Atom 1.12 released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.atom.io/2016/11/09/atom-1-12.html <comment><USER2> As is usual with these releases, i'm always more interested in the new Beta's.

1.13 is going to have some pretty big changes. They are removing shadow-dom which is kind of a big deal and i'm really curious for the in-depth post about what didn't work with it later (until then, [0] is the PR that talks a bit about why).

And 1.13 will also include a change [1] that will allow it to better handle large files, which I know is a huge plus for a lot of people (it hasn't been a problem on my machine for a while now, but clearly people are still having issues with it).

It looks like it's going to be a good update.

[0] [https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/12903](https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/12903)

[1] [https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/12898](https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/12898)

<comment><USER3> As much hate as Atom gets in these threads, I'm impressed by the team's (and contributor's) continuous work into making Atom as good as possible.

Though it might just be a small, loud minority: Most devs I meet in real life use Atom with no problem or just have no opinion on it.

<comment><USER2> I've stopped caring what "HN" says about things.

I'm mainly a javascript/php developer that uses Windows and Atom... I'm used to being told I'm wrong. But at the end of the day, these are the languages, platforms, and operating systems I get the most done with, and I just don't seem to hit the issues everyone keeps saying I will.

<comment><USER4> I also use Atom, and just can't seem to garner an affinity for VS Code. I came from a .NET background, so I've struggled with Visual Studio and Nuget for years, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm also probably just used to using Atom for my Node development. But aside from finding out very quickly on here that I'm wrong for using it, I don't find anything difficult. I've built many successful projects with it.

Also, Nintendo kicks Sega's ass.

<comment><USER2> I love VSCode from a technical standpoint. They have clearly picked a better architecture when it comes to performance, and they have done a pretty damn good job at showing that a web-based application doesn't need to be a "slow resource hog", but on the other hand I MUCH more prefer Atom's policy of "plugins are everything" over VSCode's "Core should do everything, and plugins are second class".

But at the end of the day, it's a choice, and i'm glad we have competition to keep everyone on their toes!

<comment><USER4> I totally agree, I wish there was 50 viable choices. Competition is good, look at our ISP situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I liked Atom. But the more I use it the less I like it. Paying 300MB of RAM to edit a 5KB file seems idiotic. And the fact it can't open a file larger then 100K-256k means I can use it to manually inspect logs.

It was a nice distraction, but back to VIM.

<comment><USER6> I switched to neovim, because it supports 24-bit color themes. Stock vim is just too limited for me with 256 colors max. With neovim I can have themes that are easier on the eyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I switched to VS Code last week after using Atom almost since it was released (probably 0.70.0 or so) and I immediately decided I wasn't going to switch back. It's just so much smoother, and the debugger (+ requisite extension for PHP) is really nice. Based on some of the comments here I might try Atom again at 1.13 (I tried VS Code back when it was new as well), but for now I reckon VS Code is miles ahead.

<comment><USER8> You made me curious, how did you configured VS Code with PHP. I have bad experience especially with that language in VSC. In Atom and Sublime there are many various extensions which helps you get better _IDE experience_ (autocomplete. formatters, linters).

Personally, I found Crane for VSC [1] as a very limited tool for autocompletion. It works really bad with frameworks like Laravel or Symfony where developers use various design patterns which implements a lot of abstraction difficult to index (facades, factory, repositories, service providers, @inheritdoc). Using Sublime you may probably use SublimeCodeIntel [2] with PHPIntel [3], as their best feature is I would mention that they work very fast for large codebase and also gives great suggestions for code i.e. suggests paramters or next objects in namespaces (when you are typing backslashes (\\) code intel will start guessing what objects are under specified path and it works flawlessly just like in vim or bash when you are pressing tab after `cd`). Atom is not bad either, the atom-autocomplete-php [4] package is really great to improve autocompletion for PHP Code. When I have been using it recently I was really enjoying how many decent features PHPStorm has been implemented in open-source Atom, e.g. if you add a class from not imported namespace it will be automatically added. Such a simple operation, but it is interesting how many editors does not support that.

Hopefully, php devs have some awesome tools to annoy them a whole 9-to-5 which are: `phpcs` (obviously), `php -l` (popular), phpmd (rarely used) and phpcpd (well, most php devs haven't heard about that tool). Since, aforementioned linters are binaries their implementation in editors like VSC, Sublime or Atom is not a problem. There are few differences between editor and their linters - they are mostly the same but each editor have another way to display problems in your code. It is rather matter of taste I would say. Well, I really miss "unused use-namespaces" in phpmd.

Personally, I dislike XDebug. VSC gives a nice user experience when debugging code with it. But all three editors supports XDebug somehow. Maybe Sublime puts a whole stacktrace, breakpoints, local variable into editor viewport as "plain text" but you may got used to like in Atom, where there are additional panes to see Xdebug output. Personally, I would go with Backfire if we speak about profiling, which is very painful in XDebug.

[1]: [https://github.com/HvyIndustries/crane](https://github.com/HvyIndustries/crane)

[2]: [https://packagecontrol.io/packages/SublimeCodeIntel](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/SublimeCodeIntel)

[3]: [https://packagecontrol.io/packages/PHPIntel](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/PHPIntel)

[4]: [https://atom.io/packages/atom-autocomplete- php](https://atom.io/packages/atom-autocomplete-php)

<comment><USER9> Give this a try: [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=felixfbe...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=felixfbecker.php- pack)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are they improving the performance issues?

I love Atom but I've had to switch to Sublime 3 because I can't handle waiting a couple of seconds every time I switch between files (or the several second start up time).

It's small but it completely kills my workflow.

I spent the whole weekend setting it up to look similar to my Atom setup, including implementing the same syntax highlighting. It's not perfect[1] and feels like it could fall apart at any moment (eg I had to do an awkward hack to center text in tabs), but it's worth it for lightning-fast switching between files.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/t1ULTfy.png](http://i.imgur.com/t1ULTfy.png)

</comment><comment><USER11> Any more details what does Chromium 52 and Electron 1.3.x bring to table?

</comment><comment><USER12> Is anybody using Atom on Linux? The last time I tried, there was an issue where each time the cursor was moved horizontally, its displayed position and actual position would diverge a bit so that after a minute or two of editing a file you couldn't tell where you were typing. I believe it was a known (upstream?) issue at the time but that was obviously a deal breaker.

<comment><USER13> I can echo bbrks comment. I've used it on Ubuntu for a year and OS X for 2. I haven't had any problems with it other than slightly different key bindings between the two which can cause some confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope this isn't just placebo, but I can see a noticeable increase in performance compared to 1.11. Less typing/autocomplete lag in general.

PS: how about some hashes or GPG signatures on the download page, Github people?

</comment><comment><USER15> Any FreeBSD port yet?

<comment><USER16> Building from source seems to be trivial: [https://github.com/atom/atom/blob/master/docs/build- instruct...](https://github.com/atom/atom/blob/master/docs/build- instructions/freebsd.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I moved to Atom from jEdit (on Linux). I build it from source and it runs well. And SFTP plugin is working well. I've been coding 20+ years and find Atom easy to use and customise.

I'm teaching code too, Atom is pretty easy for beginners as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> Until Atom or VS handles autoclose tags the way Sublime does out of the box, I'll have a hard time moving over. Sublime beauty packages also work great with a simple command to keep all my code nice and tidy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Impressive to see so many contributions from the unpaid rabble. vjeux's PRs are mentioned twice in that blog post.

Even if GitHub gets bored, hopefully Atom has the momentum to keep going.

</comment><comment><USER20> Adding a project folder with approx. 50 000 files took 2-3 seconds, but the search-in-project functionality broke down, even UI response (when entering the search string). Takes several seconds per character to appear, as I try to input a search string.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ctrl-f macro support, no results. Sigh.

<comment><USER19> Until it's in core, are you using one of the macro plugins?

<comment><USER21> I'm not. What do you recommend?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The only "innovation" I am waiting for in every release is humane performance. Didn't happen so far :-(

</comment><comment><USER23> Great editor. One of the best.

</comment><comment><USER24> "International Keyboard Support"

And it only took them two and a half years!

<comment><USER25> If you have an issue with it, maybe you should have contributed sooner.

<comment><USER26> I'm incredibly sick of seeing this argument. Just because someone uses a piece of open source software does not mean that they A) Are obligated to contribute to it B) Are disallowed to want features or complain about the lack thereof for not doing A and C) Are even capable of contributing to it.

e- analogy was weak and unneeded.

<comment><USER27> Complaining about the lack of a feature in a FOSS project that you haven't contributed to is kind of a dick move, though, and it's extremely discouraging to developers. If they violate community standards or put users at risk (breaking semver, insecure elements, malware, etc.) then you have the right to complain, but otherwise you really ought to remain civil and positive.

Politely requesting features is fine, but complaining about a lack of features in software that you don't contribute to with effort or money is extremely rude and pretty much a slap to the face for the developers who work on the project.

<comment><USER28> Atom is developed by paid professionals at github, it isn't really a community led project like emacs.

Not that that matters, because nothing is immune from criticism, free or otherwise. It is a useful service to provide criticism, in fact, it can be useful to the developers and also useful to potential users - although it doesn't have to be.

<comment><USER29> There is a difference between providing useful, constructive criticism and rude complaining.

<comment><USER28> Pointing out that the technology platform chosen makes features simple elsewhere into multi-year odysseys seems fine to me. I think maybe atom users are too close to it, so have heard such things before and react very negatively to it. For me it was interesting to learn it took significant work to provide this support.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sono – window noise cancelling system - <AUTHOR> http://id2studio.at/content/noise/

<comment><USER2> "With its concentric broadband antenna rings, it harvests the energy of electromagnetic noise from Wi-Fi, and similar signals and this way also reduces the level of e-smog pollution in your environment."

This is nonsense.

<comment><USER3> We hope it's nonsense. This idea that constant exposure to EM is without consequence is unproven. If your immediate response is something about "non- ionizing" then you know nothing about the many animal experiments that demonstrate behavior and biological effects from magnetic fields and EM exposure.

<comment><USER2> My immediate response is that putting some tiny rings of metal on a window somewhere in a room will not somehow absorb and decrease the amount of EM in a room by any measurable amount, harmful or otherwise.

Additionally, the amount of energy that could be harvested this way is a few orders of magnitude less than what would be required to oscillate a window with enough force to cancel sound.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> design-of-homes This looks like a concept piece, not an actual product. An alternative is to simply have soundproof windows. For fresh air without opening the window, you can install a mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR) unit. These units extract stale air from a room and replace it with fresh (filtered) air. They run continuously 24 hrs. They are installed in homes with air-tight insulation (e.g. homes that meet the Passive Haus standard). You don't get a breeze though when the windows are all closed. To actually move the air around the room, (create a breeze similar to opening a window) you'd need to install a ceiling fan.

</comment><comment><USER4> From the Designers-making-shit-up-again department as Slashdot would've put it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately, this seems to be about hypothetical product design for a fictional technology, not about the technology itself.

<comment><USER6> While I agree this is probably fictional, the technology of canceling out sound waves (Well any wave) is pretty simple. Obviously filtering and replacing the sounds is more complex, but you could probably filter out external sounds in this way.

<comment><USER7> Not sure if it's fictional, I've worked in a few secure buildings i my life and we had an oscillator glued to the glass of every external window.

This was basically to prevent the use of any laser or parabolic microphones, however it also had a nice effect in which it really dampened the noise not only from the outside, but also interestingly enough the internal noise which bounces off the windows in your office.

If you would stand and talk near a large window with one of those things on it you will actually hear some muffling in the conversation you are having with the guy next to you.

The device it self was fairly small about the size of a match box, and I'm pretty sure it was nothing more than some piezoelectric oscillator that generates random noise in the window.

For it to be completely noise canceling well if you tie it to an external microphone you are pretty much getting noise canceling headphones on a Window.

The amount of power needed for such devices is also fairly small there are "vibration" stickers that you stick to glass and some other surfaces that run on a single cell battery, and to cancel the noise you'll need even less power.

From what it looks to me if you pretty much glue your active noise canceling headphones to a vibration speaker and stick it on a window you get this device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks promising because a lot of people are (over)exposed to noise these days. It is not clear from site but it appears this only works when window is closed. I've been thinking from time to time about similar device which would cancel noise while window is open.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I've also wonder about that. I know in my high school a few kids in my physics class did a project with a local bakery to try and cut our machine noise by inverting the sound waves and playing them back to cancel it out... I never found out if they got it to work properly. Cool idea though.

<comment><USER8> That is probably the basis of the idea. I know it is a long, long way from an idea to the product. I presume that knowledge of acoustics, electronics, digital signal processing, software dev and probably more is needed to transform this idea into a "killer" product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The effect has been known for some time, and the concept isn't exactly new. I'm sorry to say that the presentation looks very amateurish, which makes it rather unconvincing.</comment>


How to recover from an upstream git rebase - <AUTHOR> http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-rebase.html#%5Frecovering%5Ffrom%5Fupstream%5Frebase <comment><USER2> This advice seems outdated to me; I often rewrite my public history, and "git pull --rebase" handles it fine.</comment>


Living Efficiently - <AUTHOR> http://jonasgalvez.com.br/Writings/Living-Efficiently.html

<comment><USER3> Mercola is a hack.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Mercola>

<comment><AUTHOR> Uses all kinds of cheap marketing and scare tactics? Sure.

I just see his blog as a health news digest. He learns about recent discoveries about Health and Fitness, researches them in detail, comes up with a way to make money off them (and he's right to do so), and writes articles. Some articles are good, some are ignorable. In any case, valuable presence on my subscriptions list.

Got any suggestions for an alternative Health News source that is as prolific as Dr. Mercola?

<comment><USER4> The wikipedia article does a good job of summarizing why he is an unreliable source for health and nutritional advice. Having nutritional research filtered through him is not something I would find acceptable, and it's unnecessary. If you have access via, say, a university or workplace, I would recommend bookmarking and reading nutrition journals on a weekly basis. Even if not, the free abstracts/summaries will at least be less biased and often equally informative.

Also, many journals now offer free podcasts, some of which are very good. Nutrition is not my main area of interest per se, but for other medical topics these are invaluable and I suspect the same is true for nutrition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great post but arrgh, use this to read it: <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

<comment><USER6> He applied this CSS rule to all elements on the page: "letter-spacing:-0.1em !important;". This is why the page looks so cramped.

He also applied this to the body text: "font:140% 'Inconsolata', monospace;" I presume the site looks good in Inconsolata for those who have it installed.

This site is a good reminder to check your site on another computer. Also, make common font choices, or at least default to something specific that looks good.

<comment><USER7> It still looks like crap, even with Inconsolata.

EDIT: It's a good read, though, as noted above.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jeez, okay, I'm convinced. I'll make those changes as soon as I can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ironically, his productivity bookmarks have supplied me with so much reading material that it's unlikely I'll get anything done today.

</comment><comment><USER9> Many of my habits are trending towards what's in the article as well. Specifically:

1\. My todo list fits between chunks of my life, not the other way around - <USER2> keep a running diary of things I want and need to do. There isn't really a timeline because I just do them when I can. If it's written down, it'll get done. TBH my productivity has skyrocketed since adopting this. It's a bit like structured procrastination: <http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/>

2\. Keeping to a regular rhythm - I find that as I've grown older, a regular light/dark schedule helps me to be refreshed and more productive the next day.

3\. Keeping fit - I've cycled through many of the diet and exercise plans out there but my fitness plan has basically boiled down to "Work out every day. Eat 3 smallish meals and 2 snacks. Don't eat bad food except maybe once or twice on the weekends."

</comment><comment><USER10> I especially enjoyed the linked article Do It Now by Aaron Swartz: <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/doitnow>

</comment><comment><USER11> "I turned these and other activities into necessary and weekly scheduled tasks.." I hope you scheduled some time to be spontaneous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, well, I should probably elaborate that a bit more.

The thing about limiting the things you're supposed to give your attention to in a single day is that it begins leaving a lot of room for doing whatever you might feel like doing throughout the day. And by controlling the things you're most likely to spend time on, you create an opportunity for new activities to find their place in your schedule. Like spending time outdoors, learning a new language, all those things you always wanted to do but never "had the time".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article he links to in Men's Health [<http://bit.ly/auvNqa>] is an excerpt from "Born to run" by Christopher McDougall - <http://amzn.to/c9w7Co> \- Great book, makes for a great read.

</comment><comment><USER13> want to get things done?

use this: <http://userstyles.org/styles/28042>

</comment><comment><USER14> YASHP! Yet another self-help post.</comment>


Ask HN: Which job perqs mean the most to you? - <AUTHOR> (burner account)
I'm in the midst of negotiating an offer with a medium-sized startup and am trying to decide which, if any, perquisites to push for.
For example: one I'm considering is an education allowance to cover $n/yr in conferences, trainings, etc.
What perqs have you had / seen / dreamed-up, and why did they matter to you?
If you can, please provide $values where relevant. <comment><USER3> Please, somebody build an HQ with real offices for _everyone_ , where you can close the door. Have premium slack, email and conferencing systems so everyone can still chat when they need/want to. That would be awesome.

<comment><USER4> Ah, that's the dream. Being able to work in a silent room. No, noise cancelling headphones aren't really the same. I just want to invite Joe over to talk about X and not have Sandy from Biz Dev overhear and invite herself to the discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From reading some of the comments here, it's a bit sad that a 40 hour workweek is considered a job perk...

</comment><comment><USER6> Apart from permission to work remotely, nothing else really matters from what is advertised as perks. Well, maybe health insurance in the countries underdeveloped with this regard. Everything else either you can buy easily yourself (and not depend with lifestyle on this particular employer) or gets old after six months.

What really matters is how much you can learn (and you only learn by actually doing something that's above your skills) and how much you can develop your own ideas, but (a) nobody advertises this and (b) even if everybody did, it's a really difficult thing to verify before you actually take the job.

</comment><comment><USER7> (1) True remote. (2) BS remote(realistically have to live in commuting distance of the office) . (3) true 40 hr week (4) flexible schedule for appointments/kids/etc. (5) time off

</comment><comment><USER8> Training budget for confs/courses/books is a big one for me, it shows that a company is invested in you and helping you further your career.

Another one is relaxed working hours and having a culture of trust with regards to when you're actually in the office. It shouldn't be a big deal if I need to leave early one day, or if I decide to do reduced hours but work flat out during the time I'm in the office, as long as the work gets done - <USER2> cares when?

<comment><USER9> Very interesting point for me nearly every increase in salary I've gotten has had a decrease in training budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Personally, I'm much more concerned with the day-to-day work situation than perks, but remote work (near 100%, preferably) is something I look for.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with this, however it's not clear to me what concessions one can win in comp negotiations that'd affect day-to-day work. Any ideas there?

<comment><USER10> Sorry, you're right: TO me, either there's a fit or there isn't. I guess my point was that no perks will compensate for a bad fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> (1) True remote (2) True 40 hr week with flex hours -- Those two allow the best options for a work / life balance

</comment><comment><USER12> Cafeteria. Worked in a company where we had free lunch and breakfast. It was very sociable.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1) Time off 2) only a 40 hour work week 3) Window 4) work from home <\- the best 5) Office size 6) I like the $ for conferences, I recommend a specific annual anount that remaining rolls over or a specific conference. 7) special schedule - 9/80, or 4/10 8) Beer :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> Really, REALLY flexible time. I only go to the office to socialize. I like to code late at night where nobody can bother me. I've quit strict "where were you at 8:00AM you need to call in if you are going to be late" jobs within weeks.

</comment><comment><USER15> In addition to professional development stipends, you could look into allowances for transit and fitness, as well.

Additional vacation time is an easy ask, as well, since it doesn't require the company to spend more money to hire you.

</comment><comment><USER16> Vacation. When you have kids, you suddenly realize 1) They have much more holydays than both parents combines and 2) you will bump into unforeseen stuff like, one kid getting sick, or you getting sick...

</comment><comment><USER17> \- bonus based on your performance, starting at 2 month salaries;

\- home office allowed, with the proper accesses ( VPN ? ) available, at least 2 times a week;

\- certifications costs' reimbursement up to 3%(?) salary yearly;

</comment><comment><USER18> Remote work, beats any other perk almost any time for me

</comment><comment><USER19> 1) managers that only truly expect a 40 hour work week 2) freedom to explore new fields in the non 40

</comment><comment><USER20> Bonus.

</comment><comment><USER21> PTO.</comment>


Show HN: Spin Report — compare news headlines over time - <AUTHOR> https://spin.report <comment><AUTHOR> This weekend I prototyped something I've wanted to make for a long time. Spin Report takes a screenshot of six different news sites at the same time every four hours. (Click one to enlarge, and use your arrow keys to navigate up/down or left/right.)

Its goal is to apolitically demonstrate differences in political narratives over time and across different publications, simply by making it easy to view their headlines at once.

This is an early prototype, but it's already been incredibly interesting for me and the few friends I've shared it with, despite missing about twenty features (especially real mobile supprot) I want to add. Are you a real software engineer? Want to help me take it the next level: firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks for looking!</comment>


…and I'm fired | Don't mess with HF-Trading  - <AUTHOR> http://analyticsmadeskeezy.com/2012/08/29/and-im-fired-plot-only/ <comment><USER2> That sounds like Market Manipulation. What made you think that is OK?

You can't shout fire in a movie theater (a considerably less regulated environment), what made you think shouting fire in the stock exchange was OK?

<comment><USER3> it's creative writing.</comment></comment>


Disney to acquire Lucasfilm Ltd - <AUTHOR> http://www.4-traders.com/THE-WALT-DISNEY-COMPANY-4842/news/The-Walt-Disney-Company-Disney-to-Acquire-Lucasfilm-Ltd-15445015/

<comment><USER2> Hopefully they will make "Heir to the Empire" as episode 7.</comment>


Ask HN: Ubuntu PC or a MAC - <AUTHOR>

Should I buy an PC and throw Ubuntu on it, or just get a Mac? <comment><USER2> I have both and in practice I find that I use the ubuntu pc for almost everything except mac compatibility testing.

The main reason I guess is that most of my servers run linux and I don't need to mentally make the switch from one flavour of unix to another ten times per day. Stuff on my dev box lives in exactly the same places as it does on my production machines.

The mac is very slick though, but that's not a good enough reason to buy one if you have to choose between them.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are comfortable with Linux I would recommend Ubuntu. They're both fine choices, but you'll get more bang for your buck with Linux than with OS X.

(I do most of my development at home on a Mac. I don't like dicking around with my operating system though.)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want a "just works" experience, but still want to stick with free software, maybe check out <http://laclinux.com/gnu/GNU_Linux_Computers>

</comment><comment><USER5> I use my mac for everything. Our application is hosted off of ubuntu servers, and it's pretty seamless to switch between the two. My business partner runs ubuntu on his laptop - he has to boot windows to do photoshop, but that's pretty much it.

The Mac OS is prettier. I would suspect that it gives you a better experience on a laptop than Ubuntu does. For some reason, I like my macbook better than I liked my thinkpad before that. If you don't care about such things, you might be better off with Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER6> I also have both, and I rarely use the mac (a MBP) except for demos.

The mac is really pretty, but almost all the hard work is done in a hp laptop connected to a 25.5" monitor, external mouse and keyboard and running windows xp and a couple of virtualbox machines.

Use whatever tool make you more productive. Don't waste money in a mac just because fashion.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ok, I'll bite.

What do you do?

I have a Mac right now. Why? I do tons of web dev and I need to test multiple environments- mac, windows etc. I can do all that with one machine via virtual machines. Not so easy to do mac os testing with a PC.

I do most of my dev in a debian vm that is setup to exactly match our production machines.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think Macs are targeted towards art/design professions, and casual home users. I think they're great for those audiences, but unless you fall into one of those categories, I think Ubuntu is the right choice. It's very stable, lightning fast, has a ton of great software, and it's free (comes on cheaper, more versatile hardware, too).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am using it for Rails Dev and Web development, but I want dual monitors. I see that the Mac Mini does not offer this.

The problem that I am running into is that Rails behave differently on my Vista laptop than it does on my VPS and I and it's causing me quite a bit of grief.

I just want to be up and running as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> uh, what are you going to use it for? do you have experience using either operating system?</comment>


Ask HN: How best to sell used server hardware? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there. I've recently moved to Amazon EC2, and now I'm left with a few rack servers that I had at a co-location facility in NYC. I've tried Craigslist and eBay, but I've found very little interest, even though I'm starting a $2,200 (circa 2008), 8 core, 8GM RAM box at $400.<p>Does anyone have any suggestions on where or how to sell used server hardware? <comment><USER2> I think because of moves just like yours, server hardware isn't worth what you think it is. Go lower.

I'm down in the DC area rather than NYC, but I've sold old tech assets on CL with regularity -- there are lots of buyers out there. It's just that sometimes it's hard to swallow the prices that people are willing to pay.

With so many people moving to cloud-based services or virtual-server setups (or to colos that don't let you bring your own hardware), I think the retail market for rackmount servers has shrunk significantly from what it was a few years ago, when you'd routinely get small companies buying them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're absolutely right, but I guess I'm just a little bit surprised it is so bad. Oh well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Computers are basically free on a small scale. Most of the cost is electricity to run them and various other overhead and management. As a freelance programmer and linux sys admin, I have so many servers, desktops, older laptops, and etc that customers have given me free, that even though I only keep the working ones, right now only one person at a time can fit into my office.

I'm not sure what "the solution" is, or even if there is a problem. But I think that if you have old unused computer hardware, the more profitable thing you can do is simply use it in your business directly and thus avoid buying more new stuff later on.

</comment><comment><USER4> If 1 year old 8 core 8GB boxes are only going for $400, what can I do with a bunch of 3 year old 2 core 4GB boxes, where it's making more sense for me to replace them with newer boxes that use less power and space?

</comment><comment><USER5> State surplus in south carolina does not take servers any more. they are junked even if they have warranty on them. They cant sell them to other agencies much less the public

</comment><comment><USER6> I would also be interested. Shoot an email to rah5051 at gmail

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested. Toss an email to todd at bit.ly</comment>


FCC Republicans launch last-ditch effort to sink Net Neutrality plan - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/fcc-republicans-launch-last-ditch-effort-to-sink-net-neutrality-plan/

<comment><USER2> You mean the same plan that will give the government total control of the Internet as we know it?

Net Neutrality is just the marketing campaign to sell it to the masses.

<comment><USER2> Love the down voting. Get used to the oppression HN. If I see any complaints about privacy, etc, I will be the first to laugh in your face.</comment></comment>


Show HN: iCultus – A free menubar calendar for OS X - <AUTHOR> http://djyde.github.io/iCultus/ <comment><AUTHOR> Pull request is welcomed :)</comment>


Netflix Secret Categories Revealed by Chrome Extension - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simkl-for-netflix-hulu-cr/dbpjfmehfpcgmlpfnfilcnhbckmecmca <comment><USER2> There's a whole arsenal of Netflix enhancements in this extension. I like the Secret Categories, can find lots of new interesting movies. Plus a Netflix Randomizer for "special" occasions when no idea what to watch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10881255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10881255)

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't believe this isn't a native Netflix browse option. You just made Netflix even more valuable to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> every hidden netflix genre, right in your browser.

</comment><comment><USER6> nice!</comment>


Interactive Visualization of Global Terrorism Death - <AUTHOR> http://parano.github.io/Global-Terrorism-Visualization

<comment><USER2> Shows nothing except a grey rectangle on my browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you tell me what browser/system you are using? Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Firefox 3.5.19 on Mac OS 10.4.11

Yeah yeah, I know.</comment></comment></comment>


Rep. Alan Grayson: Verizon-Google: There's a Hard Rain Coming - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/verizon-google-theres-a-h_b_688195.html <comment><USER2> I wish I lived in Florida specifically so I could vote for this man. That has to be the most forceful, cogent response to the Google-Verizon proposal I've read so far. Better yet, it makes its points without resorting to stilted analogies or oversimplification.

Its people like Grayson and Al Franken that give me hope for the future of information technology regulation.</comment>


The Admiral of the Atom - <AUTHOR> http://www.city-journal.org/2015/bc0102rc.html

<comment><USER2> I watched the show a couple of weeks ago; it was great. Between college and law school I did my ROTC-scholarship payback time as a Navy nuclear officer. To get into "The Program," I had to interview with Admiral Rickover. I can't remember ever having been as furious as I was during our "conversation," which of course was one of his interview techniques. Rickover was sometimes known as the Kindly Old Gentleman; he was only two out of those four, but damn was he effective. I'm more proud of having been a Navy nuke than of anything else I've ever done professionally.

<comment><USER3> I was offered the NROTC scholarship but turned it down because the Captain who interviewed me had the idea that my interest in Physics would make me a good nuclear submarine reactor operator.

Had he suggested I operated aircraft carrier reactors, I might have accepted it. If I melted down the reactor at least there would be some possibility of survival by swimming through the burning jet fuel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I knew almost nothing about the man, but reading his Wikipedia page (and the article linked above) make me want to know more. Here are some items I found interesting:

In testimony to Congress on why naval nuclear propulsion had succeeded in achieving a record of zero reactor-accidents as opposed to the one recent accident at Three Mile Island:

"Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Program, so that they might find some benefit for their own work. I am always chagrined at the tendency of people to expect that I have a simple, easy gimmick that makes my program function. Any successful program functions as an integrated whole of many factors. Trying to select one aspect as the key one will not work. Each element depends on all the others."

From testimony to Congress:

"I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. I am not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war. Unfortunately limits — attempts to limit war have always failed. The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available." Further remarking: "Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it." (Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982))

On education:

"I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants - those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America's youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women."

</comment><comment><USER3> My father was a Civil Service Electrical Engineer at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. When he served in uniform, he was an antiaircraft missile fire control officer.

He had a great deal of admiration for Admiral Rickover. It's a complete surprise to me that Rickover is regarded as a jerk.

Liquid sodium-cooled reactors can be a lot more efficient than water-cooled reactors because you can get the liquid sodium a lot hotter. The efficiency of heat engines is determined largely by the difference between the hot part and the cold part.

So a Congressional committee invited the Admiral in to explain why the Navy didn't build submarines with sodium-cooled reactors. He responded by dropping a piece of sodium into a glass of water.

(Sodium burns on contact with water.)

Despite being a government employee himself, my father hated government employees with a furious passion.

<comment><USER2> > _Despite being a government employee himself, my father hated government > employees with a furious passion._

We had a saying about civilian "managers" (what we'd now refer to as PHBs), attributed to Rickover: _There but for the grace of God goes God._

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The video being reviewed is on Youtube. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BE6ybK4Io4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BE6ybK4Io4)) Unfortunately, it's tagged as "for mature audiences", which means you have to have a Google account. The DVD is rated TV-PG-L, so that's an error.

Rickover's history is well documented; there are at least three book-length biographies of the man. The one by Polmar and Allen is probably the most honest.

<comment><USER6> Next time you see something like that and don't want to log in just change /watch?v= to /v/ e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/v/2BE6ybK4Io4](https://www.youtube.com/v/2BE6ybK4Io4)</comment></comment>


The IT security culture, hackers vs. industry consortia - <AUTHOR> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20161206-it_security_culture_telecoms/ <comment><USER2> Coming from research land, both academic security and beyond, this seems like a misunderstanding of how the broader CS research community achieves "standing on the shoulders of giants".

1\. The impetus in the academic research community is to disseminate, not hide. Likewise, most research is not considered a one-off but a progression. I highly encourage looking at writings by CS research leaders like Simon Peyton Jones and David Patterson on their approach to having shaped large areas of computer science for the last 30+ years. Reasons include improving your own understanding, improving how you present it to others, and getting others engaged.

2\. There is a personal bean counting aspect that some researchers are stuck with that limits where they do the first conference publication. They care due to particulars of the promotion process, e.g., tenure, which is in turn subject to publishing rules for academic conference & journal papers around minimal publish units. None of that applies here.

HOWEVER, the author is clever here! As the point is to disseminate & improve, by taking an unusual position and writing about that, they've achieved the goal.

And final caveat: the non-academic security researchers are among the few that (a) has individuals making up and following personal ethics and ignoring internal review board (IRB) etc. regulations that scientists are required to follow and (b) are fearful/surprised of getting their results buried, most of the time (but not always) IMO as a result of that.

</comment><comment><USER3> "How could they?"

Sounds like a Responsible Disclosure kind of thing to me. However, they didn't just ask for the research, they requested additional work in the form of a presentation. That's labor for which there should be compensation. Further, a contract with this potential client that explicitly prevents the client from blocking other presentations and publications; perhaps even barring this client from speaking publicly about the research and what you've found any time before your public presentation. They need to cover the legal expenses for the researcher as well.

So you give them a price to get this advance presentation. Maybe you offer an olive branch (and maybe you label it "responsible disclosure") that they might also have access to the research itself before publication.

Or maybe you tell them to stick it and go public on your own schedule and throw this industry group under the bus. But that seems like destroying the canyon wall before any bridges could even be built (let alone burning bridges that may have already existed...)

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess I sort of understand the urge to refuse requests to privately present research findings to companies, but the moral math they're using doesn't really hold up for me. Sure, sharing knowledge and helping people learn is a great reason to give a talk. But if your talk pokes holes people didn't know about in some important technology, then _getting those holes closed_ is another reason, and those private presentations are going to make that happen faster.

I think it's totally reasonable to demand compensation for private presentations (else, why not just have the company attend the CCC talk?).

I think if you've got Stallman-esque purity, it's reasonable to refuse on principle: you don't want to do anything to help un-free software.

But I don't see any such coherent reasoning here.

<comment><USER5> Reading between the lines of the original (and I realize I'm being very generous) was perhaps a fear that once they knew the content they would take some action to prevent it from being discussed at CCC. You can't get a judicial figure to agree to an injunction based on "we think this will be damaging to us but we're not sure" but you can get one based on "this is what the guy is going to talk about and we're going to be damaged in this way..."

<comment><USER3> "...take some action to prevent it from being discussed"

This is where the researcher needs legal advice and a contract with the client. Sure, do the private presentation, but make sure you have a contract that says the interaction with corporate staff in no way prevents the researcher from presenting the findings publicly.

<comment><USER5> I certainly agree, but it the private presentation offer was predicated on understanding the risk so they could start an injunction process if necessary, then they wouldn't agree to a stipulation that they _wouldn 't_ file an injunction. That would defeat the purpose.

That said, it might be a nice way to test the waters with them to understand their actual agenda. IF you said, "Sure I'll come and give you a talk but you need to all sign and say you will take no action to prevent my talk from happening in the future in public." And if they refuse to sign such a stipulation then you have your answer on their motives.

Note that if that is in fact what they were trying to do, and you "gave away" that you knew what they were trying to do, it might just force them into action anyway even without a lot of evidence that the talk would harm them.

<comment><USER6> That or they wanted to privately short a lot of stocks...

Note that their promise not to push for an injunction holds little meaning, since if a transcript or recording was passed on to some corporation not so pledged, that corporation could still press for the injunction. The way to be discreet is to be discreet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow. I just read a great example of why good things won't happen in the cellular industry. The people doing research supposedly wanting things to be better were offered a chance to present the problems and/or proposals to the industry. They told them to screw off then wrote a blog post encouraging everyone else to do the same. The industry, esp its leadership, certainly created the problems. Some in industry in middle and on bottom do what they can to fix some of them. Him saying no is an example of the hacker part of the problem where they are about digging up and talking about problems but not taking action that might remedy them.

Note: These hackers don't represent hackers in general. Many if not most bug hunters are more than happy to tell the suppliers what they found. I'm only focusing my comment on those with opinion similar to author.

The only concern I'd have is they try to prevent the CCC talk with legal action after the presentation scares them shitless. I don't know what the odds of that are for telecoms or CCC talks. I know companies occasionally try to block a damaging talk in the States. I'd ask for a contract from participants saying they wouldn't block the talk or sue me over discussing any flaws I found in my work. If they refuse, I'd offer to deliver them a presentation in video through email or posted to that conference's web site _after CCC_. Alternatively, show up at next years conference at their expense to deliver an even better talk.

</comment><comment><USER8> >>I could hardly believe it. How could they?

Via email, im assuming.

>>Who am I?

One of the authors of osmocombb and OpenBSC, two tools that have enabled foundational research into vulnerabilities in mobile networks.

>>Am I spending sleepless nights and non-existing spare time into security research of cellular modems to give a free presentation to corporate guys at a closed industry meeting?

I doubt anyone has that expectation. Harald has created a penalty for asking if there are disclosures that need to be addressed.

>>The same kind of industries that create the problems in the first place,

Has open source eliminated security vulnerabilities in software?

>>and who don't get their act together in building secure devices that respect people's privacy?

Is the situation getting worse, staying the same or getting better over time? I can confidently argue better.

>>Certainly not. I spend sleepless nights of hacking because I want to share the results with my friends. To share it with people who have the same passion, whom I respect and trust. To help my fellow hackers to understand technology one step more.

That reasoning is what it is I guess. I don't agree with the clique approach, but I respect him for being so blatant about it.

Good for the GSMA. Change at scale is hard. It takes time. Some of these coference presentations help motivate change(stagefright comes to mind)... Lead time helps the workerbees get executive alignment to invest in fixes. It is better for everyone that they at least tried to get some information for marshalling a response. Not all presentations are as serious as their title or abstract suggest. I guess we learned where Harald's priorities lie.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, it's far from unknown for the "marshalling a response" to include legal intimidation.

Not giving a presentation ahead of time could be viewed as reducing the chance of suppression.

<comment><USER8> I understand your point, but he didn't make that argument.

He's been around long enough to know this issue as well. I think it is fair to infer the risk of legal entanglement did not influence his decision by the fact that he didn't bring it up.

The way I read his blog post, his main point seems to be about behavior that reflects being a part of a scene or culture that embodies certain passion and values.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A video of the CCC talk referred to in the post: [https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8151-dissecting_modern_3g_4g_cel...](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8151-dissecting_modern_3g_4g_cellular_modems)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've done this in other areas (not security) and it's worked out well.

Some quick tips:

* get everything in writing;

* make sure there's not a clause, agreement, etc that prevents you from presenting it elsewhere;

* make sure to clearly say what they're allowed/not allowed to do with the presentation - record? share slides internally? publicly share everything?

* clearly document that you continue to own everything 100% - (slides, code, etc);

* get compensation - I'd suggest travel, two hotel nights, per diem for meals, and at least one daily fee on top (travel+presenting is possibly 1.5-2 days);

* make sure you understand what any non-disclosures cover and for how long.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand why the company couldn't just attend the already-scheduled public presentation? Like the author, I would be suspicious of the company's motives for requesting the earlier, private presentation. Not much upside, plenty of downside.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is responsible disclosure not a thing anymore?

</comment><comment><USER14> Why are you giving the talk in public if you don't even want to communicate the findings to the people most affected by it?</comment>


Instruction Manual for Charles Babbage's 2nd Difference Engine - <AUTHOR> http://ed-thelen.org/bab/bab_inst.html <comment><USER2> Thanks, I had lost my copy.</comment>


Construction of the Transreal Numbers and Algebraic Transfields [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.iaeng.org/IJAM/issues_v46/issue_1/IJAM_46_1_03.pdf <comment><USER3> Briefly, this is very similar to nonstandard analysis and the hyperreal number system. The paper appears to follow along the trails considered by NSA and HR textbooks previously. Those works are fully rigorous, so this paper seems a little redundant in the logic portion.

I even attempted to code those systems in C/python/java.

</comment><comment><USER4> So, essentially the transreal numbers treat NaN as a "value"?

"The main difference between transreal arithmetic and IEEE floating-point arithmetic is thus that nullity compares equal to nullity, whereas NaN does not compare equal to NaN."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._D._W._Anderson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._D._W._Anderson)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not 100% comfortable with the idea that n/0 retains the sign of n, 0 is neutral - not negative or positive. Although a division by a positive infinitesimal would retain the sign of the numerator, with zero I'd expect a result that was either both positive and negative, or neither.

As far as I got into the paper, the proofs seemed somewhat circular and no significant value (from a mathematical standpoint) was covered.

The comparison to the use of a negative square root was unreasonable - <USER2> even if i is not a meaningful value, it still can act as a useful intermediary, whose weirdness goes away at the end.</comment>


Ask HN: Open Source Call Routing Software for Text Adventure Game? - <AUTHOR> Greetings,
Simply for fun, I'm interested creating a basic choose-your-own adventure game inside of a regular push-button telephone. Premise is that after some simple directions the user would make decisions in the text-based adventure style (1=yes, 3=no, 2=north, 8=south, 4=west, 6=east, 0=game directions). I suspect this could be made to work using a fairly standard call routing program, so long as the software allows for many levels of menus. Ideally, the software could be run off-line on a raspberry pi.
I ask the community because I lack the skills to develop it myself. My background is more closely aligned with the narrative building side of things and I'm hoping someone has experience with a suitable open source option. <comment><USER2> What you're thinking of is called an IVR: Interactive Voice Response.

[http://www.openvbx.org/](http://www.openvbx.org/)

OpenVBX allows you to create an IVR (layman translation: phone tree) where you can plug in "press 1 and go here, press 2 and go here" via the web interface. You'll need a Twilio account and API key for it to work, but both are easy enough to setup.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like any help or want pointers.

If you want to do this programmatically (which I'd advise given how complex this could get), I refer you to the Twilio API docs for building an IVR in PHP (other languages available): [https://www.twilio.com/docs/tutorials/walkthrough/ivr- phone-...](https://www.twilio.com/docs/tutorials/walkthrough/ivr-phone- tree/php/laravel)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can provide the sound files, something like Asterisk + PHPivr[1] could work for you. Problem: It's quite old (2010).

If you _need_ text-to-speech thats could be a problem. Text-to-speech needs good software. Maybe you can call Microsoft or Google text-to-speech API and cache replies (I don't know if this is allowed under their ToS).

Finally you could try a platform like Twilio and make ir point to your app endpoint. This could be a static site (made with hugo/jeckyln/vim) or a dynamic one.

[1] [https://code.google.com/archive/p/phpivr/](https://code.google.com/archive/p/phpivr/) Just make a static site with HUGO/Jeckyln, host it somewhere

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you both for the suggestions. I would be using prerecorded sound files and will dig into your recommendations.</comment>


This is the Microsoft I want to see: A Glimpse Ahead - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/28/this-is-the-microsoft-i-want-to-see/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft (along with lots of other companies) have put together lots of great concept videos in the past. I've seen amazing concept videos from MS, Sony and Orange (UK mobile operator company) over the last 10 years.

Making a concept video or having a group of talented people with a good vision doesn't mean the corporation is actually going to deliver on that vision. You can bet every big company has a load of talented people with great ideas and talent inside it. But the machinery and politics of the big company pretty much dictate the really groundbreaking ideas aren't going to make it out of the R&D lab.

<comment><USER3> It is not clear to me what concepts in this video are. There's lots of touch- screen-y stuff and shared screens.

But given that tablet technology has not proved its usefulness where it is available, I'm not sure if making more common would make it more useful.

Sure, it's nice to see a video of programs responding to a gesture according to what the person apparently wants. No one has yet created an environment where that happens (the iPhone GUI is a perhaps closest).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This video consists of snippets from previous "Microsoft future vision" videos. Full videos here: [http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/b112da1c-c918-4...](http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/b112da1c-c918-41ee- bb45-d6a553496168)

The healthcare video is the one that seems to get the most attention. (When I first saw it, everyone around me was "ooh"ing and "aah"ing.) I actually found the video to be a pretty banal vision of the future of healthcare. You don't fix healthcare by adding a bunch of touch screens everywhere. What _would_ have impressed me is if any of the following had been featured:

\- AI decision support helps the doctor correctly diagnose a patient's disease (think 20q.net, but for medicine)

\- Software that helps nurses in the ER triage patients and queues them to be seen based on a mathematical model to minimize costs and morbidity

\- Enterprise resource management that ensures all resources are delivered around the hospital like clockwork

\- Telepresence software that lets a surgeon in China watch and maybe even guide the surgery

\- An app that gives patients specific recommendations based on their genotype and lets them communicate with others who have similar genes (see <http://www.patientslikeme.com/>)

These things would not have made great eye candy, but they are _far_ more important to the future of healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER5> By the time anything of this comes down to the consumer it will suck tremendously. It's incredibly difficult for big companies to innovate. They'd be better off just buying smaller interesting companies to aquire interesting technologies rather than trying to implement it themselves. Like Next buying that french? company to get Objective-C.

<comment><USER6> And How did you conclusively know that it will suck when it comes to consumers? some occult prescience or just devil's advocacy. Pray enlighten us!

<comment><USER7> Because with this video Microsoft isn't showing that they are solving any real, actual problems in people's lives.

To me, the suckage is that its all just gimmicks: the marketing department tricking people into buying things they don't really need.

<comment><USER8> Videos like that are a clear sign of a company that can't innovate. Creating a video like that suggests Microsoft's "creative" people are not really part of the design processes and the company has no idea what to do with them. And those "Creative" people don't understand what makes useful advances vs. art.

None of those "products" would be that hard to prototype today, but the interfaces are just not that useful. Take that screen shot capture in the meeting. Now outlook or some location aware system could keep track of where people are and link to the meeting notes, but no they want to guess where you're eyes are and figure out where the screen is ect. It's different, but not useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the Longhorn promise (WinFS, etc), and we ended up with Vista (it's a decent OS, but as an end-user, it just hogs more memory, I don't see any other benefits).

I hope they make this happen though.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's such a predictable future it makes me suspicious.

Newspapers? Devices that need a stylus to use the screen? No keyboards? Nothing wearable, no summary dashboards?

It looks a lot like a read-only, use-only, no-hacking, Trusted DRM Limited swirly interface kind of future to me.

<comment><USER11> I thought this looked like a future as envisioned in the 90s. There sure is a lot of "copy files around", moving them between devices, taking snap shots of them, for a future of always-on, always-accessible remote storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really interesting video. Most of the products looked like they were well designed but just like all of the stuff coming out of Detroit, why bother making concept products if you don't intend to actually build them?

<comment><USER13> PR? Try to convince people you're innovating and still relevant?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If this is a glimpse of our technological future I don't think it will be coming courtesy of Microsoft. All they need to do for me is concentrate on actually delivering an operating system that I can use for a change. They need to stop the dreaming and show us some of the things that they are working on now. I mean they have one main product, and its been a botched mess since XP.

If any company is going to deliver these kinds of solutions I think its going to be Google and Apple.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are two ways to enable everything to talk in a slick manner like this: brutal monopoly, or open standards. As evidenced by this video the "new" Microsoft has all sorts of cool ideas, but I'm willing to bet they see the enabler the same way as the "old" microsoft. Brutal monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand why there's so much hate for Microsoft. There's much more to Microsoft than just Windows, Office, and Live Search. For one, I'm impressed by some of the stuff coming out of Microsoft Research that was shown at Techfest 2009, their internal research conference, in the last couple of days: [[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/events/techfest2009/vide...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/events/techfest2009/videos.aspx)]

</comment><comment><USER17> The main difficulty with this kind of vision is that people need to build a system to support it. It is not like a single company can make the devices, the software, the infastructure, the economic environment, the incentives, etc. So one must develop and establish rules and interoperability protocols. And this takes a lot of time.

Expressing the vision and trying to build parts of it (e.g. microsoft surface) does not hurt, though.

<comment><USER18> > It is not like a single company can make the devices, the software, the > infastructure, the economic environment, the incentives, etc.

Apple?

<comment><USER19> It's worth noting that Apple never makes concept videos, mainly because their creative minds actually make real products.

<comment><USER18> I've seen this mentioned too. It seems they do concentrate on just shipping stuff.

"Here's this phone we made.."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> im looking for the blue screen of death in one of these concepts

</comment><comment><USER21> It is not about vision, it's about mantra.

Theirs is to fuck up everybody for their only benefit and that doesn't fit with my view of a cooperative world for the benefit of all.

Call me romantic or idiot, not both.</comment>


Almost Armageddon - Markets Were 500 Trades From A Meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypost.com/seven/09212008/business/almost_armageddon_130110.htm <comment><USER2> This seems like hyperbole - 500 trades in the modern stock market is a fraction of a second. No human can intervene that fast. I'd like to see how they figured that.

<comment><USER3> 500 trades is a fraction of a second _if the market is open_. The article is pointing out that if the Treasury hadn't intervened overnight, the market would have opened much lower in the morning.

<comment><USER2> How do they get the 500 trades figure, then?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: MDXC – Use React Components Within Markdown - <AUTHOR> http://mdxc.reactarmory.com/ <comment><USER2> Very cool idea. I can see a use case for this in static site generators for blog posts that include complex visualizations / demos.

For those who hate the idea of JavaScript, it would be cool to add first class support for server side rendering, so that this tool could be one step in the build chain for producing complex non-interactive HTML.

<comment><AUTHOR> It actually has first class server rendering support! The linked website is statically generated, with the app bundle that enables live editing downloaded afterward.

Unfortunately you still need to configure Webpack to make it work though.

</comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 I didn't get a chance to spend much time looking at this, but I couldn't quickly determine a use case.

Can anybody enlighten me? Got to get back to cleaning...

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here! This project came from me wanting to be able to extend Markdown with things like sidebars and live code examples. I've also found that it integrates better with React than similar projects, allowing for things like `pushState` links or customised rendering of headings.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Alright then. Have to be honest, I can't see any use for myself right now -- but keep it up!</comment></comment></comment>


Flutter vs. React Native vs. Native: Deep Performance Comparison - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/flutter-vs-react-native-vs-native-deep-performance-comparison-990b90c11433 <comment><USER2> Yay! A Holy War again...

Developers did a great work btw.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Developers did a great work btw.

Almost... They should have used native animations support for Flutter, not Flare, but nevertheless they did great job in general.

<comment><USER3> Here is why we did not:

[https://twitter.com/Niteshgarg06/status/1277557314489159682](https://twitter.com/Niteshgarg06/status/1277557314489159682)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I get it re. the Lottie just the stats do not match my personal experience with Flutter animations. Still, kudos for the work; there's some really interesting data there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Terascore (YC W13) launches to help teachers bring testing online - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/terascore-yc-w13-launches-to-help-teachers-bring-testing-online

<comment><USER2> I like the idea and there is a real need for this kind of app, but I think that restricting to multiple choice and text input questions is a very bad choice. These types of questions are the legacy of computer-fill-in-the- circle-with-a-pencil technology from the old days.

The khan academy exercises framework[1] is doing some very interesting things on the "rich question" front. They have questions which can be answered by moving lines, matching expressions as well as entering rich math expressions sqrt(2).

There is also ka-lite[2] which is building a "hosted khan-exercises" application, which includes a basic "teacher admin" view. It would be worth taking a look at it -- it is a very well done django app.

More feedback when the demo starts working again :)

_________

[1] <https://github.com/Khan/khan-exercises> [2] <https://github.com/jamalex/ka-lite/>

<comment><USER3> Terascore co-founder here. We totally agree with you on rich question types. We needed to start somewhere, but we do plan to add for example "alter the graph to set the correct answer" question type. The challenge with things like that is providing an easy-to-use question authoring feature, that is available to all teachers using our product. Our focus is enabling _all_ educators to build tests of all kinds, so that's quite unlike Khan Academy (whom we admire greatly though).

BTW, essay questions are not at all "fill-in-the-circle" and with keyword- driven automated scoring recommendations (available in Terascore) we are making teachers lives easier.

p.s. demo.terascore.com is up and has not been down. Please email us at info at terascore.com if you experience any issues. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Hi balazs,

> demo.terascore.com is up and has not been down

Last time I went some assets were not loading -- it could have been a problem on my side. Now it works great.

more feedback:

The contenteditable work is very nice. I see what you mean by "enabling _all_ educators": WYSIWYG definitely makes a difference here.

The tooltips that pupup all over the place are annoying. OK, for reproducing MSWord-like editing in the browser but don't reproduce the paper clip!

The recourse to tooltips sounds to me like you are having trouble phrasing the key value proposition. You should think of your MVP and just //show it// without too much explaining. The "what you do" steps should be obvious from the visual hierarch of the website.

I would suggest the following changes. At Top Level s/Tests/My tests/ and s/Students/My students/ as for Educators, it doesn't seem like it belongs at the top level. Your users mostly be coming to create exams and check their students' grades.

On the exam admin view, say [https://demo.terascore.com/assessment/cc54852a50a54a499e8333...](https://demo.terascore.com/assessment/cc54852a50a54a499e833377e77f5fc7/content) , there should be more visual demaraction for each question. The exam is a list of questions. Make that visible in the hierarchy. One approach would be to have a list of the questions on the left (like a table of contents) and move all the question authoring stuff out of there. Maybe you could have the authoring toolbar that appears on the right of the question currently being edited. Such a "right margin panel" could also contain all the questions metadata instead of that cramped row Type|*|POINTS|TAGS.

Ok now I should probably go and get some work done but I just wanted to say that you have built an excellent tool and I like where you are going with this, EXCEPT the part where you assign the student's grade based on the z-score. That is BS and you know it. What information does my ranking relative to the other students in my class convey?

I encourage you to focus more on the "Reporting: Immediate self-assessment, Students can access their own score reports" aspect of this and then come up with a effort based metric for the "Grades in Score Report ADJUST GRADING" part. Forget µ and σ, instead you could report "cpu usage" during the last (week, month, year). I wrote some more about this not too long ago <http://minireference.com/blog/exams-suck/></comment></comment></comment>


Sustained DDoS Attack Against 4chan - <AUTHOR> http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2011/11/15/sustained-ddos-attack-against-4chan.html

<comment><USER2> UDP flood on port 80? With a bit of cooperation from your upstream, this should be one of the easier attacks to mitigate.</comment>


For $300 a Utah company can recover vanished Snapchats - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-09/for-300-utah-company-can-recover-vanished-snapchats#r=hpt-ls

<comment><USER2> Well it was only a matter of time. On my Galaxy S4 I rooted it and am running GameSpector and downloaded a patch that not only removes the warning sent to the sender of said Snapchat I have taken a screenshot of their Snapchat but it also keeps the Snapchat indefinitely (the countdown drops to zero, but the video or image remains until you press clear). Anyone who honestly believes Snapchat is truly anonymous is very much mistaken. Be careful.

Any anonymous service is bound to be abused and used for nefarious purposes. The high price tag ensures that only serious situations will warrant a Snapchat recovery (primarily law enforcement and on occasion, paranoid parents). Considering most people use Snapchat on their iPhone's mainly, I think most are safe for now.

<comment><USER3> There are tweaks available on Cydia for jailbroken iOS devices that provide similar functionality.

</comment></comment><comment> grey-area _The appeal of Snapchat—and a growing number of companies specializing in ephemeral media—is that once the expiration date has passed, you no longer have to worry about whatever it is you just shared. It's gone forever. Nobody can dredge it back into public view._

It's not necessary to root your phone to circumvent snapchat or run special software after the fact.

Since you can always use a camera (say on another phone) to take a photograph of the screen and record the image that way, why would anyone consider snapchat or similar services secure or reliable? If you can see it, you can reproduce it, and share it as much as you want via other channels.

<comment><USER4> Snapchat alerts users that the person on the other end has saved a screenshot, so as long as you don't see that, most people would assume that it has, in fact, disappeared.

<comment><USER5> Is that for Android only? Yesterday my friend and I tried it (I have an iPhone, he has a Samsung), because I was curious if I will be able to take a screenshot while holding my finger on the image and it worked. He received no notification about the screenshot, though.

<comment><USER4> Nope, my iPhone has told me when another iPhone user has saved a screenshot before. Unsure about Android/iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A bunch of people here seem to misunderstand this as less powerful than being able to just modify the software (largely trivial on both iOS and Android) to not delete the images in the first place, or to save them while viewing them: that requires forethought to have made that modification ahead of time. The people who talk about "forensics" are interested in situations like "cell phone belonging to victim found at the murder scene: checking the system logs, the most recent application to have been used was SnapChat; if we knew what they had just received, we might have a clue (or just a naked picture of someone close to the victim)".

Honestly, what they are doing is probably about as "lame" as "undelete a file", possibly with the at-most complexity of "undo some simple encoding" or "undelete a file that was stored as a row in an SQLite database that has yet to be vacuumed". So, this isn't technologically "wow" (one of the threads here is "how is this 'special'?"), but this also really isn't "engh, I can root it and scrape the framebuffer". It isn't even a company bragging that they beat SnapChat, so the "it's lame tech" part doesn't even matter: it is a company advertising a product/service for police departments to undelete self- destructing messages from a program that is very very popular.

I thereby feel a more interesting conversation to be having on HN about this article isn't "lame, we knew SnapChat was insecure" or "lame, I could have done that" or "lame, there are easier ways to do that": it would be something closer to "damn, that was easy, we all knew it could be done, I could have even done it, and apparently it is worth $300 a pop to do this for forensics purposes? what other business opportunities are low-hanging fruit I'm missing out on by dismissing them as 'lame'?". (Yes: I know that "lame" wasn't a quote from any of the responses; I am summing up the sentiment. It isn't just HN either, but the other places I've seen this discussed don't have the business focus.)

<comment><USER7> I think that given Snapchat's advertising ('the snap disappears') they should really be doing more on the client to make sure third parties don't get access to the picture, for example, by not storing it on the device at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know nothing about Android development (this service isn't available for iOS yet, according to the article). Does the OS give you low enough level control to overwrite specific memory locations, say with random data? In other words, could the snapchat app shut this down with a simple update?

<comment><USER9> Even if they did this, there's still a huge problem on Android in that it is trivial to root virtually any Android phone and a rooted phone can be running a background app with READ_FRAMEBUFFER_ACCESS and constantly polling the framebuffer, so anything you see on the screen is leaked out of any app. And you can do this all at the app level without even getting into kernel driver hacks.

Anyone who thinks the photos passed along through these apps are in any way safe from being saved and leaked by the receiver is very technically naive. All of the old rules about all bets being off if someone has physical access to a device in the chain still apply.

<comment><USER10> You could draw the photos in a SurfaceView with a "secure" flag (see [http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/SurfaceV...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/SurfaceView.html#setSecure\(boolean\))). This would prevent other apps from reading them out of the framebuffer, or even taking a screenshot of them. If Snapchat isn't doing this, well their developers should do some research...

<comment><USER9> That flag only exists in the very newest JellyBean MR1 release (API level 17). The best they can do is set it if the user is running an Android device at 4.2 and higher, which is a VERY small minority* of all Android devices right now. Until they are willing to limit the app to devices running Android 4.2 and above (and there is no way anyone would do this right now, it would be commercial suicide) the easy escape hatch remains.

* 2.3% as of this writing according to <http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It really was only a matter of time before this came out.

Though by making it $300 they really restrict their clientele to companies or the government, both of whom would be able to cough up the money for investigations. This will almost definitely keep out the riff-raff trying to retrieve that dick-pic or nip-slip.

<comment><USER12> Anyone who has enough money to pay for a smart phone could probably scrape up $300 if they wanted that photo badly enough. Kids who are too young to have a credit card might find it difficult to use the service, however.

But now that this company has figured out how to do it, others will figure it out too and the competition will lower the price.

<comment><USER11> I don't know... Most people I know with smart phones didn't pay >$200 and a lot got some sorta deal. Regardless, @ ~$300 or even if it went down to $100 most people aren't gonna spend that to retrieve a pic unless it's supremely important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does "special forensics software" even mean? What is stopping some smart hackers from making a software that does the same thing, open sourcing it, and allowing 'regular' people to do the same thing for free?

<comment><USER14> Not much, really. Anything that scrapes the disk image should be able to recover the images. There's already a "free" open source application or three.

I don't work in the field, but I've had some classes with local forensics engineers. Forensics teams buy software almost solely because they are able to reliably cite the software's use in court, and the developers could be subpoenaed easily to explain the function if the defense decided to call its use into question. Open-source solutions likely will never be used for that reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They spelt danah boyd's name wrong.</comment>


Show HN: HNBlocker – Chrome extension that lets you block other HN users - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hnblocker/plcjaaiijmcnamnhgbpfonkjicmnplni

<comment><USER2> User blocking doesn't appeal to me, I just ignore and move on. But maybe I'm just not that sensitive.

The only HN extension that has withstood the test of time for me is a thread folding one, <https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/130027>. I imagine there are other variants. It let's you quickly ignore those giant flame-war or off- topic threads.

<comment><USER3> To add to that, I recommend this extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- mark-a...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-mark-all- read/ogfbcfkihdkplelnaenpgkhnkpoaggjc).

Not only does it give you collapsable comments, but it also ads the ability to mark comments and submissions as "read," so you can easily see what's new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, Fark has this built-in and it is sometimes really useful, but it does cause problems in some threads.

I've been thinking about something that would allow you take notes about other users and have those notes pop up when you hover over their name[1]. It is sometimes hard to remember who is who. It would probably be helpful to have a way to save comments that you thought were pretty cool.

1) I also thought this would be a great Google Glass app for older users (note about person or place appears when seen / there), but without facial recognition it wouldn't work.

[edit: with -> without]

<comment><USER5> >something that would allow you take notes about other users and have those notes pop up when you hover over their name

On Reddit, you can do this via the Reddit Enhancement Suite.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit- enhancement...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement- suite/kbmfpngjjgdllneeigpgjifpgocmfgmb?hl=en-US)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't really pay attention to names and have never felt a desire to block or even ignore anyone.

Now that I think about HN extensions, I could really use something that correlates articles and HN discussions in both directions.

More than once I've read something sourced elsewhere and ended up doing a site:news.ycombinator.com search to look find discussion for the same.

<comment><USER7> You mean like <http://see-reaction.appspot.com/index.html> ?

<comment><USER8> ISTR once reading about a HN-specific tool like that. (The URL above points to a tool that returns results for Reddit and Twitter as well as HN.) Anyone know of anything like that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hereby christen this extension, "Weenie Ware."

Why?

Only a true weenie would feel the need to block someone on a global scale.

More reasonable users simply ignore what they don't wish to read.

<comment><USER10> So the more reasonable thing is to block mentally instead of letting the computer do it?

<comment><USER11> Yep, until a strong enough AI exists to discern the useful information out of the flaming.

The problem with people who you'd want to block is that a good amount of the time they say something that gets you to think things through in a different light. It sucks to get flamed, but boy is it a good tool to force a reassessment of what you've said. Sometimes you realize you were dead right, and sometimes you realize the guy you want to block has a good point.

<comment><USER10> There are too many assholes to introspect with each one of them. I'd rather lose some insight.

<comment><USER9> Sometimes, even _assholes_ such as myself have something worthy to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been working on the same thing for firefox as a userscript. It's certainly more equitable then hellbanning, and inane threads about how subject x is turning hn into reddit.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pardon me, but is blocking people on HN a big issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't say it's a big issue, per se. Rather, I'm tired of seeing comments denigrating other comments. If you don't like what people have to say, better to ignore them silently than respond antagonistically.

<comment><USER14> people would block without having a really good reason..

an example, i would block you just because you're using "per se" :)

<comment><USER10> And what's wrong with that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> awesome. so how about the ability to add regexps(?) so that we filter people based on content? mentioning no names, but some users are great when they're talking about technical issues, but not so great on the social / political side...

also, have you consider trying to unify user ids across websites? <http://www.acooke.org/cute/Automatemy0.html>

oh - and another feature (now i open the site on my laptop) - sharing across computers!

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of the a scene from the '50 first dates' movie where Adam Sandler asked Alexa a question, and replied, "Then again, there are always ways around such things, for example, if I promised a woman's father I would not see her, I would simply shut my eyes while she serviced my manhood.".

Those people are real people not bots and spammers, blocking them are simply an absurd way to do it, or 'shutting your eyes to get around with it'. A quick solution, but you are not solving the root of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER17> Finally, I don't have to see this "pg" guy everywhere ;-)

</comment><comment><USER18> I fear now we'll be having a lot more inflammatory, useless, space-filling remarks like "I can't see what he just said I have him on ignore".

My philosophy is to simply ignore trolls without any extension (since fortunately there aren't many on this site, it's not hard), so I'm not really sure if this extension is so necessary.

<comment><USER12> That's why you don't tell people when you block them, and if you want to see what someone said, you just unblock them for a second.

<comment><USER19> I fully support this addon, I think it's the best way to do blocking, on the client. That said, I am not looking forward to comments that consist of nothing more than "blocked" "added to killfile" "plonk" etc. These are nothing more than implied calls for others to block someone. It encourages groupthink imo.

<comment><USER12> I kind of think hellbanning and the karma system encourage groupthink as well. That would be annoying though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> it would've been unfortunate if i had missed this post by Finbarr, because i was already using a chrome extension to block other HN users ...

</comment><comment><USER21> For those of you wondering why someone might use something like this, I had someone who made a fake account to follow me around on HN and insult me for a while. They got shadowbanned, but I like to keep showdead on, because it's interesting, so I still had to read it.

Woulda been nice to be able to just block them, but luckily with no responses they moved on to twitter (!) to harass me instead.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm glad you spent your time making an extension so I can block people on this superficial website. Are you going to pitch it to investors? If it doesn't work are you going to publish an article name: "Here's how not to start a startup."

<comment><USER23> I can't tell if no one got your sarcasm or if they're admonishing you for it. I think it's spot on and great though.

<comment><USER24> Can you explain it to me? All I see is a really whiny post attempting to mock the extension for not being useful enough. What is 'spot on and great'?

<comment><USER23> Mostly the stuff after that. I appreciate:

\- mocking the stupid shit that is sold to VCs here (and the stupid shit VCs invest in)

\- mocking the "holier than thou" attitude that people often have about HN/community/content

\- mocking the need to have an extension to prevent yourself from reading something from someone you don't like

\- mocking how worked up people get over this "superficial website"

I wouldn't want to knock the dev, I think that's tacky. I find the usefulness of the extension to be something of a reflection on the person who needs to use it. Anyway, I liked the bits of the comment that are self-mocking of HN, not the extension.</comment></comment></comment></comment>