Ask HN: Is it ageist to judge an older applicant for lack of achievement? - <AUTHOR> So, this is a question that I've been pondering lately based on recent interviews. The position I am interviewing for is entry level for us, but not entry level overall. We look for 2+ years of experience for candidates. It is not unreasonable for a candidate with significantly more experience to apply for this position, though rarer (typical candidates have 2-7 years professional experience).
Is it ageist or unfair in some other way to judge a candidate with a dozen or more years of experience for not having progressed past the level of capability that we expect from people filling this role?
I try to be very conscious about making a hiring suggestion based solely on merit and suitability for the role, but I do not claim to be perfect.
On the one hand, it shouldn't matter if someone took two or twenty years of experience to get to where they are if they are both equally capable now.
Of course, we also look for people who have the potential to grow out of the position. It's hard to consider the person with twenty years of experience to be equally capable of continued development as the person with two.
It would not be unreasonable to make a career of this position, just moving up from $position_title_I to $position_title_II and so on, rising in seniority. I don't think we'd be satisfied with someone who was satisfied with that, though. <comment><USER2> The real question you should ask is "why is he still in this role after X years?" It is possible that he loves that role and doesn't want to transition out of it, in which case he could be a great hire. Or maybe he just doesn't want increased responsibility. Of course, it is also possible he just isn't competent enough to move up the ladder, and has been stuck as a result.

See if there are other areas in his life (hobbies, activities, etc) where he really excels. If he isn't fantastic at anything, you can probably assume limited competence.

</comment><comment><USER3> Advice to older people is to minimise the amount of experience they put on their resumes for some positions, to avoid being labled "over qualified".

Interviews are totally broken. All you can do is try to eliminate bias (and thus comply with the law), and try to avoid hiring obvious idiots. After that anyone you get is probably good enough, especially if you have a good on- boarding process.

</comment><comment><USER4> IF: You're hiring for capabilities, not length-of-experience THEN: Neither their age nor length-of-experience is relevant

If you're hiring for someone that can grow out of that role you're evaluating against different criteria. Not expanding capabilities is a result of many factors, though, not just their ability (or lack thereof) to grow.</comment>


Rip: Yes, I know sed can do this - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/icholy/rip <comment><USER2> Can I get a tl;dw? Having the key "what does this do" information in the middle of a long GIF makes it pretty painful to find...</comment>


Ask HN: New MacBook? - <AUTHOR> Its page was labeled as 'New' http://www.apple.com/macbook/ <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't watch the keynote, but the apple.com page labeled the MacBook as new. [http://www.apple.com/macbook/](http://www.apple.com/macbook/)

<comment><USER2> That was released earlier this year. Nothing new there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rumors has it they will come in October</comment>


Social-networking sites face new privacy battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/15/BASC1JERVI.DTL&tsp=1 <comment><USER2> The road to hellish user experience is paved with good intentions.

While I appreciate the senator's intent, this is a ham fisted approach to solving the problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good idea, impractical implementation.</comment>


'eyeDisk' USB drive secured with iris recognition reveals password in plain text - <AUTHOR> https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/eyedisk-hacking-the-unhackable-again/ <comment><USER2> This _unhackable_ USB drive has a camera and it check the iris pattern as well as a password before unlocking the storage.

USB drive doesn't have enough processing power so the software running at host implement the iris pattern recognition and authentication.

The problem is, the USB drive store the password and iris pattern value by plaintext and it's readable without unlocking.

Totally useless.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bionetrics are never going to be able to be used to directly produce a strong key, so it always reduces to a question of how secure is the enclave, and bugs in the pattern recognition.

In this case there was no Secure Enclave at all. If you do have a enclave you trust to keep a private key safe, my preference would always be to use a simple (not trivial) password/passcode and depend on strict rate limiting.

The only way to avoid a private key being stored in an enclave is to derive the key from a strong password. This avoids the whole class of key extraction attacks but, now there is a password that can be attacked offline.

If you combine a decent password with an online hardening / rate limiting system then I think you have something which stands a chance. But I'm building a commercial product in exactly this space, so I'm not entirely unbiased.

<comment><USER4> How is what you're building different from Apples fingerprint / facial recognition system?

<comment><USER3> It's not biometric at all, BlindHash is a way to protect passwords from offline attack. Today we have a service to protect passwords at rest (authentication). We are doing a closed beta now which pairs BlindHash with TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt to protected data at rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://spritesmods.com/?art=bioslimdisk](http://spritesmods.com/?art=bioslimdisk)

[http://spritesmods.com/?art=diskgenie](http://spritesmods.com/?art=diskgenie)

[http://spritesmods.com/?art=biostick](http://spritesmods.com/?art=biostick)

[http://spritesmods.com/?art=securehd](http://spritesmods.com/?art=securehd)

[http://spritesmods.com/?art=secustick](http://spritesmods.com/?art=secustick)

There's some patterns with 'secure USB storage', notably that none of them are anything besides a toy.

<comment><USER6> I mean to be fair all of those appear to be cheap junk. You would probably find better results with something from a reputable brand or that has undergone some kind of third party testing.

<comment><USER5> They're basically all exactly this though, no matter what you're paying this is generally what is underneath. Competent encryption in hardware is difficult, so everybody is doing it in software, and then why id the software hardware specific to begin with?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had that story long time ago. I've got A-DATA MyFlash FP1 stick with fingerprint unlock. Somehow it didn't work on Linux. I sniffed the USB and figured out that after fingerprint check it simply sends a fixed 3-byte command to the stick to switch to real storage instead of dummy storage. You don't even need the password to unlock it.

</comment><comment><USER8> > x86 is not my thing: I prefer efficient, well-designed machines code such as > ARM

shots fired

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h In fairness, I've never known anyone to describe x86 as anything but... idiosyncratic. Its not terrible, and it goes hand in hand with decades of unbroken backwards compatibility, but it really isn't the most elegant thing.

<comment><USER9> The original ARM is pretty wacky too. Not as wacky as x86, but not what I would call clean.

Thankfully, unlike x86, ARM's 64-bit ISA ditched the dumb parts and is very clean.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Intel did _try_ with Itanium, but... Well, decades of backwards compatibility, plus unfortunate design choices.

<comment><USER9> It makes me sad to think of what we could have had if Intel had built a 64-bit CPU with a clean, straightforward ISA and a compatibility mode for x86-64, instead of the monstrosity that was Iranian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah a kickstarter project. Why am I not surprised...

Still, the corolary of "the unsafest projects will be the ones with the most amount of overblown claims" seem to stand.

<comment><USER11> Traditional manufacturers of this kind of thing mess up all the time too, kickstarter isn't a very strong signal here IMHO

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's the Kickstarter page for this thing: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eyedisk/eyedisk- unhacka...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eyedisk/eyedisk-unhackable- usb-flash-drive)

</comment><comment><USER13> The original blog post with more details can be found here: [https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/eyedisk- hackin...](https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/eyedisk-hacking-the- unhackable-again/)

<comment><USER8> That's the same post?

<comment><USER11> link was changed</comment></comment></comment>


Who owns these gTLD companies? - <AUTHOR>

http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-strings<p>This page is full of bogus names like "Spring Falls", "Storm Orchard", and "Holly Hill". Who owns these companies? <comment><USER2> Those companies are usually Donuts Group companies. (www.donuts.co). If you look them up here:

[https://gtldresult.icann.org/application- result/applications...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/application- result/applicationstatus/viewstatus)

You'll see the contact listed has a donuts.co email address. For example, try .exchange

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like these companies may have been set up specifically to hide who owns them (sort of like what patent trolls do).

Here's some information about "Storm Orchard, LLC", incorporated in Delaware in 2012:

[http://www.bizapedia.com/de/STORM-ORCHARD- LLC.html](http://www.bizapedia.com/de/STORM-ORCHARD-LLC.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> That is why the campaign by Global Witness to end anonymous companies is so important.

It is really a bummer that ICANN accepts just any legal corporation. Without knowing who they really are or without disclosing this information to the public.

<comment><USER5> Why? Why is it that important that we know who owns those gTLDs?

<comment><USER4> For the same reason why it is important to know who owns the house you are are living in or the company for who you work. Or the company who runs a factory across town.

It is a question of accountability and also stability.

When you start a business on a domain and you rely on that domain it is important to know that this domain is well maintained. What if the company is giving your domain to someone else. And you can't do anything about it because the company is gone.

Top level domains are a key to the infrastructure of the internet, there should be transparency and accountability. Otherwise this market will fail.</comment></comment></comment>


Dow plummets 600 points after Trump orders US manufacturers to leave China - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/23/us-stocks-wall-street-monitors-speech-from-fed-chair-jerome-powell.html <comment><USER2> Point of order: Does the US president have authority to "order" US companies to move out of China?

(My instincts scream: no. At least not by tweeting...)

<comment><USER3> No he doesn't. It would require the law to change and he doesn't have that power. However he keeps increasing tariffs far enough I guess it's the same thing.

<comment><USER4> This seems like the most likely plan, since that's the only lever Trump can operate.

He could declare a 10,000% tariff on iPhones if he wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "plummet": Closed 25,628.90 -623.34 -2.37%

According to [http://www.dogsofthedow.com/histogram-m.htm](http://www.dogsofthedow.com/histogram-m.htm) "95% of the time the Dow has a daily change between ±2.1%; and 99% of the time the Dow has a daily change between ±3.2%."

</comment><comment><USER6> All of the indicators are flashing bright red for an incoming recession and furthering this pointless one-upmanship will just further speed things along. He's already increasing the tariffs even further and eventually things are gonna crash.

<comment><USER7> That is his game plan. Trade deficit complaints are all a ruse to constraint markets leading to resession and crash. Then his wealthy cronies can buy up stocks at a huge discount before the next president comes along and fixes everything.

<comment><USER8> He won't be re-elected if we have a recession. Note how he called the Fed chairman the enemy today for not lowering the discount window rate 100 basis points.

<comment><USER9> It's an interesting question whether there is any chance he could be re- elected.

The site fivethirtyeight.com has a page that shows approval polling of presidents since Truman overlaid with Trump. The only President significantly more unpopular than Trump at this point in their Presidency was Carter. The only Presidents who were roughly _as_ unpopular at this point, were Obama and Reagan, oddly enough, both of whom of course were re-elected.

But I think those facts fail to capture what is unique about Trump's polling. _Every_ President since Truman, excepting Trump, has had high points where they had well over 50% approval. Trump's polling is uniquely nearly flat since the beginning of his presidency. He's currently about 42% approve, 54% disapprove, and it's getting worse, but this is actually not the worst rating he's had - late 2017 was worse. In other words, there seems to be no trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The grammar and style of Trump's tweet puts me in mind of some Usenet folks, like maybe John Grubor (google "John Grubor medpot" to get a flavor). What's going on here?

<comment><USER11> Considering his popular support, his style of communication is likely very similar to those of his constituents (a large segment of the electorate).</comment></comment>


The FTC is investigating DNA firms like 23andMe and Ancestry over privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40580364/the-ftc-is-investigating-dna-firms-like-23andme-and-ancestry-over-privacy <comment><USER2> Good. Also, I find it unbelievable that both 23andMe and Ancestry still do not offer 2FA. What the hell are they thinking?

<comment><USER3> 2FA has nothing to do with user privacy</comment></comment>


Nintendo sells 2.4M Switch consoles worldwide in first month, above forecast - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/14/superdata-nintendo-sells-2-4-million-switch-consoles-worldwide-in-first-month/ <comment><USER2> It's amusing that Breath of the Wild has sold more than the system it runs on. Ars Technica had an article on that. [1] And it's not because of the Wii U version (those are counted separately).

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/why-zelda-breath- of-t...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/why-zelda-breath-of-the-wild- is-the-biggest-system-seller-in-history/)

<comment><USER3> Most likely theory, IMO: people preordered Zelda for the discount (BB and AMZN offer like 20 percent off MSRP), expecting to nab a Switch later, but later hasn't yet arrived. Based on ebay sales rates, maybe soonish.

<comment><USER4> two points of anecdotal evidence: i bought a special edition to preserve and a retail version that i'm playing. my brother-in-law bought a switch retail version but is playing a wii u digital download.

<comment><USER5> Preserve it for what exactly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Particularly impressive given that they still seem to be selling out instantly, so this is them being supply-constrained rather than meeting demand.

<comment><USER7> I check everyday, hoping that I can order one! Still no luck.

<comment><USER8> Nice little Python script I whipped up to poll Amazon Prime Now to get my Switch: [https://gist.github.com/bryanhelmig/3225bf42e5d2b8fb0cb4b720...](https://gist.github.com/bryanhelmig/3225bf42e5d2b8fb0cb4b720ac2d3c3b)

<comment><USER9> I've only done a little Python, so am not up on the finer points of the language, so a question if I may.

I'm a bit confused by the use of the

      if __name__ == "__main__":

construct in this script. My understanding of that construct was that it is true when Python is invoked directly on the containing file, and is false if the file is being invoked as a module loaded from something else.

In your script, the parts that are outside the "if __name__" construct do not appear to be things that would be useful for something else to load as a module. So my question is why aren't they inside the "if __name__" construct?

<comment><USER10> The Python idiom is to guard pretty much just the main() function; the Python package system does the job of keeping the rest of the details from leaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> to be the voice of reason here: botw is amazing. it's no surprise. if you played any of the franchise growing up, you prolly love it– zelda. botw takes that love and doubles you down.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am bullish on Nintendo and considering adding a position via over the counter (ADR) NTDOY. My concern is that they continue to have supply issues unable to ramp up production to meet demand. Perhaps this is intentional.

My friend just got a Switch and absolutely loves it. He has been playing Zelda nearly non-stop since he got it.

<comment><USER13> They probably allow themselve a threshold of demand over stock. Who would want storage costs and less needy customers :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having taken a look at a Switch, I'm a bit surprised that a brand new portable console has such a low resolution screen. If Nintendo is trying to compete with mobile phone gaming, wouldn't it be logical that they offer a better screen (or at the very least comparable with a mid-end phone)?

<comment><USER15> There's more to graphics than pixels - framerate, latency, color etc. And besides, there's more to gaming than graphics - notably, input/controls. That other stuff is important enough to make the Switch easily better than any higher-resolution phone for serious games.

<comment><USER16> I found myself mezmerized by a twitch stream on a computer 2 desks over today for about 3 minutes. I have good eyes but that's like palm pre resolution at that distance. Pixels don't matter as much as engaging game play, engaging graphics or interesting style, or story. Whatever argument you come up with I'll just counter with books and tetris.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hmmm it's probably because of Zelda!

Though subjectively the Switch isn't all that innovative like the Wii. Also, I do not see a ton of compelling games scheduled, as the next game is Super Mario Kart 8 which is a rehash from the Wii U.

Im hoping Microsoft's next console has some innovative features like their Illumiroom [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGGMv9RnJIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGGMv9RnJIA)

<comment><USER18> The form factor seems decently innovative to me anyways. This is definitely the most polished implementation of a console that travels from tv to handheld that I've owned.

<comment><USER19> The controllers seem pretty innovative to me too. They attach to the sides of the console for single player portable play, and can be detached to allow for stationary 2-player play.

If I was still a student that alone would be a killer feature for me, since I could bring it into school to play with friends without having to own multiple consoles between us.

I wasn't really a fan of the previous few generations of Nintendo consoles, but I do think they knocked it out of the park this time. The Switch is an marvelously designed piece of gaming hardware.</comment></comment></comment>


FCC panel wants to tax Internet-using businesses and give the money to ISPs - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/fcc-panel-wants-to-tax-internet-using-businesses-and-give-the-money-to-isps/ <comment><USER2> Tax funded, corporate owned - the best of both worlds :/

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of an interesting century-old maneuver ... government-created, corporate owned ... when the US created RCA after WW1 by using a 'national security' argument to force British-owned 'American Marconi' to sell to US citizens.

Which, to me, explains a lot about how RCA later treated later radio and TV pioneers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another disaster in the making. Just look at FUSF. It started at 6% and only applied to long distance calls. Now it's 18.3% and applies to all sorts of data services. The appetite for free money knows no bounds.

joe

</comment><comment><USER5> I feel that the most damning part of this suggested regulation is that it directly feeds into funds that already exist with no real evidence that the half a billion leaves us underfunded. There is also the idea that states/muni governments would make themselves less attractive for business to give that tax money to a subsidy fund... Instead of their local government monetary funds.

</comment><comment><USER6> So the fcc opposes regulation, unless it's taxes being paid to the carriers?

<comment><USER7> As far as I can tell, it wasn't Ajit Pai that suggested this tax - it was an advisory committee within the FCC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> they already pay for the service they use and are taxed on tha usage. This current FCC continues to prove they are terrible at regulation or logical conclusions.</comment>


PreciousPlastic – An Open Source Plastic Recycling Workshop - <AUTHOR> http://preciousplastic.com/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome. Are there any other projects like this out in the wild?

<comment><USER3> we are working on the same notion, but for textiles [1]. specifically for knitwear, we have designed a 3d-printable machine for unravelling the knit structure and processes for straightening, plying and spinning the yarn into a new raw material. we're documenting where we collect our source fiber and creating an audit trail for tracking the fiber back to its source via instagram [2].

totally in love with precious plastic. this project is so well documented, need to get some metal tools and build a shredder!

[1] [http://reunionyarn.com/learn](http://reunionyarn.com/learn) [2] [https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/reuniongeb202](https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/reuniongeb202)</comment></comment>


Nine Baffling Startup Names — Can You Guess What They Do?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2012/10/startup-names-chart-test/

<comment><USER2> Apple - An organic food producer

Target - An application that provides analytics for a website.

Unilever - A producer of mechanical parts

Oracle - Predictive software

Abercrombie and Fitch - A law firm

HSBC - A radio station or TV channel

Kongregate - Meeting room software

Cervelo - Espresso coffee brand

Acura - A brand of contact lenses

<comment><USER3> HSBC stands for Honk-Kong Shanghai Banking Company. At least that one is explicit.

<comment><USER2> You'd be surprised how many people I met in America that use TD Bank yet don't know that it's from Canada (Toronto Dominion).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Choosing 'descriptive' name for aa startup doesn't make much sense. First the best ones are already taken. Second: they often sound generic and uninspiring -- it'ss hard to build a brand with soul around that. Andd third: having a name which is descriptive can be a problem when you pivot or just evolve and extend your business.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hewlett Packard - Could be anything

Ford - Could be anything

IKEA - Could be anything

Kroger - Could be anything

Wal-mart - Could be anything

I don't think names matter so much as some folks seem to think.

</comment><comment><USER6> I still believe in buying a domain that relates to the business or search term, such as NoSQL. But that does limit if the company does something else or if the people do not actually know what NoSQL actually is!

</comment><comment><USER7> Have to say though, munch on me makes sense. Its suggesting that you eat out 'on' them, meaning you pay little or nothing (sometimes the case, not sure after buyout, they got worse)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wired - a producer of wires

<comment><USER9> It's actually a badass name, with roots in both traditional journalism and technology.

 _A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service_

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_services>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These startups got picked up and advertised. Mission accomplished.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do mine, do mine!

OVOZ</comment>


The dangers of news media speed - <AUTHOR> http://www.visionofearth.org/news/ben-harack/the-dangers-of-news-media-speed/

<comment><USER2> Not directly related to the speed of news but interesting reading is "Don't believe it! How lies become news" by Kitty Alexander, who was also involved with the fantastic documentary "Outfoxed".

It's my impression that people lump news and doctors into the same bunch: they are somehow infallible. Somehow they are always doing the right thing.

Well "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scrubs" pretty much ruined the medical industry for me :) I guess maybe Season 5 of "The Wire" does the same for mass media?</comment>


Brewers tasked with turning sewage into suds - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c6048d08a5e04adfa2c86421f51a8ef2/brewers-tasked-turning-sewage-suds

<comment><USER2> This is clean water that used to be waste water but has been treated? What's the issue.

In medieval times people used to brew with water that actually contained waste in order to sanitise it, the yeast killing the bacterea. Then everyone would drink it, including the children.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is mention of brewing duck pond water (I believe in Davis) in the documentary "How Beer Saved the World". A fun and informative 45min.

[https://vimeo.com/23278902](https://vimeo.com/23278902)</comment>


Want to Know Why The TSA Needs to "Touch Your Junk?" Sorry, That's Classified - <AUTHOR> http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/want-to-know-why-the-tsa-needs-to-touch-your-junk-sorry-thats-classified/

<comment><USER2> Is it me or has there been a big increase in the amount of things that are "secret" from public eyes?

I understand things like intelligence about locations of military personnel being sensitive. But policies for domestic security agencies, I don't get it. Why?

There always seems to be a strong correlation between immoral acts and secrecy. I'm curious if questionable morality is a greater influence these days for the application of state secret laws than actual security.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason why, as far as the TSA goes, is that the data for the efficacy of their systems is abysmal. Rep. John Mica was quoted as saying, "The failure rate (for body scanning equipment) is classified but it would absolutely knock your socks off."

In other words, if the public (and most of Congress -- Mica only knows because he's on the right committee) knew that the TSA misses somewhere in the range of 25% - 75%, depending on the test, of threat items brought through by covert inspectors, it would be obvious (well, more obvious than it already is) that this huge expenditure is an utter waste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I will not fly as long as they can look at or touch my genitals. Why do flyers tolerate such an invasion? I'd like to travel but I refuse to put myself or my family through this kind of treatment. Are there private flight services that allow me to skirt the TSA gestapo? Can they get me from the middle of the USA to Hawaii and Japan and back again without any invasions of privacy?

<comment><USER4> Sure, if you're willing to pay for it. For intercontinental flights you'd need to charter something like a Gulfstream IV which runs about $6,000 per flight hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My guess is that they're too embarrassed to just say "we think a terrorist might sew a grenade inside his scrotum."

<comment><USER6> My guess is that some administrator somewhere thought that this would force compliance with the scanning machines.

<comment><USER7> That's what happened to me. When they first came out I always looked for a line without the scanner, or when I wasn't able to, I'd opt-out of the scanner. At least, that was until I got one of the new intrusive pat downs. I know go through the scanner because I'd rather someone _look_ at my naked than _touch_ me.

My wife recently had a walking cast on and wasn't able to go through the scanner so they gave her a pat down. She told me it felt humiliating.

Why do we let out government touch our private parts without probably cause? It's insanity.

<comment><USER8> In all honesty, I prefer the pat-down. Better to be a brief and unpleasant memory in the mind of some TSA agent than to be a permanent body scan stored in a database somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe ask that guy in New Mexico...</comment>


Actors: Object Orientation Evolved - <AUTHOR> http://gojko.net/2010/09/13/actors-object-orientation-evolved/

<comment><USER2> I'm currently working on a pet project that I think could benefit greatly from this. Anyone got any links on how to implement it? Ruby is my target language, so anything directly about Ruby and Actors is appreciated, but any language will do.

Edit:

I found these, but I'm looking for something more concrete.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model>

[http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/OOP/Act-1/Concurr...](http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/OOP/Act-1/Concurrent- OOP-in-Act-1.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't used this library, but google says it's ruby actors: <http://revactor.org/>

<comment><USER2> Thanks.

It looks more complicated than I'd feared. And Revactor hasn't been updated since 2009 and the docs say it's incomplete.

<comment><AUTHOR> the nice thing about scala and erlang is that you get everything (threading, messaging, remoting, process control) with the framework, so all your code needs to be concerned about is the business functionality.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: I've written a script to Tweet all the stories from the HN homepage - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/HNTweets

<comment><USER2> Nice initiative, but the implementation makes it seem like only a marginal improvement over <http://twitter.com/NewsYcombinator> \- There are too many quick-voted two-pointers that pop onto the front page for just a bit.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is also @hkrnws ( <http://twitter.com/hkrnws> ). It posts 1 update every 10 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's neat... does it work with moderation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it uses the RSS feed. What do you mean exactly?

<comment><USER4> If a NH moderator deletes a news post for any reason (spam for example) does it also get removed from your Twitter feed?

It's not a criticism, I just wondered.</comment></comment></comment>


EditorConfig - <AUTHOR> http://editorconfig.org/ <comment><USER2> > For Windows Users: To create an .editorconfig file within Windows Explorer, > you need to create a file named .editorconfig., which Windows Explorer will > automatically rename to .editorconfig

What a neat trick I had no idea. Been renaming those files on the cli all this time.

On a related note: Why has it gone the way that _I_ must look at code _your_ way. Is there no chance of decoupling the presentation with logic like the web has long preached us (not saying that worked). Tabs to spaces shouldn't be some messy commit regardless of your preference on the matter.

Anyway, nice project. I understand your search preferences up from the project root not down from my preferences because it's controlling other people's coding standards.

<comment><USER3> I've often wondered this. I find columnar alignment of key:value pairs (in CSS, dictionaries, etc) to be much easier to read, but I find that I'm an outlier because most people get upset when they see whitespace changes in a diff. (FWIW, `?w=0` will hide whitespace changes on GitHub).

It would be rad if an editor like Sublime or Atom understood columns and displayed code that way without needing to reindent everything in the file every time you add a longer key.

<comment><USER4> I find it more readable up until the difference in key lengths becomes larger (font and text-decoration for example), at which point I have trouble matching the values with the shorter names.

<comment><USER5> Just right-align your property names. I know that sounds ridiculous, but give it a go:

      body {
                 font-size:  16px;
             margin-bottom: 100px;
               padding-top:  40px;
                     color: rgb(100, 100, 100);
          background-color: rgb( 90, 255,   3);
      }

<comment><USER2> Oh way better yes. I sometimes like to indent dependent properties too:

      body {
        width: 400px;
        margin: 20px;
        position: absolute;
            bottom: 0;
            right: 0;
        background: #ccc;
      }

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who don't know, github recently started supporting editorconfig[0] files in repos, which means that if your repo has an editorconfig, it will be respected by github in the online code viewer. Without an editorconfig file, the default indentation on github is 8 spaces, because that's how pre tags work. See the link for more info.

[0]: [https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/170#issuecomment-137...](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/170#issuecomment-137993149)

</comment><comment><USER7> For more see the numerous older discussions of this [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=editorconfig.org](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=editorconfig.org)

<comment><USER8> HN has a direct link to this feature now. There's a link under the story labeled "past." Although it goes to the official search instead of your link. Cheers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice. I'm addicted to automatically running `gofmt` on .go file saves.

Now I'm crazy sensitive to whitespace and formatting discrepancies that show up in .js or .css files from different environments. It seems like EditorConfig has a shot at improving this, particularly since GitHub supports it.

Next step, strict linters/formatters for all languages.

Edit: Based on other comments pointing to the Javascript standard style project, I found this to auto format .js files in Sublime Text:

[https://packagecontrol.io/packages/StandardFormat](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/StandardFormat)

</comment><comment><USER10> The IDE has now become an abstraction. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wasn't there an old standard for text format strings that could be placed at the end of source files that would be understood by Vim and Emacs? I never used it, but this reminds me of it.

<comment><USER12> Vim has modeline[0]. Is that what you meant?

[0] [http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#%27modeli...](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#%27modeline%27)

<comment><USER13> And the Emacs equivalent, file-local variables[0]. However, these are editor- specific, as far as I'm aware, although Python was able to extract the commonalities between them to support file encoding in PEP 0263[1].

[0] [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Spe...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Specifying- File-Variables.html#Specifying-File-Variables)

[1] [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could this be extended to keyboard shortcuts? I always feel like the effort I have to do setting the shortcuts on a new IDE is redundant, and shared with a lot of people

<comment><USER15> Um... No thank you?

pd: the last thing I want as a developer is a developer on Windows overriding my OSX keyboard shortcuts (or viceversa).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> yes, because coding style can be reduced to charset and indentation choice

<comment><USER17> No, but ignoring these basic project conventions can lead to issues when another developer tries to work with the file, specifically around charset and line endings.

<comment><USER17> editorconfig only defines the following properties:

      charset
      indent_style
      indent_size
      tab_width
      end_of_line
      trim_trailing_whitespace
      insert_final_newline

These are all sensible things to enforce (with the exception of tab_width, which is actually a display preference). Subjectively, other things are mostly flexible.

<comment><USER18> There are more properties listed in the complete list (link is above the short list), mostly about parenthesis and braces. I guess they aren't listed in the main page because they are language-specific.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ads and articles from UnixWorld Magazine (1992-1996) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sunhelp.org/unixworld/ <comment><USER2> The first picture I clicked into (<http://www.sunhelp.org/unixworld/coherent.jpg>) is an ad for Coherent Unix, which was a commercial Unix clone sold in the '80s and '90s, by Mark Williams Company in Northbrook, IL.

I look them up to see what they're up to and, of course, they are no longer in operation. Interestingly enough, it was owned by a man named Robert Swartz, who just happened to be the father of one Aaron Swartz. What coincidence.

(Wikipedia page here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company>)

<comment><USER3> Wow, I never knew that, small world. I have very fond memories of Coherent. I split the license cost (a whopping $99 bucks) with a buddy, both of us making near-minimum wage as bench techs for a used computer shop in Atlanta (which, much to my shock is still in business today). A few months later I scraped together enough money to pick up a used Sun 3/60 running Sun OS (and shortly after that, moved to an early version of Slackware), but Coherent will always be my _first_ Unix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, Bill here, owner of sunhelp.org. My own site is the last thing I expected to see on HN this morning. :)

<comment><USER4> (... and I just put up a nicer index page for this content)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article ('Steve-Jobs-UW041993.pdf') on Next's move to software-only is really interesting.

<comment><USER6> It is. Personally, I think the analysts were wrong and Next should have continued with the Cube and the Station. They just should have cut down on profit margins slightly to accumulate more sales, and then return the margins to normal after the device became popular.

The iMac is so popular now, and it's a closed system as well. Granted, the world is quite different now than it was in 1995, but they could have pulled it off.

I'm using GNUstep on my Linux box, and the software behind Next was 20, perhaps 30 years ahead of its time. If you compare it to OS X, you'll see that barely anything has changed besides a few graphical updates and a few nifty utilities such as Notification Center and Spotlight.

It was a great system. But keeping the hardware and software integrated might have allowed the company to keep its true vision intact. They only needed to cut back on the style a bit.

<comment><USER7> A sentiment that several Apple employees have voiced is:

 _NeXT acquired Apple for negative -$400M_

That says it all, I think. Apple today is more like a successful NeXT than it is like Apple of the 90s.

<comment><USER6> I don't think I share your sentiment. Apple has always been a consumer- oriented company, whereas NeXT was oriented towards business, educational, and professional use.

Apple is still a consumer electronics company, not a professional one. Whatever pro products they used to sell are now obsolete and they don't seem keen on updating them. The only thing that Apple computers share with NeXT machines is the operating system.

<comment><USER8> The MacBook Pro line is still quite popular with professionals, especially developers. With the retina display on the 15inch, it appears to be the best option for a professional laptop available.

Is this different from the kinds of 'pro products' you are referring to?

<comment><USER6> Well, really, a professional desktop is what they're missing, and features in OS X that may have been asking for, such as the latest version of OpenGL, ZFS or a suitable replacement, and better virtual desktop/window management that was crippled with 10.7.

It seems as if all "improvements" to OS X are for consumers and "power users," such as Notification Center, Mission Control, porting of iOS apps over to the desktop, etc. There's been no major breakthrough since FileVault 2 was announced, and usability has drastically dropped since 10.6 in favor of kitsch like the stitched iOS apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple should have kept A/UX back in the day, instead of dumping it.

I only managed to see one system live at an exhibition back in 1994.

Has anyone used it back then?

<comment><USER10> I bought one of Apple's first webservers, which used A/UX. It wasn't a really great Unix compared to some others available at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The SGI Indy one is worth looking at if only for the O'Reilly media ad on the second page. Some things change, some stay the same.

<comment><USER12> The SGI Indy was the first Unix system I lusted after. They ran a magazine ad showing off the _back_ , with the tagline "Any Port in a Storm".

Not too many computing experiences were more pleasurable than the first time I walked into an MIT computer lab as an incoming freshman and found myself face- to-face with an Indy: Video camera, Jurassic Park file browser and all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> OMG, I still have my coherent 3,5"s somewhere... loved it on my superbeefy 386sx</comment>


My review of Dell XPS 15 as a developer laptop - <AUTHOR> https://peteris.rocks/blog/my-dell-xps-15-review/ <comment><USER2> I would encourage people to consider buying business laptops. In my experience many developers don't even consider business laptops and only buy consumer devices.

Business laptops have the following advantages over consumer laptops: \- they're much more reliable \- better support \- a lot fewer problems with drivers and other incompatibilities \- they are designed for work, which means you will have fewer problems with things like virtualization \- generally speaking, the keyboard and the track-pad will be better

And the good thing is that some of the disadvantages of business laptops like size and bulkiness have also disappeared. You can now find business ultra- books that look good and work well.

<comment><USER3> I am not sure XPS is a business laptop. For enterprise there is Latitude line, with more ports and higher price tag.

But I am not sure the price is worth it. XPS is very good.

[http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/84/campaigns/xps-vs- latitude...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/84/campaigns/xps-vs-latitude-slg)

<comment><USER4> The Dell Latitude 13 (7370) is the business version of the XPS 13 [1] [2], although for some strange reason Dell decided to swap the Core i5 and i7 processors in the XPS for Core M5 or M7 CPUs.

[1] [http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/latitude-13-7370-laptop/pd](http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/latitude-13-7370-laptop/pd)

[2] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10720212/dell- latitude-13-w...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10720212/dell- latitude-13-windows-laptop-ces-2016)

<comment><USER5> If I had to guess, it's because they're betting that for business users buying an ultrabook-style laptop, the battery life you gain with the M-series is more advantageous than the extra processing power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad people are doing reviews of laptops from developer perspectives.

It amazes me that it's 2016 and none of the windows based laptop makes have come out with anything that approaches the macbook pro. Microsoft seem closest with their surface book line, but that seems beset by driver issues, and Razer might have something with their Blade series, but that doesn't seem to be available in the UK 3 or 4 years on from launch. ASUS also seem close but again beset by a few odd build quality issues.

If I knew anything at all about this kind of thing i'd be tempted to do a kickstarter to fund the development of a quality developer laptop that was windows/*nix based that aped the macbook pro as much as possible.

<comment><USER7> A kickstarter to compete against Apple on their MBP? Yep, can confirm you don't know anything...

<comment><USER6> up voting for constructive feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >> but the problem is that this laptop can wake up randomly and if it's in your bag it can overheat. And there is no way to tell if it's on.

Deal-breaker, right there. I had a hard enough time with a previous dell/ubuntu combo pulling this trick and roasting itself alive in my bag, and I've no desire to repeat.

<comment><USER9> It also happens on Windows 10 on my XPS 13. I've been blaming Microsoft for it but I'm not too sure if Dell is involved now.

<comment><USER10> My MacBook does this all the time when using Parallels. That, or it hard- crashes.

<comment><USER11> I had the same problem with my trusty eeepc running debian wheezy. It got fixed at some point though since it hasn't happened in years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Laptops in this price range should not have coil whine, electric buzzing sounds or screen flicker. I would've returned it immediately.

I have to use a very expensive HP Z-Book for work with a power adapter that has a loud coil whine. I've fixed it by not using the power adapter and only plugging it in when I'm away for lunch or on the toilet.

<comment><USER13> yes, this is absolutely not acceptable for a real work laptop in 2016.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My employer previously supplied me with a Lenovo 440s, with a low res (1440x900) display, a dual core i5, and an inability to power the 4K monitor I had at home above 30hz, that I throughly despised. When I moved over to a new team I got given my current rMBP, which I enjoy considerably more.

I think that moving forwards an Apple laptop is going to be a hard requirement before I work for an organisation. It's not that other companies don't make _good_ laptops, it's that Apple doesn't make _bad_ laptops, so I know if the company has a policy of buying them I'm guaranteed to get something good, instead of the POS Lenovo that the IT department bought.

<comment><USER15> You could just require your employers to spend as much on a ThinkPad as they'd spend on your Macbook and get a much better machine, imo. I'd work with a ThinkPad for the keyboard alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think this is a perfect advertisement for a MacBook (Pro). When I buy a computer (for business) I want it to just work and continue to work for years and years. Not having to deal with things like coil whine and screen flicker are extremely good reasons to purchase an Apple product. I've been a Mac user for years and I didn't even know what coil whine was and had to look it up. Sure, Apple products have their flaws, but they generally don't force you to deal with electronic buzzing sounds coming from the graphics drivers and the computer frying itself on the way to work.

Building a computer to play with and learn from is great. But when you have to get work done, it pays to get the best. Spending time fooling around with problems that shouldn't be there in the first place is a time & money waste.

<comment> vladimir-y It's easy to explain why MacBooks work well and have a decent battery life. Because Apple has a very limited and predefined line of machines and in that situation it's not a problem to polish OS to work well with a limited line of devices.

<comment><USER17> For what it's worth, I got an MBP from work and it's power supply has an annoying coil whine/hum. I've looked online and it is common enough I haven't bothered to ask for a replacement. Quality issues like that exist among all manufacturers. Likewise with the software side. OSX still has bugs and I still waste time working around behaviors like in Windows or Linux.

There are definitely benefits to it but there are drawbacks too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a 9530 model of the XPS 15 from late 2013. It's the model immediately previous to this one (I think). It also has the coil whine problem, but only when the charger is plugged in and the battery is at 100%. It also developed a small screen glitch after about a year - but I can't rule out damage by myself or someone in my house as it was stepped on, but full weight wasn't put on it.

The touchpad/clickpad/whatever drivers have been a challenge since day one. I've learned how to customize the Windows registry settings to make it mostly cooperate with what I want and they were mostly fixed by the time Windows 10 was released.

I've actually thought the device itself has been a pretty good performer, battery life is not awful but not great, and mechanically it's pretty durable. The screen is pretty amazing (I have the first slightly less than 4k IGZO panel which I run at 1920x1080).

My biggest complaint is the lack of dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys. But this is a problem on pretty much every laptop made with chicklet style keyboard and it is SO STUPID.

I was considering the new XPS 15 since mine is now three years old and I have the screen glitch, but the fact that they haven't fixed the coil whine problem shows me they just don't care. (That said I've read that not everyone reports this problem.)

I've generally had good luck with the Dell Latitudes though screen quality can be a big variable from model to model and year to year. I've also looked hard at their Precision line from time to time.

I do nearly all my programming on a desktop with a real keyboard. My biggest gripe using a laptop for programming is the lack of the home/end/pgup/pgdn keys and numpad on most models.

<comment><USER19> I bought this laptop too and spent literally probably 12+ hours making the track pad work how I wanted but never got it there. Wound up returning it. Will be buying my first MacBook instead pretty soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I own the Dell XPS 15 FHD and have experienced same issues. However, mostly I do not notice them. Have not experienced the random wakeups.

Another issue is the crappy broadcom wifi card that shipped with it. Wifi connection would just randomly disappear and only return after multiple retry/reboot combinations. Replaced it with an intel card and haven't had any problems since.

I do like the laptop but do not believe these problems should exist on a laptop with such a high pricetag.

<comment><USER21> You'd think they could build a laptop wifi card that didn't totally suck, but I've been through a half-dozen different laptops, work and personal, over the years, and they are all terrible.

<comment><USER22> I had the same problem for years until I switched to MacBooks

<comment><USER23> Which use broadcom exclusively. Wanted to try linux on my macbook once. All was well, except that dreaded Broadcom Wifi. Apparently broadcom gives big middle finger when it comes to truly open source drivers. C'mon broadcom.. it's 2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As stupid as it may sound, I really dislike laptops with 16:9 screens. That is why, together with other small things such as build quality, that I cannot seem to find anything better than Macbooks to fit my taste..

<comment><USER25> Take a look at the Surface Book.

It's the most impressive laptop I've ever used. Great 3:2 screen, excellent build quality, a real touchscreen (i.e., multitouch, pen support with pressure, etc), MacBook-tier trackpad. Convertible tablet mode is far more useful than I anticipated and is nice for showing off. The new Linux subsystem is still a bit buggy but is very impressive (I was able to compile and run emacs with a GUI as if I was running Ubuntu natively, for example).

<comment><USER26> Which model/options did you select? And the machine is coming on on a year old, are there rumors of an update/2nd generation?

Also it's still limited to 16GB RAM on the upper end right?

<comment><USER25> I have the i5 256GB/8GB model with discrete Nvidia GPU in the base (very handy for photography / light gaming). Haven't had issues with RAM although I rarely need to run VMs, and I have a SD adapter in the base to expand the storage for TV and films and so on.

The top model has an i7 and 512GB/16GB (same dGPU). It was about EUR1000 more if I recall correctly, not worth it to me.

Not sure about hardware refresh. I've seen rumours around that they might hold off for Intel's Kaby Lake parts which would mean 2017, but who knows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> And this is why people are wrong when they say Apple Macbooks are overpriced and you can get the equivalent or better laptop for a cheaper price.

Yes, you can get something with the exact same hardware specs for cheaper, but when you also consider size, weight, battery life, high-quality trackpad and other components, there are very few products that compare - and those that do are at the same or higher price level.

</comment><comment><USER28> I tried an XPS15 and gave it up after 2 months.

1) Constant problems with Broadcom wireles. Supposedly they employ someone to work on Linux drivers but I never heard back from them.

2) As has been mentioned HiDpi support in Linux is not good, I ended up using 1920x1080 anyways.

3) Defects. I did not have coil buzz, but accidentally shaking the laptop too hard (e.g. in one's bag, or tapping the bottom) would cause screen/gpu to glitch and require a hard restart.

4) Dual video support on Linux is also quite poor. In practice running Bumblebee gave only marginal improvements.

Compared to a MacBook Pro: build quality is worse, it is heavier, battery is worse, wifi problems as mentioned. I would stay away from any Dell products in the future.

<comment><USER29> Nit: the XPS15 is lighter than the 15" Retina MBP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've gone through 2 generations of XPS laptops. The build quality has just never been there. The casing is flimsy. The battery life degrades significantly after 6 months. The charger cord falls out of the charger port. They also seem to overheat and are generally noisy. However, with all of this being said I keep coming back to XPS because, until recently, they were the best looking windows laptops which still perform quit well. I know Lenovos are great but they look like bricks. My current XPS 15 is literally falling apart after 3 years of use and I'm slowly bringing myself to buy a MBP.

<comment><USER31> You may want to look into Alienware - they tend to have a way better build quality than the Dell machines, and you can get better bang for your buck than typical 'workstation' builds for laptops. I'm not sure how well their smaller form factors are, as I've always gone big - but I've used various Dell and Lenovo 'workstation' laptops and I will be sticking with Alienware for the foreseeable future.

Edit: Also, my use case tends to be database development, data analysis, and virtualization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> One of the things I look for is build quality. I picked up an HP Spectre x360[1]. It plays rough with other laptops. I had my plastic-cased Lenovo in the same bag - it came out with battle wounds.

In general I have found that laptops are generally 'fast enough' for the dev I'm doing and creature comforts such as battery life, keyboard, screen, and case quality are far more important.

[1] [http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptops/spectre-x360-211501-- 1...](http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptops/spectre-x360-211501--1#)!

</comment><comment><USER33> I bought a thin gaming laptop last year (in my case a razer blade, but there are several similar laptops from other manufacturers available now) and honestly it's one of the best development laptops I've had (compared to the Thinkpads and MBPs I've had from work). Plenty of CPU and memory, and a nice screen, and I find that the keyboards on gaming laptops are more comfortable than a lot of other laptops these days).

<comment><USER34> Agreed. For my use I don't need particularly light laptop, or long battery life so I choose gaming laptops too. Simply, because they are packed with the most powerful hardware.

This is my favorite right now: [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-G501VW- FY081T-Notebook-Rev...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-G501VW- FY081T-Notebook-Review.163403.0.html) Sadly, the last time I checked it didn't sell in my country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> If people here are interested in Linux and are not convinced about the Dell XPS developer model, check out their precision models:

[http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux- lapt...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux- laptop?c=us&l=en&s=biz)

I am using a previous generation model (Precision M3800) and am quite happy with it so far. I get ~4 hours of battery on Linux. This includes a lot of browsing, watching a few videos. I also have the ability to get a higher capacity battery (from 60Whr to 90Whr) in the future. It is also quite easy to take apart and upgrade any internals you want.

</comment><comment><USER36> I use mine with linux (Ubuntu Mate + xmonad) and so far I like it (as a disclaimer, the company bought it, not me personally).

What I did so far:

      - updated all the firmware to the latest (thunderbolt has a separate firmware)
      - bumblebee automatically disables the nvidia gpu on startup (i don't need the extra power or power draw)

I run in 1080p on the 4k screen, which is kind of sad, but the hidpi support just isn't there yet. Gnome3+ might have better support but can't replace the WM for xmonad in those variants.

I used to have the first XPS13 model with linux support officially from dell and this laptop is just as good and even better due to better hardware. Slightly larger and heavier but not an issue for me.

Palm detection support is ass and might have to look into it more as it's driving me crazy. There is also some firmware bug where the screen won't start after sleep.

With proper hidpi support and remaining firmware fixes from dell this will be a nice laptop even with linux.

<comment><USER37> That's my main issue with Linux, hardware support is always a couple of years behind. Although at some point it catches up and probably surpasses Windows (I can't stand using my touchpad with the official ASUS drivers), this limbo period with less than stellar support is a PITA.

It sucks that you have to carry around the extra weight of an NVidia GPU that's never used though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> XPS15 is not a good choice for developer. I went with a Precision 7510, which is more massive, but better in a lot of aspects.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you are considering the XPS 15, you might also look at the E7470. I have been using one of these as my primary machine for several months now and have been quite impressed. The high-DPI display is fantastic, it's built like a tank, and I've had no compatibility issues whatsoever after a firmware upgrade. Moreover, it runs at a reasonable temperature and I can get 7 hours out of the battery if careful (`killall -STOP firefox` is a must, unfortunately).

The only minor annoyance was the lack of driver support for the Alps touchpad hardware. Thankfully, after poking and prodding enough people I was able to get specifications and implement driver support. I do wish that Dell, et al would be more proactive in pushing their vendors to merge driver support but oh well.

All-in-all, I'm very pleased with the machine.

</comment><comment><USER23> I felt horrible when I bought a macbook air 4 years ago. "What have i done, I sold out, I should've bought a lenovo and put linux on it -- which all the hackers do as well."

FFWD to today, I have a quiet laptop. Doesn't flicker on white background when dimmed 30%. Doesn't squeak anywhere. Doesn't wake up randomly. The keyboard is fine. Is easy to open. Fans are not spinning when charging. No coil whine, this shit still happens? Only thing in four years that broke was the battery. Bought a new one for €40.

Thanks for sharing the experience though, seems like I still have to stick to Apple for a while for my mobile computing. Unfortunately it comes with this horrible window manager and dumbed down desktop. That said, the cons list of the XPS15 is more than enough reason to cope with OSX.

<comment> vladimir-y Have you tried to put Linux on your macbook?

<comment><USER23> Well yes, and failed because of one thing. The irritating broadcom wifi. I tried it on a Windows laptop as well recently. Not a great time with secure boot with bios/UEFI which do not have support for different OSs as a usecase

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've considered buying a Yoga 710, its borderline Mac with a screen small but big enough for my Web dev / GUI work. Marketed as a premium ultrabook - It had all the necessary specs, very light, backlit keyboard, great screen, gpu and battery life.

But it failed at future-proofing, no USB Type C connector. At the price range £750-800 I would expect a premium laptop to have one. Seeing cheaper sub £500 laptops are equip with them.

I plug into Ethernet and need to expand at work, but this is where it stopped for me.

I've had two past terrible experiences with Dell so I beg myself not to make the same mistake when I see something irresistible or too good to be true. Still searching for good dev machine. I may wait a while until Lenovo announces their new line up for 7th Gen Intel but that could be nearer to 2017.

</comment><comment><USER41> Been in the market looking for a good replacement to my old thinkpad, but I don't know if people have noticed, most laptops today cannot be upgraded for RAM and in some cases even the HDD/SSD and batteries are soldered on to the board. Add to it, keyboards seem to come down a few notches in terms of quality.

So, earlier my laptops have typically been with me for nearly 6 years each, these days, with the constant upgrades it feels like Iam buying a mobile phone that is sealed shut and demands an upgrade every 2 years. I've now stopped updating OSes as a result of the slowdowns I see everytime I upgrade the OS.

</comment><comment><USER10> For the love of everything that is good, if you buy this laptop, go for the 4k screen. It's beautiful.

It's a big laptop, you'll use it on a desk, so the battery life is fine.

I use my XPS 9550 for work and carry around a MBP13 for email / reading / surfing.

The biggest problem with the 9550 by far is the keyboard. The MBP keyboard is amazing in comparison. However it is a laptop keyboard, I have yet to encounter a good one (old Thinkpads come the closest). Just buy a decent mechanical keyboard and plug it in.

<comment><USER42> The Dell XPS laptops have a reputation for being good to use with Linux, but I read somewhere else that Linux doesn't handle 4K very well yet. Apparently, the UI elements look tiny because they don't scale. Any chance you've tried it, and can comment?

<comment><USER43> I can confirm. Linux on HiDPI still has a lot of scaling issues that OSX and Windows does not - OSX is far superior here when it comes to handling their "retina" display.

On my 1440p 23" desktop, things seem to render just fine. On my 11" lenovo helix and on my 15" macbook pro (while running linux), it's definitely noticeable.

I mainly use either Gnome or MATE desktop on Ubuntu. MATE seems to handle scaling the desktop elements better than straight Gnome. But it's still a bit off.

The worst part is browsing the web. Firefox has relatively decent HiDPI support these days, but Chrome on Linux is just terrible. A site like Facebook on Chrome shows the newsfeed as this 3" wide centered column, and you have massive white space on the left and right of it. But reboot into Windows and they make that column much wider and easier to read. On imgur on chrome/linux, I find most of the images are "too tall". If I'm watching an animated gif, I find that one edge is vertically outside of my viewport.

Your only fixes is to change the scaling. As you do this, you start to lose the advantages of the higher resolution:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911509/how-to-make-linuxs- de...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911509/how-to-make-linuxs-desktop-look- good-on-high-resolution-displays.html)

Ultimately, things are still usable, video playback is fantastic, but most of the applications really need to improve their Ux on high resolution screens under Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Slightly off-topic:

Do people really notice coil whine that much? When I built my PC last year with a 970 GTX every review I read mentioned the horrible coil whine. I don't notice it at all. I also helped build my roommates computer with the same 970 GTX and I didn't notice the coil whine at all on that one either. It's possible that both those cards were "lucky" but it seems like literally every single 970 GTX review mentioned coil whine and I have yet to notice it.

<comment><USER45> It'd be a deal breaker to me. It's one thing to have it on a desktop machine that sits under your desk and probably has a fan going at all times. Very different to have it in a laptop that you're using a few feet from your head and where the fan doesn't run unless under load. I had a Dell with coil whine, and if I was using it in the library or at home that was all I could hear.

<comment><USER46> Is it possible to dope the coil with something to damp out the whining? I have an old Lenovo that has this, and the noise seems to vary depending on what's onscreen. It can be very annoying.

<comment><USER47> Manufacturers often apply some goopy glue on top of inductors to damp out some of the noise, like this: [http://i.stack.imgur.com/144ui.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/144ui.png)

<comment><USER46> Yeah, I've done this myself when building switching power supplies. I guess there's no reason not to tray silicone or nail varnish on noise graphics cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> saint-loup This laptop model have sometimes problems with sleep/wake but your mileage may vary, widely. I had to return mine because it wouldn't wake from deep sleep on battery, sometimes even after trying a hard reset. No problem with the second unit I got.

I confirm there's sometimes a slight squeak when I press the left of the spacebar but it's hardly a dealbreaker.

So overall I'm very happy with it: gorgeous 4k screen, reasonably powerful dedicated GPU, firm keyboard with enough key travel.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm really happy with my Dell XPS 13 (9350). I'm running arch linux on it with herbstluftwm as my window manager. There are some problems with waking up my screen sometimes (I still haven't figured out why, though) sometimes but most of the time everything works fine and I would definitely buy it again. I replaced the broadcom wifi chip with a Intel one (I'd have to look up which chip I ended up using). That was definitely worth it.

</comment><comment><USER49> I got Dell XPS 13 a year and a half ago that had similar problems. Also a problem with the audio jack - buzzing noise whenever you plugged in headphones. I mainly use Ubuntu, but the problems were on Windows, too. I returned it and got a Lenovo Yoga Thinkpad 14 which has been great, except I broke the headphone jack on it somehow (not laptop's fault).

</comment><comment><USER13> I know this Dell XPS laptops... their black surface on and around the keyboard and mousepad will look very greasy over time. Maybe it's a problem on every black surface laptop. On first sight macs don't look like this (although they can be greasy too... but you don't see it immediately).

</comment><comment><USER50> \- no home/end keys \- tiny arrow keys

These two points are enough for me to immediately dismiss a laptop. Especially the home / end keys are vital when writing code (for me at least)

<comment><USER36> Dell actually has the fn modifier which works with the arrow keys to create pgup/dn and home/end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I really wanted this to be a shining review. I've been looking for a daily use linux laptop and the XPS15 was at the top of my list. Sad.

<comment><USER13> have a look on Lenovo X260 and below. I've read in some articles that some Kernel developers are using this kind of laptop series for their work. Best battery life I've seen on a Linux laptop so far (over 8h, X220 experience).

<comment><USER51> awesome, I'm going to take a look at that, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Sigh... another big hope of mine. I have a Carbon X1 (3rd gen), thankfully a company laptop.

I'm quite disappointed by it, and I was hoping to push our company to move over the XPS line.

We got the HD display with touch screen. Although it's a decent display, there's substantial glare. In fact, scrub the useless touch and get the matte, which also boosts the brightness a little bit. Not to mention, the laptop is so light that attempting to touch the display will just flip the laptop. This is my first "not antiglade" display since the CRT era, and I regret it a lot.

After several months of usage, the display developed several uneven backlighting issues (some spots are quite bright), and I noticed the black is not as black anymore compared to an unused one (we have 24 of them with several to spare). We moved from the HP EliteBook series (which also has their issues), and while the contrast is much better than any elitebook I've used, we never had uneven backlighting with HP.

The keyboard was a big issue, and I see that XPS does not realize how important it is. In fairness, the X1 keyboard is not too bad, except for the awful placement of the Home/End keys. No squeaking and decent feedback. But the small keys such as the arrow keys work very poorly. The rubber dome behind them is so small that if you don't press the key with some little extra force it will "pop" but not activate. In particular, this is especially bad for the up arrow, which of the 24 laptops we have was horrifying. If you use bash, remember the up arrow is "recall history". The problem is that the key is slightly slated (for "ergonomics"), causing the dome to be pressed unevenly. I fixed mine by some careful placement of scotch, but it's still not the same accuracy of other keys.

The trackpad is awful for some reason. HP was much better here. No amount of tweaking would allow me to perform fine movements.

Battery life is the same on both linux and windows (around 7 hours new for random workload), so no complaints here. Power management works. But, the HP EliteBook G4 we where using before has a super-easy replaceable battery, and we changed _many_ over the years. The G4 is around 6 hours of battery runtime. Not much difference honestly. Not to mention the G4 is very easily serviceable.

On linux I still have problems with the intel drivers with the carbon. The "old" drivers work, but the modesetting drivers cause "twitching" of the image especially on the second external output. Incredibly annoying to the point that I'm still using the legacy one. This is a classic issue with intel, and unfortunately it's the same for any laptop nowdays.

Overall, the display is still a bit better than whan HP offers, but the rest is worse. The laptop is a bit thinner and lighter, but honestly there's not much difference here. The appreciated the serviceability of the HP line as components started to fail. Although opening an X1 is not hard, there's not much you can swap without replacing the entire laptop.

<comment><USER28> > I'm quite disappointed by it, and I was hoping to push our company to move > over the XPS line.

I've had much worse luck (see my post elsewhere in this thread) when trying an XPS, in the end I ended up getting a new Thinkpad (I don't think they are great but they definitely seem to be more consistent).

> The keyboard was a big issue, and I see that XPS does not realize how > important it is. In fairness, the X1 keyboard is not too bad, except for the > awful placement of the Home/End keys.

I found that the keyboards actually got worse from gen1 to gen3 (the plastic feels cheaper, more flimsy) -- I'm really unclear why companies make $1500-2000 laptops and than save $10-15 on the keyboards ( Apple is the only company that doesn't seem to fuck up like this ). I will say I do greatly prefer the thinkpad trackpad buttons to tapping and that's something that always bothered me on a MBP as well.

> Although opening an X1 is not hard, there's not much you can swap without > replacing the entire laptop.

The T460S is better at this (you can swap the Ram / SSD) - on the minus side I think the screen quality is slightly worse.

> On linux I still have problems with the intel drivers with the carbon. The > "old" drivers work, but the modesetting drivers cause "twitching" of the > image especially on the second external output. Incredibly annoying to the > point that I'm still using the legacy one. This is a classic issue with > intel, and unfortunately it's the same for any laptop nowdays.

Which kernel are you running? I'm running 4.6.4 and I think it should be fixed in 4.6.X.

<comment><USER52> I'm also running 4.6.4 (arch). This particular issue was incredibly bad when we got the first models (tearing at the mouse position) and progressively improved, but it's still not fixed.

Note that the modesetting drivers also incur in several performance hits compared to the regular xorg-video-intel. For instance, I can see libreoffice dialogs REPAINT, while inkscape works at 1/4 of the refresh speed.

This is not lenovo specific though. Intel drivers typically lag 1-2 years behind current models at the time you can consider them "bug free enough". This was true for any laptop I've been using the last 10 years.

I cannot fathom how broken the skylake driver is right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> XPS15 is not a good choice for developer. I went with a Precision 7510, which is more massive, but better in a lot of aspects.</comment>


Adventures with DIY Dual Extrusion - <AUTHOR> https://blog.paullang.pw/diy-dual-extrusion/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is one of my first blog posts about this, hoping that somebody might like it!

I've had other suggestions for using two independent carriages instead of the single carriage. Any feed back is great!

</comment><comment><USER2> Am I the only one who finds the animated penguin way to distracting to finish the article?

<comment><USER3> Yea. It's cute and all but.... adblock'd it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aww, I'll slow it down, and add a button to pause it? Would that help? I like it's animation...

Or a way to hide the sidebar?

<comment><USER4> Yes please to no animation at all as an option. It's incredibly distracting.

<comment><USER5> I read the whole thing and didn't notice the penguin until I read your comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>