment><USER49> If you mean the clones, that's not exactly what I'm suggesting. I want Apple to continue building computers, but to use industry standard form factors, and to use as many commodity components as possible.

They could get such a product out faster than 2019 and it would be better than whatever they will end up announcing. Instead we have to wait a year for Apple to figure out how to make a computer that is 'pretty' and 'innovative' enough _for Apple_ , even when their professional customers don't give a toss how pretty or innovative it is.

<comment><USER51> Or at least _one_ computer in the lineup like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> What I read from the article is that Apple is working on finding a few workflows and optimising the hell out of those instead of like creating an awesome general purpose computer for which only users imagination is the limitation.

Which obviously is a very Appley thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER53> It sounds like the next Mac Pro still won't handle ML workloads in a meaningful way, but it will have a keyboard with a touchbar that works with Garage Band. Pass.

<comment><USER26> You might get external GPU support if you're trying to do ML.

<comment><USER53> Then I'll stick with a laptop. Probably my first non-MPB in over a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I bet it's going to be a sphere on a stick. Like the original LEGO Death Star II. But if it had been completed all the way around.

[https://i2.wp.com/www.yuppiegadgets.com/wp- content/uploads/2...](https://i2.wp.com/www.yuppiegadgets.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/Lego-Death-Star-II-10143-1.jpg?fit=500%2C450&ssl=1)

<comment><USER55> What about the existing trashcan design, but instead of plugging in a monitor and mouse and keyboard, the trashcan's surface is just one single touch screen? That's much more user-friendly, you don't have to mess with cables at all anymore.

<comment><USER54> Good point on user friendly. But I don't think that's really what they're going for.

Sphere on a stick would be cool to mount on a walk so it looks cool and then have wireless video (or video through the stem) so you just remote into it from your local network from tablets or light notebooks as terminals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm honestly confused by what Apple is doing here. Maybe it makes sense to refine their software, but they're bringing in content creators to study their workflow to inform their hardware design? What?

<comment><USER57> Some hardware questions I'd think working with content creators could help with (disclaimer: not a hardware guy)...

Are external GPUs fast enough? What internal architecture do they need to make them so?

How much L1/L2/Ln memory do they need for serious workflows?

Is Thunderbolt <whatever> fast enough?

How well do professional apps really scale with multiple CPUs? Benchmarks are one thing, seeing people use the software in production is something else.

Anyway, just random speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> So they're optimizing for video/photo work. What about the rest of the "pro" users? They've given up on them?

<comment><USER51> Yes, what about developers, scientists, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> > We've been focusing on visual effects

Are any visual effects or animation shops still on macOS? I was under the impression that this world was mainly Linux (Pixar, Disney, Weta, ILM, etc, are all on Linux).

<comment><USER60> The major studios are still using Maya, Photoshop, and other commercial software that doesn't work on Linux. They are using Linux for render farms and some custom software.

<comment><USER59> > The major studios are still using Maya, Photoshop, and other commercial > software that doesn't work on Linux.

Maya/Houdini/Modo/etc run on Linux (this is what Weta, Disney, and Pixar do). Creative Cloud definitely does not, which is a bit of a problem.

<comment><USER60> Are you sure?

This page seems to indicate that Maya is not compatible with Linux.

[https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/troubleshooting/...](https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Operating- system-compatibility-for-Autodesk-Maya.html)

<comment><USER59> Positive — I used to develop Maya plugins on Linux. That page is perplexing!

<comment><USER60> Oh, upon closer reading, that page just says it doesn't work on 32 bit linux. Why they are even including that is beyond me. Who is working on Maya with a 32 bit system?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Just make it a cool looking square and shove tons of hardware in it. The whole circle thing is such a bad design.

<comment><USER62> NeXT.

Though the big aluminum desktops they made years ago were probably a high point for balance of beautiful and functional.

<comment><USER63> _Though the big aluminum desktops they made years ago were probably a high point for balance of beautiful and functional._

This. I think existing and potential future Mac Pro users would be perfectly happy with a cheese gater that has 2018 innards (ok, they could make it Space Gray).

When it comes to Pro hardware, I think that Apple has lost the balance between aesthetics and functionality. The trash can Mac Pro is a good example of this - it's beautiful, overheating all the time and not extensible. So is the new MacBook lineup, they are beautiful. But really? 1 USB-C port on the MacBook 12" and 2 USB-C ports on the MacBook Pro Escape? I don't know of any MacBook 12"/Pro user who doesn't dislike the port selection.

<comment><USER64> Don't know where you bought your laptop, but my MacBook Pro has 4 USB-C ports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I think I'll be out of the Mac ecosystem soon. The writing is on the wall. I still don't like any Linux DE and I hate the eternal config hell I end up in, but the effort to have a functional Mac is starting to catch up to it.

I'm still using a 2015 MBP and a Hackintosh desktop (Old Intel 3770k + Titan Xp) but this year was the first time after the 2006 release of the MBP that I bought a non-Apple notebook... I needed something to replace my 11" MacBook Air that I use for travel, and the new keyboards just aren't usable for me. Bought a Thinkpad X1C6... Great machine except a few baffling design decisions, and appears to be borderline impossible to Hackintosh for now - <USER2> the keyboard is my tool of the trade. I need a good one.

</comment><comment><USER66> This is a lot of copy for some pretty simple updates:

* 2019 release data

* Modular architecture

* Probably a heavy bet on eGPU and TB3

* iDevices as additional inputs

<comment><USER67> _Probably a heavy bet on eGPU and TB3_

I'm not sure that's really about the Mac Pro itself - the article doesn't say that.

<comment><USER66> I got the impression it was about the Mac Pro, but you're right, it doesn't say that, and it's kind of hard to tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> If Apple say they want to look at workflows, and winkle out bugs, then I've got a good one - but incredibly specific to LibreOffice.

If they get the LibreOffice git repository, then run:

      make sw.all

eventually it will get to the unit tests and one of our exports kills the display server. Only happens if you run it on a iMac Pro 4K screen running max resolution.

We know it's something we are doing around graphics, but for the life of us we can't work out what that is. But also: I would have thought killing the display server like this should be something that shouldn't be possible...

<comment><USER55> I'm making a guess that the explanation is going to be as hilarious as the infamous "LibreOffice cannot print on Tuesdays" bug, which ended up being a problem with file(1).

<comment><USER68> Almost certainly :-)

For anyone who wants to find out about the above-referenced bug, see:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171956)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> > He stresses that it's not just Apple's applications that they're testing and > working to help make better. Third-party relationships on this are very > important to them and the workflow team is helping to fix their problems > faster too.

This is great. Sounds a lot like Microsoft's recent change in culture away from using Windows as their worldview lens for everything to seeing their work as being platform agnostic (with non-Windows OS, mobile, IoT, watches, cars, etc).

</comment><comment><USER70> While the article mentions a refresh of MacBook Pro, "Mac Pro" gets mentioned 36 times in the article while "MacBook Pro" is mentioned 8 times. I hope the refresh will not be about completely removing the underpowered "no touch bar" 13" MacBook Pro and instead adding an on-par configuration without the touch- bar-from-hell :/

</comment><comment><USER71> Jeez, just freaking put new components/IO in the old MacPro tower. That would make everyone happy and it could've been done years ago. This is ridiculous. I still have a 2010 MacPro tower. Still runs Ok, but CPU and NVME storage leave it really lacking.

</comment><comment><USER72> I'm really glad to see that Apple is paying attention again to what have been their long time core users. First with the new iPad for the education market and now revealing strategies for creatives in design and audio.

</comment><comment><USER73> Wait a minute, wasn't it supposed to be 2018?

<comment><USER74> They never said that, they only said it was not going to be in 2017. The article says this was always their timeline.

If you believe that.

But they never said 2018 and I remember people being very skeptic le that 2018 would happen last year when they first announced they were working on a new Mac Pro.

<comment><USER56> Yeah, it was "not 2017" and now they're saying:

> We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so > we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product

By "transparent and open" I guess they meant wait a year to tell people it's going to be another year?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Will they enable workflows, or will they control workflows? That's what I'm asking myself, especially in the light of ditching Intel one year later. Controlling workflows would mean an iOS on steroids, or an appliance for pros. Yeah you could get certain stuff done faster if you follow best practices, but you might run into invisible walls.

</comment><comment><USER76> I have 2009 flashed to 2010 with 64GB RAM and modern GPU and SSD and to be honest I don't see a need to upgrade.

<comment><USER11> Apple is going to EOL Mac Pros to 2011 via the next OS and have done for many of the older Mac Pros [1]. It is a shame because many can still run it just fine. I have a 2012 I got in 2013 which is our last Mac Pro and I am not going to be happy the day they do it.

[1] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT201624)

<comment><USER77> My 2008 is running the very latest version of High Sierra without any issues. It's a _very_ simple hack to make it work. So you can get more life out of it easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I think the new Mac Pro will be modeled after a stack of Mac Minis. Imagine being able to add processors just by stacking them up. Need more storage? Add a SAN module! Need a better GPU? Grab an NVIDA module! Hook them up with USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 and you're good to go.

</comment><comment><USER79> happily using Mac OSX 10.7 on three or four machines today, and avoiding for years the variously awful MacOSX experiences of intrusive and superficial "improvements"; I believe I am not alone in this point of view. Hefty hardware is only part of the story here.

<comment><USER80> If you develop iOS app, Apple is forcing you to use at least Sierra 10.12 for XCode 9 and the need to support iPhone X screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> The big question is: Will it still come with an Intel cpu?

<comment><USER82> If Apple switches to some other CPU architecture, the Mac Pro will be the very last thing to change, assuming it does at all.

The processors they've developed for iPhones and iPads are getting into laptop territory, but it's a big step from there to 2x 6-core Xeons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> "Apple Performs Usability Testing"

</comment><comment><USER84> Apple has had a long history of "innovation" which only has longevity in the form of museum pieces.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G4)

</comment><comment><USER85> I wonder if they'll force users to purchase dongles for their new desktop machines, too.

</comment><comment><USER86> Let's not kid ourselves, 2019 means December 2019, so...2020.

</comment><comment><USER87> Yay, a Mac made to run JS development tools.

</comment><comment><USER88> The Mac Pro is a great piece of hardware. I'm using one at work. I put linux on it, and I use it for Qt development.

</comment><comment><USER89> Better late than never, I guess?

<comment><USER90> Except if they are _too_ late.

Take a look at the new Dell XPS 15" 2-in-1, with Intel Core i7-8705G (with AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH, 4GB of dedicated HMB2), e.g.

That thing ticks most checkboxes of a pro machine, except for the "is a Mac" and "runs Mac-only software" ones.

And I imagine that an upgraded version will come out in 2019. Honestly, I find both Windows 10 Pro and Ubuntu very usable nowadays. I don't really find much reason to stick with a Mac anymore.

<comment><USER91> > That thing ticks most checkboxes of a pro machine

Except for little things like (workstation) Xeon CPU and pro graphics (Quadro or whatever ATi is calling their FirePros these days).

If you want a actual pro system, check out Dells workstation line, e.g. Precision 7520. Sure, its not light and pretty like a XPS, but you can load it with fairly serious amount of stuff and as a cherry on top it comes with Linux support out of the box.

Workstations are just a different class of computers.

<comment><USER91> Oh, and actual desktop workstations (which Mac Pro would be competing against) are yet another class. I just had some fun at Dell website, and you can configure a desktop system with dual Xeon Platinum (lol) 8180 CPUs. Those have 28 cores each. The memory configuration taps out at 12x32 GB. With 384 GB of RAM and 112 HW threads, you might be able to even run Atom and Slack simultaneously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I wonder what "pro" means to Apple anymore.

The Macbook Pro is unarguably _not_ pro. Maybe anything above $4,000..?

</comment><comment><USER93> what on earth is "promunnication"?

<comment><USER26> Professional+communication?

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> ALL I need to know!

</comment><comment><USER95> It will still take a while to penetrate the gaming market. A $3000 desktop can play most games at the highest settings right now including VR.

A $3000 mac would be lucky if the games even supported OSX.

<comment><USER26> Why do you you think Apple is trying to enter the gaming market?</comment></comment>


How one guy with a 20yo telephone did $30m in damages in less than one night. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7vvti/what_on_gods_green_earth_gets_a_fucking_pl7/c07k5nn <comment><USER2> There's definitely something missing from that story ...

How did the 'attacker' just happen to have a wardialer and know to use it that night? Why couldn't the NOC just shut off that one guy's service? Why can't I find any reference to this in the news? (they always love a good cracker story). How was a company that big operating in such an ad-hoc manner?

<comment><USER3> I find hard to believe that during such a special night all the company's fate depended on 3 guys with no backup and no direct supervision. If that's true, it seems to me very unprofessional.

<comment><USER4> After reading The Daily WTF (and assuming those stories are at least 80% truth), these sorts of tales don't really surprise me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I ran the story by a local telco guy tonight who said the guy has the lingo right but its bogus. He told me that two guys couldn't run a NOC with that equipment for that level of calls.

He also mentioned there were some other technical errors in the story like the fact MySQL was not used at all in the industry at that time and he doubted PHP was either.

He said make it $800,000 lost in one night instead of $80,000,000 and it might be a stretch but be believable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a "straw that broke the camel's back" type of thing. Three guys getting some extra phone calls on one night will cost your company 80 _million_ dollars? That means there is something seriously wrong with your business.

80 million dollars buys a lot of custom software to automate this sort of thing.

<comment><USER7> What this guys said: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7vvti/what_on_g...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7vvti/what_on_gods_green_earth_gets_a_fucking_pl7/c07k8f9)

<comment><USER6> Yeah.

I refuse to comment on Reddit, though, so I rehashed it over here.

<comment><USER4> Why the strong refusal?

<comment><USER6> I really want to have intelligent discussions, but everyone over there just posts stupid personal attacks when they disagree with you. If I'm going to spend the effort composing a post, I want people to read an think about it, not just make a snide attack. (FWIW, I am guilty of making TONS of snide personal attacks on Reddit. The community rewards it.)

The thread that made me quit Reddit for good is this one:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7uvkz/to_stop_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7uvkz/to_stop_all_the_multiple_posts_why_not_add_a/c07htm2)

My post is definitely on the sarcastic side, but it did take me some time to think about and compose. I just wanted to show that people aren't "idiots" for using an ORM. In return, I get a personal attack from someone who has probably never written a line of code in his life.

This just doesn't happen on HN. There are people with ideas that I disagree with, but at least they have something more intelligent to say than "your dumb".

So since I only have a finite amount of time, and I spend too much of it replying to social news sites, I figured I'd give up the stupid one for good. We will see how it goes.

BTW, I don't think _everything_ on HN is intelligent... but it is several orders of magnitude better than Reddit. (I wrote a bit about this last night, as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473023>). Also, I'm sure _I_ make stupid comments from time to time... but hey, nobody's perfect :)

<comment><USER8> That guy on reddit is a troll, and his comment was modded down. No free social site will ever be invulnerable to trolls, but they must be ignored.

I post on both reddit and here, and I think your generalization that "everyone over there just posts stupid personal attacks when they disagree with you" is not constructive. Your original comment about how you refuse to comment on reddit added zero value to the conversation about a telephone company from 2000 - all it did was start a thread attacking a competing website. Doesn't this break the spirit of hackernews's rules on civility?

The mentality I sometimes see on here that "we are smarter than them" doesn't make a better site. Do it, don't say it. Threads like this aren't "intelligent," they are mean-spirited and off-topic.

Sorry, but the comparisons to reddit have been bugging me. I really want to be a member of this site, party because I think its foundation of intelligent and civil conversation is a great idea. But I see way too many comments that wouldn't even be kosher on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7necx/heres_a_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7necx/heres_a_thought_stop_talking_about_digg_we_arent/)

<comment><USER6> > No free social site will ever be invulnerable to trolls.

I disagree. I have noticed a lot of troll comments on HN. A few minutes later, I come back, and the comments have been killed (or even deleted entirely).

This is the way to deal with trolls. Instead of wasting my time getting upset or composing a reply, I just never see the comment, and can focus on something else.

> But I see way too many comments that wouldn't even be kosher on reddit.

Well, by those standards, I've never seen a comment on Reddit that would be "kosher on Reddit".

HN is definitely not perfect, but I have a social news addiction and (compared to Reddit) HN makes me want to kill a lot fewer people after reading it. Metafilter actually makes me _like_ people (although there is really no technical content there, so I need something else for that).

Social news can be done right, it's just that Reddit's community failed to do that.

Edit, replying to this:

> Doesn't this break the spirit of hackernews's rules on civility?

HN has rules, but let's face it, no community ever follows the rules. The main (unwritten?) rule here is "explain your thoughts in more than 3 words". If you actually take the time to explain your thoughts, you are much less likely to upset anyone, and other people are much less less likely to regret reading the site. That is the most important thing for me, and I think others might agree.

I agree that this rant is attached to the wrong article, but that's how conversations go -- sometimes you digress. The level of discourse is high, however, so I don't think anyone is at all upset by this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I liken this story to the mortgage-backed securities mess/scandal/disaster. Read [http://semyondukach.blogspot.com/2009/01/real-cause-of- finan...](http://semyondukach.blogspot.com/2009/01/real-cause-of-financial- crisis.html) \-- a link previously posted here on HN.

99.99% of the nights, this company could get by without a few $M of software to automate these processes and protect it from extreme risks. However, it couldn't survive even a single night of failure. It's like a player in an online poker tournament who makes extreme and unnecessary all-in bets to steal pots: The strategy works really well until the last time you try it.

I wonder if management/investors were really aware of the risk profile they had implicitly accepted.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Sunday before thanksgiving is the biggest day of the year for people using call cards? Not saying it's a lie but that sounds weird to me.

I'd have guessed New Years Eve/Day, Christmas Eve or something like that.. or perhaps even the first day of the work year or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a really interesting story even if it is embellished or flat out false, good read.

</comment><comment><USER12> possibly an inside job? or by a competitor or contract channel (quest, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't read any more. My bs detector is whistling way too loudly...</comment>


Show HN: Passwørd Safe – open source cross-platform password manager - java-man https://github.com/andy-goryachev/PasswordSafe <comment> java-man The program uses scrypt password-based key derivation function, 256-bit AES cipher in EAX mode. Random numbers, essential for generating salt and nonce, are provided by a SHA-512 digest-based generator which uses standard JVM SecureRandom implementation as well as entropy sourced from the user keyboard and mouse events. The tool uses Bouncy Castle cryptographic library.</comment>


Video Games: Time not Included - <AUTHOR> http://whatisnoise.com/2010/06/video-games-time-not-included.html

<comment><USER2> MeteorBlitz has this right. The game auto-saves when you let go. You can pull your iPhone out of your pocket and play, then put it away in a second.

Something like Machinarium would be great, where you have many, many short puzzles. For an adult, what you can fit in "in a spare moment" becomes very attractive.

</comment><comment><USER3> My consoles are gathering dust, as well. An older Windows computer still has an unfinished session of Dungeon Siege, somewhere around the house.

The wife and I instead opt for those shorter, hidden object with mini memory games that take 2 to 4 hours to complete. We play these together, taking turns who is mousing.

The service we currently subscribe to gives us a game each month for $7.00 - Much less than the popcorn and sodas, let alone the admission of a movie these days. And the service makes out, too: We end up buying one or two extra each month when we find we have the odd evening off. The service gets the steady revenue and a minor cash till ring here and there.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can totally relate to not wanting to feel required to put 100+ hours into an RPG or MMORPG/grinder game. Short simple games that can be played in quick intermittent bursts of free time was one of the design goals with my Rogue- like zombie survival game <http://DeadByZombie.com>.

Due to the nature of the game engine, nothing happens unless you issue a command or make a move. It only reacts to your input. Therefore, you can keep a long-running game session open, not even needing to save, and just tab over to it and play, here and there, when you have a moment.

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to work as a game reviewer, now I rarely find time to actually touch a fully fledged game. I currently get vastly more gameplay out of my 4 year old DS lite (I basically have nothing to do on my lunch break other than listen to radio, no access to computers and barely anyone to talk to) than I do out of anything else. So much so that I'm currently considering picking up a PSP to expand my game selection.

I've spent 2 months trying to play through Dragonage, but can't find enough time to actually sit down and enjoy it, and any actual free time I do have I have priorities elsewhere, like trying to keep my writing skills exercised so I don't become an illiterate troll.

</comment><comment><USER6> Books, time not included...

I very rarely play games, but if I do, I like to play for three days straight (with sensible drinking, eating and sleeping). There are just not that many games that are good enough, or so it seems. But I admit that I have stopped following the announcements, too.

There definitely was a time when few good games emerged, but it might have changed for the better now. You know, when selling points were "50 different weapons, super-blaster-bazooka. Very realistic blood effects".

Last game I enjoyed was Risen, Fallout 3 is in the backlog.

How can you play a game like Half Life & successors and not be hooked?

</comment><comment><USER7> Whenever a new Grand Theft Auto comes out, I buy it and plan to use nearly all my free time playing through it. It's better just to get in it, get expert, and get it over with. Then I can return to a more normal life. It's the same obsessiveness that makes me a pretty good coder, I suppose.

Usually, the only other games I play are ones recommended by a friend in the gaming industry. He introduced me to Braid. Sometimes, I'll play a game which gets a lot of coverage in nerdy, non-gaming channels, like Portal.

(by the way, I'm currently fighting the urge to run out and buy Red Dead Redemption)

</comment><comment><USER8> I often hear about adults buying games but not really playing them. As long as this is happening, there isn't any economic incentive to aim for quality over quantity in gameplay. Game reviewers play a big part in this since adults tend to buy games based on reviews, but reviewers consider length to be a good thing. Only when games that are shorter sell better will publishers' perspectives change.

<comment><USER9> A good game should be enjoyable regardless of how long you play it.

I mean, how long was Pac Man? A few minutes, perhaps, but people would play it for hours.

How long was Sonic The Hedgehog or Super Mario Bros? Maybe half an hour once you got good at it, but you'd have to play it a fair few times before you got good enough to beat it -- even once you had though, it was fun to play through again.

Modern games are mostly just one long hard slog that you play through once and forget about. Nothing wrong with some games being like that, but it'd be nice to have the other type of game back as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to see a polished "arcade" game that ran on my Mac. Something like _Cadillacs and the Dinosaurs_ [1]. Sometimes it's fun to sit down with a couple of friends and mash the gamepad for a few hours, then forget about it. Modern games come with too much baggage to be fun.

That, or strategy/sim games that are designed to be challenging. Rollercoaster Tycoon and Capitalism come to mind.

I'm getting old.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillacs_and_Dinosaurs_(arcade...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillacs_and_Dinosaurs_\(arcade_game\))

<comment><USER7> > That, or strategy/sim games that are designed to be challenging. > > Rollercoaster Tycoon and Capitalism come to mind.

How about OpenTTD?

<http://www.openttd.org/en/>

It definitely doesn't fit your first criteria, as it is phenomenally complex and took me weeks to get the hang of using signal lights to route trains without collision. I found it pretty engrossing, though, and easy enough to play in spurts when time allowed.

<comment><USER10> Also see: Simutrans, Capitalism, Caesar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is exactly why I stopped playing video games too. I would love to see more episodic presentation in games. Something where the plot and gameplay elements are neatly arranged into 30m-1h chunks with a little recap before each episode. I'd also like the option to skip these episodes. When I did play games I'd often hit an area that just wasn't fun to me anymore. Without resorting to looking up cheat codes there isn't much you can do but suffer past the boring parts. This seems like a relic of coin-op video games to me. I already gave you $60 -- why can't I just skip to the next major plot or gameplay point? Smaller chunks would possibly allow for more reasonable prices too. I'm just not interested in spending $60 on a game that I may stop playing after 2 hours.

<comment><USER12> On the other hand, especially for hard parts (and not for lame stories), persistence can be rewarding.

<comment><USER6> So true. I played a lot of games through because of the story, but it was actually annoying and boring "work". Solving "real" game puzzles is unforgettable in contrast.

<comment><USER12> Tetris is a nice example. It has absolutely no story, but becoming good at it, is fun nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hope that in the future game designers start designing short games with a higher content/time ratio with the intent of targeting them at adults. Adults in general have more money than time, and are not going to feel cheated paying money for a short game. On the contrary, they'll be happy that they had the time to enjoy it, and that the experience during that time was the best it could be.

<comment><USER14> Try looking at more indie games: Cave Story, Spelunky, Hero Core, and N all present polished gameplay experiences for the convenient price of free. There's plenty more where those came from, and as you branch into the multi- person studios who have the _gall_ and _audacity_ to charge a nominal fee, you find mid-length games in more and more genres. (I'd point out Aquaria, World of Goo, and Knights of the Chalice.)

<comment><USER15> To add: Desktop Dungeon with Derek Yu's tile set. Short-form "roguelike" that is actually more of a puzzle game. Takes less than 10 minutes to play a complete game.

I am on mobile right now, but search TIGsource for full links.

And to add to the discussion: games that I play the most are either online, procedural, or score-based. But games that I have _enjoyed_ the most have all been highly focused, incredibly polished single player experiences. 10 years ago, these were long (30+ hour) games. But the cost of producing content has risen so much lately that you can only obtain this level of polish if you keep it short.

<comment><USER16> Speaking of mobile, I'd love to have that on my phone</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a simple web hosting solution - <AUTHOR> Can anyone recommend a simple hosting solution for a small web service written in Python?  Just an instance where I can run gunicorn and point a DNS endpoint at it would be great.  I've been using PythonAnywhere up until this point which was perfect, except they don't support socketio which I now need.  I'm trying to avoid services with complicated features and configuration like AWS, and I'm avoiding Heroku because I'd have to rewrite a bunch of the code to deal with the fact that they don't let you store persistent files.<p>Thanks for any suggestions! <comment><USER2> Have you tried digitalocean?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm considering them, but it's not obvious from their sales copy if the service they're providing is simple (upload files; start server from bash), or if they've got some complicated tooling that I'd need to use before anything actually works. They don't have a free trial account to just spin it up and see, so I wanted to be sure.

Would you recommend them?

<comment><USER2> > upload files; start server from bash

That's pretty much it. They give you a server you can do whatever you want with.

The 'droplets' are billed by the hour so you could try it for a few pennies. I don't think you even need to spend any of your own money. I've seen referrals that give you credit for signing up.

> Would you recommend them?

I would. The only thing you should watch out for is not going over your bandwidth limit, which only applies to outbound traffic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have a droplet running my app now. Thanks again for the recommendation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you build, nurture, and grow a Platform-as-a-Service business? - <AUTHOR> There are many excellent platform-as-a-service (PAAS) business that have grown from a simple idea done well.
Are there any personal experiences from individuals who have led, participated in, observed, competed against such a company (companies like Stripe or Twilio or ...)?
Are there any good resources to learn from?
What are key concepts to focus upon?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Found this:

[https://500.co/marketplace-startup-mistakes/](https://500.co/marketplace- startup-mistakes/)</comment>


Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg - tech-historian https://www.axios.com/civil-rights-leaders-blast-facebook-after-meeting-with-zuckerberg-63daa9dd-0209-4420-85d3-805385825718.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure I'm in the minority on this website, but I think anything the President posts on social media should be kept in place. Yes, I think he posts bad things sometimes, promotes violence, posts racist comments. But...he's the President. He's _not_ like all the other users of Facebook/Twitter, and different rules should apply to him.

Essentially the people who want his posts removed are forcing their own opinion of right and wrong on the President of the United States. His opinion, right or wrong, is of national importance. What he says is a matter of historical value, showing the culture of America and its leadership at the time. It provides a check on power, letting the citizens know what their President thinks on certain issues and allows them to form their own opinions on whether the President is a leader they can get behind or try and vote out.

<comment><USER2> So if a President yells "fire" in a crowded movie theater, we should all sit and sing kumbaya just because he's the President?

No. The President isn't above the law, and he shouldn't be above the rules of social networking sites as well.

There are plenty of ways to archive and memorialize offensive/racist/vile posts from a President. The news media will do a fine job of that.

No exceptions, no mercy: if a President oversteps, they should be forcibly muzzled just like the rest of us.

<comment><USER3> Censoring the president hurts the Ammerican people more than censoring a normal individual. Closing our eyes and ears to the presidents actions and statement doesn't make them go away, or meaningfully disincentivize him.

If the president were to announce a racist policy or glorifies a violent military action, we should know.

<comment><USER2> > Censoring the president hurts the Ammerican people more than censoring a > normal individual.

I don't buy that a single bit. Any sort of "censorship" on social media of a sitting US President (heck, even a former President) is going to be a _major international news event_.

<comment><USER3> I agree that banning trump would be a major news event. How does that relate to my statement that you quoted?

The president can announce war, policies, and executive orders. Normal individuals can not. Preventing individuals from seeing these announcements is obviously more impactful than whatever the typical citizen is saying.

Even if the speech is violent, hateful, or racist, it valuable to see it. Perhaps even moreso because of the content,

<comment><USER2> Except there's _a ton of other channels_ those announcements also go through, and legitimate announcements are not what people are worried about. Legitimate speech _will_ be seen one way or another.

But violent/hateful/racist speech has no place in social networks, and should be struck down immediately.

<comment><USER3> If the president wants to express violent/hateful/racist speech, it is even more important the public see it, so that they can judge it and vote accordingly.

I would rather know if the president is a bigot, and their latest misguided thoughts, than not know. I want others to be able to see and judge the behavior as well. Therefore I think the public interest is to provide a free and unmoderated platform.

The solution to a president you dont like is voting them out of office, not gagging them so they appear less offensive. If you dont personally want to see the content > unfollow

<comment><USER2> So Twitter is now the only way to know that Trump is a bigot, racist and proto-dictator?

<comment><USER4> This is not what the comment you are responding to is saying, please address those points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Devil's advocate thought experiment: suppose I was a CEO of a large social media company and my personal view is pro-life. Should I remove pro-choice posts (or censor them with violence labels), or should I allow discussion on the topic even though I personally disagree with it?

I don't think people can have their cake and eat it too. Either the CEOs of these companies start imposing their personal views on their users or they try to make the platform as neutral as possible. In-between solutions are going to make everyone angry.

<comment><USER6> The point isn't to push a personal cause or belief. The goal should be to keep a safe space where people aren't allowed to threaten others and incite violence.

<comment><USER7> The pro-life viewpoint considers pro-choice views to be advocating violence in the most direct way possible ("murdering babies"). That's the fundamental problem: there is a huge subjective grey area.

<comment><USER6> ok... you can chose to not take a stance on grey areas and act on clear cut cases.

<comment><USER7> I am pretty sure that's the _intended_ Facebook stance, and the disagreement comes over what's a "grey area" and what's clear cut -- which is what makes it a grey area to begin with.

<comment><USER6> I don't see how the tweets twitter added an annotation to could be seen as grey area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Regrettable defense of FB:

In the book, Guardians of the Internet, two cases are mentioned:

Case 1:

Mexican gang violence was caught dramatically on video and went viral. This sparked a conversation and brought attention on a major issue since The government had been suppressing this information to project an image of security.

This video pierced that veil- until it was seen by (I believe) British citizens who woke up in the morning.

They called their friends at Facebook who realized it broke their rules and removed it.

Case 2:

Contrast this with how Facebook handled the boston Bombings.

Facebook mods removed gore images because that broke their rules.

And then a message came on high telling people "no, This is newsworthy and it goes through. The rules are in abeyance."

If country like Mexico Can't have that benefit, then Facebook is effectively using power in one place to decide what goes through and in other places is choosing not to exercise it.

Facebook is then trapped by its choice.

What should FB do in a country like Brazil? Hungary? Russia? India?

Heck, could any theoretically company find the right policy people and be able to pay them to tell their teams what the right call is?

Facebook's solution currently is this "we are not the arbiter of truth" comment, and working with governments to create govt agencies to set up rules which FB can then follow.

So What's the right call in this situation?

</comment><comment><USER9> Zuckerberg realizes that large corporations should not be arbiters of truth, because it cannot be fair, and it cannot work long-term, in my opinion.

Even if one decides certain types of incorrect content should be removed, he realizes there's no chance for this to be applied evenly to all individuals and organizations, especially when the only example given by these activists is a single person.

</comment><comment><USER10> You know what's hillaroius about all of this; the tweet was literally correct. Whether you interpretted as a threat or a warning or whatever, looters have been shot and killed by store owners protecting their shops.

</comment><comment><USER11> Strange times when _Twitter_ can claim to be the morally better social network.

<comment><USER12> I don't want a moral social network I want one that I can share by beliefs and views no matter what they maybe.

<comment><USER11> No social network (including offline ones) would be able to operate if they let everyone say whatever they wanted. There is an intense amount of moderation required, even here on HN, to remove low quality posts, abuse, threats, spam, porn, illegal content and lots more. So no, you don't really want one where anyone can share their beliefs no matter what. You just have your own opinion of what should/shouldn't be allowed, same as everyone else.

<comment><USER12> I, and I believe most other people that share a similar view to mine, are not arguing for true zero moderation. I feel like you're trying act like me admitting that any moderation would make me a hypocrite.

I'm ok with them filtering "illegal content" or rather I don't think that's a choice that they have and is something to address within the legal system rather then at a social network level.

Abuse of the system? Like they are sending too much traffic/spamming/malware/etc is fine to limit. Threats, allow users to block each-other; I'm fine with restricting people who attempt to circumvent other peoples blocks.

Porn meh; I don't think it's a real issue I think it's great to allow users to filter pornographic content if they don't want to see it.

My issue is when they start getting into filtering out "incorrect" statements, "dangerous" ideas, even "hate speech" (an every expanding category), etc. It's very distressing that Jack Dorsey thinks twitter has a moral responsibility to remove certain viewpoints from discussions and believes that these discussion will shape the future of our society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Free speech is overrated. Speech can be dangerous and therefore we need to regulate it on every level. Not just Facebook either; we need to ban speech and public commentary whenever it's problematic. Books need to be screened too. Hopefully we'll be able to monitor and correct people's thoughts as well when the technology becomes available. When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong.

<comment><USER14> Uh no. The problem today isn't free speech, it's that the limits on how you transmit and disseminate it, favors the tiny, loud, misleading, ignorant few who can generate the most 'engagement'. Like you for instance. You're hear calling free speech dangerous, and that is such an absurd and ridiculous point of view I feel the need to respond.

Free speech has worked great for 100s of years. You don't give up wheels because people have started driving cars into buildings.

I sincerely hope that was all sarcasm.

<comment><USER15> It was all sarcasm.

<comment><USER13> The last line is a direct quote from The Giver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Let's not first talk about what Facebook ought to do, but what Facebook can do.

There is no such thing as absolute freedom. This includes speech, which is already regulated in our society.

And as a society, we have spent ample effort to distinguish harmful speech - promotions of hate, abuse of minors etc...

This framework is clearly outlined in our laws and everything fb has done so far has been lawful.

One of the major proponents of this "let's allow as much free speech as possible" framework is to establish an competitive marketplace of ideas, so that instead of legislating away bad ideas, as a society, we choose not to adopt them through reason.

This is why I think FB should be allowed to do what it's doing.

As to if the recommendation and ranking algos are doing their job to help ideas be battled out in an transparent and efficient way, or simply creating an ideological echo chamber, that is another issue altogether.

We, as consumers, need to be vigilant, and choose a platform that we think is good for each one of us and our society.

In this case, have a discussion as a nation and choose between the Twitter and Facebook model.

I truly believe this is the American way.

</comment><comment><USER17> What is the reasoning behind taking down or flagging the comments (looking for responses, not rhetorical)?

If it is to reduce distribution because it could incite violence, it seems to me that 1) the vast majority of distribution/awareness is happening via traditional news outlets and 2) distribution and awareness is actually what you want to happen, since it is important that people be aware of the President's extreme rhetoric. If the reason is that the statement is immoral and platforms have a duty to take a stand / pick a side, then I would say that sounds reasonable to me but leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable. It feels like we are applying a Total War mentality to our political discourse, and that doesn't seem like something that could possibly end well.

Disclaimer: Former FB employee.

<comment><USER18> > " _It feels like we are applying a Total War mentality to our political > discourse_ "

That's a pretty good way of describing it save that I would add that one side is failing to realize that they might lose and get hoist by their own petard of suppressing speech someday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm pretty sure that Facebook won't do anything until they finish integrating the Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp backends so that any future antitrust action won't be able to split up the company. They just need to postpone.

<comment><USER20> Do unified backends mean that the government can't enforce antitrust action? That would be quite the loophole.

<comment><USER21> No lmao, the US has enforced monopoly breakups of companies with much larger physical barriers, and honestly much more real-world dependency/impact

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Mark Zuckerberg knows that Trump will probably be re-elected in spite of everything; it would be quite unwise for the CEO of any large public corporation to make an enemy of the most vindictive American president in recent history. His shareholders won't appreciate the results of that.

</comment><comment><USER23> >Facebook, for its part, said it was "grateful that leaders in the civil rights community took the time to share candid, honest feedback" and said "it is an important moment to listen, and we look forward to continuing these conversations."

PR blabber. They need to start printing these responses as "Facebook's Public Relations department responded to Axios with a general response." or something.</comment>


Hope I'm doing this right - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/d0b32422b05

<comment><AUTHOR> HN won't accept the title on the page, but the author described the post using "hope I'm doing this right" when linking to it.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's pretty hard to tell "right" static from "wrong" static.</comment>


Iphone 4 that says that it's on the verizon network even though it's not - <AUTHOR>

My friend bought an iphone4 from the AT&T store last night and for some reason on the top left it says Verizon even though he's on the AT&T network. Weird stuff.<p>http://www.twitpic.com/34kk0s <comment><USER2> Updating the carrier name or logo is easy to do on any Jailbreaked phone.

 _Occams Razor_ : I think your friend is messing with you.</comment>


How much is your app worth? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewhoyer.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-much-is-your-app-worth.html

<comment><USER2> I did a similar thing for my iOS app[1]. It was free for months, and I started charging for it last October. I raised the price by a dollar every week, and sometimes kept the price for a bit longer than a week if I thought it might have been influenced by other factors (like new updates).

I was surprised to see that my app's sales averaged to be about the same at every price point (some price points had more, some had less, but there was no consistent trend downward as the price rose). Thus, my revenue maximized at the highest price point I tried ($9.99) and I kept it there.

I presume that my experiment was so flawed that the results aren't conclusive (rankings, ratings, etc. all changed throughout the experiment), but I was happy enough with the results that I went ahead and priced my app at $9.99 and have kept it there ever since.

[1] Iron Money, a personal finance organizer. I include this here because I have a feeling this might vary from category to category.

<comment><AUTHOR> The more I read stories like this, the more I realise how random I have been with my pricing. Time to test some prices :)

<comment><USER3> Exactly. As devs testing should be an ingrained habit, but it's not just the code and the user experience that need testing :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The hardest part is convincing someone to spend any money. If you've done that, the difference between charging $1 and $5 isn't going to be much.

</comment><comment><USER5> >iCarc is geared towards a fairly niche market, so I decided that having more buyers was better than having a few at a high price.

I don't really follow this logic. My experience has been the lower you price your app the worse the reviews. If you can charge a higher price and earn the same revenue, do it. You'll build a higher perception of quality through better ratings and in the long run I think this will earn you more customers.

<comment><USER6> You have a great point here. My hope was that by getting more users, word of mouth would play a bigger part because of the more limited market.

As a follow up test, I'm going to bump the price a bit and see what kind of effect it has. It's possible that my interpretation of the price test results wasn't quite right, and I should have been thinking up instead of down.</comment></comment>


How Journalists Can Protect Themselves From the U.S. Government - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/05/15/strongbox_and_other_tools_for_journalists_to_protect_themselves_from_the.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is good to see a segment of the population (one with a large voice) being pushed to understand and pay attention to computer security. Perhaps this will help more things become more secure by default, or enable things like two-factor auth.</comment>


Why I Lie About Watching Game of Thrones - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/confessions-of-a-conversational-impostor-1501853924 <comment><USER2> Sounds interesting, but it's paywalled.

<comment><USER3> It's not interesting. He lies throughout his life to feel included in conversation; he gets caught out when people talk about a fake character they invented and he joins in.</comment></comment>


Rover, A "Dogbnb" Site, Raises $3.5M And Nabs Commercial Promotion From Petco - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/30/rover-a-dogbnb-site-raises-3-5m-and-nabs-commercial-promotion-from-petco/

<comment><USER2> Dogbnb in more ways than one: You can choose to pay a sitter to put up your dog for x nights, or you can pay someone to LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE and take care of your dog. It makes sense, of course, but sounds a bit odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed - I've talked a sitter on Rover who was planning on listing their profile in NYC as a traveling sitter as a way to get a free stay in the city, while also watching someone's home & dog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I honestly never thought "It's like [x], for dogs" would be a real thing. That this is even getting off the ground amazes me.</comment>


Free web kits for fast web design and development – Uix Kit 3.5 Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/xizon/uix-kit/commit/25b68c2175c3b2d564145a2504e980b21b4b2c46 <comment><USER2> From the Github changelog, I clicked on the homepage link. Then my laptop's fan became noisy as many particles moved on the screen to form the logo of Uix Kit. As I moved the mouse cursor toward the menu which points to the documentation, the particles moved, and the 3D effect made me feel uneasy.

I cannot understand the motive for these heavy effects. I interpret it as "we prefer shiny effects to usability". And it's a UI framework! I hope I'll never have to work with this and watch these particles several times a day.

I'm sorry for the harsh words, and my point of view may be in the minority. But maybe a part of the public turns away just because of the design of the homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi. Thanks for your feedback, it's not a framework, just a toolbox that uses a common script library. The home page is just an interactive demo. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Uix Kit is not a framework, just a toolbox based on some common libraries. :) Hope you like it!

</comment><comment><USER3> Jesus, there is just so much going on. The drop-down menu is _huge_ and too tall for my browser window. I clicked through some of the components, you should learn some basics about accessibility.

(Also, this is your third time promoting this "kit". Maybe read up on the Show HN guidelines[1].)

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><USER4> If you're going to recommend those guidelines, which is nice, can you please also follow them?

A response that begins with "Jesus" and ends with "you should learn some basics" is not acceptable in any HN thread, let alone a Show HN. When responding to someone's work, it's especially important to be kind. If your knowledge is greater than others', teach. Don't punish them with it.

Also, as the FAQ explains, a small number of reposts is ok if a story hasn't had significant attention yet. Thrice isn't excessive.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I try to release it only during major upgrades. Maybe next time, it will take a long time. I will continue to improve. I will use this community for the first time. Thank you for your guidance. :) Thanks for everyone.</comment></comment></comment>


We Are What We Choose (Jeff Bezos commencement speech) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/we-are-what-we-choose-2010-6

<comment><USER2> The point he makes about kindness being a choice and cleverness being a gift is quite profound. I think as smart people, we often fail to realize the emotional & ethical effects of our actions and choices.</comment>


Ask HN: Moving to London soon, how to find flat/apartment? - <AUTHOR> I'm a software engineer, I've got an offer in London so soon I'll be moving there, do you have any suggestion on how to find a flat/apartment for rent? <comment><USER2> If you're looking to share, try spareroom.co.uk - create a profile for someone searching, reach out to people in your budget bracket and say hello. May help to do a month in AirBnB before so you can figure out what area you want to be in / meet the person/people you may end up living with.

If you're living by yourself, try rightmove.co.uk - you'll end up talking to a bunch of agents. Obviously you have rent / bills / council tax on top of what's on the site. Again, may be worth a month in AirBnB to try and figure out the area you like.

FWIW, I like East London - Shoreditch, Old St., etc. It's a pretty good blend of people and things, and a good location for doing stuff (or at least starting your journey). I'm in London - contact details are in my profile - feel free to reach out if I can help more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reply, the idea with AirBnb is pretty cool. I see you do stuff on the web, I've got an offer from Bloomberg (Software Engineer), did mostly web development too, thank you for the contact details, I'll reach out when I'll be in London :)

<comment><USER2> Congrats on the offer. Feel free - always happy to grab a coffee or a drink. London is a great city! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.foxtons.co.uk/](https://www.foxtons.co.uk/) is the biggest chain and also has short lets. It's easy to find full furnished apartments. [https://www.spareroom.co.uk/](https://www.spareroom.co.uk/) or [http://www.moveflat.com/](http://www.moveflat.com/) for flatshares. Plus the usual big portals rightmove and zoopla. [https://www.gumtree.com/](https://www.gumtree.com/) is the local equivalent of classifieds (Craigslist). In Greater London area all prices are listed per week (x4.3 to convert to month) but payment is per month.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe also look outside of London, and work out how much commuting in is. Depending on what you are after, you might get a better deal.</comment>


Nuclear Bombs Mistakenly Flown Over US - <AUTHOR> http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/B/BOMBER_WARHEADS?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

<comment><AUTHOR> Follow up from reddit comments:

[http://tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/05/staging_nuke...](http://tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/05/staging_nuke_for_iran)</comment>