Uber's Design Meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2016/2/16/ubers-atomic-meltdown <comment><USER2> I think one of the best points of this piece is referencing the iconic U sticker that nearly all Uber drivers have on their windshield or passenger window. When I've taken an Uber in an unfamiliar city (the bulk of my Uber trips basically) and I'm on a busy street corner, seeing the unmistakeable black-and-white sticker lets me know quickly and simply that I'm hopping into the right car, or where to start walking if it's 100' away.

What will the new Uber car sticker look like from afar? A circuit board? A community college parking lot pass? There's no way it will be as obvious and instantly recognizable as a big U sticker. In fact I can't even imagine Uber drivers will swap their decals out, ever, so it'll create a rift in the overall brand (drivers with U stickers, website/app with the new brand) and increase overall confusion with passengers.

<comment><USER3> At least in Seattle they now have colored bars that identify the car (you can select the color in the app, it's an LED strip).

[http://mashable.com/2015/12/03/uber-spot-light-color- code/](http://mashable.com/2015/12/03/uber-spot-light-color-code/)

The problem with just having a logo is in many places there are lots of very similar Ubers (oh hey my Prius is here!).

<comment><USER4> It's interesting that they let the passenger pick the color. 2 passengers in the same area might both pick the same color and try to locate their driver based on that information alone. Uber knows which pickups are at the same place at the same time and could choose the colors that minimize confusion (some kind of 4D map coloring problem!)

<comment><USER5> You know, you could just disable colors already picked in close proximity. For maximum distinguishing power, offer primary colors first, then secondary and tertiary colors, and then differences in brightness/saturation.

Unless you're dealing with several dozen cars arriving at once, it should be reasonably distinct, and even if for some freak reason there is more cars than colors, it'll still help sorting through prospective cars more quickly.

You could also do this automatically, but offering the user control over it may help them feel in charge and/or remember the color they picked better than just assigning one.

That's my thoughts on it.

<comment><USER4> Good point! However, is it important for people to feel in charge of their color? Right now, requesting an Uber is 3 steps (open app, set pickup location, confirm). Why add a 4th step and require another decision? I value simplicity over getting to choose my favorite color (n=1).

<comment><USER5> See, you don't have to make it a separate step though. It'd be something that is initialized with a sane default, and allows you to change it if you want to. A button with the colour the light will be that you can click to open a modal dialog displaying your options. Someone suffering from dicromacy may choose a colour that is more distinct to them.

If you don't care about the color the light is, you'd simply confirm without changing anything.

Another nice tweak would be coloring the app based on your chosen color whilst you are waiting for the ride, making the connection obvious. That should be a fairly simple matter of shifting hues.

<comment><USER6> Like in Android contacts, when you add a new one it chooses a colour (maybe randomly, I'm not sure if there's a system for it) but you can change it if you want.

<comment><USER5> I mean it's a general interaction design principle. Provide sane defaults, offer customization. As a corollary, if you need to prompt for data, think long and hard about whether you actually need that data.

Hrm, thinking about it, it'd probably also be neat if it tracked what colours users who do choose pick, and then use that information to deduce their favorites. If any of those are available, it should pick them automatically. Even if I went out of my way to pick orange every time, it'd be nice if the app remembered that and picked orange for me, thus eliminating a step.

It may be worth displaying available colors as smaller squares next to the button like this:

      ┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━┳━┳━┓
      ┃ primary   ┣━╋━╋━┫
      ┗━━━━━━━━━━━┻━┻━┻━┛

So that I can know at a glance whether or not my favourite colour is available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Was it just me, or was the uBar advert at the bottom of the title really oddly placed. It was almost as if it were going to be part of the article. How the brand was becoming associated with crap software too.

Meanwhile that was totally just a horribly placed ad for the site ...

<comment><USER8> Damn, the ads have devolved and are harder to block. At least don't show the ad to non-macs.

<comment><USER9> It's just a straight-up image and a link. While I hate advertising, this is a compromise I'm willing to accept.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. I'd trade what we're stuck with today for simple, self-hosted images and links (no trackers, third party scripts, creepiness) in a heartbeat. This is advertising done right.

<comment><USER11> I guess. But damn, I'm so used to not seeing ads that I spent maybe 10 seconds wondering how the image was relevant to the article. "Maybe UBAR is an Uber side project?", I was thinking. Then I saw "SPONSOR" ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm never one to judge a rebrand immediately, as so many people were quick to do here. These things have a tendency to grow on you.

But after living with the rebrand for a few weeks? It sucks, and it made me realize how all the things I used to like about Uber are disappearing.

The simplicity was one of the best parts of Uber: you picked your service level, then ordered a pickup. That was it! These days, they've added a lot more friction to the process, and instituted carpooling rules. Never mind that surge pricing is almost always in effect -- I guess they're having a hard time retaining drivers?

Ultimately, all Uber has long-term is a brand: their business model will be commoditized the day autonomous cars are integrated into a fleet management system. And they fucked up that brand: they went from a recognizable brand identified with the letter "U" to an unrecognizable glyph that looks more like a video game than a ride hailing app.

<comment><USER13> The implied - not sure it was ever stated - aspect of their branding was that the experience was about YOU. Getting the car, handling payment, not having to worry about all the details makes YOUR life easier. Their deals with Hilton and United to have a car ready whenever and wherever furthered that in my mind.

So while the "U" meant "Uber" I always interpreted it a little bit differently.

No clue what the backwards C means.

<comment><USER14> It is not a backwards C, it is an atom (circle) and a bit (square). They're trying to say they are the link between meat and cyber space.

It is the vaguest marketing device since "Visa. Love every day."

<comment><USER15> Man. I guess they really want to get the point across that they're a business using computers to do things. They feel it's that unique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For the record, it's happened more than once now that I look through my app menu and see the new Uber icon and have no idea what it is. Takes me a second to think about it and remember this 'rebranding'.

It's one of the worst things they could have done at a time when they need a strong brand the most.

<comment><USER17> Especially when a serious number of your customers are drunk when they are looking for your services....

<comment><USER18> I was sober and honestly thought the new logo was my uber app being updated. And the square meant the update was paused. Absolutely terrible rebranding. The U was recognizable and iconic.

What in the sands of silicom valley were they thinking? [http://cdn.igeeksblog.com/wp-content/uploads/How-to-Fix- Apps...](http://cdn.igeeksblog.com/wp-content/uploads/How-to-Fix-Apps-Stuck- at-Waiting-in-iOS-7.x-When-Installing-Updating.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> About two weeks ago, I found myself in Manhattan, needing to get to a specific airport hotel near jfk for a 7am flight. I'd never used Uber before, so I downloaded the app - I knew nothing about the rebranding (which had happened at the time) but I found myself with a somewhat bewildering array of options - uber, uberx, uber black, uber pool, something else. Multiplied by choosing the type of vehicle?

I had no idea what I should choose and I was in no mood to track down what to the designers and implementors meant by the various choices in the matrix.

(Took the subway to something close, got out, got in a cab and got there for $20 total)

I wish there had been a more scripted experience: where are you going? What's your timeframe? Do you have luggage or need to impress someone? Do you mind acting as a carpool dummy? Do you want conversation or quiet?

Then pick from your array of checkboxes for me.

<comment><USER20> Just as software wizards are in other contexts, that would be useful for a new user, but frustrating for a power user who knows exactly what they want and the quickest way to select it.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't have to be one or the other; include a small switch at the bottom of the screen that alternates between the two representations.

<comment><USER22> Maintaining one consistent front-end is obnoxious enough from my biased personal experience with the UI/design aspect of building a web app... but I agree that it's probably a weak point that they offer so many disparate options but they are probably just gathering data with what works/what doesn't. Just guessing. I would imagine that eventually we'll see some (more? I don't know if its happened already) closures of the individual Uber product lines

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Basically, designers have to put up with the same management bullshit as developers, except with significantly less respect for the difficulty of their craft.

</comment><comment><USER24> All they needed to do was rotate the icon 90' clockwise and it would have satisfied everyone.

\--EDIT-- For clarity: [http://imgur.com/sZN6g2i](http://imgur.com/sZN6g2i) ...still looks like a 'U'

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I think that was the bit where, when animated, the logo works. But rarely will a sticker on a car be animated, at least in this decade.

That said, designers often over-worry about logos initially. If you put enough marketing power behind it and the company is still on a growth curve, the logo will eventually become associated with the brand and it wont matter whether it was obviously a 'U', a Chinese coin or a ghost ;)

EDIT: The question now is, is uber on such a growth curve that they can still get away with this. My gut says 'no,' but only time will tell.

<comment><USER25> If your logo doesn't matter much later on, and therefore you shouldn't worry much about it early on, then when should you care about it?

<comment><USER26> It's not that the logo doesn't matter. It's that the _specific shape_ of the logo doesn't matter. As long as it's unique and recognizable, over time it will come to be associated with your brand. As an example, think of car emblems. What does 4 rings have anything to do with Audi? The roundel with BMW? The bowtie with Chevrolet? Of course, these all have a historical significance, but there's no direct tie between the shapes and the name. It could just as easily be Audi's roundel and BMW's bowtie. But yet all are distinct visuals intimately tied to the brand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I really hope the writers of _Silicon Valley_ somehow work this into the show.

Unfortunately Uber's timing is such that it'll probably have to be season 4.

</comment><comment><USER28> Just wanted to say that Uber is used by the mass; It's not really a product for techies. So a lot of my friends thought that Uber has been deleted from their phone (as they weren't able to find the icon) and then went ahead and ordered a cab from the competitor.

</comment><comment><USER29> Am I the only one that sees the icon and thinks that it looks like an abstract drawing of the sphincter or the underside of your anatomy? Must be tortured remembrances of goatsee videos from years gone by. Perhaps there is a tie in with all those grindr ads. Personally I find the combination of moms, puppies, and sphincters a bit disturbing.

<comment><USER30> This logo shall henceforth be known as the "anal fissure".

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've never, ever in my life seen a rebranding or redesign that wasn't widely complained about. How can we differentiate between this kneejerk reaction that all humans seem to have to changes in a UI/design they are already familiar with, and actually bad redesigns/rebrandings?

<comment><USER32> Use the Uber redesign as the standard of poor redesign and you won't go far wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ok, so supposedly the redesign is based on the idea of "bits and atoms". The atom at least seems to be based on the textbook image of a circular nucleus surrounded by lines of orbiting electrons. (Let's ignore the fact that the lines in the logo are pointing in totally nonsensical directions.) The "bit" though...why a square? A bit is a unit of measurement - it has no physical representation. Another circle would be just as valid. Maybe they're thinking of pixels? (Though those aren't always squares either...)

Even if you can get past how pretentious the whole concept of the design is, it all falls down anyway once you realize that they're just making shit up.

<comment><USER34> It's also not a theme that is unique to their brand at all. So you connect cyber and meatspace, ok, well what tech company in the last 20 years couldn't say that?

<comment><USER15> This is what's blowing me away more than anything. It's literally the second thought that came to my mind.

Only two possibilities:

\--A hundred Uber employees thought of this, and didn't say anything about it because they were scared of the CEO.

\--A hundred Uber employees thought of this, someone said something, and the CEO heard the words but did not even process them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Huge shifts like this are confusing to consumers. Companies like Starbucks understand that you can be fresh without looking like you're going through an identity crisis. Luckily for Uber, what people really care about is the service they're getting, not the logo for it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe I'm just reading the wrong authors, but so much of the writing on design today let plain bad design slide because it has the right look/people/brand/tech/image. Eli Schiff's writing is maybe a bit more vitriolic than necessary at times (IMHO) but it's a very refreshing counterpoint.

</comment><comment><USER37> The first thing that came to my mind when I first saw their new icon was electroencephalogram stickers[1], or maybe those stickers that hold on heart monitors in the hospital.

1\. see pic on the right here: [http://www.epilepsygroup.com/notes6-35-63/new_patient.php](http://www.epilepsygroup.com/notes6-35-63/new_patient.php)

EDIT: I was told by my friend who is a nurse that the more accurate example would be "telemetry leads" \- [http://www.wireless-technology- advisor.com/images/cardiac-te...](http://www.wireless-technology- advisor.com/images/cardiac-telemetry-1.jpg)

<comment><USER38> Fun fact about those leads: the clips that hold the leads to the electrode pads are of many different specifications, i think specific to the manufacturer, so you can't change the lead (and so the monitor) attached to a patient without replacing the pads.

Hence my slightly comical experience of sitting in an ambulance during a transfer from my local accident and emergency department to a specialist cardiac hospital, topless, having my electrodes replaced, then going through the same procedure after the ten-minute drive to the destination!

If someone could disrupt that, that would be great, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It is fun bashing uber but I am not sure this is quite as bad in all respects as this article makes out. In particular I like the black square icon, it is bold and unique. Their Android and ios icons though are pretty bad. Too bad they couldn't have stayed with the bold black square for those as well with some way to ensure it has good visibility.

Black monolith icon -- I like it.

<comment><USER40> The logo of the app looks like a Chinese bank logo. A lot of Chinese - and to a certain point Vietnamese - banks have logos with square inside a circle, since that's how Chinese money used to look like.

When Uber updated, I wondered what is that Chinese bank app doing on my Android.

<comment><USER41> Maybe take a closer look at where Uber's capital is sourced from and get you answer there.

Personally I think the logo is awful. And the statement

> but creating an icon that was based on an English character didn't make > sense for a global brand

Is the company not called Uber in all languages? Is Uber not the name of the company that starts with the letter U?

<comment><USER42> For reference, there are languages that don't have the letter U in them, or any letter you would recognize.

<comment><USER43> You don't see Pepsi re-branding themselves to 'Bebsi' in Arabic-speaking countries.

<comment><USER40> Well sort of.

[http://www.pegnsean.net/~sue/pics/151-200/tn/162%20...and%20...](http://www.pegnsean.net/~sue/pics/151-200/tn/162%20...and%20Pepsi%20in%20Arabic.med.JPG)

But yeah everyone everywhere can read Latin alphabet, at least in the demographic interesting for Uber.

<comment><USER43> Ha, you got me. On the other hand, though, they are starting to borrow the Urdu 'p' character in some places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> For someone not part of the design process, the author sure seems to know how everybody on the team has been feeling during the redesign process.

<comment><USER45> I don't know why you would comment something so "simple" (if you actually read the article, if you didn't then I'm wasting our time) when the author clearly (albeit sarcastically) points out that "Obviously designers have no right to comment unless they were in the room with the Uber designers during the design process". Surely you should come up with a stronger rebuttal than simply paraphrasing _his_ sarcastic comment?

<comment><USER44> I think he has every right to point out that the design is bad (I think it is too) but to me many of the phrases reads like he knows that the designers behind the logo also thinks it was a bad design, and that the designers suffered during the process. He shouldn't speak on behalf of the design teams thoughts or processes and stick to commenting on the final result.

Maybe I just read some of the sarcastic parts too literally.

> "Obviously designers have no right to comment unless they were in the room > with the Uber designers during the design process"

I think we can all agree, that when it comes to the quality of a logo or visual identity, the end customer is always right. If people paying for Uber services can't recognize Uber, or get negative associations with their visual identity, no design process can make up for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "The Uber brand guidelines were sure to make clear that they doesn't want their logo to be urinated on or to be associated with condoms or sex. Because there was a real danger that might have happened."

I see ads for Uber on Grindr all the time. What's that about not associating the brand with sex?

</comment><comment><USER47> Do you remember the time that Marissa Mayer said, referring to Adobe Illustrator, "I'm not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous" and then "helped" designing the new Yahoo logo? by that time, Mayer's (micro)management style had already resulted in the Lead Yahoo Mail Designer quitting the company[1].

This time it seems that, because of Kalanick's micromanagement of the Uber logo design, Uber's Head of Design has left the company[2].

A non-technical co-founder shouldn't write code, right? So I don't understand why a non-designer co-founder should design a logo.

[1] [http://www.inc.com/cody-steve/yahoo-logo-redesign-marissa- ma...](http://www.inc.com/cody-steve/yahoo-logo-redesign-marissa-mayer.html) [2] [http://www.fastcodesign.com/3056457/fast-feed/ubers-head- of-...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3056457/fast-feed/ubers-head-of-design- steps-down)

<comment><USER48> This is a common problem in marketing. Given marketing unseen soft skills it's common for people to feel they can be great contributors. I've literally had an occasion when a exec waited til marketing left the building and held design/programming staff back the night before a launch to implement his messaging, look and feel which had been previously discussed and rejected. And no joke, he had the gall to criticise the marketing team for the launch when it didn't get the traction expected. My jaw still hits the ground someone can be like this.

While not normally as bad as that example, executive input is acceptable at some companies, typically from those people we've all seen whose confidence clearly outweighs their ability (though to be fair some people give great commentary too). In areas like brand its very difficult to 'prove' bad suggestions right or wrong as measuring impact/result is difficult given so many variables, and for what you can measure you'd have to run the alternate to truly know results, which is unrealistic. The other one I see is sales management get promoted to run marketing as many operations/finance leadership dont realise how different the skillsets are, assuming 'selling is selling'.

For this, life is a bit easier in the performance marketing channels vs brand type channels. I've found the best solution is, rather than fight the political fight to keep them out, simply build what they want (assuming digital campaigns) and A/B test their campaign version. Afterwards be sure to present the results at a suitably high/wide level. Its win/win as if they contribute good work the company benefits from their insight which is great. And if they are the manager sticking their untalented nose in repeatedly, after several presentations (all done in a genuinely friendly manner) the bad internal press tends to keep them quiet, at least for a while.

And to be fair, some marketing people are not the best themselves and probably deserve micro-management...

<comment><USER47> I understand your point with regards to your last sentence, but that doesn't justify bad management. I think the main point here is that, as you said, institutional marketing/design/UX success is not as easily measurable as other endeavours. You can A/B test a landing page but you can't really A/B test things such as logo/corporate identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> > It felt wrong for Uber's global and local brands to revolve around the color > preferences of a rich, white guy in California - even if that rich, white > guy in California is the CEO.

It worked for Steve Jobs at Apple.

</comment><comment><USER50> It took me like 30s to figure out the change, and I haven't had any problems with it since.

Not sure this is going to topple the company. I think this is a case of, "I do this for a living so it's super duper important". The branding redesign probably isn't as important as this author claims.

</comment><comment><USER51> Uber's rebranding is a management classic. It will be studied for decades as an example of what happens when committees create things.

</comment><comment><USER52> I assumed the backwards 'C' was the incomplete progress bar. First I thought Uber is updating. Then when I realized it is the new icon, I thought it is meant to signify urgency of "your cab arriving."

In no universe did I imagine an atom or a bit there. Why does the bit have a tail that makes an atom a backwards C?

Pixel art on city landscapes would have conveyed their point better, and would have looked better.

</comment><comment><USER53> Not to detract but it's a somewhat similar issue albeit probably will never elevate to the same level, but LastPass also just went through a logo redesign and it's equally rather puzzling.

The logo went from

[http://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/08/lastpass...](http://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/08/lastpass_logo.jpg?26523c)

to

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/VUywxm7hR04d-hXnhenjtLcwHG...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/VUywxm7hR04d-hXnhenjtLcwHGe69ypNh1wiLfni01PeDDNR89jB0OZg7ryloBGwhfaPo_5BcQ=s128-h128-e365)

Considering things like that the three dots simply look like any number of other menu icons, especially on android where you can have three of those ellipsis type of icons in one view sometimes; I'm not sure that was all that smart of an idea. In case you didn't notice/realize it like I didn't, that's a cursor at the end of what are supposed to be three hidden characters. It's just an odd choice in my opinion.

<comment><USER54> >that's a cursor at the end of what are supposed to be three hidden characters

That was immediately obvious to me. I'm neither a designer, nor have I ever actually used their product. I think it's an excellent logo because it is instantly evocative of how you use their product.

<comment><USER53> Ok, now scale down that image about 25 times to icon size. This one is about 4 times larger than the used icon.

<comment><USER55> Amen. E*Trade (I completely forgot they are "ee asterisk trade," not "eetrade") sued them over the lovely asterisk, so now we're stuck with this thing that looks like the "action!" movie clapboard device.

The big blobby square indicating how many profiles match under the dots is distracting. Maybe my eyes will stop flickering to that once I adjust, but it's not an improvement over the asterisk, in my mind.

I get the idea, but it just seems to messy, especially by incorporating a UI element indicating where the cursor is into your design.

tldr; trademark suits are the worst.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The amount of hubris this article describes is _staggering._

And I say this as a long-time Uber fan.

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder if this destruction of brand equity will mean Uber have to write down the "intangible assets" section of their balance sheet.

</comment><comment><USER58> Wow, I didn't think the day would come when I felt sorry for designers.

</comment><comment><USER59> I am confused. How's the app logo nowhere on the homepage? Did they go with UBER, black square, and the weird backward C thing all at the same time? In addition the font for Uber front page does not match the Uber logo once you log it (where the U seems to have a little curve to it). Get it together, people!

<comment><USER60> Huh, haven't noticed that yet. This re-brand is so thoroughly weird in every way you could imagine. The original Uber site that I remember had a mark of professionalism and gave me a luxury limo vibe (though I knew it was just people's cars). This site has a more bubbly, AirBnB vibe, for better or worse I guess. I personally thought the professional vibe was better for their product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> The article reads like the author has a personal hatred against Uber, it makes it hard for me to accept his opinions.

Would have been better if he took a more objective look at Uber's redesign instead of taking the time to bash the CEO or the designers.

<comment><USER62> There may be some snark, but it's entirely appropriate. I think it's a piece written for designers, who regularly have to deal with micromanagement from talentless, egotistical people. Except in Uber's case, things were ten times worse than usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Seeing the iOS logo always makes me think for a second that the app is being updated.

</comment><comment><USER64> Is it just me, or does anyone else think those two icons look like toilet seats?

</comment><comment><USER65> "All in all, it is remarkable that the Uber team produced what they did given the circumstances–truly a testimonial to the patience of Uber's Design Director Shalin Amin and former Head of Design, Andrew Crow, who not so inconspicuously departed the company immediately after the redesign."

Is there a difference between "head of design" and "design director"? They seem to have been at the company at the same time - correct? Just can't understand what the difference between these two positions would be...?

</comment><comment><USER66> How much a branding has actually impact in a product like this? Uber is pretty much the only option for ridesharing in my country, and I guess in most countries in the world. I guess you can harm the brand a little by doing some redesign or something, but I think in the end it doesn't matter that much. The most important thing is that the product works, for a good enough price. I personally at least don't care a bit what the uber icon on my phone is, and I doubt that majority of consumers do.

<comment><USER67> It's not insignficant. For one, the app icon looks completely different now. I had thought for a moment that I had uninstalled uber inadvertently before remembering their brand redesign in the tech press. For those not following the tech press, they probably had a harder time figuring out how to call an uber app.

They destroyed their brand in one fell swoop their new logo is entirely new. The good news for Uber is though that they are so essential and ubiquitous there's no danger of this impacting their business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The new logo looks like Pacman after assimilation by the Borg.

Maybe that's indicative of the new 'data platform' development team they're actively recruiting for.

</comment><comment><USER69> Lately I've seen quite a few people reach for their phone, not find the Uber app right away and they just click on that pink mustache instead.

</comment><comment><USER70> Who gives a damn. At this point Uber could choose a turd as their logo, and they'd still be successful.

<comment><USER71> A turd would be more recognizable.

The problem is not the brand, that's just a symptom of a far worse problem.

<comment><USER70> I bet there'd still be gnashing of teeth and consternation. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Wow talk about a nuclear facepalm. I'd bet Uber doesn't make it through the crash if this is how their thinking process works at the top level.

</comment><comment><USER73> I used to use Uber quite regularly.

In the past year, I have had several drivers bring up, of their own volition, their dissatisfaction with the fact that tipping Uber drivers is uncommon. It is quite clearly stated in Uber's app and website that there is "no need to tip". I'm not a cheapskate, but I don't carry cash most of the time, and their veiled reminders/requests made me uncomfortable.

It probably sounds strange, but the ridiculous logo change on top of the changing driver culture have made me remove Uber from my transportation-method choices.

Fickle creature I am.

</comment><comment><USER74> Wait, but finally what does this shape/icon mean?

</comment><comment><USER75> I remember similar sentiment when AirBnB did their rebrand. An article comparing the rebrands of the two companies would be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER76> Seems like an example of a CEO with an over abundance of hubris.

</comment><comment><USER77> Interesting read.

Funnily enough, I used Uber three days ago and didn't notice any chance at all. But after I read the article I checked the Uber logo on my iPhone, and there it was, the new logo staring at me.

</comment><comment><USER78> Apropos of nothing:

> _English is the lingua franca of the world_

I love reading, and hearing, these words. Heh.

<comment><USER79> Many people think the term arose because of the dominance of French in diplomatic circles, but I t's actually quite apropos; "lingua franca" is an early medieval term that essentially translates to "language of the Western Europeans" ("Franca" in this context is not modern France, but a term for historical Germany -- everything north of modern Spain, essentially). In the day, lingua franca was a patois consisting of bits of various languages that all traders in the region knew and could communicate in, though it was too mutable to be a stable language as such. Not unlike English, actually!

<comment><USER80> I had always just assumed it meant "French" so you got me reading (thanks!). Wiki seems to indicate the original lingua franca was based on the language of the Franks and mostly used in the eastern Med.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> He seems very bitter about something.

<comment><USER82> Yes. The author obviously has an axe to grind, implying Kalanick is an "elitist", "drooling idiot" who picked the logo "impulsively", "doesn't know what his own intentions are", and "shouldn't be in charge of Uber's brand" (all actual quotes from the article).

Flagged this submission for gratuitous negativity and for being a hit piece on Uber and some of Uber's employees, disguised as design critique.

<comment><USER83> This has to be a joke. You must realize I am a design critic.

<comment><USER82> Design critique is fine but this piece is riddled with personal attacks on Uber employees and political attacks on Uber as a company. You must realize this as well, as you changed the link "Uber is publicly struggling with its image" from a gossipy, political piece [1] to a more balanced piece [2] a few minutes ago.

[1] [https://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just- how-f...](https://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-far-ub)

[2] [http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/02/uber-drivers-rates- protes...](http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/02/uber-drivers-rates-protest-sf/)

<comment><USER83> You are mistaken. I have not changed any links. Those links were and are both there still next to each other.

Even if the article were some sort of political argument (I guess one could interpret it that way in the sense of internal design politics and management) it should not call into question its validity.

<comment><USER18> Id say your article was very informative and non bias. Of course your views are there but the information about per country palettes and whatnot was very depthy and rigorous. You did due diligence dont feel bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Are we supposed to know who Amin is? The article starts referring to him with no introduction.

<comment><USER85> Did you skim read? It introduces him as:

"One can be sure that Uber's Design Director, Shalin Amin".

<comment><USER84> That's been edited in after my comment

Compare to [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2016/2/16/ubers- atomic-meltdown)

<comment><USER83> Your comment helped me with that one, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> What a clickbait title. This is not about meltdown but design.

<comment><USER87> "Clickbait" is overused around here.

It's the title of a blog piece. There are no rules that it's required to be hyper-descriptive. Nobody is being deceptive. Did you really think the article related to some sort of nuclear meltdown and Uber?

<comment><USER88> When I hear the words "company" and "nuclear meltdown", my first thought is something catastrophic and immediately bad happening. Founders dying, sudden regulatory changes, stuff like that. And I'm going to guess that most people thought the same. "Oh crap, what happened to Uber?"

A freaking _logo redesign_ does not qualify. Less so when it's brand new and nobody even has the logical basis to make an educated guess as to what its impacts might be.

So yes, clickbait. The headline wrote a check the article couldn't cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> This reads like an oddly smug attack on a fairly successful redesign.

<comment><USER90> ... the logo is unrecognizable.

Apple's logo? Looks like an apple.

Exxon's logo? Says Exxon.

Google's logo? Says Google.

Shell's logo? Is a shell.

Chevron's logo? Has a chevron in it.

The first time I saw Uber's new logo, I said "wow, I have no idea what this is," which is absolutely the opposite thing you want a customer to think. You might say "oh, but it says Uber right underneath the icon on my phone." Which is accurate, but many customers wouldn't recognize the logo on the car without additional text, which COMPLETELY misses the point of having a logo in the first place.

<comment><USER91> The shell in the Shell Oil logo represents an actual sea shell. The founding family were originally sea shell importers and pivoted to oil in the late 1800s. (The story is told in Daniel Yergin's book on the history of the oil industry.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> "Leading up to the Super Bowl, Uber's Twitter feed was all puppies."

Does the writer not get that the "Puppy Bowl" was on at the time? Animal Planet's special show is very popular alternative to the "Let's not compete with Super Bowl" lull on TV.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands Honestly? This looks like Nixon's logo, just tipped on the side and modified slightly:

[http://logonoid.com/images/nixon-logo.jpg](http://logonoid.com/images/nixon- logo.jpg)</comment>


Ask HN: Review my Twitter App - Tweakio - <AUTHOR> http://www.tweakio.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Tweakio is about helping individuals and companies/brands embed dynamic content into their Twitter background, viewable whenever someone hits the standard twitter.com/username page.

Today I'm releasing a teaser theme called "Friend Tree" which lets you put a tree on the left hand side of your Twitter page and decorate it with photos of friends.

Sometime next month I'll launch the rest of the service. It will include themes that change with the time of day, change with the local weather, showcase recent twitpic/yfrog photos, etc. There will be some stuff for businesses/brands, too.

Thanks for checking it out HN! Would love to hear any suggestions you might have...

EDIT: Here's an example of what it looks like -- <http://twitter.com/fpotter>

</comment><comment><USER2> FWIW, I'm not a big twitter user, I don't use a single twitter "app", but hey this is pretty cool and its extremely digestable. I'd imagine a lot of people would want that cute tree on their page, just depends on how easy it is to get it running. The concept is good though imo, good job!

Also the main text on the page is kind of hard to understand. It makes sense now that I saw your example page, but "dynamic twitter theme" didn't really do anything for me immediately. Personally I would put something like: "Finally! Custom twitter backgrounds!" That sounds kind of myspace-y which is a good thing imo because any idiot can use (and understand) myspace. "pimp your twittaaaahh" - ok just kidding about that last one.

So overall, your app lends itself to the "show, don't tell" mantra more easily than most.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some cosmetics: Possibly move the "Get your friends at tweakio" only shows up correctly without being clipped in a exact resolution, a better option would be to move it to the left side. Another is on the home page, the background doesn't repeat so looks off on screens wider than 1600px.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'll play with better positioning for that. I know it looks weird if you have a giant screen. I'll see how big I can make the image w/out bloating the file size too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the snow at the top of the page supposed to fall? By dynamic is it an animated gif, or just dynamic on reload? I kept waiting for the snow to fall.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely forgot about the possibility of animated gifs. I'll look into this. If I do it, I should probably make it optional - some people might hate me for it. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You might benefit from buying tweak.io in addition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I might still. .io domains are about $100 USD, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A video or screenshots would be nice.

<comment><USER7> And maybe a link to a twitter account that shows how the friends tree looks like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, those are on the front page now. Don't know why I didn't do that to start with :-)

The tree looks like this: <http://twitter.com/fpotter></comment></comment></comment>


Index 1.6B Keys with Automata and Rust (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.burntsushi.net/transducers/ <comment><USER2> This is the same individual who spent over two years writing a faster grep than grep: [http://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/](http://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/)

Amazing work.

<comment><USER3> And a native rust crate for walking directory trees that's as fast as `find`.</comment></comment>


KGB Defector Explains the Theory and Practice of Subversion (1983) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fQoGMtE0EY

<comment><USER2> Only a few minutes in, but it appears as if this man has a lot of extremely interesting things to say. It really is a unique window into the mindset of espionage workers and the military industrial complex in their rote application in the world.</comment>


Social skills XOR programming skills? - <AUTHOR> http://kranglefant.tumblr.com/post/90084168180/social-skills-xor-programming-skills

<comment><USER2> I'm always baffled how gossip and negative speak about others is considered good social skills while discussing something important about life, be that technical, big problems for society, or other topics that require thought is lacking in social skills.</comment>


Does having a higher paid technical job mean you do not get to code any more? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more <comment><USER2> Well, I can only tell you that at Google there are no "architect" positions, and people expressing a desire to hold such a position will probably not even get an on-site interview, much less actually get hired. Based on that I would say "no" because you can find senior, high-paying jobs where you code all day long every day,

Personally I find the idea of "architect" to be a bit of an industry anti- pattern. It's a person who hasn't written anything in ten years, essentially. If someone wants to write the design doc and implement the first draft and then other people become interested in contributing to the project, that's just technical leadership. But someone who wants to mostly talk about how they would have implemented something, ten years ago when they still remembered how to code, is useless.

<comment><USER3> The architect at my company is by far the most talented programmer I know, and his position as architect is more often "programming the cross-functional, low and high level pieces that touch across multiple stacks and helping implement the first stages of large projects" than "sitting around and designing things". I have tons of respect for him and his grasp of subjects across many aspects of programming is profound.

So along with that, I resent the idea that an architect must be some neckbeard who spends his days conjecturing and drafting and doesn't contribute. I know the cool thing now is to have flat-hierarchy companies consisting entirely of coders, but then again Google is a very young. I'd bet in the next five years you'll see people moving into architecture positions much like the one I describe.

<comment><USER4> Just to be clear, your argument is entirely over a word, and not about anything in reality -- right? Words are pointers to concepts. When you say "architect", you mean something different from what most people mean when they say "architect".

You resent this?

<comment><USER5> Well, that's all this entire thread is about—the word "architect."

<comment><USER6> And "neck beard", for some reason I don't grasp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a developer at a small (500 people) Telco.

By very definition, for me to get promoted and a salary increase, I must move away from technical work and become a people leader/manager. I must also move into a department I have never seen/touched/know nothing about. i.e. right now I'm coding IP stuff, I might become the manager of a bunch of call center workers.

That is the only way to "move ahead with my career".

Because of this, my direct manager has absolutely no idea what I do, let alone the 7 levels of management above that.

It's completely insane, and that's how the company has always done things.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like you'd prefer working at a smaller (<100) company.

<comment><USER9> You don't need a smaller company, just a less stupid one. Any of your major tech companies has a fully technical career path and at least some managers with technical background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the 3 or so most senior engineers at Google is Sanjay Ghemawat (<http://research.google.com/pubs/SanjayGhemawat.html>). I always joke that it must be a pseudonym for a group of at least 10 people, judging from the number of files in our core libraries that have his name as the author. That guy is a machine, and it's very good code too.

So it's definitely possible to be a very senior engineer and still write code.

</comment><comment><USER11> Developers have far more say in how they interpret and be in a "higher paid technical job" than they realize.

There is limited value a non-coder doing technical stuff can enable, and inversely, ultimately a limit to the value a technical/coding only person can contribute if they don't work on understanding the business both at the macro and micro.

I find that you DO code and you do as much steering of the ship, technically, architecturally, to find and head in the direction that the code needs to go to solve problems.

Where does it come from? Over time when you build more and more business technology, you understand more and more of the business than just at a technical or functional spec level.

I also find that you help troubleshoot connections between the code and possibilities that could exist -- the crystal ball.

Often this can come at a point after coding so many solutions in so many industries that you start seeing patterns and similarities.

Being on the ground floor of putting together the proof of concept, and more is invaluable, and I continue to code as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER12> I commented on this in the Maker/Manager transition article from yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4816586>

At weak engineering companies, senior developers are moved into managing roles because (I believe) the company culture doesn't believe engineers truly provide value. In the traditional model, value is built by supervising larger numbers of people and contributing to more projects. To justify your salary, you have to be "in charge" of more people. It's a traditional hierarchy.

At strong engineering companies, they understand that some engineers are multiple times more productive than other engineers and that those people provide real value. So, people who are good at organizing and directing work are moved (not necessarily promoted) to roles ensuring product delivery while people who are good at hacking keep hacking. The delivery guys aren't necessarily "above" the developer guys. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite.

That's a good way to organize things because it ensures that people do the work they're best at and that the whole system is a meritocracy.

But it's rarefied air at the top of the senior engineer ladder. If you want to get paid $200k/year to write code, you have to provide close to equal value to 4 (very smart) recent grads at $50k/year. Not everyone can do that, so for a lot of engineers shifting to a more supervisory role that more strongly leverages their experience is a more economically viable proposition.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a business owner I've seen how hard it is to attract quality people in general. There aren't many quality people that bridge the coder+architect skills. It's natural to gravitate towards a suboptimal separation of the two, because not doing so means you can put yourself in a position of resting your business on the shoulders of a superstar. As far as I can tell, the best way to avoid this is to build a good team with overlapping skills and a strong sense of how to solve problems.

<comment><USER11> Part of it is the unclear definition that allows someone to say they are a coder+architect. Is it software architect? How much is it systems architect?

Some things I look for:

\- Find someone who is always solving problems and building things to understand how they work, and how an organization works.

\- Find someone who gets that the data is the system. If the individual doesn't have an ability to immediately want to learn the data, what it means, how it interacts in all its stages and the various outputs, you don't have a coder+architect who can put the small details together to come together down stream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you look at salary surveys you'll find that management positions top out at a higher pay grade than coding jobs. For example the role 'CEO' can pay 7 figures annually, there is no 'technical' job (even CTO) that pay on that scale.

Generally I object to the question, lets break it down:

"higher paid technical job" - "not get to code" those are the active elements in the question. If all you want to do is write code all day and night, then the amount of money you will be paid to do that will top out these days just under $150,000 in the US. Understand though that pay for technical work is a distribution, some folks will get more than that, but the further 'right' of that number, the smaller the pool of people who can get that kind of money. So the general answer for the exemplar technical person, is about $150K max, individual salaries will vary. And that doesn't include 'bonus' programs.

Management jobs top out around $250K. Again, same constraints, some get more but the further right of that number you go the fewer and fewer the people.

If you want to code all day and make a lot of money your _only_ choice is to leverage your programming. Which is to say you work for a combination of cash and equity in the company you are working for. I made more money off the Sun stock I got as stock options and through the employee purchase plan than I made as salary. It doesn't always work out that way, but unlike salary, equity doesn't have a 'limit' on its growth value. I personally know a number of millionaires, many of them who predominantly wrote code throughout their career, but none of them became millionaires because of salary.

My concern is that if you're counting on 'writing code' to make you rich, you're in for a disappointment. If the code you write is making the company you're with more valuable, and you can share in that value, then you're coding is making you rich in proportion to your equity ownership.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is similar pattern in other type of industries too.. As you grow in the career path, you move more towards management role. If you write code, most of the time you spend on very small part of a big software. Your impact is very less on the overall product. Being an architect, you have more impact on the product

<comment><USER16> You certainly have more of an "impact", but that might be just that everyone hates you.

However I'll go with the nugget of wisdom in your post: Some coding involves lots of hard work to small parts of a program, so you don't have much overall impact on the product.

This is typically because you're doing it wrong. You're either using the wrong language (eg. C for a GUI product), or you're reimplementing wheels when you should be using a library, or you're not able to inspire others to join the project and help out on some details.

Or, very very rarely, what you're doing is ground-breaking and highly skilled. You can only write one line of code each day because it needs so much thought. This is not something that one often associates with "architect" and "program manager" in an organization.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, the most popular GUI apps on the planet: iOS, Windows, MacOS and Linux apps, are written in C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I suggest that you make time for what is important to you and be honest about why you love to code. It's possible that coding for your company is a compromise, anyhow - I made a decision a few years ago to only code on my own projects, and I suddenly love programming as much as I did 15 years ago again. In that way, lending your experience to a dev team without having to roll up your sleeves might be a blessing, because many folks find that doing it for other people doesn't satisfy in the same way as doing it for yourself.

YMMV, of course.

</comment><comment><USER18> My experience says: there is at least one advantage in differentiating an architect and a developer (I have been both developer and architect). If the developer designs the system, he/she will tend to push the system design towards whatever he/she knows the best in the programming language such as libraries. This will restrict the design. In fact, the developer doesn't think about the design without thinking about how to implement it. But, the architect who is not good at writing code can think without boundaries.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, reality has boundaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Our Chief Architect is probably the biggest contributor of code, and I can't imagine it being any other way. He definitely leads by example. Some of our customers (Enterprise) have these 'architect' types that just draw pretty vizio pictures, and I can't see how they aren't just laughed out of the room when it comes time to make actual decisions. But I guess once you have 4+ layers of management and decision making it's easy to fall into crazy town.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yeesh, has nobody heard of the role 'lead programmer' or 'technical director'?</comment>


Garden path sentence - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence <comment><USER2> A similar phenomenon, at least in English, is that you can (technically) infinitely embed subclauses without using complementisers ("that", "who" and "which"). So you get unparsable things like:

       The dog the cat the mouse feared loathed barked.

...punctuated and complementised makes it _slightly_ better:

       The dog, who the cat, who the mouse feared, loathed, barked.

...unwound makes it readable, but changes the semantics subtly but significantly:

       The mouse feared the cat, who loathed the dog who barked.

I say "technically" because there's nothing stopping you from doing this, but in reality, even one level of embedding can be borderline nonsensical (e.g., the "The horse raced past the barn fell" example).

<comment><USER3> You can't "technically" do that. Which "rule" (from which rulebook) do you think allows you to arbitrarily repeat structures?

<comment><USER2> There's no rulebook when it comes to syntax (grammar), unless you're a prescriptivist. There is plenty of precedent for embedding subclauses (e.g., "Here is a sentence, that I just made up, which has an embedded subclause."), but -- beyond anecdotal data -- there is no hard cut-off point to how many times you are permitted to embed. Empirically, most people don't like more than one level, but plenty of people allow it; thus it becomes more a function of cerebral load than it does an argument of permitted structures.

<comment><USER4> If you're arguing over technicalities, you are inherently adopting a prescriptivist approach.

There are two possible approaches to your sentence and neither renders it grammatically correct. A prescriptivist would dismiss it as not being allowed by any rules while a descriptivist would point out that it defies both common usage and intelligibility.

<comment><USER5> I disagree, and FWIW, I find your tone hostile.

A prescriptivist would say it follows allowed grammar rules but is still unintelligible.

A descriptivist would say it follows common usage patterns but takes it to such an extreme as to be unintelligible.

You see this pattern more often with proper names:

\- That's the house Jack built.

\- That's the woman the house Jack built fell on.

\- That's the lawyer the woman the house Jack built fell on hired.

\- That's the briefcase the lawyer the woman the house Jack built fell on hired carried.

At what point does it become "incorrect"? When it becomes unintelligible to most native speakers?

It's also worth noting these sentences seem much stranger in writing than they do when heard. In writing, most sane people will use punctuation in the examples above. But in speaking, our tone of voice conveys enough context to use more streamlined structures.

<comment><USER4> > At what point does it become "incorrect"? When it becomes unintelligible to > most native speakers?

Beyond 1 level of nesting. There's no rule allowing arbitrary nesting, nor do people commonly nest beyond 1 level.

I'm not sure where you saw hostility in my comment.

<comment><USER6> There's empirical work on this [1] (alas, paywalled): multiple center embedding in speech is rare but exists. It is more common in writing.

There are examples of 2 levels of center-embedding which are clearly grammatical and not hard to understand:

> Anyone [who saw the woman [who committed the crime] at any point] should be > questioned.

Others are very hard to understand:

> Anyone [who the man [who the woman shot] killed] should be questioned.

There are many factors that make a sentence hard to understand, not just degree of embedding. Some degree 2 sentences can be easy, and some degree 1 sentences can be hard (e.g. "the horse [raced past the barn] fell", which has only 1 level of embedding).

So if you want to describe English with the rule "no embedding beyond 1 level" then you're going to miss a lot of valid sentences while also failing to rule out lots of invalid ones.

Contrast this with a valid descriptive rule of English, such as "determiners such as 'the' always come before the nouns they modify". I can say "the man died", but "man the died" is never comprehensible under any circumstances and cannot be made better.

No one would say that a sentence with 10 levels of embedding is perfectly fine English. But descriptively, you have the problem that there is no _non- arbitrary_ upper bound on embedding degree: it's not clear when one more level of embedding takes you from grammatical to ungrammatical, and furthermore it depends on the contents of the embedded clauses.

There is also some work I'm aware of, currently in prep for publication, showing that the extent to which people can understand multiply-embedded sentences strongly correlates with IQ (measured by Raven's matrices).

All this suggests that the simplest descriptive rule is to say that English allows center-embedding recursively, but that there are human processing limitations on sentences that create very deep stacks. The "human processing limitations" part is basically the whole field of psycholinguistics: many details have been worked out, but many details are still sketchy.

[1] Karlsson (2007): [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1056752)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing the research, it's fascinating that there has actually been serious investigation of this.

That being said, I still think the rule of 1 level still makes sense (not that all 1 level embeds are valid or easy, but that all embeds beyond 1 level are invalid).

> Anyone [who saw [the woman who committed the crime] at any point] should be > questioned.

That sentence has two complementisers, which the OP's sentence specifically did not. Introducing complementisers completely changes the rules and I think makes embedding much more possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The name "garden path" reminds me that during my Turbo Pascal loving 80s I played with making "fog" from markov chains. The idea was to computer-generate reasonable-reading nonsense text and I'm sure you've all tried it as kids too! :)

Of course my naive approach suffered from lack of corpus; if it picked a rare word, it'd get railroaded into using the very limited set of words that follow that rare word and so on.

I remember running it - this was before the internet days, so I can't imagine where I got the input text from - and getting back a page-full of gobbledygook. And there right in the middle, somehow drawing the eye like a magnet, was one of those railroaded sentences:

 _herbaceous_

Well when your random roulette picks the word herbaceous, its likely only seen it once or so in its learning text, so there aren't so many words it can pick next:

 _herbaceous border_

So far so good. But where does this lead next?

 _herbaceous border disputes_

Love it!

<comment><USER8> I could swear you've posted this exact comment before.

Or is it a meme by now? Google finds four results of this phrase:

[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13292744100/the-s...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13292744100/the- spam-posts-on-a-forum-i-keep-an-eye-on-are)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/sgght/comparin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/sgght/comparing_automatic_poetry_generators/)?

[https://www.reddit.com/comments/108q4b/markov_chain_poem_tra...](https://www.reddit.com/comments/108q4b/markov_chain_poem_trainergenerator_in_29_sloc_of/?sort=qa)

[http://encode.ru/threads/2225-A-jackhammer-it- doesn%E2%80%99...](http://encode.ru/threads/2225-A-jackhammer-it- doesn%E2%80%99t-have)

But it turns out all of those are you. Does your computer beep every time somebody posts about markov chains, so that you can go post this comment? Do you have it saved on your machine, ready for copy paste?

I feel like I'm in an XKCD strip right now.

<comment><USER9> Whoa, did you realize that you commented on it 3 years ago in that second reddit link?

Anyway, no harm in sharing willvarfar. First time I've seen your comment!

<comment><USER10> But this is wonderful! In the context of the discussion..

The guy who had told the story before who had told the guy who had told the story before had forgotten had forgotten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "the poor aerodynamic properties of bananas [citation needed]"

Worth reading just for that little bit of precision.

<comment><USER12> Not to nitpick, but yet another partial quote. Bravo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would love to see a garden path sentence at the beginning of this Wikipedia article.

The second sentence, in a paragraph of its own, would explain what just happened.

I doubt this would ever get past the serious folks at the 'pedia.

But if it did... That would be the difference between awesome and mundane.

<comment><USER14> Maybe tvtropes will have a page on it; they seem like the heirs to the awesome fun place wikipedia used to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think in real-world situations speakers would prefer "fruit flies like bananas", which may also be a garden path sentence, but its resolution seems much easier to me.

Do native speakers concur?

Is there any research whether speakers do prefer utterances like my example in practice due to this property?

<comment><USER16> In real-world situations the stress falls on different words depending on which parse of "fruit flies like a banana" you are adopting

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find it interesting that we have solid grammatical fixes for this problem in some cases, but not all. For example,

      The horse raced past the barn fell

should never be written like that. The fix is:

      The horse, raced past the barn, fell

But:

      The old man the boat

really can't be fixed, other than rearranging the sentence altogether.

<comment><USER18> Sure, though a substantive adjective followed by a noun-verb homonym will almost always cause this phenomenon (to varying degrees):

The crooked defect home.

The hot lead the cold.

The quick pace themselves.

The wet tear off their wet clothes.

<comment><USER17> Nice examples. "Old man" is a much more common adjective/noun construct than "wet tear", "crooked defect", and maybe even "quick pace", though, so I think these are slightly easier to parse. But "hot lead" is excellent :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's the first time I understood "fruit flies like a banana" as a pun -.- To be fair, I'm not a native speaker.

<comment><USER20> It _ahem_ flies past many native speakers initially

<comment><USER21> I wonder if you can come to any conclusion about the psychology of a person based on which meaning they hear initially.

<comment><USER22> One word geek test: pronounce "coax" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The sidebar shows two other languages for this Lemma, the Dutch one is interesting:

* _Intuinzinnen_ , From the Dutch proverbs "ergens intuinen" of "om de tuin geleid worden". Literally: To "be gardened into something", or "to be led around the garden." Both meaning the same as "lead someone down the garden path"

Seams the proverb is nearly similar in both languages. Which makes me wonder whether they originated from the same word. After all, Dutch and English (And German, Danish and Swedish) have the same common ancestor.

Or whether they describe the same, in the past generally known effect of garden paths leading to unexpected dead ends.

<comment><USER24> No. 'tuin' etymologically is 'town'. Both originally described an enclosure (around a piece of ground). From there, it became the piece of ground within in both languages ([http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=town](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=town))

Garden is from French (jardin)

Back to the proverb: the dutch one seems to be about "keeping someone from that what is important/the truth" by not letting them in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As a non native speaker I struggled greatly until I learned that this is a thing in English language.

<comment><USER26> Ha, yup. I think a good corollary is prefix vs. infix notation in programing languages. With prefix (or RPN) notation, it's impossible to be led down the garden path. The rules are simple and unambiguous.

For example, 4+5×3 is a garden path, where reading left-to-right you may think to yourself, "four plus five is nine, then nine times... wait, I have to backtrack and handle _five_ times three first..."

Whereas + 4 × 5 3 can't be confused. (Or 4 5 3 × + in RPN)

I'm not a (good) speaker of any other language than English, but I can see how adjective/verb/noun ordering in different languages can prevent this problem.

<comment><USER27> And this sentence:

        The girl the boy the dog hit bit cried.

measures the depth of the stack in human brains.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, it exceeded my own stack :). Is it, "The boy hit the dog, the dog then bit the girl, who then cried?"

Some of those verbs are binary operators (transitive), others are unary (intransitive).

<comment><USER27> Argh! You're right; I got the words out of order. It should be:

        The girl the boy the dog bit hit cried.

I tried parenthesising it; I tried Lisp syntax (you're right; it's the mix of direct and indirect objects that complicates things); nothing worked. It's a diabolical sentence. The best I could come up with was this:

In step 1, the dog bit the boy.

In step 2, the boy hit the girl.

In step 3, the girl cried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like human sentence parsing is better fit for handling predefined definitions and additive sentence building, and isn't fit for recursion.

<comment><USER29> Nah, this just means that language did not evolve to be written. In spoken language, these ambiguities are not a problem because of prosodic cues. Also, non-recursive languages are not necessarily unambiguous, which shows that this problem is not tied to recursion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> After I read the article self-destructed!

</comment><comment><USER31> Shakespeare loves to do this: "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer..."

<comment><USER32> I don't think that's an example of a garden path sentence though. My initial parse is "whether or not suffering in the mind is nobler". "In the mind" is an adverbial phrase that modifies "to suffer". Am I missing anything?

<comment><USER33> Maybe I've misunderstood all this time, but I thought "in the mind" meant to _think_ about suffering, not literally suffer _in_ the mind. That is to say, more like "whether or not one thinks suffering is nobler".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is awesome!</comment>


Only 37 dogs of each breed can have the same name - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/leftoblique/status/1139737041162272768 <comment><USER2> This part:

      They're:
      Spot                 I
      Spot                II
      ...

is not quite correct. The AKC does not assign a number to the first one.

Open the Dog Name Check [1]. Pick a breed, enter a unique dog name, and the page will report it is available. Now pick a semi-unique combination ("Shih Tzu" \+ "King") and the page will say "The name chosen has been used previously, but may be used with the following change: King XXXVII." This implies the first person to pick "King" got "King" and the second person got "King II."

One dog per breed can have the name Spot/King/etc. But the AKC is a rent- seeking monopoly and 6 Roman numerals is short enough to still appear somewhat exclusive.

[1] [https://www.apps.akc.org/apps/reg/namecheck/index.cfm](https://www.apps.akc.org/apps/reg/namecheck/index.cfm)

<comment><USER3> So it's an off by one error in the post?

<comment><USER4> I think it's more like how it's Pope Francis and not Pope Francis I, since he's the first Pope Francis, you don't add the number. We will only do that after the fact, i.e. when another pope chooses the name Francis.

So grandparent's point isn't that it's off by one, but that the first name is inaccurate for the time it was rewarded. Although, considering we are viewing it _after the fact_, i.e. now that more dogs are called the same, I think it's fair to add the "I" at the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kind of a weird, deceiving title choice. There's no rule or law anywhere requiring this ... you can name your dog whatever you want. Apparently there is an organization called the AKC (never heard of it) which allows you to register your dog. Their record-keeping system can only hold 37 dogs of each name / breed combination because of old technological requirement.

So if you have a dog you want to register with this specific organization for whatever reason, there might be limitations on what you can name it. That's much less interesting to me than the title suggests. Does everyone register their dog with this organization for some reason? I'm not sure why you'd want to do that.

<comment><USER6> I think "deceiving title choice" is a bit strong. Of course you can name your dog whatever you want. I highly doubt that anyone read this and actually thought that there was some sort of global law requiring this.

> That's much less interesting to me than the title suggests.

I'm having a hard time imagining some more interesting, plausible thing that you thought the title suggested.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough, I suppose I should have worded my complaint the other way around. A better title would have been "Why only 37 dogs of each breed can have the same name registered at the American Kennel Club".

Self-diagnosing a little, I think my skeptical attitude towards institutions is acting up here. It's weird to me when people use "name" when what they really mean is "name registered with institution X". I don't see why anyone should care what the AKC thinks of their dog's name, in kind of the same way that registering a name for a star in a star registry is similarly stupid.

<comment><USER7> I was expecting some kind of statistics showing the common dog names and the number of dogs of each type kept as pets.

<comment><USER8> It's in German, but here's open data about dog names in the city of Zürich:

[https://data.stadt-zuerich.ch/dataset/pd-stapo- hundenamen](https://data.stadt-zuerich.ch/dataset/pd-stapo-hundenamen)

The CSV should be clear enough:

[https://data.stadt-zuerich.ch/dataset/pd-stapo- hundenamen/re...](https://data.stadt-zuerich.ch/dataset/pd-stapo- hundenamen/resource/c1fd0489-19ef-47dd-9374-c4e702037c3c)

<comment><USER9> So German cities have employees /systems whose job it is to register dog names not totally sure that's the best use of taxpayers money - better bike lanes and electric charging infrastructure or even _GASP_ better support for homeless people.

<comment><USER10> Worth noting: Switzerland has a pet tax, so that obviously pays for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What problems would arise if they skipped numbers that exceed the 6 characters? Like, go from 37 to 39 (XXXIX). Then you have a solid run until you run into 78.

And 78 ought to be enough for anyone.

<comment><USER12> The Dog Name Check Tool is very clear on that matter:

"Roman numerals must not be included at the end of the dog's name. The AKC reserves the right to assign roman numerals for identification purposes."

"The name you have chosen contains the restricted word _' XXXIX'_ which cannot be used."

However...

"King XXXX has been verified for use for this breed."

So numbers from 40 onwards are not rejected by the automatic check. I don't know whether an application would be handled by a human who might notice this, though.

<comment><USER13> 40 is XL, not XXXX. "King XL" is rejected (and sounds like a condom brand)

<comment><USER12> Ok, it seems like they only recognize subtractive notation. Nonetheless, numbers from L onward seem to work, so if you want that distinct "roman numeral" look, you could choose "King LXVII".

<comment><USER14> For some reason i would be suprised if they check for unicode roman numerals, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerals_in_Unicode#Roman_nume...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerals_in_Unicode#Roman_numerals)

<comment><USER12> They don't check for them, they just forcibly convert them into ASCII by taking the lowest byte of the Unicode code point, turning "ⅠⅡⅢⅣⅤⅥⅦⅧⅨⅩⅪⅫⅬⅭⅮⅯⅰⅱⅲⅳⅴⅵⅶⅷⅸⅹⅺⅻⅼⅽⅾⅿ" into "`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~\x7f". A few of these characters get rejected, though curiously not the last one, which is nonprintable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Most AKC-registered dogs belong to a breeder's kennel or bloodline. You never really register "Max" to the AKC. You generally register Hilly Billy's Max The Beau. Even if at home you just use Max, and Hilly Billy is the kennel affix.

It is a little like horses, and their insane official names.

<comment><USER16> Yep! My dog has an insane official name.

I got special permission from her breeder to use their kennel in the name, even though she isn't being raised by them.

Dry Pond's Eager Big Lady Mountain Goat Meghan.

Each part of her name is a part of her story. But her name is Meghan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Vaguely related: 1888 was the longest year in history, to date -- typographically as expressed in Roman numerals.

Thirteen characters: MDCCCLXXXVIII.

That record will stand until tied in 2388 (MMCCCLXXXVIII), and won't be exceeded until 2888 (MMDCCCLXXXVIII).

<comment><USER11> Kids these days have it easy with their movie credits. In my day, you had to pause the tape to work out what year the movie was copyrighted.

 _Die Hard_ : MCMLXXXVIII

 _Avengers: Endgame_ : MMXIX

<comment><USER18> Why do movie credits use roman numerals for production year in the first place?

<comment><USER17> Possibly: "deception theory".

[https://web.archive.org/web/20120822041637/https://newsblaze...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120822041637/https://newsblaze.com/story/20120820063820ssid.nb/topstory.html)

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1934990.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1934990.stm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You know it is late or your mind is in a sad state when you picture the exact tables you would need to make this work in a relational database. It is amazing the amount of real versions of the apocryphal railroad width stories out in the world.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Evidently they decided six characters gave them the best trade-off between > flexibility and cost of typesetting?

They didn't think that using Arabic rather than Roman numerals gave them a better tradeoff?

<comment><USER19> These are names, and its traditional to use Roman numerals with names for people, and many treat dogs like people, so....

<comment><USER21> That analogy is broken; it's traditional to use Roman numerals to indicate that _people_ hold the _n_ th instance of the same name in a line of patrilineal descent (or, even more traditionally, a line of rulership). Roger White's son could be Roger White II; Roger White IV's son is definitely Roger White V.

But two Roger Whites from separate families won't use numbers at all; both of them are just Roger White. The AKC is numbering unrelated dogs.

And we appear to use arabic numerals for that use case: see [https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/26880947/lee6-wins- us-w...](https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/26880947/lee6-wins-us-women- open-pockets-1m)

<comment><USER22> No descent is implied when numbers are used for monarchs and popes. John XXIII was the 23rd pope named John (20th century), a long time after John XXII in the 14th century. Queen Elizabeth II of England (current) is not a direct descendant from Queen Elizabeth I (16th century).

<comment><USER21> Descent is implied, just not genealogical descent. John XXIII is the 23rd Pope John in the same line of papacy. Pope Benedict XIII (17th century) is the 13th Pope Benedict in that line, but Pope Benedict XIII (14th-15th century) was the 13th Pope Benedict in the line of Popes in Avignon. Henry IV of England was the fourth King Henry of England; Henry IV of France was the fourth King Henry of France; like the Popes, they are two different people tracked in two different lines of descent.

<comment><USER23> I suppose you could say it's similar with AKC dogs.

Spot III the Chihuahua vs Spot III the Beagle

<comment><USER21> What is the relationship between Spot III the beagle and Spot IV the beagle?

There isn't one; they're named in parallel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What if any are the restrictions on characters in the dog's name?

GOODBOY_FLUFFBALL_TAILWAGGER_DOGGO_BESTY_4EVAEVA~1

GOODBOY_FLUFFBALL_TAILWAGGER_DOGGO_BESTY_4EVAEVA~2

Etc.

<comment><USER25> No dog may be called exactly "con" or "aux" :)

(kidding)

<comment><USER26> A pet called com1 may experience burocratic issues.

/s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A quirk of an old, badly implemented database... from before the days of databases.

<comment><USER28> You can still make a varchar(7) column if you want

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I saw "purebred" and "AKC", my mind immediately went to:

The Bizarre Truth About Purebred Dogs (and Why Mutts Are Better) - Adam Ruins Everything

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv10_WvGxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv10_WvGxo)

<comment><USER30> [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7620507.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7620507.stm)

<comment><USER31> Shelters are full of dogs that breeders surrender because the offspring weren't to their liking or diseased or imbred. It's quite sad and we shouldn't be supporting purebred breeders anymore. They are trading other creatures' pain for their own gain and profit :-/

<comment><USER32> Shelters are also full of dogs with severe behavioral disorders which can't be treated or managed effectively. How confident are you in selecting a shelter dog which might live with you for another 10, 12 years, versus a dog from a breeder that you know the genealogy of (and therefore the parents, grandparents behavioral traits)?

There's a difference between buying from a backyard breeder who doesn't care about the quality of dogs they're producing, and a quality breeder who vets buyers, parental lines, and has offspring contracts to prevent future unwanted litters.

<comment><USER33> Sorry, but no.

Breeders, even if ethical, are part of the problem. Just because they try and reduce the chance of genetic defects by avoiding direct inbreeding, it's still a minor statistical manipulation.

> (and therefore the parents, grandparents behavioral traits)?

Behavioural traits (with very few exceptions) vary more widely in between individuals within a breed than from breed to breed.

I know people can get _very_ defensive about their best friends, but purebreds will have genetic deficiencies. That's no reason to love your current pooch any less, but do give cross-breeds some consideration for your next member of the pack.

As silly as "labradoodle" sounds, these people have the right idea.

<comment><USER34> >Behavioural traits (with very few exceptions) vary more widely in between individuals within a breed than from breed to breed.

No they absolutely do not. There is nothing to suggest this, and overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

>but purebreds will have genetic deficiencies.

No, some subset of purebreds will have genetic defects. Just as some subset of mutts will.

>As silly as "labradoodle" sounds, these people have the right idea.

Why? They are doing the same thing you are complaining about, just using a specific cross of two breeds rather than a specific single breed.

<comment><USER33> > There is nothing to suggest this, and overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I'm willing to read a good citation here if you have one, but the "overwhelming evidence" lies on the other side where docile and submissive specimens of fighting breeds and aggressive and dominant specimens of family- friendly breeds can be easily observed. There is plenty to suggest this.

> No, some subset of purebreds will have genetic defects. Just as some subset > of mutts will.

These subsets are not equal. I'll clarify in a bit.

> Why? They are doing the same thing you are complaining about, just using a > specific cross of two breeds rather than a specific single breed.

That's not how genetics work. Inbreeding increases the number of recessive genes floating around in the gene pool, increasing the number of carriers.

Say, for simplicity's sake, hip dysplasia is bound to a single recessive gene. If you cross a breed that is prone to hip dysplasia with one that isn't, none of the offspring will suffer from hip dysplasia, and it will halve the number of carriers of the recessive gene in the genetic lineup.

Do that a couple of generations with different breeds, and it starts becoming very unlikely that two recessive genes for dysplasia will match up.

Now understand that a lot of genetic diseases are the result of the interactions of many genes of which the exact mechanism is unclear, and it should become clear there is no solid way to prevent a disease from expressing itself through careful monitoring.

For now, the best way to guarantee a healthy dog is to mix in new genes and keep the gene pool healthy, which is very much the opposite of breeding for conformity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ugh, this story interesting but I despise Twitter's UI. Why is this being told through this medium?

<comment><USER36> Meanwhile, I get a "you have been rate limited"... Which I don't understand, opening a Twitter link for first time in the last 4 days (been traveling)... Wasn't expecting this.

<comment><USER37> That happens on links to Twitter from HN on mobile. You have to reload the browser page.

Surely at least one Twitter SWE reads HN, so it's probably known and done maliciously.</comment></comment></comment>


Swift 5 Exclusivity Enforcement - <AUTHOR> https://swift.org/blog/swift-5-exclusivity/ <comment> kris-s I put Swift into the category of "almost memory managed" languages and it's never fully clicked in my brain. Thinking about strong/weak/unowned references is more difficult in my opinion than when to malloc/free something. Following the examples in the article just reinforced that maybe Swift's approach is a little too complex.

<comment><USER2> Right. This is one of the things I don't like about automatic reference counting, that it's almost a complete solution, but cycles require more thought (but less cases) to deal with than manual memory management itself.

<comment><USER3> It would be interesting to compare the cognitive load of the Swift way and the Rust way. Rust gives you better guarantees, but you must annotate your code.

<comment><USER2> Rust doesn't just give you better guarantees. It gives you no runtime checking, and potentially even better performance than naive C, because it can automatically tell LLVM when there is no memory aliasing going on.[0] Also, it gives you more confidence, because you can, for example, give out an array to someone and be sure that it won't be modified. And usually that kind of confidence is enough to write safe, race-free parallel code.

I don't think Swift's runtime exclusivity checks give you any of that.

[0]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/50744](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/50744)

<comment><USER4> Swift arrays have pass-by-value semantics (under the cover, they use copy-on- write to keep performance good) and are thus safe to pass to functions without concern that they'll be modified. (Unless it's passed as an `inout` parameter, which requires a prepended "&" at the call site.)

<comment><USER5> Rust can use its own bovine superpowers here [https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/borrow/enum.Cow.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/borrow/enum.Cow.html) to enable developers to write code that's invariant over whether it's dealing with a fresh copy of something, or just a borrowed reference. So, it's not quite correct to say that Swift's use of copy-on-write gives it better performance. Rust can express the exact same pattern quite easily, and do it with far more generality.

<comment><USER6> Are you sure that code expresses the same pattern? It looks like Rust's COW can only transition from Borrowed to Owned by making a copy. Swift's COW works by dynamically inspecting the reference count.

<comment><USER2> Right, unless I'm mistaken, what you want is `Rc` with `Rc::make_mut`[0], not `Cow`.

[0]: [https://doc.rust- lang.org/stable/std/rc/struct.Rc.html#metho...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/stable/std/rc/struct.Rc.html#method.make_mut)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And here I thought this was going to be something about enforcing some exclusivity of swift to apple devices...

<comment><USER8> With their recent attempt at patenting programming-language concepts, you'd be excused to think so. I thought the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not totally versed in Swift. In the example provided is it ambiguous because the closure captures `count` and count itself is being modified by the method calling the block?

I don't understand why this is an example of an unsafe operation. Wouldn't clearly defined behavior of closures clarify the "3 or 4" question?

<comment><USER10> > I don't understand why this is an example of an unsafe operation. Wouldn't > clearly defined behavior of closures clarify the "3 or 4" question?

I believe that it's possible to specify this, and that's basically the behavior we had before SE-0176 was implemented. The issue with this is that it was slower for a dubious benefit (the semantics are obscure and non-obvious), so it was decided that it's just better to disallow this and get the benefit of clear behavior and better optimization opportunities, at the cost of removing this somewhat uncommon and not-all-that-hard to-rewrite-for-clarity pattern.

<comment><USER11> > it was slower for a dubious benefit

Isn't this kind of arguable? The benefit is that it avoids the need to make unnecessary copies in some cases, as is basically acknowledged in the article:

> The exclusivity violation can be avoided by copying any values that need to > be available within the closure

Right? And in addition to the local cost of the extra copy, there's also the more ubiquitous cost of these run-time checks. Yes, there's the potential benefit of better optimization due to the non-aliasing guarantee, but I think it's far from clear that it's an overall performance win.

While I think it's reasonable to adopt a universal "exclusivity of mutable references" policy in order to achieve memory safety and address a fear of a (vaguely-defined) notion of "mutable state and action at a distance" (referred to in the article), particularly for a language like Swift, I think it would be improper to dismiss the associated costs, or even to imply that the costs are well understood at this point. Or to imply that this policy is, at this point, known to be an optimal solution for achieving memory (or any other kind of code) safety.

<comment><USER10> I'm going to refer you to the proposal, which explains the rationale behind the change better than I possibly could: [https://github.com/apple/swift- evolution/blob/master/proposa...](https://github.com/apple/swift- evolution/blob/master/proposals/0176-enforce-exclusive-access-to-memory.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm assuming that -Ounchecked also removes the runtime diagnostic?

<comment><USER12> Yes, it removes exclusivity checks and bounds checks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> neat. maybe by swift 10 they will have windows builds and i can check it out.

</comment><comment><USER14> How do you use swift on ubuntu

<comment><USER10> You should be able to download a toolchain from here for your version of Ubuntu and have it work: [https://swift.org/download/](https://swift.org/download/)</comment></comment>


The first "social network" of brains lets three people transmit thoughts - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612212/the-first-social-network-of-brains-lets-three-people-transmit-thoughts-to-each-others-heads/ <comment><USER2> 20 questions game: So yes-or-no binary signal of state.

and the sentence _proof of concept_</comment>


Bill Gates makes the jump to Windows Phone 7 - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2010/11/02/bill-gates-makes-the-jump-to-windows-phone-7/ <comment><USER2> It would be hugely ironic if he used an Android phone for that...</comment>


Johns Hopkins Coronavirus COVID-19 Dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 <comment><AUTHOR> I don't know about you, but the way I see it, the mortality rate is actually 3129 deaths / (3129 deaths + 41875 recoveries) = 7.0%</comment>


Searching for fast radio bursts from the Milky Way with low-cost radio receivers - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.01475 <comment><USER2> I don't see the cell phone idea working simply because the raw data from the radio receiver is not exposed to the user application. Similar for the FM radio in cell phones - all you really get is the demodulated and processed audio. Software defined radios have the best opportunity to work because they have direct access to the RF samples in the time or frequency domain. Unfortunately there is a cost associated with purchasing and running one, so the operators of the experimental data collectors would have to be volunteers willing to put in the resources. It's not as easy as installing an app, you need a piece of hardware running all the time and the data must be processed before uploading to the Internet.

<comment><USER3> Some Wi-Fi hardware does allow access to signal before demodulation, for debugging purposes or channel monitoring (e.g. [1]). But this is usually limited in some way (e.g. you can only get a limited number of samples or FFT bins).

The authors also talk about correlating such samples with GPS time with sub- microsecond precision. This is most likely impossible. GPS receiver is separate from the Wi-Fi interface and I doubt they share any kind of low-level synchronization in a smartphone.

[1] [https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/ath9k/spec...](https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/ath9k/spectral_scan)</comment></comment>


PaX Team: Intel Ivy Bridges' Supervisor Mode Access Prevention - <AUTHOR> http://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?t=3046&p=12101#p12101

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Intel implements UDEREF equivalent 6 years after PaX, PaX will make use of it on amd64 for improved performance.</comment>


Angry Interns: the pursuit of cake - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oenhbmaofkphcfnfclaenalmlgbijjol?hl=en-US This is an HTML5 strategy game I'm currently developing. <comment><AUTHOR> Maximize intern productivity with our patented intern management system(ims).</comment>


Introduction to Higher Order Functions - <AUTHOR> http://comp-phil.blogspot.com/2015/05/intro-to-higher-order-functions.html

<comment><USER2> Been using these for a long time but never realized that there's a technical term. Closure and callback functions are the terms that I know of about returning functions from and passing functions to other functions.</comment>