Ask HN: Does your work offer to freeze your eggs? What are your benefits? - <AUTHOR> What $ amount does your work offer, do they pay for other services for families (childcare, breastmilk shipping, birth control, etc.) <comment><USER2> This is just another way to get you to prioritize work (them) over family (you).

Putting things off for later tends to mean putting them off forever. You aren't getting any healthier. Running after little ones isn't easier when you are old. Maybe you freeze a few... but is that enough? Maybe you will really like having kids.

Also, freezers fail. I think it was just a few months back that a large facility had a huge failure that wiped things out for a huge number of couples. Oopsie, so sorry! Getting a refund is unsatisfying when you were expecting a child born of your own flesh and blood.

<comment><USER3> Maybe there's a niche in the market for an egg freezing company with multiple availability zones, like AWS or GCP. Hope they adopt good SRE practices and don't screw up their uptime ;)

<comment><USER4> Back up your DNA. Will for on a USB drive and you could store it in multiple zones.

Or outsource the DNA production and birth delivery for no cost by adopting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't answer the question and I certainly don't want to judge someone else's family planning.

However, I think this particular perk raises some interesting questions:

My first thought was that this is the ultimate in deferred life plans.

However, it also allows people to keep their options open and not sacrifice one opportunity for the other.

Perhaps, it's even a good counter argument to rationalising judging people by their sex rather than skill ("She can get pregnant so we better hire the male candidate.").

Nevertheless, it's in some way representative of a traditional work culture that values time over outcome and that considers time spent outside of work as something inherently bad or at least questionable.

It shows that the employer in this case exerts some degree of control over not just your working life but your life outside of work as well. At the very least because freezing your eggs brings about the expectation that you won't get pregnant all the same.

<comment><USER6> The encouraging of egg freezing is a cynical play.

It's offering young women a way to put what they want on hold, and few understand the risks. IVF success rates start nosediving at 40, and implode depending on different risk and health factors.

End of the day, it's better, cheaper and lower risk for everyone to be in healthy relationships and have kids in their 20s-30s. Sacrificing that to generate more shareholder value is gross. Having been through something like 15 fertility procedures, I wouldn't recommend the process to anyone who can do it the fun way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think so; we do get about a year of parental leave though, when someone wants a kid they just have one and their employer doesn't really have a say in the timeline.

</comment><comment><USER8> Freezing is no guarantee, it was on the news a few months ago, but a few facilities that stored frozen eggs messed up and lost thousand of eggs.

[https://nypost.com/2018/03/09/fertility-clinic-disaster- may-...](https://nypost.com/2018/03/09/fertility-clinic-disaster-may-have- destroyed-thousands-of-frozen-eggs-embryos/)

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/11/freezing-failure- at-s...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/11/freezing-failure-at-s-f- fertility-clinic-eggs-may-be-damaged/)

<comment><USER9> the Seveneves (neal stephenson of snow crash fame) story has a great plot dealing with this matter

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My employer pays up to $50k for fertility services like this and IVF.

You need pre-approval and many costs are waived if you use a designated center of excellence.

</comment><comment><USER10> So instead of doing the work to figure out how women and men can have the families they want and also the work they want without losing status (for lack of a better word), these companies are throwing money at a social problem and saying 'fixed!'?

</comment><comment><USER11> I would think that employers would prefer to hire people that already have children if they now have to subsidize their employees ability to procreate.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a woman, but I'm single and middle age (36) and want to have healthy children eventually. Are sperm freezing services offered to men as part of work benefits anywhere?

<comment><USER6> It is not necessary in most cases — your counts drop but most men can father children into their 70s.

Don't wait... the career impacts you fear are mostly myth. The one regret I have in life is waiting for the "right" moment to have kids and thus waiting too long.

<comment><USER12> You can still be fertile, but the quality of the sperm decreases. There's a high risk of autism if you're fathering over 40.

<comment><USER2> I think I'm safe. I won't be fathering over 40 unless I get several more wives.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Subtractive Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.sirlin.net/articles/subtractive-design.html

<comment><USER2> Subtractive design is an expected-but-unintentional occurrence if the project is running over scope. And the stuff that is subtracted is dependent on the size and status of the project. Big budget games will typically cut large swathes of content and some of the less-critical features. Small budget games may end up gutting the entire concept in favor of whatever gets some gameplay with the available assets and tech.

It is a meme, almost a cliche, for designers to battle programmers over the quantity of features in the game, because more features (usually) allow more gameplay. There's a lot of inertia to avoid cuts if possible; a cut is viewed as "wasted effort," and each one potentially violates the interests of stakeholders.

On the other hand, if you view games as being like other art forms, it's not uncommon for other mediums to overproduce and then cut to reach the final product: Pop songs are cut to about 3 minutes, and movies get cut to about 90 minutes. Big budget games have been steered towards shorter length recently, but this is done mostly because it costs too much to produce 40+ hour games at the current quality bar, not because of a move towards "cut to perfection" methodology.

<comment><USER3> It's more than that. A designer's fundamental job is to distill the essence of a presentation to it's more powerful form. That means not only taking a clunky version and paring it down; it means reimagining what the piece fundamentally is or does, and presenting it in a way that conveys the actual meaning--not just what you thought the meaning was.

With games, it means figuring what makes it fundamentally engaging, then presenting that in a way that capitalizes on those aspects that improve it while cutting those that add nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Designers/film-makers use it a lot to draw attention to particular subject, such as the all B&W except the girl in red coat depicted in Schindler's list was perfect example.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a great article. I haven't had a chance to play some of these yet, and now I'd like to. =)</comment>


Secure Share - Secure Social Networking - <AUTHOR> http://secushare.org/

<comment><USER2> This made me aware of Social Swarm:

<http://socialswarm.net/></comment>


Nearly 200K people told to flee crumbling California dam spillway - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-dam-idUSKBN15S04W <comment><USER2> Active overlapping discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13632708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13632708)

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember reading about this when environmental groups were trying to raise the alarm like 10 years ago. I recall quite clearly the attitude of condescension and arrogance from the state and fed officials quoted, as if anyone would dare question their unshakable engineering authority.

The sad part is no engineers were ever involved as far as I could tell, this whole thing was just a kick the can budget gimmick. Gotta really start digging into stories like this more instead of taking authorities at their word.

<comment> purple-again Be careful with hindsight driven analysis. Show me a single large infrastructure project in the United States with out environmental groups protesting the potential impacts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've family in Chico and we've toured the Oroville dam... it's massive, tallest in the US, of the riskier earthen dam type and holds back a great deal of water (3,537,577 acre feet (4.36e9 m^3), Shore length: 167 miles (269 km) (WP)) which is sent through the California Aqueduct.

Also note there are internet hobgobblins spreading false rumors (over 400k views on YT) about a risk of flooding Silicon Valley, which is over 150 miles (210 km) away, well north of Sacramento. Primarily, the risks are to lowlying areas like farmland and those immediately downstream of the dam in that area around Oroville are at most potential risk. Furthermore, the evacuations were mostly precautionary given the unstable/riskier nature of earthen auxiliary spillways. Estimates of non-auxiliary spillway repairs are already in the hundreds of megabucks. :(

<comment><USER5> > Also note there are internet hobgobblins spreading false rumors about a risk > of flooding Silicon Valley

Probably got the idea from the Bond movie

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not clear if the damage was already there and accelerated by the influx of water or if this was just freak damage caused by the influx. I seem to remember John Oliver doing a piece on infrastructure and Dams were one of the things he highlighted as being especially precarious through underfunding of maintenance.

<comment><USER7> The damage to the main spillway was "first reported" on 6 February [1] (although it could have existed for longer and gone unnoticed). They had to leave the spillway in use because of the amount of inflow, but on Friday they reduced the spillway outflow to avoid damaging electric pylons [2].

They also had to halt outflow via the main hydroelectric discharge.

On Saturday, the emergency spillway started being used for the first time in the dam's history. The operators thought this might happen, but didn't see it as a risk.

The evacuation order was given when they saw the amount of erosion caused by the outflow from the emergency spillway, fearing that if it carried on, the emergency spillway could collapse. As a result, they've since fully-opened the main spillway (100,000 cfs, rather than their previously reduced limit of 55,000 cfs), accelerating the damage to the main spillway.

So the damage to the main spillway existed at least a week ago. The emergency spillway was seemingly undamaged, but once put it into use, caused damage showing it wasn't really fit for purpose. And in trying to save the emergency spillway, the main spillway is now sustaining further damage.

[1] [https://twitter.com/CANGJ3OPS/status/829769462077284352](https://twitter.com/CANGJ3OPS/status/829769462077284352)

[2] [http://www.water.ca.gov/news/newsreleases/2017/021017orovill...](http://www.water.ca.gov/news/newsreleases/2017/021017oroville.pdf) (PDF)</comment></comment>


BookGlutton an online bookstore - <AUTHOR> http://www.bookglutton.com/reader/unbound?group_id=0&id=3160&view=ub#href%28cover.html

<comment><AUTHOR> $23.99 seems a bit steep as a fee to try out the experience of an on line ebook reader - even if it is written by "The Master". However this looks like an interesting addition to what looks like becoming a wealth of alternate ways to access books other than in the dead tree format.

If we were clever enough to spot the winning technology right now we could probably make that fortune - but perhaps we will just have to wait until it becomes retrospectively obvious...

<edit> OK - Now I have spotted the sign-up makes a difference - you can get access to the book OK. BUT I can only see the top two thirds of the page - oops now the navigation buttons have wandered off somewhere - I might come back another day and take another look.

<edit 2> Looks like signing up was a bad idea - that email address is now picking up emails saying that some other users are following me - <USER2> balderdash because I can't get the site to work so am making no discernible progress for anyone to follow no matter how slowly they read.

</comment><comment><USER3> I looked up my own book on this site and it is available, but it appears very ugly. The choice of font for reading, the fact that they've lost things like different font height/weight for headings means that it's hard to read.

[http://www.bookglutton.com/detail/John+GrahamCumming/The+Gee...](http://www.bookglutton.com/detail/John+GrahamCumming/The+Geek+Atlas/3232.html)

Frankly, you'd be better off with a Scribd or Safari version.

</comment><comment><USER4> A lot of interactive webpages break the back-button behavior. However, this one takes the breakage to a whole new level: for each page you turn, an entry to the history is added, but it does nothing.

So if you turn a few pages and decide you want to go back to HN, you'll have to hit the back button as often as you turned the page. Without any visual feedback that it does anything.

<comment><USER5> Really? I didn't see that at all. It does, however, gobble up all available memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unresponsive. Should prebuffer page in either direction of current position.</comment>


Ask HN: How would a recession affect venture-funded startups? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious to see what people think of how the current startup ecosystem will fare if there is a real recession. <comment><USER2> Well, I distinctly remember what happened the last time - investor capital dried up really quickly, which significantly lowered early stage financing and made deal terms quite a bit worse. Additionally, startups had a lot harder time actually making revenue since both b2b and b2c spending lowered significantly.

That said, this time it's really hard to say because we still have historically low interest rates and not a whole lot of places for people with money to invest it at higher returns, so that's sure to have an impact.

</comment><comment><USER3> It will be GREAT.

Ok, maybe an overstatement. Fewer companies will be funded, many many will die. The market will viciously slaughter any weak business plans. But the few that survive will THRIVE. With brutal market pressure, only the best ideas will move forward... there will be a complete inability to hide from the reality of bad plans or execution. High quality employees will be more willing to join for less salary, extending runway. When the economy recovers, those scrappy survivors will already have market share and will be in the best possible to ride the wave upward to absolute dominance.

Seriously, if you want to join a startup, definitely consider looking for companies that seem to be doing well (or even doing pretty-much-ok) in the depths of the recession.

</comment><comment><USER4> It might actually be good. Companies need more funds not so much because they need it to live, but because they want to outpace the competition. As one mid stage VC put it, "There's war and we sell the bullets."

Startups have developed a bad habit of overspending (at least in Asia) where they're offering unsustainable discounts, playing bait and switch, swarming competitors with false reviews and calls, or things like buying phones and offering generous contracts for partners, who quit their job, and then find that the startup is not so generous 3 years later.</comment>


First detection of the missing half of normal matter in our universe - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2149742-half-the-universes-missing-matter-has-just-been-finally-found/ <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15435838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15435838), due to "/amp" being in this new URL.

<comment><USER3> It has the same <link rel="canonical"> meta tag, though, which points to the non-amp version of the url. Perhaps HN should look for that header and use that for the link.

<comment><USER4> Good idea. AMP links take seconds to load on my laptop. All I see is a blank page with no indication of loading.

<comment><USER5> I think this might be a problem with your adblocker; at least it was on my PC. After I disabled uBlock, the amp site loaded in no time

<comment><USER6> AMP pages are simply too buggy.

I don't understand this because they want to replace the slow bug ridden JS pages...

<comment><USER5> Indeed, lately I have seen more slow AMPs (the acronym already contains the word "page" btw) than fast ones. Multiple issues, including the one the grandparent is pointing out, make AMP look and feel like a step back.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to not get scammed hiring remote freelancers on Upwork - <AUTHOR> https://jamesclift.ca/how-to-not-get-scammed-hiring-remote-freelancers-on-upwork-bfc6d215d22e <comment><USER2> From a job seeker point of view, there are also lots of job posters that are scams or that want to receive free or almost free work.

Some are just trying to steal applicant's money or identity, but I've also seen legitimate companies asking for long test tasks and disappear afterwards and employees from high profile organizations trying to outsource part of their work but paying $6/hour. Upwork is broken, but this also happens on angel.co and probably on other digital job markets.

Interestingly, most of the advice given in the article for not getting scammed is also true for job seekers.

<comment><USER3> Q:"So if the job is writing test scripts in Perl, why do you require Haskell ?" A:"We've found we get better resumes that way."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I've been told over Skype that an applicant who lived in Downtown Vancouver > couldn't meet up for a coffee because they didn't leave their house. They > lived in Guangzhou.

No wonder when people get paid based on their location and not based on their output/value. This is what bothers me quite a lot about Gitlab as well.

<comment><USER5> There are legitimate reasons for hiring someone who you can occasionally meet with. There are also legitimate reasons to hire someone in your own country. Or at least in a country with a reasonable facsimile of the rule of law and fair access to courts by foreigners.

<comment><USER4> Of course, there are very legitimate reasons/incentives to hire someone from your own jurisdiction. I'm just not a fan of cheap offshoring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are quite a few things I disagree with in the post.

> Every developer has a Github profile. If their profile is new, yet they say > they've been coding for 10 years — you may want to gut check.

There might be developers that just does not want to commit to public projects. It is possible that the developer is bound by NDAs that they can't share customer work. I know I fall in this category.

> It's 2019. If you're hiring someone who works on the internet, you will be > able to find them on the internet.

Again, incorrect. I intentionally make effort to remain as much of an online ghost as I can. If you search for me on Google then you WILL find a profile, but that is a profile I am forced to maintain and may or may not be the person that the profile describes.

> Often it means they didn't do the work, and will disappear once the money is > sent.

Possible, but it might also be that the people are running on razor thin margins and have bills to pay. The whole idea of selection of contractors on Upwork and similar websites is mainly finding the cheapest guy. If someone in India is beating others in price, it means that there is really not a lot of runway to let an invoice sit for weeks. The guy has to buy bread you see....

<comment><USER7> I've been told by many many candidates that all work they ever did was under an NDA and so they have no Github profile and not even any code samples. Somehow they never did a single shareable thing in their lives - not at school, not a hobby project, not at work.

Potential employers use all the signals available to make decisions and this is an important one. Many of the other applicants will have solid material. It may not at all be your fault, and yet also be a serious disadvantage.

<comment><USER6> Ever worked for Federal Govt?

<comment> blaser-waffle Feddy Gov has their own eval process, and things like active clearances are useful even for non-gub'mnt work.

But yeah, you can't say or release nothin. But that's true with the Fortune 500 places I've worked, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The key is to not hire fungible resources based on a set of TLAs but actual people instead.

Unfortunately, the software industry by and large still seems to insist on continuing this backward model rooted in scientific management because it creates a semblance of an industrialised process that can easily be scaled by throwing more resources with the same TLAs at the problem (see "The Mythical Man-Month").

If people are treated as a commodity it's no wonder they start acting like one.

There certainly are largely commoditised areas of software development. However, especially for those it shouldn't matter where the person doing the job is located or in fact which person it is that does the job.

All that matters is results. Only settle an invoice once the agreed upon results have been delivered.

<comment><USER9> What does TLA stand for?

Also: Mythical Man-Month -- great book. I recommend it to anyone, especially programmers and project managers. Not too technical. Fairly light read. Good content.

<comment><USER8> Three-letter acronym. Those technical acronyms CVs tend to be rife with (admittedly they come in non-three-letter varieties, too), e.g.: XML, CSS, PHP

<comment><USER10> But can you imagine explaining that PHP: Hypertext Processor stands for PHP: Hypertext Processor?

<comment><USER8> Piece of cake: It's a recursive acronym.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > It's 2019. If you're hiring someone who works on the internet, you will be > able to find them on the internet.

This guy seems pretty clueless. I'm not sure I'd be trying to absorb his wisdom.

<comment><USER12> Right. Why on earth would I want a twitter account?

<comment><USER13> Is it so outlandish to have a professional LinkedIn account?

<comment><USER14> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of these encounters can be genuinely painful. People avoiding video chat is the most obvious sign often. Then you get on a call with someone and they are as terse as they possibly can be so that their accent will be "masked". On one occasion I was talking to a TTS.

Ultimately for everything we do, communication is the number one requirement. We have to be able to communicate fluently in a high level of detail and have what we say not just understood, but even anticipated and interpreted.

So no matter how good someone is in some other aspect, it's a non-starter if I can't have a chat with them - and I think vice-versa too ... how can they enjoy the work and do a reasonable job if I can't really explain to them what I want easily?

I don't know if I'll ever use Upwork for programmers again. Most of my experiences have been bad, even when I was quite willing to pay premium rates.*

* Big motivation for many using Upwork is bypassing conventional corporate finance and the way they pay (or fail to pay) freelancers.

<comment><USER16> I don't do freelance work myself, but based on how software development is done in most software companies I've worked for. Do you not have open tickets that need to be done by freelancers? Or are you simply looking for freelancers to do entire projects on their own?

Most of the software development I do is done based on open tickets that people can pick up and comment on if things are unclear. The same goes for when we hire a freelancer, we have open tickets that can be picked up and completed, once completed they submit a merge request and we go on from that.

That is not to say you can't have a (video)chat, but it shouldn't really be needed for the actual development part of the job. We only have a call/meetup if we expect to be working with them for a longer period of time, or when we haven't worked with them before.

If you were looking to do a videochat with me when you have only a few hours of work for me I don't think I would be open to that either.

<comment><USER15> Most of the work we want done is project based. Like "Build this API for us and afterwards we'll take it in-house". Mostly I hire for several weeks or even months of work. So yes interviews will occur.

As for tickets...well I don't know how someone can just drop into a complex system and resolve bugs or add features, without understanding how the wider system works. We don't have work of that nature really.

<comment><USER16> I see, most of ours is as well. But we tend to start people off with simple stuff so that they can get to know the stack and our software. That way we ease them into it. It makes it a lot easier for repeat work. That way we get to know them better and better as well.

We're a small team, but even we often have tasks that are trivial for our senior engineers, those are perfect for freelancers/juniors to find out how capable they are without taking too much risk (financially in case of them being freelancers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On a related note, this is not about getting scammed, but more about getting the work you need completed.

I have had very poor results using people who have a full-time job and are trying out freelancing as a side gig. They rarely seem to be able complete the work on time, and of the quality you desire.

It's never due to a lack of technical skill. It's in part because they seem to lack time and energy to do the work after grinding it out all day at full time job. But more importantly, they seem to lack the time-management, and communication skills to manage the work.

An experienced freelancer can juggle multiple projects, but someone coming from a single-focus, full-time job often cannot.

I think this is why a lot of people dabble in freelancing, fail and go back to full-time work.

Edit: This is more a general note, and not about Upwork specifically, but the same definitely applies.

</comment><comment><USER5> How about maybe stop trying to find the cheapest people you can?

<comment> V-2 Much easier in a world where consumers stop trying to find the cheapest product they can.

<comment><USER18> It's competition and consumers gets scammed as well. Packaging&Brand increase the price. If a consumer want quality he has to do some research as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well the location-based bullshit really has to go. I can charge more for remote work when I move to a higher wage country, while moving to a less ideal location in terms of timezones. It's to no benefit to the customer yet they'll gladly pay more.

People always pretend life is oh-so cheap in for example Latin America while a lot of things including basics like soap and dried pasta can be more expensive in the supermarkets. And don't even get me started on electronics.

Of course you'll get people that pretend to be from a more expensive time zone for remote work. It's the same work after all.

<comment><USER20> The customer benefits from work being done in a location with the rule of law and independent courts.

<comment><USER19> Oh sure perhaps for unknown developers but often it's the same customer I already worked with for quite a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I constantly, like multiple times a week, get connection requests on LinkedIn that all lead to the same conversation of "hey! let me use your name and profile on Toptal/Upwork, I'll do all the work, and you can keep 15-30%". I'm not surprised by any of this.

</comment><comment><USER18> The problem is that he has to constantly look for someone new. Why? Not paying decent salary or short term contracts.

</comment><comment><USER22> yup, I got scammed on upwork for 10k. super hard to know the difference between a developer that got a little stuck, vs someone that is scamming. upwork seems to do their best to enable these people as well by hiding reviews. this guy in particular would do a lot of small projects to cover up the negative reviews on bigger ones. the other feature which encourages this is the upworks feature of automatically paying invoices without any checks on the work being done. the best way to avoid getting scammed is not to use upworks. its almost like they designed their product to encourage scams.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think similar article should be promoted, where we can identify job posters who are scams.

In past I have used Upwork[when it was odesk]. Not much positive experience. For them client aka job poster is everything. They could kick you out mid project/task without any reason, they can deny your milestone work, appeal will most probably get their side, if you got to have more than two-three bad subsequent clients and got kicked out mid project. you can got yourself banned

In short its pro job-poster site.

</comment><comment><USER24> Well... i don't have ANY social media accounts, and there is absolutely nothing interesting on my github (about 30 repos which i built working for just 1 client of mine, out of 100+, 1-6 years ago). Am i a fake? I am top #1 Upwork developer in EU by revenue though.

<comment><USER25> I'm sure what you say is true, but here's the thing... you know what that makes you? An exception. And as a first pass heuristic, "don't bet on exceptions" is a pretty reasonable guideline.

<comment><USER24> Trick is, i never found out how to go beyond Upwork. I never, ever made a good deal with anyone outside of it. It gets me super concerned because i'm locked into one platform, but have no idea what to do.

<comment><USER26> Not to jump on the original point of this article, but I would suggest creating a personal blog, professional LinkedIn profile, and a technical focused Twitter account.

The reason you can't make a deal outside Upwork is that all of your information that would cause someone to trust you is on Upwork, and only clients using that platform will see it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Distros Coming to Bash/WSL via Windows Store - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/05/11/new-distros-coming-to-bashwsl-via-windows-store/ <comment><USER3> Anybody manage to make their Bash/WSL actually look good? I've got it just running in, what, cmd I guess? I don't know. Anyway it's fuckugly. I had to just set all the fonts to white on a black background because otherwise the returns from npm installs and git status and stuff would be unreadable deep blue.

Don't get me wrong, I love using it, but it doesn't beat the aesthetics of a terminal on a mac or a nicely configured ubuntu terminal.

<comment><USER4> I use zsh with Hyper ([https://hyper.is/](https://hyper.is/)) using "atom- dark" ([https://www.npmjs.com/package/hyperterm-atom- dark](https://www.npmjs.com/package/hyperterm-atom-dark)) theme and it's quite decent sans the hideous text background colors:

[http://i.imgur.com/l4Oi2up.png](http://i.imgur.com/l4Oi2up.png)

<comment><USER5> Woah it uses 250MB of space when installed, this really surprised me, even for a js app. I like the terminal though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The primary reason I even looked at a Mac, way back in the MacOS 10.2 days, was because there is a Unix underneath the pretty interface. I bought my first Mac and never looked back.

Stuff like this is making me look at Windows machines again.

<comment><USER7> I'm betting this is the real end-goal of WSL. MacBooks were once expensive, but high-quality, grab-and-go unixy development machines. Now, they're mostly just expensive.

When WSL matures, any commodity laptop will be a cheap, decent quality, grab- and-go unixy dev machine. It'll probably be easier and more reliable than installing Ubuntu directly! At that point, web and server devs will migrate en mass from Mac to Windows.

Then they will discover Clang for Windows and that dev tools for Windows in general are actually pretty nice. And, since they are already running their server code on WSL, it becomes much easier and more interesting to get it running in Windows directly. Bang! Huge uptick in open-source server development on Windows.

<comment><USER8> Huh? MacBooks are unlikely to disappear, companies love how slowly they depreciate (and are easily sellable), while it is by far the most optimized unix system out there. Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this.

Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere? The tooling is third rate, the WSL (which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current state.

I just don't see why you'd choose a platform that does pants on head retarded shit like making wget open IE 11 rather than downloading the file at a given URL. This isn't rocket science here, I know all the MS people across the water in Redmond & Bellevue can fix this without much work, but apparently worse than non-existent is the best MS can do.

<comment><USER9> > Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows > or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this.

The repairable/upgradable thinkpads are probably better in this regard

<comment><USER10> Why would you want to repair/upgrade (and so pay the salaries of hardware IT staff) when you could get business-leased commodity computers with scheduled "upgrades" by return-for-replacement, for the same cost?

<comment><USER11> I want to repair and upgrade my computer. I suspect there are many people like me that would like the option to upgrade components on my laptop as well. I used to be able to do that with a MBP (2012-ish), now I can't...

The WSL is compelling and to be honest, one of the main reasons I switched to OSX was the command line. Now, I can have a command line and not have to run VM's for 3d stuff, games, and more. Pretty compelling...

<comment><USER10> That's a personal desire. The context here was corporate buying and depreciation. Why would a _corporation_ want to repair its computers, any more than it would want to repair e.g. its office furniture?

<comment><USER12> Because swapping a burned out power supply is 5min job while waiting for a [company] technician to bring that replacement computer can be a day+ several others to get the original back?

It boils down to how much the downtime costs. "Do it all in the Cloud" simply doesn't apply across the board.

<comment><USER10> Why wait? In most companies I've worked at (a few startups; IBM), if your computer isn't working, they take your current one and then hand you a spare out of a pile they have in a closet. The original gets sent for replacement, but you're already at your desk re-doing the documented onboarding process on the new machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If anyone trusts microsoft right now after the past year or two worth of things we've learned I highly doubt their dedication to a free and open source vision of the future.

I actually have a hard time beleiving some of these comments are even organic... (web and server devs are going to migrate to windows!). What world do these people live in? It's like people live in fantasy land and have forgotten the 90's truth of MS.

Embrace. Extend.

 _Extinguish_.

RMS was and is right. Either the user controls the program or the program controls the user. Microsoft has shown they are only interested in controlling the user, and not in giving the user control.

I say this as a senior sysadmin who has dealt with every aspect of their OS's in production for a long time, and I'm fed up with it. Honestly I think Win8/10 was the final straw for me, for what it's worth.

I've since moved completely off windows to gnu+linux, despite the rough points such as gaming. It's been a freeing experience I wish more people had the guts to be a part of. I'm also heavily considering refusing to support windows systems in general, something I think we should all consider.

<comment><USER14> Isn't it a bit ironic, given your concern with 90s-era Microsoft practices...

...that your comment is basically just FUD?

I'm not saying your wrong! But your comment is, clearly, intended to make people feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Microsoft, the Windows platform, what MS may choose to do in the future, etc. And you don't have any particular factual claims to back it up (classic FUD tactic), just an appeal to authority ("as a senior sysadmin") and some handwaving about events that took place long before most of us were actually in the workforce. I mean, I'm the oldest dev on my team, and I was a teenager when the Halloween Documents were published.

We live in a very different world. I'm not saying MS wouldn't abuse their power if they could, but you know...what power? And how does WSL provide them an opening? At this point, I'm much, much more concerned about Facebook than Microsoft, and I think the onus is on MS critics to explain exactly what they fear. And no, chanting "embrace, extend, extinguish" is not an explanation.

<comment><USER15> Some of OPs comment is hyperbolic, but I think

> Microsoft has shown they are only interested in controlling the user, and > not in giving the user control.

Is very well supported by their recent we'll-do-everything-possible to get Win10 on people's machines, force upgrades, forced (and ultra comprehensive, but mostly secretive until a month ago) telemetry.

> We live in a very different world. I'm not saying MS wouldn't abuse their > power if they could, but you know...what power?

They have spent the last year and a half abusing their power of Win7 updates to force people into Win10, which takes away the power that people had to resist the Win7->Win10 upgrade. If you missed that, we truly do live in different worlds.

<comment><USER16> I agree that the telemetry is very very dodgy. However, on the forced update front, I have to side with Microsoft here.

From their POV, regular and forced windows updates are the best way to ensure we don't have XP-like situations, where people just keep running out-dated software with horribly exploitable browsers. This creates a maintenance nightmare for software developers. Could you imagine running a 16 year old piece of software, refusing to upgrade to a newer-one but still expect security updates? And Windows 7 is well on it's way to become the 'next XP', it's almost 8 years old now...

<comment><USER15> I might agree with you from a "public goods" perspective (but only if win10 had user control comparable to win7, and it doesn't)

However, Microsoft is in it for themselves. Not for the public good, not for the people who want to keep running their old system, not for the developers. Furthermore, whoever bought win7 was guaranteed support until 2020.

Your siding with Microsoft in 2016 is siding with "we already got the customer's money, now let's try to do the easiest thing for us rather than keep our promises; use dark patterns if we need, because it is easier to get forgiveness than permission". I am sorry, but I disagree with this attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would be nicer if they would just document the bootstrap process for initializing a WSL "container" (or whatever their term is) so the community can do this on its own.

<comment><USER18> Stay tuned - This is just the beginning ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some of these distros come with browsers and JavaScript engines that can run in the console (such as node.js, w3m, lynx, etc.).

Third-party HTML and JavaScript engines are banned in the Windows Store, so can someone explain how this uneven enforcement of their own rules is ethical?

Consider this quote[1] from a Microsoft spokesperson on May 9:

> Windows Store apps that browse the web must use HTML and JavaScript engines > provided by the Windows Platform. All Windows Store content is certified by > Microsoft to help ensure a quality experience and keep your devices safer.

[1]: [http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-wont-be- allowed-o...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-wont-be-allowed-on- windows-10-s/)

<comment><USER20> Windows store or UWP apps is the gimped version of windows that no one cares about. It's about as successful as the windows phone OS that started it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They can do this all they want but no amount of linux in windows is going to get me back to using it on my main home desktop. I have no choice at work (an all MS stack: c# and sqlserver) but yeah I'll just stick to VMs, docker, or linux on bare-metal. I get the latest kernels, the ability to run anything in the _nix ecosystem without arbitrary_ drawbacks.

*Arbitrary is harsh, they did a lot of heavy lifting to get Windows, but it's still early and still rough imo.

<comment><USER22> I didn't realize staying on the bleeding edge kernels was such a performance boost, that it's worth shying away from an entire ecosystem. It sounds a bit elitist.

Alternatively, when I use Windows now I'll get both PowerShell and a full Unix environment. For my development work so far, none of those arbitrary drawbacks have stopped WSFL from being a champ. On the plus side, I don't constantly have to edit configuration files after every update because my wireless card/window manager/etc broke.

<comment><USER23> For me, it's the opposite: I don't want to be on the bleeding edge of forced windows updates, so I'll run a linux system and VM an older-but-still- compatible windows system where I can keep the environment stable without worrying about security updates (due to it being in a sandbox). I realize this doesn't fit everyone's use case, but wanted to offer an additional perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The problem with WSL is that it's young so some integrations are still not perfect.

For example, the integration with VSCode :

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/25033](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/25033)

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/24967](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/24967)

But both teams, WSL and VSCode, are very, very responsive. I'm pretty sure in a couple of months everything will be fine.

<comment><USER25> Same reason why I am not making the switch. Whenever I have good integration of wsl python interpreter running in vscode, I will be a happy person

<comment><USER26> Not VSCode, but...

[https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/pull/2500](https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/pull/2500)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I want Nix and Nixpkgs. A genuinely innovative and different package manager / distro alternative.

<comment><USER28> Apparently this already works really well:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/64xyd7/nix_package_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/64xyd7/nix_package_manager_works_flawlessly_in_windows/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I missed the Windows 10 free upgrade and now regretting it.

<comment><USER30> I really like most of windows 10. My main complaint is the start menu, I have yet to figure out how I'm supposed to use it

<comment><USER31> I use it the same way I use Spotlight on mac and gnome-do on Ubuntu. I press a key-combo and it gives me a prompt to start typing a few characters that'll probably take me to what I'm looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can't wait for Arch Linux!

<comment><USER33> Arch works fine, the wsl subreddit ([https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/](https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/)) has a guide how to install it manually.

<comment><USER34> What a nice name for a subreddit

<comment><USER35> It's interesting to see how your mind starts chunking it into almost-words if your eye runs into the middle of it while scanning the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there some clear benefit of using it instead of normal VM or running Linux directly?

<comment><USER37> Interoperability is one: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/commandline/wsl/interop](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/commandline/wsl/interop)

I also appreciate the fact that it "boots" instantly (i.e. you don't have to turn it on or off like VM) and that it works out of the box with every up-to- date W10 computer (great if you need to get something done on a computer that is not your own).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does the new update fix it working with Windows Firewall? So far it was all or nothing, you could not block any processes seperately that were running within the subsystem. I assume that has not changed?

</comment><comment><USER39> I still find it funny that people claim that they code on a Mac because it's flavor of Unix is somehow close to Linux. There's an ocean of differences between the two and I'm getting tired of people who perpetuate the false sense of security that because they're coding on macOS that they'll be fine when they deploy to a Linux environment. WSL is starting to look like the better option for those who for whatever reason can't develop for Linux in a Linux environment.

</comment><comment><USER40> a bit off-topic, are there cheaper ways to buy a windows 10 license than directly from microsoft for $200? (I'm not a student).

<comment><USER41> Win 10 Home is only $110 from Newegg or Amazon, and less if you get the "OEM" version. I forget the restrictions on the OEM version, but I think its intended for people building systems and reselling them -- I don't think anything stops you from using it on your own system, its just technically in violation of the licence.

<comment><USER42> Windows 10 Home doesn't include the Group Policy Editor though, so if you buy that you're basically stuck having all manner of things shoved down your throat.

While the Pro version won't necessarily save you entirely from this, it goes a long way towards giving the user more freedom (at additional cost, of course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> As much as I wish this could be compared to what Apple did with MacOS, it's not an apt comparison. Microsoft is essentially bolting on a Linux distro whereas Apple rebuilt MacOS from the ground-up using NeXTSTEP. What Microsoft is doing is more akin to something like Cygwin, except Microsoft is developing it and you can choose your distro. You might have better integration between Windows and Linux, but it's hardly a rethink. I would really like to see a commercial grade UNIX alternative to Mac brought to us by Microsoft, but it doesn't appear they are headed in that direction.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder if package maintainers will be able to use this as a way to test their packages on multiple distributions from a single test system. That would be pretty cool.

I continue to be impressed with the progress the WSL team has made. The usable open source development environment on top of a kernel that can correctly drive all the various peripheral in the box is so very useful to me.

<comment><USER45> That's nothing you can't already do with VMs, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

<comment><USER44> Actually it is different. The difference might not matter in some cases, and in other cases it will.

Running on a VM means running on emulated devices, running in a Userland host means running on native devices. WSL is to windows as Wine is to Linux.

A really trivial example is the buffer cache. On a Linux kernel it will take big chunks of memory to buffer disk blocks that it has read and dirtied. When run in a VM it continues to have that behavior so for a given disk you have two sets of disk caches, one in the VM and one in the host kernel. Twice the cache with half the management smarts.

<comment><USER45> I'm not arguing that VMs vs API compatibility layers aren't different, but that the specific testbed case you'd mentioned of emulations on a single host is nothing novel.

A compatabilty layer generally takes away the kernel's role. Is that the case here?

<comment><USER44> Generally packages are concerned about interactions in 'user land' and the package manager of the distro. By not carrying around multiple copies of the kernel and its internal data structures this compatibility layer provides a better solution (in terms of resource utilization) for working with several different distributions on a single system than the VM approach does.

<comment><USER45> Sure, but _that_ is something you can already do in a chroot jail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> You can do a lot of this already with this tool [1] that uses the images on Docker Hub to replace the contents of the lxss folder. It's a little clunky but worked well enough for my limited needs.

[1] [https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution- Switcher](https://github.com/RoliSoft/WSL-Distribution-Switcher)

</comment><comment><USER47> how does this handle SELinux on Fedora? Is SELinux below the userland, so it doesn't factor in at all?

<comment><USER48> Right, the WSL still uses the Windows kernel, so anything at that level (filesystem permissions etc) will be handled either by the kernel or by the "pico provider" syscall translators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Fingers crossed for FUSE support soon, sorely needed IMO.

</comment><comment><USER50> Hope for fixes for stuff like npm, too.

<comment><USER51> Fixes for what, specifically?

<comment><USER52> I initially had problems with max character length for paths. When npm installed dependencies really deep down, Windows became unable to move or delete such files. I think it's been fixed with Yarn's flat dependency structure, which I think npm has also gone or is going to in the near future.

<comment><USER18> Wait, is that for the Windows npm or the linux npm running on WSL? I don't believe the second would have ever had that problem

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Someone on /r/linux said, and I agree, "it's like putting sugar in your cup full of piss".

</comment><comment><USER54> Im only interested in Gentoo!

</comment><comment><USER55> Microsoft is _so_ frustrating.

On the one hand, they really seem earnest about wanting to make Windows 10 appealing to people like me who fled Windows for Unix-alike systems long ago. And steps like this show that they're not just addressing that at a shallow level, but are willing to dig deep to make it happen, which is sincerely encouraging.

But then on the _other_ hand, they insist on loading Windows 10 up with privacy invasions you can't disable and ads in deeply inappropriate places like Windows Explorer, which is just a huge buzz-kill for the exact type of person who the other stuff is so clearly meant to appeal to. Which gives the whole effort a real Keystone Kops aspect.

It feels like there's different groups inside MS that are working from fundamentally incompatible premises, and Nadella either isn't willing or isn't able to wrangle them into all pulling in the same direction. I guess it's an improvement over the Microsoft of old to see the company's basic orientation go from "competent evil" to "incompetent good," but when you consider how few good things there are in the universe it's always sad to see a potential new one kneecapping itself.

<comment><USER56> I'm not saying it's not true but I am yet to see any advertisement in my Windows 10 anywhere... even Explorer! Anyone else?

<comment><USER57> I think people have a bit of a popular misconception about the Explorer advertising thing. What's happening is that MS is adding a banner to Explorer advertising paid OneDrive subscriptions.

I totally agree that it's massively inappropriate, but I do think that most people are imagining third-party advertising which is not what's happening - <USER2> lot of people might not consider the current situation to be an "ad" necessarily since it is pushing a subscription for OneDrive, a Microsoft product that you already have installed. It's more of an in-app purchase kind of offer.

<comment><USER58> I don't particular care _who_ is trying to sell me shit in the file manager, I care that _shit is being sold in the file manager_.

In an operating system I paid $100 for. Unacceptable.

<comment><USER59> The shit being sold in the file manager is... space in the cloud for your files. Which is managed by the file manager.

<comment><USER58> Which I already paid for as part of the operating system. If they want to advertise to me, they can give me my money back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> why do people support this company still? sorry to be that guy, but i will never use a product from them after the jwz fiasco. and no, new leadership doesn't make up for decades of behavior.

<comment><USER61> What is jwz?

<comment><USER60> [https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html](https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html)

<comment><USER35> It's not clear if it's the intended result, but that link (for me, and quite unexpectedly) redirects to an Imgur picture of a testicle in a teacup, which is a little funny but which one might not intend to display.

<comment><USER62> It seems to be a redirect based on the referring URL. Copy and paste it to get to the actual site

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'm super excited about this but the windows store is cancer :(</comment>


Help CERN's Large Hadron Collider with your downtime. - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14488797

<comment><AUTHOR> ..although the software is hardly written for the layperson!

<http://lhcathome.web.cern.ch/LHCathome/Physics/></comment>


CSS3 buttons based on Adobe Kuler's top 100 color schemes - <AUTHOR> http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB00T81AK

<comment><USER2> Unless I'm missing something, many of these would make no sense to actually use. The point of the bootstrap css is to provide baseline styles which handle all of your functional needs.

In terms of button sets, you almost always _need_ a red button to signify that this button does something dangerous (or perhaps just irreversible). And it must be done without making the user read, so usually bright red is needed. And if you have multiple shades of red (even an orange, brown-ish orange, or purple are pushing it I think) for different buttons, it becomes confusing and defeats the whole purpose.

Just taking into account the need for one red (and only one red), I'd probably rule out half of these as unusable combinations in an actual web app.

The other half look great though! ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Apples and oranges. Bootstrap's default buttons all carry some kind of semantic meaning (primary, warning, info, etc.) while these buttons are purely for their visual appeal. The colors within a single Kuler color scheme aren't intended to be used together in this pack, they're just arranged like that so you can see the color schemes. It's more like for when you want a nice looking button and want a wide variety of colors to choose from.

<comment><USER2> Oh, then I misunderstood the purpose. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Goes to show that the product description could use some work. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool as a demo or library, but why would anybody ever need to _buy_ 500 buttons?

<comment><AUTHOR> The process of creating them is not free (at the least it will cost time) and for some people, depending on their skill, it's not even possible to customize CSS at that or any level. The style selection is unparalleled when compared to other button packs.

<comment><USER4> Why not just create a CSS generator. That helps someone tweak there button down to the very last detail, and then just charge them 50 cents for that one button.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are already CSS button generators (for Bootstrap, even) and it's always the same: you get out what you put in. Even the examples these sites use as the buttons you can generate typically look like a lousy lot. And $0.50 would end up being like 80% credit card fees for me. It probably wouldn't work out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would be extremely interested to see if you make any money out of this. What are you including in the pack? Is it just the buttons.css, which you can easily download from your site already? I'd be a bit more impressed if it was more tightly linked in with the kuler api - so that you could enter any theme name and get a set of buttons.

</comment><comment><USER6> if you're not colorblind, these would be great.

accessibility?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is basically just the first version of this pack and I was trying to get it out before the morning, but in the following versions I think that would be a great addition. It's something I'd want to think through though and do right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> $8 that I cannot give for the buttons because PayPal is being itself and won't let me buy anything with my perfectly valid credit card.

Stripe?

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, that's a drag. I'll start shopping around for other options that can integrate. PayPal is just a starter thing anyway. Sorry about that!

<comment><USER7> No worries and thanks for setting up the site. Personally, I think it's great and a potential source of that discretionary income needed for, well, discretionary spending.

<comment><AUTHOR> I certainly hope it turns out to be that way. And you're welcome. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-united-arlns-fleet-airbus/united-orders-50-new-airbus-long-range-jets-to-replace-boeing-757s-idUSKBN1Y800N <comment><USER2> America is going to pay for the cronyism that merged every airplane manufacturer into one and eliminated internal competition. If you don't have internal competition, you'll collapse in the face of external competition. There is no way to get away from Boeing without getting away from the American aerospace industry entirely, a problem that didn't exist back when McDonnell Douglas was around.

<comment><USER3> I mean, one option is to break up Boeing (and Airbus). They're far too vertically integrated.

<comment><USER4> Vertical integration means fewer middlemen driving up the margin on each part.

<comment><USER2> Efficient market theory would suggest that there is no margin in equilibrium, and what looks like margin is actually the cost of capital (which all companies, big and small, have to pay).

<comment><USER5> Economics is laughably bad at predicting real-world economic behavior.

<comment><USER2> That's too broad a statement. There are some theories in economics that work very well, like supply and demand, or arbitrage theory. The idea of the cost of capital is also a fairly well-trodden one, it is taught in business courses, used on wallstreet, and seems to work in practice.

<comment><USER5> I can't think of a single broad economic axiom or theory that doesn't depend—wholly or in-part—on the principle of ceteris paribus, which excludes their practical application to essentially everything in real life.

In a few cases, economic theories do a passable job of roughly mirroring real- world behavior, but that's the exception and not the rule.

<comment><USER2> > _on the principle of ceteris paribus, which excludes their practical > application to essentially everything in real life._

When a principle is violated marginally, conclusions made based on the principle are themselves violated marginally. You can't write off chemistry because relativistic effects violate the conservation of mass any more than you can write off economics because no two soup cans are identical.

<comment><USER5> Economics waves off secondary effects at an entirely different level than Chemistry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It will be interesting how Boeing/Airbus/traditional carriers react when China fully enters the market with Comac-built/branded planes. Commercial flights of its first plane, the C919 are slated for 2021. The whole 737 MAX fiasco really came at a bad time for the US aerospace industry, and if the other comments about Airbus being just as bad culture-wise are true (profits/jobs over serious engineering), then China could really be set up to take a lot of commercial aircraft market share over the coming decades.

<comment><USER7> It will be blocked from purchase in the U.S.

[https://www.wired.com/story/us-china-cybertheft-su- bin/](https://www.wired.com/story/us-china-cybertheft-su-bin/)

<comment><USER8> But the rest of the world (larger than the US) might just want a cheap deal with companies from business friendly countries?

<comment><USER7> Yes, China has found it is incredibly effective to just pay individual leaders in Africa to get their business and win bids.

I don't see how the west wins this one

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is keeping Boeing's share price so stable in the wake of such catastrophic news for the company this year?

<comment><USER10> I'm sure Boeing would have loved to have those orders, but 50 planes is not catastrophic.

In terms of the aircraft group, Boeing has steadily growing 787 orders and deliveries, with about 500 orders yet to deliver.

In terms of their space program, they are close to testing their manned capsule and just got a light touch program review, while SpaceX got put through the ringer.

And there are other aspects to Boeing that I'm not familiar with, but I'm sure don't relate directly to the 737 MAX.

As for Airbus, they have had to kill their A380 program, seemingly prematurely, in the face of declining interesting and cancelled orders. So, it's not all roses on the other side of the pond either.

<comment><USER11> > In terms of their space program, they are close to testing their manned > capsule and just got a light touch program review, while SpaceX got put > through the ringer.

I'm sure this will end well for them...

<comment><USER12> Oh no kidding. I'm putting puts on BA ahead of their upcoming capsule failure in two weeks.

<comment><USER13> Except the whole point of this subthread is that Boeing's stock price never faces any actual consequences, regardless of how badly the company screws up.

Boeing will not be allowed to fail, even if it personally bankrupts every taxpayer in the United States. And they know it.

<comment><USER12> Puts are short term, not long term. I agree that boeing will not be allowed to fail. Let's assume that it gets that bad. At what valuation will the company in the immediate wake of a bailout? 125% of current value? Or 75% of its current value?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My takeaway is that Airbus and Boeing both need to make progress on their clean-sheet midsize designs. The A321XLR sounds great but it's kinda what Boeing has been doing to the 737, milking it for decades. The A320 is a newer design, for sure, but it's not young.

I won't miss the 737. What I'd love to see is a twin-aisle-but-small short range aircraft. Yeah, that won't happen, but it would be comfy.

<comment><USER15> The Airbus A220 (formerly the Bombardier C-Series) is a clean sheet design and by most accounts, one of the best designs of its class today. It widely considered to be a next generation commercial aircraft, and will be unsurpassed by competitors for a couple of years until they catch up with newer designs. It's enjoyed rave reviews by consumers and airplane nerds love it.

Delta has already bought a bunch and I look forward to these planes becoming more and more common.

Obligatory Wendover Productions video on the A220 and the fight with Boeing

[https://youtu.be/V1YMPk3XhCc](https://youtu.be/V1YMPk3XhCc)

<comment><USER16> IIRC, Boeing muscled the C-Series out of the market with race-to-the-bottom tactics, which eventually led to the Airbus acquisition of the program. If Airbus manages to meet its targets with the A220 this might constitute in ironic justice.

<comment><USER15> I look forward to the day when most of my regional flights are on A220s. CRJs are a little long in the tooth. ERJs are decent but A220s are much better.

Cabin config is of course airline dependent but in one of the default configurations the A220 middle seat is actually wider than the flanking seats. In a world no one cares about customer comfort this is a nice reversal.

As a frequent flyer customer I find comfort has much more to do with aircraft than cabin service: I flew 2 United segments in the past few days on 737 equipment. United flight attendants are the highest paid among US airlines but United doesn't spend enough money on ops. Aircrafts had so many technical issues and both segments were heavily delayed and very uncomfortable. No amount of customer service would have helped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Mostly, this proves that the 737 MAX isn't a valid alternative to the 757. This goes against Boeing's official stance.

The A321 (and the 757) is a lot more flexible, can carry more cargo, and has better performance.

<comment><USER18> It is not that. It is that regardless if the plane is "fixed" or not, many frequent travelers will refuse to fly on a 737 MAX from now on.

Last year I took 73 flights. At least three of those were on a MAX. I profusely refuse to get on one of those, regardless if they are fixed or not.

<comment><USER19> I have been thinking about how to implement that after the MAX starts flying again. Flight search interfaces don't seem to filter on equipment. And of course, equipment gets changed at times, so you may book one aircraft and have a different one swapped in on the ramp. I wonder if after you have checked in, and the airline swaps in a MAX, if you can get credit for your ticket if you refuse to board a MAX? I would guess not. (Yes, I know airlines try to avoid changing equipment because it causes reseating hassle and crew scheduling hassle. But it _does_ happen)

<comment><USER20> Seems like you could either target routes that don't fly 737s at all, just much bigger or much smaller planes. Or you could stick to carriers that don't own any 737 MAX 8's such as Amtrak and SNCF.

<comment><USER21> Delta Air Lines, Spirit, JetBlue, Allegiant... you're not stuck to just rail.

<comment><USER20> It's too bad that the site where I have the greatest need for emoji is also the only one that doesn't support them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > United's 757 planes will reach the end of their lifespan in about a decade

About a decade?! I was on one of their 757s returning to Dublin a while ago; it felt like they were already pushing the end of its lifespan. I suppose the repair of the interior doesn't say much about the airframe...

<comment><USER22> Airplane lifespans are determined by pressurization/depressurization cycles (i.e. number of flight trips), not distance flown or interior wear and tear.

<comment><USER3> Yep, I mean I know it's nothing to do with the interior. But this didn't seem like a plane that was being taken care of; it felt like one they intended to scrap the next week, so there was no point putting the work in any more. I was honestly kind of shocked; hadn't been on a plane like it since Ryanair modernised their fleet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Looking at the bigger picture - I wonder if we are at 'peak' air travel - because:

1\. Improved video conferencing quality and availability

2\. potential future green initiatives - like adding tax to air fuel or frequent flyer taxes.

Sure people will still want to travel, but might do less.

<comment><USER24> >Airlines receive only about 60% of their revenue from passengers directly (the other 40% comes from selling frequent-flier miles to credit card companies). But of that 60% of passenger consumer revenue, the big money comes from business travelers – as opposed to those flying for leisure or personal reasons – in percentages that far outweigh their numbers. Business travelers account for 12% percent of airlines' passengers, but they are typically twice as profitable. In fact, on some flights, business passengers represent 75% of an airline's profits.

[https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/041315/how-much- rev...](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/041315/how-much-revenue- airline-industry-comes-business-travelers-compared-leisure-travelers.asp)

I think that video conferencing and collaboration technologies have already curtailed business travel, the most profitable part of the airline business.

The high volume in terms of passenger numbers is dominated by leisure travel. Video conferencing is unlikely to affect this (although the family did a Hangout at Thanksgiving), but it might be affected by stronger environmental campaigns or by a significant economic downturn. In fact, I think an economic downturn could cause a fairly steep drop in leisure air travel.

<comment><USER25> When they say "business travelers", do they mean people traveling for business, or people traveling in business class? I am fairly certain that those are almost entirely disparate groups at this point.

<comment><USER26> People traveling for business.

And they're more profitable for reasons not relating to class of seat.

<comment><USER27> Premium economy is profitable and robbing economy and business. We might see a return to a happy medium

<comment><USER26> I would so love this. It seems like it shouldn't be too much to ask to spend 50% more and actually get an armrest and a seat that doesn't make my tailbone numb after a few hours. In percentage terms, it's not a lot of space. If a couple inches for an armrest is to wide to fit in an existing plane in a 3+3 config, maybe they should plan better for the next generation of planes.

<comment><USER27> Some writers say the bombardier C has widened the middle seat in 3 abreast, which would be a significant thing if true.

My personal view, (from the luxury of Business, now moving back south as I cease work travel) is that seat pitch, seat size, and seat density should be regulated. That removes competitive tension around "who suffers more for price" but at a socialized cost of travel costs more than bucket seat prices. I know thats anti-democratising in the specifics of who now will be able to afford routine travel, but the cram-them-in approach has got beyond acceptable.

<comment><USER23> Regulated for what size person? The average ( then still too small for a good proportion ), or 60%, 70 or 80& of average?

Also people are different proportions - length v body, top versus bottom part of leg etc.

You might also deprive diminutive people one of their few perks - cheap _and_ comfortable air travel :-)

<comment><USER26> Presumably, anything better than what we have today would be... better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Fun fact: United used to be part of Boeing. The two were split in 1934 when a scandal around air mail pricing led to laws saying you couldn't both make planes and operate them commercially.

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

<comment><USER29> "you couldn't both make planes and operate them commercially."

We need a _way_ more laws like this :)

I'll start with 3 off the top of my head.

1) You can't both make content and distribute content commercially

2) (More abstractly) You can't both make a platform and compete with sellers and resellers on that platform

3) You can't both make a mass or social media product and allow advertisers' concerns to dictate content

They're a bit sketchy but you get where I'm coming from I hope?

<comment><USER30> Sometimes this has unintended consequences. For example, not being able to make cars and sell them directly as created a system that doesn't necessarily benefit consumers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't believe no one has linked L. J. Hart-Smith's classic 2001 paper "Out- Sourced Profits" yet!

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2011/02/04/2014130646...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2011/02/04/2014130646.pdf)

It offers a detailed look at Douglas Aircraft and their doomed attempt to boost profits via outsourcing.

Those familiar with the commercial aviation business know that Boeing's "purchase" of McDonnell-Douglas resulted in wholesale importation of Douglas's accounting wizardry to what had been a largely engineering- and safety-driven corporate culture.

Relevance to the MAX fiasco and the tardiness of Boeing's NMA designs is left as an exercise to the reader…

</comment><comment><USER32> What's the state of mechanical engineering Software tooling / infrastructure On Linux and UNIX-like operating systems? I know Solidworks and AutoCAD are primarily Windows-based software, with proprietary data formats like .SLDPRT/.SLDASM (Solidworks Assembly) and high vendor lock-in. Why haven't we seen greater adoption of scriptable, composable utilities (like a finite element analysis simulation) that might enable better horizontal scaling and commoditization of complements? Is it because hardware and mechengr is capital intensive already and high capex on software is justifiable? Seems to me like a first principle (software is free to copy) just waiting to be executed on.

Might make entry into otherwise moaty markets like aerospace a bit easier.

<comment><USER33> FreeCAD is not bad and used pretty extensively by the 3D printing hobbyists. It's nicely script-able with Python.

However, from my experience, it's still nowhere near the level of polish that e.g. Solidworks has, so professional work is still primarily done with non- Free tools.

I have no direct information, but I'd imagine the big aerospace companies have significant proprietary internal tooling, specialized to their own work flows and IP.

<comment><USER34> > but I'd imagine the big aerospace companies have significant proprietary > internal tooling

Right, but for mechanical CAD it's heavily based on Catia. The customization is more on the PLM side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's surprising airbus hasn't eaten more of Boeing's lunch. The A32x series planes fit the roles of the 737/757/767 seemingly, and likely don't require new certifications to fly each in the series. I think boeing has not only lost customers from the 737 max but confidence from people actually flying boeing jets as a whole. I for one look at the plane I'm flying on when buying tickets, I pay more for planes that have good to great safety records. I can't be alone in that.

<comment><USER36> They're production constrained. The backlog for A32x is like 10 year long. At some point, better a slightly inferior plane now (well, in the next few years) than in 20 years.

I assume they don't increase production (or at least not enough to massively reduce this backlog) because they don't expect this to keep up, and it's a massive investment.

<comment><USER37> Airbus say that they would like to increase production of the A320 series but are constrained by their suppliers's ability to expand their production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> You think they could have predicted the need for a 757 replacement and realized the 737 isn't it. Or just kept updated 757s in production, just like the 737 has been.

<comment><USER25> Boeing's next plane will likely be a 757 replacement[0]. Part of the reason that the MAX exists is the clean-sheet replacement designs take a long time (and take longer than anticipated/desired even after accounting for the fact that they take a long time).

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Fuel-efficiency and increased range are enticing airlines to opt for smaller planes on longer routes as they seek to control their operating costs.

</comment><comment><USER40> The A321XRs are super long single-aisle planes and they're planning to use them on trans-atlantic routes. 6 hour+ flight times on single-aisle configurations will make a poor user experience even worse.

<comment><USER41> Single-aisle airliners are already super common on 6+ hours transcontinental flights in the US, and relatively common on shorter transatlantic flights from the US east coast to Europe (where the single-aisle 757 these jets are replacing are already used). Consumers seem to tolerate this just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hope the 30% lower fuel burn per seat compared to previous generation aircraft is not due to packing the seats even tighter.

</comment><comment><USER43> Too bad they couldn't just order new 757s. A great airplane.

</comment><comment><USER44> If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going down

</comment><comment><USER45> From a different perspective that's what you got when company are obsessed to save money everywhere no matter what it takes, to the point to outsource airplane control system software to India at $9 per hour, we had airplane- battery-problem a few years back at Boeing due to the same reason, now it starts to kill people, where is the end?

People buy airplane for safety first, nobody dares to buy them no matter how cheap they are if they will end up killing people on board.</comment>


Is a college degree necessary to succeed in the creative world? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.iamzachreed.com/post/22658233826/is-a-college-degree-necessary-to-succeed-in-the

<comment><USER2> no. ability, persistence, social awareness, and creative thought are.</comment>


The C Programming Language (K&R) Book: Answers To Exercises (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/kandr2/

<comment><USER2> A complete collection of answers (and analysis) has also been available since at least 1988: <http://amzn.com/0131096532>

</comment><comment><USER3> There's even space left, i.e. not all exercises have solutions published on that site. That's ... inspiring, heh.

</comment><comment><USER4> Been working through this recently. Great link!</comment>


How Much Is Your College Football Team Worth? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-is-your-college-football-team-worth-1506000030?mod=e2tw <comment><AUTHOR> paywall bypass link: [https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...](https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fhow- much-is-your-college-football-team-worth-1506000030)</comment>


Why do you assume the lack of women tech speakers implies they lack tech skills? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/why-do-you-assume-the-lack-of-presence-implies-women-in-tech-are-missing-technical-skills-540345bada0e#.4c9yxriqz <comment><USER2> "Happily, DevelopHer has created a fantastic list."

They did? It's blank.

The form to even add yourself is a 404.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Why do you assume the lack of presence implies women in tech are missing technical skills?"

I don't think women in tech are missing technical skills. I think there are less women in tech..period.

There are less women majoring in tech/science related fields for starters:

[http://readwrite.com/2014/09/02/women-in-computer-science- wh...](http://readwrite.com/2014/09/02/women-in-computer-science-why-so-few/)

"Typically the organizers of the conference are men and they naturally reach out to their networks to find speakers"

Is this still a thing? My network contains men and women of all races. I know many professionals in and out of tech and I don't know anyone that excludes someone from their network because of their gender.

"Happily, DevelopHer has created a fantastic list."

These sorts of lists and organizations will only push us further behind in terms of equality. 'Equality' doesn't mean choosing one gender or race over another and this is exactly what organizations like this are doing.

"Without them there people jump to conclusions similar to the ones you have jumped to"

Who is jumping to conclusions? I look at statistics and use science, rather than emotion and assumptions. Are we also to believe that biology jobs and majors are dominated by women because of sexism?</comment>


Why I've Dropped Chrome to Develop in Safari 6 | The Phuse - <AUTHOR> http://thephuse.com/development/why-ive-dropped-chrome-to-develop-in-safari-6/ <comment><USER2> Missing (2012) tag, and also you'd have to be crazy to switch from Chrome's amazing dev tools to the horribly organized, buggy Safari ones. This was especially true in 2012 when they started this rework that, IMHO, has completely destroyed the usability of Safari for debugging.

I was working on HTML5 games for Nickelodeon in 2012 and let me tell you: Safari was the only way to debug iPad safari and it was BRUTAL. It would disconnect from the browser all the time and occasionally crash. You were better off using Weinre (even though it slowed the browser to a crawl). Oh, and occasionally the console would just fail to connect with absolutely no way to fix it besides restarting the whole browser and reconnecting to the device.

I don't know if they've added the option to de-obfuscate source yet, but that was a major sore point for me when code was failing in production. Chrome is a little buggy setting breakpoints in large codebases, but restarting the browser usually fixes it. Safari is pretty useless in my experience, especially when you have to set breakpoints in large, obfuscated files that make up your production code.

Just thinking about how frustrating my experience with this was gets my hackles up. I can't believe Apple would ship such crap in an unpolished state like that.

tl;dr: Safari's inspector sucks horribly for work more complicated than simple webpages.

<comment><USER3> Safari dev tools is horrible. Luckily we now have [https://github.com/google/ios-webkit-debug- proxy](https://github.com/google/ios-webkit-debug-proxy) to connect Chrome to an iOS debug target.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are a lifesaver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't believe someone really does this! It's good to learn other tools but I really doubt if you can do everything you can do in Chrome Dev Tools in Safari dev tools.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you still support older browsers? Or do you use latest web tech? - <AUTHOR> If you support the latest browsers only, what modern features do you use? For example, do you use CSS Grid? Or variable width fonts?<p>If you still need to support older browsers, what are the reasons for that? <comment><USER2> Depends on the situation. I worked on a site for lawyers and we needed to make it work in IE11, because that was the site all the lawyers used.

I was just at a bank the other day and saw IE being used. It is still 8% of the wider market: [https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market- share.aspx?opt...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market- share.aspx?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222018-09%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222019-08%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D)

</comment><comment><USER3> To piggyback on mooreds - you need a baseline to see what your target market uses (if you're making the business decisions)

An easy answer is to add Google Analytics to your site and support browsers that account for greater than 0.5% of your visitors</comment>


Ask HN: Do I need to encrypt data before storing it on CloudKit Private DB - <AUTHOR> Access to Apple's CloudKit Private DB is limited only to the Account Holder. So, does it matter? <comment><USER2> You won't get a good answer here beyond "it depends". Who are your trying to protect the data from?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> wow, no comments. People must be very busy ;)</comment>


30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format - <AUTHOR> http://techzwn.com/2012/02/interview-filmmakers-tell-of-the-home-video-revolution/

<comment><USER2> For me, a huge justification for piracy: archives. If the content license holders won't do it then someone has to preserve this stuff before it disappears.

I've never understood why a content creator would not digitize their archives and then offer it through streaming somehow. After a while it would seem the eventual revenue might offset the cost of the archiving. Free backup.

Imagine if one of the older studios suddenly offered every bit of content they had in their vaults, that still could be digitized, on Netflix, Hulu or even their own site? In some cases that would be five decades of content. We're talking hundreds/thousands of movies and tv shows that the current generation doesn't even know exist.

But no, the film sits in a salt mine somewhere slowing rotting away.

<comment><USER3> _For me, a huge justification for piracy: archives._

Not just you, but also the US supreme court. If you already own a copy of that movie on any format it's legal to have 1 digital backup and you can acquire that backup by downloading it. Where most people get in trouble is by re- uploading it. If you do that, you're distributing something you have no right to distribute. And the most successful aspect of bittorrent is how efficiently it turns you into a distributer.

<comment><USER2> That's true, but not quite what I meant. It's conceivable that if everyone made a digital backup of content then it almost certainly be available in one form of another.

I'm speaking more of the topic of the article. If the content holder has decided to no longer make content they control available to the masses then it is almost a moral obligation for someone to digitize that content for uploading to the Internet so that is not lost. How much content have we already lost that should be in the public domain but no one has the content any longer to digitize?

But I'm not talking just movies and tv shows. This could easily cover other mundane topics of life such as sporting events, interviews, documentaries, newscasts and so on.

This is the time that someone in the future, say 100 years, could have a near perfect record of what's going on today with the sheer amount of data we are producing on a daily basis. Not just video content but emails, texting, forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc. If only we could keep copies of content somewhere convenient so that people can get to them whenever they wish.

Now, be clear, I'm not saying that this content should be freely available the moment it is completed. The creator should have the right to recoup their costs plus make profit. Especially since profit might be required for the creator to create more. But we should have saner copyright laws in place so that it doesn't take near 100 years for something to become public domain. That kind of nonsense guarantees that something we feel is not important today may be lost and missed later. The missing early episodes of Dr. Who that keeps getting mentioned is an excellent example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People who have VHS should digitize. There is a lot on Youtube but for how long... Old films/series are lost and will be lost forever that way. It's not even actually only VHS: some things never made VHS and is rotting on tapes in dark vaults under tv studios. Possible already damaged beyond repair. Stuff like 'secret valley' (AU tv series) is unfindable. Xenon (Flemisch scifi) is only in the BRT vaults; I mailed them about that and they responded that it would cost E49 per episode where you have to order per post PER episode (you cannot order multiple at the same time) and only for private use. I just would like to see an episode for nostalgia sake; if I could buy / view it online I would, but E49 per episode and all the hassle.

What does it matter to THEM to just have some students digitize EVERYTHING and put it online for free or a small fee? I imagine there are 100s of 1000s of these series and movies around the world going to waste. No matter if popular or not, what DOES IT MATTER to put them online, it's not as if it's expensive to do so esp if you charge some monthly or one-off fee to watch them.

<comment><USER5> When I moved, a couple months ago, I packed up — not a series, not a tape — the box I have that can turn VHS _into_ digital video thinking, "Maybe I should just throw this out." I hung onto it for purely sentimental reasons, I think. I can't really remember the last time I _saw_ a VHS cassette, let alone used one.

And yet there must be hundreds of thousands of hours of human creation which will, without preservation, be utterly destroyed. There's definitely something tragic there.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the wretched work of _copyright_. This is the still-unfulfilled promise of the information age. Let's not forget that.

<comment><USER6> It seems a bit of a stretch to blame copyright for this.

People upload content for which they don't own the copyright all the time.

In this case, the people with the videos just don't want to go through the effort of digitizing and uploading. Even if the studios said, "All of our old stuff is public domain," it wouldn't change anything.

<comment><USER4> I think it would. If the studios would say that, they could have the local film academy students in to digitize; they like that and they can study stuff which hardly anyone saw before. They did that in the Film museum in Amsterdam and that worked fine. So yes that would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I upvote because it's interesting, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it's all wrong. Home video didn't disappear, it went to YouTube. Browsing still exists, as active who has looked through Netflix, Hulu, or any other service can attest to. Having that right image is sill an important conveyance of style.

But yet, I still upvote. I can't help but feel this potential loss of so much film can be avoided. Maybe someone at Archive.org can work to verify rights holders who want to donate their work to the public domain and have their work soured there. So what if most of it's bad?

We live in the first time in history where we actually can save everything. Why not do it?

<comment><USER8> Because the laws of entropy show that's not quite right?

The notion that we have the ability to save everything doesn't seem to account for the placement of such technology in a wider context. For example, take dimensions such as the political and economic - which are themselves subject to physical entropy such as fundamental communication and informational limitations manifested by the physical laws underpinning our 'reality'. It seems to me these are examples of some significant hard barriers to reaching such utopia's of permanence.

So we have a socio-political-economic system that gives rise to things like intellectual property, which in turn leads to allocation of social energy in endeavours such as prohibiting, rather than facilitating, the perpetuation of the content for posterity.

Of course this is a gross simplification, but hopefully functionally illustrative. Down with IP!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have TONS of VHS tapes that I have been slowly digitizing over the pass 25 years. The issue I have ran up against is it is harder and harder to get VHS players. New models are almost non-existent so you have to troll Craigslist or eBay for used equipment.

Also, the market for good digitizing hardware is drying up too.

The moral, hurry up and digitize now before the equipment use for this purpose drys up.

<comment><USER10> I have a few dozen tapes to convert for a medical professional (treatment documentation -- with waivers signed where used in a public context). I'd also like to convert a few personal tapes, e.g. of my great aunts discussing times out on the old farmstead.

Unfortunately, the tapes have some age/wear issues. And the fancy-schmancy Sony DVD/VHS combo recorder/player I was given promptly turns these -- which play well enough directly to the TV -- into extreme pixelation.

So, any equipment/procedure recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had a bunch of old VHS tape that i threw away. Although I would have liked to keep them, the biggest annoyance was the fungus/mold that grows on them if you live anywhere with some humidity.

The point being: VHS tapes destroy themselves, its not necessarily always a choice to not convert them.

</comment><comment><USER12> Remarkably, I know of at least one early-1990s film -- _Rockula_ \-- that was never released on DVD, but is available on Netflix Instant streaming.

</comment><comment><USER13> Officially.

Yet many of them will live on in "pirated" digital form.

<comment><USER4> And many of them don't.

<comment><USER14> Case in point: Even the BBC has managed to "lose" a lot of the early Dr Who (they taped over a lot of it before someone started thinking about archival), and have resorted to recovering some of it from versions taped from broadcasts, but bits and pieces are still missing and will likely never be found.

A large part of what has been recovered has only been recovered because of a _lot_ of effort from both the BBC and volunteers.

This is a series with massive cultural impact in the UK.

Now consider all the less popular series that don't have scores of fans pushing to ensure as much as possible of it is restored and made available...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> is there any public or industry group registry for those movies?</comment>


Is Docker ready for production? Feedbacks of a 2 weeks hands on - <AUTHOR> https://t37.net/is-docker-ready-for-production-feedbacks-of-a-2-weeks-hands-on.html

<comment><USER2> I'm disappointed that this post didn't get more comments. I can't tell how real the criticism is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone solving these problems will have a product in great demand.</comment>


Apple: We're the patent trolls' top target, facing 92 lawsuits in 3 years - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/apple-top-target-of-patent-trolls-faced-92-lawsuits-in-three-years/

<comment><USER2> Anyone remember the lame "look and feel" lawsuit Apple launched against Microsoft in the 1990's? Apple popularized some of the very attacks that today's patent trolls are using against them (and everyone else) today. Apple has also resorted to the same crybaby tactics (more effectively than vs Microsoft) against Samsung. Yet they continue to cry foul when someone dares to use something from their own bag of dirty tricks against them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article should define PAE ( _never_ use an acronym without defining it, that should be SOP).

Patent Assertion Entity: [http://www.generalpatent.com/glossary- terms](http://www.generalpatent.com/glossary-terms)

</comment><comment><USER4> We're also super rich.</comment>