MacBook Pro 16" 2019 Teardown - <AUTHOR> https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+16-Inch+2019+Teardown/128106 <comment><USER2> Most important point: Apple fixed the keyboard by ditching the flawed keyboard used for the past 3 years and returning to the Magic Keyboard scissor switch design. Comparing the 'new' keyboard to the Magic Keyboard: "side by side, we're hard pressed to spot any differences. Scissor switches, keycaps... There's slightly less space surrounding these new keys, and pundits will celebrate those reconfigured arrow keys—but everything else looks nigh identical."

<comment><USER3> The Magic Keyboard design is not the 2012-2015 MBP keyboard design, it's the design from their line of external keyboards. iFixit's jokey intro is misleading in this regard.

<comment><USER4> This is correct. The Magic keyboard has been beloved for several years, and it is not a keyboard that has ever been in a laptop before.

<comment><USER5> Personally, I prefer the MBP2015 keyboard to the Magic Keyboard.

I have been to an Apple Store recently to try out the MBP16's keyboard and it's good - but not as good as the one I'm typing this on.

I also don't understand the obsession with key stability on the corners. I _like_ the instability. I use it when I'm touch typing - it gives my fingers a lot more tactile feedback.

<comment><USER6> Can you really tell if you don't like the older keyboard more because of familiarity after a few minutes with the new one? I can't.

I just got the Magic Keyboard and it's still growing on me after a few days.

<comment><USER7> I've been using a magic keyboard for the past few years, and any time I type on the older 2015 MacBook pro's keyboard now, it feels like I'm pressing my fingers into a mushy sponge.

For me, at least, the Magic Keyboard is the happy medium between the too short action on the 2016-19 Pro keyboards, and the too deep action on the 2015 and earlier,

<comment><USER8> Interesting, I work on a '14 MBP and one of the new full size magic keyboards, and while the MBP feels slightly softer, I never noticed any discomfort or annoyance, and didn't know the '15 had a significantly different keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I went with my gf to take a look at these last night at the Apple store. Her command key has completely stopped working on her 2018 MacBook that otherwise works perfectly fine.

It feels clumsily large, especially since we're coming from MacBook 13s. She kept asking me if I'd heard any rumors about when new 13s would come out. She went in pretty determined to get a new machine but decided to wait.

The struggle continues for us 13ers I'm afraid. Not really excited to drop $3K+ on an even larger form factor I haven't been excited about for upwards of 5 years (and being forced to upgrade to Catalina) just to fix what is now universally understood to be a defective keyboard design.

I'm fairly convinced that this whole speaker business was to have something, _anything_ , to differentiate it from the current models other than fixing the keyboard, and probably delayed this release. Someone said "we can't seriously just ship a new laptop, with the _same CPU_ as the current models, and _just_ fix the keyboards!" It wouldn't surprise me if the 13s haven't come out yet for a similar reason.

<comment><USER10> I recently bought a used 2015 13inch MPB. Extremely happy.

<comment><USER11> I bought the same in 2016. Last year the speakers got fried and since few months back it has started to shut down abruptly. The max time I can use it now is only around 30 mins :(

<comment><USER12> if thats on battery just get the battery replaced and you'll be good to go again

<comment><USER13> Mine was like that even when on the charger until I replaced the battery, after that it was like new again. Well worth the money!

Another thing to do is opening the bottom an removing as much of the dust buildup as possible, that shit alone explains a lot of the "my computer gets slower with age".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Call me crazy but I must be the only person who enjoys typing on the old butterfly keyboard.

Yes I was one of those people who originally thought the travel was too small but after using it for a couple hours I found the low travel was a huge relief to Carpal Tunnel and I also typed much faster.

Maybe I have the only keyboard that "works" but I love me some butterfly keyboards.

<comment><USER15> I felt the same way until my butterfly keyboard gradually stopped working and I went back to my old 2014 MBP keyboard, and realized I had developed Stockholm Syndrome. If you haven't already, try switching back to the old (or new) scissor keys and see if you still feel the same.

<comment><USER16> Agreed - I used the 2017 model for a couple years and no complaints about the feel, just the non-working keys. But I didn't realize that my typing had gotten slower and less precise.

I switched to the X1C7 and will prioritize key travel and response from now on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just bought one and have been using it for a couple of days. So far so good. I still hate the TouchBar because it's completely useless, but the Esc key and directional keys was enough for me.

I also have a 2018 MBP from work and the keyboard is shit. Within 3 weeks it was doubletyping and putting random .'s everywhere.

I was days away from buying the top end Vaio and then I heard the news about the new MBP and decided to go for the MBP instead.

<comment><USER18> > putting random .'s everywhere.

For anyone else having this problem, the new MBPs ship with the same autocorrect "feature" that comes on iOS where when you press spacebar twice (or, I should say, your keyboard _thinks_ you pressed the spacebar twice) it inserts a period automatically. In addition, newer MBPs automatically capitalize and autocorrect spelling, like on mobile.

You can disable this. I did, and, I don't think any desktop computer should be telling me how to type. I don't need help when I have a full keyboard. System Prefs > Keyboard > Text.

<comment><USER19> > I don't think any desktop computer should be telling me how to type.

I agree.. seems like Apple derped there. The auto-correct was because typing on a smartphone is a lot harder, but some genius must've thought "Hey, why don't we use this software on our desktops too?". Also holding down a hardware key to get to accented characters, oh fuck, how is that ergonomic?

<comment><USER20> > Also holding down a hardware key to get to accented characters, oh fuck, how > is that ergonomic?

I think it's a good addition for when you _very_ occasionally need to type a particular accented character, since you can visually see the options. Of course if you are going to type it a lot you're better off learning the Option key combo.

For instance I would have to look up how to directly type "ł" since I rarely need to type a Polish name... but I can get it in 1 second by holding down "l". Very handy!

<comment><USER21> > For instance I would have to look up how to directly type "ł" since I rarely > need to type a Polish name... but I can get it in 1 second by holding down > "l". Very handy!

What's more, you can't even type ł on the standard Apple layout. Sure, you could use the Apple Extended keyboard layout that handles more characters than what's used in Western Europe, but you'll lose ≈ (irritatingly, the Extended layout isn't a strict superset of the standard layout). I type ≈ more often than I type ł or ć or ō, so the hold-key behavior is a handy addition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For those who are not in a hurry to upgrade, ( If you are on 2015 MBP ), the next upgrade which should be soon, will get you WiFi 6 and Icelake, with 20%+ IPC and hopefully Apple will throw in 10 Core Config in as well.

I kind of felt Apple rushed as the problem with Keyboard were big enough and Apple had to release something to calm the market, not to mention Intel 10nm Icelake is late as usual.

And of all the thing Apple backtrack, I really wish they bring back AirPort Extreme.

<comment><USER23> _For those who are not in a hurry to upgrade_

There is always something new just around the corner.

<comment><USER22> >There is always something new just around the corner.

True, but something new isn't always something better, and isn't always worth waiting for. Aka 2016 - 2019 MBP 15". And in the above cases, I consider Icelake IPC and Security improvement along with WiFI 6 to be quite a significant upgrade, not the same could be said for the past 3 update of MacBook Pro.

<comment><USER24> But is this something you would've known when they were released? Looking back it's quite easy to know which upgrade was worth waiting for. What if intel can't deliver next year?

For me it's also less about what next upgrade might bring but also what next upgrade does to the resale price. I'm sure those offloading a 15" 2018 will feel the price drop now.

I have a 13" 2018 and I am seriously considering replacing with the maxed out 16" with 2tb.

But the struggle is real, this is essentially a first gen device despite the somewhat small design changes. What if they release a new version in half a year? Definitely not an easy decision for a laptop that costs 5k€

<comment><USER22> >What if intel can't deliver next year?

Agree as well, something that was in mind but didn't wrote it out in my last reply. There was of course the assumption Intel execute, which isn't something Apple can control.

At least Intel has shipped its Icelake in extremely small quantities. I actually rather hope Intel do miss their deadline so Apple has an excuses to switch to AMD or ARM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wait, so are individual keys repairable, or not?

This ifixit article says, "Once again, the keyboard assembly is riveted down. Though the switches are likely less vulnerable to crumbly assailants, the keyboard itself isn't any more repairable than the Butterfly boards."

That directly contradicts statements from Apple to The Verge. [https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20962380/apples-16-inch-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20962380/apples-16-inch- macbook-pro-keyboard-screen-speakers-processor)

"Apple says that it has done extra work to stabilize the keycaps, made them slightly smaller so there's more space between the keys, and that if a key breaks you can just replace that one key without taking apart the whole laptop."

This seems like a strange thing for Apple to lie about. What's the real truth here, I wonder?

EDIT: It seems that ifixit is just wrong about this, and the keyboard is at least somewhat more repairable than the butterfly model. The keycaps are replaceable (allowing you to spray compressed air directly onto debris) _and_ the white part of the switch is replaceable.

<comment><USER26> The keycaps are replacable but the keyswitches are not.

I don't know of any Apple laptop that ever had replacable keyswitches.

<comment><USER27> It looks like the white piece beneath the keycap (I guess that's the "scissor mechanism") is replaceable too.

<comment><USER28> Apple statement wouldn't make sense otherwise. The point of failure is the scissor mechanism and I never heard of a key cap breaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > A beloved old feature returns to the MacBook Pro, and it starts with M-a-g.

Way to play with my heart, iFixit.

<comment><USER30> Soo, I take it magsafe is not back?

<comment><USER31> Nope, still USB-C :(

<comment><USER32> I bought a Magsafe-like USB-C cable...

<comment><USER33> That's quite interesting, which one did you get? What are your impressions so far? And can it be used for data?

<comment><USER34> I bought an add-on USB-C 'magsafe' adapter when I bought my 2017 MBP 13" [1]. I had planned to leave the one bit in the laptop, and use it like a magsafe, but it didn't work out well - it wasn't as magnetic or as positive in location as a real magsafe (it tended to fold 'sideways' too easily), and in the end I just stopped using it because it became more of a pain than the real risk of it getting dragged off a table (the only location I used to use it was at my girlfriend's house in the kitchen and I took to just taking the cable out when I walked away to save the kids having a nightmare).

[1] - [https://snapnator.com/](https://snapnator.com/)

<comment><USER35> Snapnator actually delivered for you? I know several people including myself that had bought one of these things and never had them delivered, then never had any support requests answered. I had put them down to a large scam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> >The X-rays make it even angrier! Run away! Luckily our friends at Creative Electron are taking all the risk here—we'll resume disassembly after things calm down.

Not sure what is the allusion to here, but anyone else noticed static discharge you get after airport xray scans your macbook?

<comment><USER37> I believe that is caused by the rubber conveyor belt carrying the laptop through in a nylon bag rather than the x-ray itself. You can get the same effect from other non-x-ray conveyor belts at the airport.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is probably a stupid question, but why have they got two different flavours of RAM?

* 16x Micron MT40A1G8SA-075 8 Gb DDR4 SDRAM (16 GB total)

* 4x Samsung K4Z80325BC-HC14 8 Gb GDDR6 RAM (4 GB total)

<comment><USER27> I think the GDDR6 is for the GPU

<comment><USER39> Yep. GDDR stands for Graphics DDR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't get their dust-proofing membrane comment:

> News flash: there's not even a dust-proofing membrane on these new switches. > We're inclined to take this as a very good sign. (It means we can finally > eat Doritos during teardowns again.)

That sounds counter-intuitive. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER41> They don't have the membrane because they don't need it. With the old keyboards, any spec of dust would cause them to stick. That means these are back to the original, non-fragile keyboards with good travel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The Surface Laptop 3 scored a 5 at least, which was a big improvement over previous generations. I wish Apple would try to improve repairability as well.

<comment><USER43> While this is true, the battery (which is likely the only component most people will need/want to replace) is still glued to the case, the RAM is soldered and I'm not sure Microsoft will provide a replacement keyboard to you for a decent price.

I mean, I was very happy about the Laptop 3 repairability, but if the MBP is 1/10, then 5/10 looks a bit too much to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm very patiently waiting for modular components. Apple's hardware is certainly beautiful but IMO not worth the upfront premium PLUS the additional premium for repairs.

From a hardware eng perspective, is there a clear advantage for hardwiring components?

<comment><USER31> > From a hardware eng perspective, is there a clear advantage for hardwiring > components?

Yeah: it saves space and reduces complexity. A more modular MacBook would almost certainly be missing features or be bigger/thicker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> A while back, I used to think hard about whether to purchase AppleCare to extend the warranty on a new MacBook Pro. Now, it's a no-brainer. Believe me, I know from hard experience that you won't regret it.

<comment><USER16> Well I bought AppleCare because of the keyboard and I regret it. They refused to fix the nonworking keys because of a 1mm scratch on the back of the top case, saying it voided the warranty.

So just a few hundred additional bucks wasted.

<comment><USER46> I had the keyboard of my MBP 2017 replaced for free. Also, the display died roughly at the same time. At first, I thought it was a problem of the flex cable, but later I discovered a small crack. The Apple Store replaced the entire display for free, what is usually a $800 repair. I guess it depends a lot on the store, the country, maybe even the person you talk to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Repairability 1/10

<comment><USER48> I don't know why you're being downvoted. Maybe for spoiling the end result? Haha.

Having the lowest repairability possible should not be acceptable for such a high-end machine.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 got 5/10 (23 October 2019)

[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+3+(...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+3+\(15-inch\)+Teardown/127277)

<comment><USER49> Why shouldn't it be acceptable? I for one accept to trade repairability for less footprint/weight. And I also admire my ThinkPad T420 that I thoroughly hacked.

Let the market decide what it wants. There's space for all kinds os laptops and gadgets.

<comment><USER50> In a world where sourcing materials and building computer parts that cannot be recycled has such a high environmental and societal cost, no, I can't find any way of seeing this as acceptable.

We should not let the market and consumers preference decide on this. We need informed, resonnable and thoughful decisions. If it leads to laptops a bit more heavy and thick but less wasteful, so be it. Convenience cannot be demanded at any cost. Anyway, repairable is convenient.

<comment><USER51> You can't dump a laptop in a blue bin but you can recycle it. You can also resell or get a trade-in credit from Apple.

[https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/](https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/)

<comment><USER50> Isn't this bullshit?

Apple Forces Recyclers to Shred All iPhones and MacBooks - [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling- ip...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones- macbooks)

Anyway, the best waste is the one that does not exist, recycling should be last resort since it's often far from perfect and costly too. So we should reduce the amount of things we need to recycle in the first place. As for computer parts, I cannot see how it can be efficient.

Reusing working stuff is good though, obviously.

<comment><USER51> The article is from 2017 and references data from 2016 and 2012. In 2018 Apple announced it stepped up its recycling efforts but I don't know how things have changed and I haven't read the full environmental report.

Apple forces recyclers to shred because they determined those devices are not fit for resale and they don't want recyclers reselling them, like they said they would in the article. This happens to 1/3 of trade-ins, see link below.

[https://www.apple.com/environment/](https://www.apple.com/environment/)

<comment><USER50> You are implying that an article that is only two years old is too old, precising that you don't know if things have changed (thank you for your honesty by the way).

Apple forces recyclers to shred perfectly good hardware indiscriminately, against their will, so it does not hurt Apple's bottom line. When you are the richest company in the world, surely you can do better. There is no excuse.

I cannot take Apple's own 2 MB, 55 request loading marketing material about environment as a reliable source.

<comment><USER51> > You are implying that an article that is only two years old is too old,

No. I'm stating that policy changed after this article was published, who knows maybe it was in response to this article, so the facts may have changed. The age of the article is not relevant I was just showing the timeline.

> Apple forces recyclers to shred perfectly good hardware indiscriminately

Says the recyclers. Apple says they are not perfectly good hardware, otherwise they would have refurbished it themselves. I also believe Apple maximizes profit which is why I believe if it was reliably repairable, they would have done it. A refurbishment unit has to fetch more than a recycled unit.

<comment><USER50> >> You are implying that an article that is only two years old is too old,

> No. I'm stating that policy changed after this article was published, who > knows maybe it was in response to this article, so the facts may have > changed

Ok, that was a more charitable and likely interpretation of your message. A bit of bad faith unfortunately slipped in my last comment. Sorry for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I switched from a pair of Mac Pro's to a 15" Macbook Pro last year. The 15" was the first laptop to support quad 4k displays (what I was using with my Mac Pro). The laptop has been fantastic, with the exception of cooling. The cooling is bad enough that I keep it (when it's hooked up to my quad 4k displays) upside down, with 2 plastic cups, to keep it from overheating.

I'm mostly interested in the enhanced cooling. If it's really that much better, it may be time to upgrade. Has anyone had similar experiences?

<comment><USER53> Yes. Everyone in my office complains about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Those half sized up/down cursor keys - does nobody within Apple use spreadsheets?

I get that it's not their primary audience but surely of all the keys you'd want to mini-fy cursor would be one of the last?

<comment><USER31> I _really_ like the inverted-T arrangement. I have literally held off on buying a new Mac until they went back to that layout, since it lets me position my fingers on the keys better.

<comment><USER55> Yeah same here, I tried using keyboards with full-size left right arrow keys and I don't know why but I found that to be one of the hardest things to adjust to. And I type on lots of different keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I love how Apple claim to care so much about the environment and then goes on to create basically the most unfixable pieces of hardware possible.

Great job, really awesome for the environment Apple.

<comment><USER57> Only a tiny percentage of laptops are ever upgraded. If making the device upgradable and accessible adds the same percentage in materials then it's pretty much a wash.

Also Apple devices on average have much longer service lives than devices from most other manufacturers. On average they stay usable longer, and even when they are replaced they're more likely to be handed on and keep in use even without upgradability. This is why they retain more of their second hand value. That factor alone is dramatically more significant from a whole lifecycle impact point of view.

<comment><USER58> I feel like much of these claims are only in the past. I used my 2009 Macbook for 5 or so years, and it only lasted that long because I was able to upgrade it. It came with a comical 2GB of ram, and that would have been a trash—as in worthless to me—if it couldn't be upgraded. I was able to sell it, only because they're desirable, and they used to be more reliable. The latter quality is not so evident any more. Many naive customers are duped into buying the bottom of the line MBP or Air, and then are dumbfounded when their thing runs out of resources. I blame apple for making less reliable products for higher margins and offering their customers less agency over their devices. Their marketing pitch is usually that you should have to know the details, but you do, because they're trying to screw you. The people with money to blow I'm not so concerned about, it's more the person who buys a 13" MBP for 2k that has 4GB of ram and 128gb ssd, and can't ever upgrade the thing.

<comment><USER57> >I feel like much of these claims are only in the past.

It's not actually possible to buy a new Mac with less than 8GB RAM these days, and that seems likely to be plenty for a typical user for the lifetime of a machine bought today. 128 GB SSD is a bit tight, but flash drives are cheap. I see it the opposite way, in the past minimum Mac specs always seemed miserly, but nowadays they're pretty capable.

<comment><USER58> Now 8Gb is a decent baseline, but it took a very long time to get there for a very expensive computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> So no upgradable RAM, no upgradable storage. If either stops functioning, you have to change the entire logic board (including the CPU and GPU? I'm not sure). Wow this is a crappy design. But expected, since this is Apple that we're talking about.

<comment><USER60> What's interesting about this perception is that PC vendors who do the same things don't catch flak. Presumably because there are still options for PC that are at least theoretically repairable and built to last.

I wonder what would happen in a hypothetical world where there were pro and non-Pro Apple laptops, but the only real difference between them were that the Pro laptops had replaceable parts, and were however much larger/heavier/pricier they need to be to make that happen, while the non-Pro ones are all soldered and riveted together.

My guess is that the ones that are soldered together vastly outsell the pro line because that's what most _Apple_ consumers want. And then economies of scale kick in until everyone's just mad that Apple is charging $500 "tax" just to be able to replace the hard drive and upgrade the RAM.

<comment><USER61> That's because Apple is the only hardware provider for Mac OS X. If you just want Windows or Linux, you have a lot of choices. If you want OS X, there's no choice but to put up with whatever hardware Apple gives you.

<comment><USER62> That's not entirely true with Hackintoshes being a thing now.

<comment><USER61> That's only for exalted characters with nice hats and beards.

If you want to run MacOSX legally without risking a lawsuit from Apple (they even went after a repair shop, FFS), you must use their hardware, as per the license agreement.

<comment><USER62> >they even went after a repair shop, FFS

They went after the repair shop for copyright infringement which the shop was guilty of. That's not the same thing at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Why doesn't apple make the touchbar out of keys? The keys could be flat on top and seamlessly adjacent to one another to make a "bar", for sliders and such. But pressable like regular keys to make great buttons (most common use-case). I feel like that is inventable.

<comment><USER31> Like the Chromebook Pixel? I don't think sliding on that would work very well, since you'd end up pressing the keys…

<comment><USER64> It has a touchbar?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I bought a MBP 15" around the time of the fall keynote because the 16" was not announced. Does anyone know how I can replace it with a 16"? The keyboard really is driving me nuts.

</comment><comment><USER31> > Stacked atop its slightly-older sibling (the 15-inch 2019 model), the new > MacBook Pro has some noticeably larger exhaust holes.

They look quite similar to the vents found in the Early 2015 Macbook Pro!

</comment><comment><USER66> Would have hoped a note on the screen cable for this one. Wasn't a breaking/failing ribbon cable the biggest problem after the keyboard for that last couple of years models?

<comment><USER2> The stage light flaw. Happened because Apple made the cable between the mainboard and the display panel in too short. Excacerbated because Apple soldered the cable to the display panel turning a $6 repair into a $600 repair.

Rossman's video from January details the stupidity: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzjoELvrkYo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzjoELvrkYo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Does anybody know the current state of installing linux on one? Doe the latest kernel fixes to SPI make things like the keyboard work now?

</comment><comment><USER68> iFixit can't cover an Apple device without injecting just a bit of snark and passive-aggression into it. People who buy these things know what they're getting. Score it how you want to, but spare me the sermon.

<comment><USER69> iFixit are not even pretending to be a neutral party here. They have a clear agenda and a clear viewpoint and that is very much the point. And there is nothing wrong with that.

While I agree with them in broad strokes I also disagree on some points but that's not the end of the world. We just disagree and that's alright.

<comment><USER68> They don't really present themselves as a political organization, just a business that tells you _how_ to perform whatever operations you _can_ perform on a given device and what those operations are, and sells you tools for doing so. They can tell you that you can't replace a lot of things on your MacBook without implying that they think it's every company's responsibility to make their devices apocalypse-proof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> How long 'till we can get this keyboard in a 13"?

<comment><USER31> Rumor is early next year: [https://www.macrumors.com/2019/11/18/13-inch- macbook-pro-sci...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/11/18/13-inch-macbook-pro- scissor-keyboard-2020/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I can't find any information on the SSD flash chips; does anyone have any info on if they're MLC or 3D Nand? That would impact the wear of the drives considerably.

<comment><USER71> Which ones last longer?

<comment><USER70> MLC would last longer than 3D NAND, SLC would last significantly longer than both; but nobody is shipping SLC for at least 5 years now it seems :(

<comment><USER72> Nobody is manufacturing planar NAND flash memory in high volume or in die sizes large enough to fit multiple TBs of flash into a notebook. The only viable options currently being manufactured are all 3D NAND. The vast majority of this (and what is used by almost all SSDs across all market segments) is 3D TLC NAND flash memory—TLC meaning it stores 3 bits per physical memory cell. MLC would typically refer to storing two bits per cell, SLC means one bit per cell, and QLC means four bits per cell.

There is _no_ reason to prefer MLC these days. TLC has plenty of write endurance for client/consumer usage. MLC offers theoretical advantages in performance and endurance, but these are absolutely not worth the higher cost that comes from lower density. (And that's comparing 3D MLC against 3D TLC; high-density planar MLC loses against 3D TLC on all counts.) There _is_ a niche market for SLC NAND in high-performance server applications that need the lowest possible latency from their SSDs, and Samsung and Toshiba are currently manufacturing memory to suit this use case. But it again has density too low for multi-TB SSDs to fit into a laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Looks like the mobo came from space invaders.

</comment><comment><USER74> I like my 13 inch retina 2013 model, and i guess i will be holding on to that as long as possible.

</comment><comment><USER75> Basically a throw-away computer.

</comment><comment><USER76> I just replaced the keyboard on a ThinkPad T440p, and it didn't seem to add a significant bulk to the machine's profile. It took me 2 minutes flat.

<comment><USER77> +1. The serviceability of ThinkPads had always been a great (if not hidden) feature, almost allowing Ship-of-Theseus-ish rolling upgrades like a desktop. Even though the build quality has generally declined since the T410 era, this at least has been preserved (I have a company-issued P50 and it's still a few screws away from changing RAM and SSD).

<comment><USER78> I replaced the trackpad on an x240 and it took me 2 hours and a few broken spudgers. I would have been able to swap everything else out first, as the touchpad was buried under motherboard, keyboard, hard drives etc.

<comment><USER79> That is essentially the feature of the "good" thinkpads. You can replace almost anything, but the whole thing is built in this weird upside-down way and replacing anything that you really want to replace means that you have to take the whole thing almost completely apart. On the other hand if you read the official procedure for that and take inspiration from that, the only tool you really need to take it completely apart and assemble back is literally an cheapest swiss army knife which includes philips screwdriver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Nice edit without the edit note. 0/10.

</comment><comment><USER81> It's not a very professional device if you can't upgrade the storage and the memory.

The Mac Pro will feature modular SSDs (and they aren't even super fast). I wonder if Apple will use something proprietary or standard M.2 NVMe modules. They probably can't offer PCIe 4.0 slots since they're using Intel which is trailing behind.

<comment><USER82> Im so tired of these comments on HN. Some people want a laptop they can pull apart and fix themselves. Those people should buy something else. when I was younger and had more time than money, I used to upgrade RAM and the SSD myself. Then I started making money. Then it became seriously dumb to spend 2 hours doing all that nonsense when I can just pay upfront to get a maxed out RAM and Hard drive. Can't afford it? Then buy something else! I honestly don't underatand this constant complaining about repairing laptops yourselves. What a waste of time! Leave it to the Apple store techs to do it for you.

<comment><USER83> > Then it became seriously dumb to spend 2 hours

It doesn't have to be 2 hours. It doesn't have to be more than 5-10 minutes.

> I can just pay upfront to get a maxed out RAM and Hard drive.

Yes, but you can't pay upfront and get a SSD that will be launched in 2023. You'll be forever stuck with whatever tech was available at the time of purchase.

> I honestly don't underatand this constant complaining about repairing > laptops yourselves. What a waste of time! Leave it to the Apple store techs > to do it for you.

Apple can't repair them either, the design is unrepairable, that's why the failing keyboards were such a fuck-up. They had to throw away the whole top half of the chassis because keyboard was riveted to it. It's as anti-consumer and anti-environment as it gets. Given the growing electronic waste problem, I expect such practices to be outlawed sooner or later, and I'm somewhat surprised that Apple isn't already positioning itself as leader in long- lasting products that extract maximum value from natural resources put into them. Repairability and upgradability are cornerstones of environmentally responsible business, but Apple seems to be heading in the opposite direction.

<comment><USER72> > Yes, but you can't pay upfront and get a SSD that will be launched in 2023. > You'll be forever stuck with whatever tech was available at the time of > purchase.

Given that the SSDs you can buy right now outstrip the IO bandwidth your laptop CPU provides, the only real benefit that upgrading to future SSDs could provide would be a better price per GB. If you're seriously concerned about wanting more storage a few years down the road, you probably also want to buy a machine now and _immediately_ upgrade it with aftermarket storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Apple rolling back the keyboard design and lack of Escape key reminds me of the satirical "Upgrade to Windows 7 (from Windows 8)" article from six or seven years ago, joyfully describing how Windows was back on track after 7 fixed most of 8's problems.

</comment><comment><USER85> I dropped a beer in my 2017 model, and i screwed up all the spacebar, and the command and option keys in one side. They were really hard to use until some days ago they started working. The prior models were better for maintenance and resistant to these abuses with liquids.

</comment><comment><USER86> As I have already said in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21524049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21524049):

> I hate the wobbly feeling that the scissor mechanism produces. Apple didn't > need to return to the scissor mechanism, it should have reiterated the > design. I'm very disappointed that Apple just gave up & used the safe way of > regressing back.

> It feels like Apple is losing the spirit of doing things itself, whether > other people dislikes it. Apple is more and more becoming a usual company > that just does what consumers demands. And I'm sad with that.

<comment><USER87> In this case, consumers were demanding a keyboard that... ya know, works for more than six months. Maybe they did try to iterate, but the fundamental design was just flawed. Who knows? Maybe they'll change it again down the road, but you only have so long between revs, and they had a design which works in their back pocket.</comment></comment>


MathML is a failed web standard (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.peterkrautzberger.org/0186/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand what is wrong with TeX.

\- As a syntax/language for mathematics, it's the actual standard. Do you think Terry Tao will bother learning some other language for his blog? You might as well argue that English is poorly-specified and the web should switch to Lojban.

\- As a layout engine, it encodes all the damn typographical conventions that are in every single research article, academic journal and textbook. In the world.

Trying to replace TeX is so quixotic it makes Urbit sound pragmatic and down- to-earth. It's this whole scorched earth tradition. There just isn't any mathematics out there that uses anything but TeX.

<comment><USER3> Alright, so I work as a mathematician and I'll strongly agree that there's not good substitute for TeX at the moment for producing mathematical documents. That said, I do periodically look for something better because it's far from perfect. In large documents, I find it difficult to produce easily maintainable mathematical statements since the macro situation in LaTeX is a complete mess. Often times, I have a large formulation that I want to modify only a small part. Now, yes, we could just number all of the equations, change one of them, and then say that the result is the combination of (4), (27), (43), and (45). In fact, we can link them, so that everyone could flip back to these equations. That also makes really hateful to read documents. Really, I want to display all of the equations and I don't want to retype them since I may very well make a mistake and I want that correction propagated around the document. So, we can use macros to help with this, but the definitions have to occur before \begin{document}, which is not where I want to look for an equation. I want a local definition since it's next to what I'm looking at. We could use something like \newsavebox, which I often do, but I often want to just make a reference to part of an equation and this is not a good solution for that. Maybe there's a better macro or way to do that out there, and if anyone knows, I'd love to hear. I could write my own macros, but, really, I find TeX to be a difficult language to work with. I am curious to know if LuaTeX makes this much easier to do and I've been meaning to experiment to find out.

So, yes, in a vacuum I think that math notation in LaTeX works really, really well. However, for a larger document, there's a lot of other features that would be nice to have and they're difficult to implement in TeX.

<comment><USER4> i agree completely on the large document problem that LaTeX has, especially when you have big formulas, statements or diagrams that are hard to parse after you have written them and, say, you want to find where you committed a syntax error or made a typo.

i think semantic macros really help with that, but they are not a silver bullet. i'd really like to see editor plugins that convert LaTeX commands to actual symbols (for example, as soon as you write the space after the q in "\neq ", it gets converted to a "=/=", and when you type backspace to erase the "=/=" you get "\ne"). that has been already implemented for languages like agda, and in a simple form is present in text editors that support fonts with ligatures.

i know that what i'm proposing more on the "wysiwyg" side (which some LaTeX fundamentalists might dislike), but i think it would be a very nice thing to have when editing complicated formulas or diagrams.

<comment><USER5> It's best, in my experience, for simple expressions. We usually have a lot of those, and this helps it flow like text. Big expressions are so complex,you really want to keep your eyes on the real input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Say what you want about MathML but as of now it's the best standard we have for putting math on the web. And there seems to _finally_ be a little bit of traction developing w/r/t getting MathML support into Chromium (and Chrome).

Consider that, as of Feb 14 2017, the "MathML support" issue was the #8 top starred issue for Blink, Google finally seem to be paying a little bit of attention to this.

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606)

 _We (layout team and igalia) have a tentative plan to build a MathML implementation on top of LayoutNG and Custom Layout. I 've marked this as blocked on CSS Custom Layout and LayoutNG._

<comment><USER7> Could you explain what makes in-browser MathML support better than rudimentary support of LaTeX's math mode?

<comment><USER6> If you could get in-browser support for LaTeX, that would be great. It might arguably be better than MathML. But do any browsers support that today, and is there any initiative underway to get such support? If so, I'm not aware of it. MathML, OTOH, is supported by Firefox, and _I think_ by Safari, and it there's at least some reason to think Chrome may eventually add MathML support. Not sure where Edge stands on this. But in either case, from a pragmatic standpoint, I believe MathML is close to giving us quality "math on the web" than anything else. That said, I'd be happy to be proven wrong if something else is truly better positioned to do that.

<comment><USER8> What's wrong with mathjax?

<comment><USER9> The fact that you have to load a large javascript library to faithfully render math equations. I ended up disabling it on my Jupyter notebook server because of it's load time.

<comment><USER10> MathML rendering is unlikely to be significantly better in many use cases.

Besides, once MathJax is cached, it loads pretty fast.

<comment><USER11> Load time, not rendering time. Code in the browser won't need to be compiled over and over at runtime.

<comment><USER10> The render time is fairly fast on most modern browsers on desktop machines (though there's much more variance on mobile devices for some reason).

For the most part, it's good enough for the professional mathematicians on mathoverflow.net, where the math can get quite hairy. (I was active there many years ago, and even then the render speed was better than acceptable)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's very frustrating every time I'm trying to read some webpage via Pocket app and it has formulas rendered with Mathjax (which is very popular because MathML is failed and pre-rendering formulas as images requires complicated tooling) and they don't work in Pocket.

</comment><comment><USER13> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444830).

</comment><comment><USER14> true but we have a better alternative from Khan Academy:

[https://khan.github.io/KaTeX/](https://khan.github.io/KaTeX/)

<comment><USER15> KaTeX suffers the same issues as MathJax; it has to render some subset of Math LaTeX to something web browsers can render. We now have two standards. All the CSS issues in the article apply as much to KaTeX as anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes, we need something better. The correct solution is to have Unicode combining characters, as anything else will require a lot of separate work to be properly supported.

To think about how Unicode combining characters could work, just look at what Mathematica can do with just a few shotkeys: like ctrl-2, ctrl-- (ctrl-5), ctrl-6, ctrl-7 etc.

The matching Unicode combination characters would respectively be: place under a square root, put a something to the right below (and above), put an exponent, put something over.

With these 6 combining characters, you could already solve a large part of the problem and write 90% of the equations: for ex, if you want to type the sum of i=1 to 10 of the square root of alpha to the k bar power:

Type: 𝚺 (ctrl--) i=1 (ctrl-5) 10 (ctrl-2) α (ctrl-6) k (ctrl-7) _

With a proper keymap or shortcuts support, you could write (and render) equations just as fast as you write them by hand. I know, because I take all my notes with Mathematica and the only "magic" I use beside Mathematica combining shortkeys is a third level Unicode mapping for greek letters and some mathematical symbol like infinity, so that AltGr a gives me alpha, AltGr 0 gives me infinity etc.

Also, unlike what you read above, where only sigma and alpha stand out, it would show up in your browser, and you could copy-paste that in any email or text forum -- like HN or reddit!! No need for MathML support, that would be implemented straight in the Unicode rendering engine with the next batch of Unicode changes.

I have been trying to get some people involved, to try to submit a Unicode Math proposal. Nobody seems interested. Maybe with MathML dead, proper Unicode math combining characters will have a better chance.

(NB: in the above, I do not use a combining over bar for k, even if that is possible at the moment with what I think is called a macron. The idea is more general - what if you want to write a letter instead of just a bar over k? we have a few exponents like numbers and latin letters, but what if you want to write greek letters to the top right corner?)

<comment> jean- It's a neat idea, but I'm not entirely sold.

How would you implement, amongst others: vectors and matrices, matched auto- sizing delimiters (\left and \right) \operatorname, \limits, \displaystyle, \textstyle? In my line of work, every other line of maths I write requires at least one of these LaTeX features.

Also: \underset / \overset, \underbracket / \overbracket

<comment><USER17> Those aren't terribly more complicated than some of the rendering in existing languages. For instance ก้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Weren't all of these issues solved with latex? Why do we need to start over all for the purpose of making everything xml?

</comment><comment><USER19> What about VRML ? SMIL ?

<comment><USER20> Yeah, these too. So? What about them?

<comment><USER19> two good old things that were forgotten</comment></comment></comment>


5 Skype alternatives for Linux users - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/unified-communications/166637/5-skype-alternatives-linux-users

<comment><USER2> Are there any Skype alternatives that use the Skype protocol under the hood? Most of my contacts are on Skype...

</comment><comment><USER3> the only thing that is interesting about Skype is that it is cross platform. Having single platform alternatives just does not work.</comment>


Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine - <AUTHOR> http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-and-connection-machine/ <comment><USER2> Already at least 18 times on HN:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Richard%20Feynman%20and%20The%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Richard%20Feynman%20and%20The%20Connection%20Machine%20&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><USER3> True, but it is at least 18 times more worth reading than most of the stuff that turns up.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Recalll – Crowd sourced knowledge vault for programmers - <AUTHOR> https://recalll.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Recalll is crowed sourced knowledge vault, where developer community can create and curate to access qualitative knowledge. Good collection of algorithms and other topics. Any questions, feedback, suggestions please shoot.</comment>


Chicago Teachers Union on Strike - <AUTHOR> https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-cps-strike-chicago-teachers-union-updates-20191016-mo2oqq4fxbezxct62kijuujzeq-story.html <comment><AUTHOR> The problem with the teacher pay to me is obvious, market forces aren't allowed to play themselves out.

Think about it: A teacher should be paid according to their skill, supply, and demand. A great teachers time is highly valuable and there should never be a cap on how much they make or considerations on such an important task to hinder on concepts such as tenure.

If I hire a private teacher for my kids to teach them programming, I know that a great teacher has options to go work anywhere and I need to pay enough to afford a good one. I might get a couple friends kids to join to afford his time. Put together a few different subjects and all of the sudden you have a school.

So the question is why is this simple concept not being followed? The answer is lack of accountability, artificial barriers to entry, limitations on control to pick your instructors, standardized testing requirements, checkbox mentality, teachers unions, etc.

I think Steve Jobs was right in this regard, if we're going to continue to coerce money out of peoples paychecks to fund a dilapidated educational system, we are much better off giving the money we spend on a kids education directly to the parents (with the obligation to spend it only on education), and letting them select the course of education for their own kids themselves.

As for these "unions" its not so much that they care about the kids as they care about themselves. They just use the kids as leverage to get subsidies.

</comment><comment><USER2> I live in Chicago and my apartment is across the street from a public school. They were outside picketing when I left for work this morning. I feel conflicted, on one hand, I support our teachers and want them to be compensated fairly. On the other hand, Mayor Lightfoot is trying to balance a budget in a city that notoriously has issues managing its money. I hope this gets resolved soon with minimal impact to students, who are really the ones getting gyped here.</comment>


Android developer on Slashdot detailing the Android "fragmentation" - <AUTHOR> http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1671914&cid=32426078

<comment><USER2> In using OpenGL he is basically giving up all the features Android offers him to stay platform independent. I think it is clear, when you write a whole, complete rendering engine that doesn't use the android stack, you'll eventually have to deal with different screensizes, input methods, etc.

Most apps i use have been running on my G1 from day 1 and now on Android 2.2 on the Nexus One and i've had no big problems between android 1.5, 1.6, 2.1 and 2.2.

I guess the only thing for games to remain relatively platform independent is to use another intermediate layer (to substitute for a not used android "layer") like the unity3d engine.

<comment><USER3> You haven't had problems but how much of that is because a developer, like this one, put the effort into making sure you haven't had problem?

OpenGL itself exists to offer platform independence.

<comment><USER2> Not much if the developer stays to the standard UI. How do i know? First of all, i've written my own android programs. Running on a new version is generally no problem, there may be some minor changes that the developer docs usually tell you about. Nothing fancy that can't be done in a few minutes.

Second, when 2.2 was released most programs ran out of the box on 2.2, there where no app updates for a few days. Out of all the programs i have installed (there are quite a lot) only one had a minor graphic bug, that has been fixed now. Don't know what was causing this, though.

When you say "OpenGL is for platform independence" you are right. But if you look at all the versions, and _especially_ the vendor specific OpenGL extensions, you'll see that OpenGL is quite fragmented itself. Also, it doesn't abstract away screen sizes and such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once he develops some stuff for non-Android, non-iPhone devices, he'll laugh at how minor his complaints are.

<comment><USER5> Like Symbian? Just guessing, i'm interested in knowing more

<comment><USER6> Or Windows CE.

<comment><USER7> Or really, any computer supporting OpenGL. This stuff is always an issue: figuring out the correct depth buffer size (not as much of a problem as it used to be), finding the vendor-specific version of the extensions you need to use, different pixel/vertex shader versions which require completely different code... It's always a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget the bugs! Apple in particular has done exactly what he's accusing Google of doing: They ignored GL bugs in older versions of OS X, since they were fixed by the newer versions. They go as far as to delete (or hide?) discussion threads from the public Apple forums that talk about bugs they don't want to fix.

In their case it's more evil, though: They actually profit by ignoring older bugs, because they sell new versions of the OS to people who get sick of things not working. But as a game developer, we've had to still work around their bugs so as to support the people who haven't upgraded.

Story's the same here, except now it's not even an option for the consumer to upgrade (short of jailbreaking their phones in most cases).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there really a way to make OpenGL development simple and consistent across a wide range of GPUs and screens? It sounds to me like he's complaining more about how hard low-level cross-platform graphics programming is, not Android itself.

<comment><USER10> Provide one screen resolution. Change that resolution infrequently. Provide only high level access to the graphics capabilities of your platform regardless of how much the underlying hardware changes. Do not permit developer access to private APIs. Hmm, sounds familiar...

<comment><USER9> >Provide only high level access to the graphics capabilities of your platform

In other words, no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Android is still in its infancy. Like all Google products, the early users are the beta testers. 1.5 and 1.6 were technology previews that were mistakenly marketed as phones you could actually use. (I have a 1.6 phone, the Sapphire. It works, but it isn't great. The hardware is low-end shit, and the software tries to make that less noticeable, but the goal of these Android devices was a price point, not a good user experience. And users can tell.)

I would just target my apps to 2.0+.

<comment><USER12> You can do what Google recommends and does themselves with their market based apps...

Target either 1.6 or 2.1 based on what APIs you need. 1.6 apps will work with all later releases just fine if you don't need a 2.1+ specific API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Like many others, I'm not surprised by this post: of course devices will have different graphical capabilities and developers will need to take them into account for decent performance.

These complaints scream out for a framework/engine builder to come in and provide a uniform interface to the graphical capabilities of the many different Android devices.

<comment><USER14> Yes, but it's good that this is highlighted when Google is touting that 100K Android handsets is activated every day. It means that for App/Game developers, your can target a lot less than total number of activate (let alone shipped) devices.

Nokia/Symbian has used total number of shipped devices as an argument for their platform, but every Symbian dev knows that it is totally meaningless number. For example targeting S60 2nd edition devices is out of question, but Nokia/Symbian is still calculating 2nd ed. devices in their numbers. I once blogged about this and mobile stats in general: [http://dirtyaura.org/blog/2009/01/05/worldwide-mobile- intern...](http://dirtyaura.org/blog/2009/01/05/worldwide-mobile-internet- usage-stats-nokia-biggest-but-iphone-growing-fast)

Detailed info about fragmentation issues is really useful for me and I assume that other mobile devs & companies too for estimating when and how to develop to different platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I think the guy has valid complaints I HATE the way that developers abuse the word "trivial". Trivial does not mean "possible" it means ridiculously brain-dead easy and requiring no effort whatsoever. Hello World is trivial, not abstracting part of the platform to be redistributable. Bloody hell.

</comment><comment><USER16> So many talks on Android fragmentation. Don't remember any when iPhone 2G was left behind iPhone OS 4.0 wagon.

<comment><USER17> Did you check out the whole OP?

I feel the dev's complaint was more nuanced than complaining about fragmentation.

The dev was saying there were tons of easy back-ports left on the table that could make the fragmentation much easier for developers to deal with. I walked away feeling that some released Android versions were neglected, more than fragmented.

[edited last sentence to distinguish neglected versions from not caring about the whole platform, which Google obviously does.]

<comment><USER18> The problem is that some of the handset makers (or carriers) don't seem to have much interest in providing updates. Which does make sense, in that there is no money in it for them. It's hard to see what Google can do about that.

<comment><USER19> Google could provide (paid) update services for handset makers or carriers. The incentive for those to pay for this service would be that those devices would be much more attractive for customers. As a consumer I would be willing to pay more for a phone if I could be sure to get updates for 3 years ASAP.

<comment><USER20> EXACTLY. Why are these updates PAID!. I know many phone users would love to pay for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In addition to OpenGL differences (which given how much the graphics hardware in these devices differs should probably be expected), 2.2 is going to be a really big compatibility break. 2.2 is the first OS version who's JVM (Dalvik) has a JIT compiler. The Android team is down-playing the performance gain, but benchmarks have shown that 2.1 Dalvik's performance is terrible and if the new Dalvik is even remotely competitive with other JIT-ing JVM's now, Android 2.1 and earlier are going to seem CPU-starved compared to Android going forward from 2.2.

That's a good thing, if you can count on most (many?) handsets being upgraded to 2.2. That's unlikely, though.

<comment><USER22> I have been using JIT on my ADP1 with 2.1, and it hasn't broken anything. Performance is great, 3.5mflops in linpack vs 2.4mflops. But I am confused, why do you think there is a compatibility break?

<comment><USER21> A compatibility break in that if you program something with a heavy CPU burden like a bunch of image FFTs or belief networks (as many of us have done on iPhone), you can't rely on a pre-2.2 device to complete the task in a reasonable amount of time. For anything CPU intensive, do you recode it in java or do you keep limping along with the C++ NDK?

<comment><USER12> When you say "compatibility break" I hear "your 1.5 to 2.1 apps won't run on 2.2" not "2.2's increased performance enables a new class of applications that won't work on phones with an older OS".

I'm not seeing the problem here...

<comment><USER21> For a developer targetting a new feature in a new release of the Android OS, it's a huge problem. If I want to make a program targetting a new feature in the iPhone OS, I can do that confident that 99% of all iPhones will be upgraded to $(CURRENT_OS_VERSION)+1 within a couple of months of the upgrade being available. It's simple. Everyone is on 3.1.3 - I don't have to worry about missing a big chunk of the market and reworking my code to accomodate old OS versions.

So do I recode my FFTs in Java and say goodbye to anyone running pre-2.2 until the carriers/handset makers get around to upgrading everyone in a couple of years time, or do I keep my code in it's little C++ NDK ghetto, safe from testing and rapid enhancements that Java would bring?

It's so frustrating that Google has fixed this problem NOW, but between carrier indifference and custom-'enhancement' inertia at handset makers, it's going to take forever for 2.2 to be a legitimate development target. This is a solved problem in iPhone-land.

<comment><USER22> So by compatibility break you mean that you are pissed that Android can run at any processor speed?

I have news for you, in iPhone-land the phones in a couple years will be faster too. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Android 1.5 is going to be the IE6 of the mobile world.

You'll have to code workarounds for it for years.

<comment><USER24> Nah, in October 2010 the first G1 owners' two-year contracts will start ending and they'll get offers for cheap or free upgrades to newer phones. Within a year or two this will happen to most people who bought a first- or second- generation Android device.

At least in the US, the carriers' subscription and hardware subsidy model will guarantee steady turnover in smartphones.

<comment><USER8> My G1 auto-updated to 1.6 a long time ago; it's other phones that haven't been updated from 1.5. Or non-US G1s? I'm on T-Mobile here in the US.

<comment><USER25> my htc on tmobile was stuck on 1.5, I had to do a bit of googling and some command line hackery to upgrade it. I'm guessing most moms & dads are not going to know what to with a command line prompt, even with great instructions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> On first reading, I couldn't see any problems mentioned that couldn't be addressed with a Factory pattern. Android game /graphics devs could band together and maintain a framework. iPhone devs would have licensing issues with such a project.

<comment><USER27> Stop spreading FUD. iPhone devs would not have licensing issues. How about I point you to a number of frameworks that iPhone developers ship with today and have been shipping with since near day one.

      http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Facebook_iPhone_SDK
      http://code.google.com/p/gdata-objectivec-client/
      http://github.com/facebook/three20
      http://code.google.com/p/touchcode/
      http://code.google.com/p/oolongengine/
      http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/

<comment><USER26> These don't go against 3.3.1? If so, I stand corrected.

<comment><USER28> They're all C++ or Objective-C. It's one of the insidious points of 3.3.1 that you can't used alternative languages (and it's questionable whether you could even use grammars or other code generators), but pure Obj-C or C++ libraries are all okay as long as they're statically linked.

<comment><USER29> There's actually plenty of precedent for scripting/interpreted languages being perfectly acceptable. Many emulators have been approved, as have games using Torque and Unity. And it's certain that plenty of games on the App Store are using Lua.

<comment><USER30> I thought the clause in question was for iPhone SDK 4 apps. Since v4 isn't shipping yet, it doesn't apply to any of the apps in the store now.

As for the question of interpreters, I though for the current generation of apps, the issue was with 3rd party interpreters that allow the interpretation of arbitrary code. Code that is embedded in the app at approval time isn't an issue. Isn't this why frotz can only run games that are bundled with the interpreter when it is distributed through the store.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lisp is Not an Acceptable Lisp (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptable-lisp.html <comment><USER3> _My prediction: someone will get tired of waiting, and they'll Torvalds Arc into obsolescence before it's ever released_

It certainly looks like Arc has been "Rich Hickeyed" judging by the recent announcement of funding for Clojure. Think about that for a moment - <USER2> commercial organization is actually funding development of a _new_ lisp!

<comment><USER4> Has Paul Graham ever addressed in writing the disconnect between the amount of hype Arc got before it was released versus nearly instantly vanishing almost completely from public mind-share?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _At the risk of predicting future fashion trends, which is rarely a good idea, I'll venture that objects are going to continue to be trendy for at least a few more decades._

This article is four years old, but since the prediction spans decades, I think it's fair to pick on it a little.

The OOP trend seems to be waning. The languages people are getting excited about lately seem to be de-emphasizing OOP and providing other mechanisms for some of the useful attributes of OOP.

Haskell and Clojure don't have OOP as most people know them, but Clojure's multimethods and Haskell's typeclasses replace OO polymorphism to a large degree. Scala and F# have OOP, but using it is optional.

Ten years ago, a new language intended for practical work and lacking OO wouldn't be taken seriously. That has changed, and the change seems to be accelerating.

<comment><USER4> I don't actually see a trend in the last 2-3 years of people getting more excited about Haskell, Clojure, Scala, and F#. Two years ago, people on forums like this one were _extremely_ excited about these languages. Outside of the forum scene, and into the industry, I see a lot more eye-rolling and knowing "here we go again" stares than excitement about these.

I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that extreme enthusiasm about functional programming and Lisp taking over as the dominant paradigm in programming is almost as old as programming itself.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention that Scala is explicitly OO, F# is based on Objective Caml, and Clojure owes a lot of its success to the libraries provided by a huge, thriving OO community. OOP is not waning unless you define OOP as the design pathologies imposed by bad OO languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For every coding Lisper, there are 99 opinionated non-Lispers waxing poetic over its glory, or barking polemic over its demise.

<comment><USER8> Odd ratio. I hazard it's inverted for the Javas and C/C++s of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I started to learn Lisp, the "Which Lisp?" problem was the first thing to hit me. Same with Scheme. I eventually went with CLISP and PLT (Racket).

Issues like hygiene didn't really bother me too much. As long as you are aware of it its not an issue.

While I really like the power of Lisp/Scheme (especially macros), I find that for most programming task Python or Ruby are good enough. There was an interesting post along similar lines 'Why Ruby is an acceptable Lisp'[1].

One thing I am really interested is in seeing how Perl 6 works out. It supports Lisp style macros (by making the parser available to the programmer) while using conventional syntax. While I am a Python fanboy myself I would seriously consider Perl 6 once there is a CPython grade implementation available.

[1] [http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby- is-a...](http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby-is-an- acceptable-lisp)

</comment><comment><USER10> About "which Lisp": I think most people recommend PLT Racket for newbies. I do, even though I use Kawa Scheme daily.

About macros: If I recall correctly, Scheme got hygenic macros in 1991 with R5RS. If I recall incorrectly it was earlier, definitely not later.

Many Scheme implementations clone CL's defmacro, which is non-hygienic unless you're careful, but is useful. There's also syntax-case, which is hygienic by default, but let's you break hygiene explicitly.

Macros should be used only when functions won't do, and not because of tool support. Macros act at compile time, not run time, so they aren't run-time objects that can be used flexibly the way functions can.

<comment><USER11> How is it to work with kawa. I only no that it exists not more. Some question: 1\. Can you use it professionally? 2\. Whats the benefit over clojure? 3\. Does it live close to java and is it still lispy to work with java (clojure does well there I think) 4\. How fast is it?

<comment><USER10> 1\. Yes 2\. Scheme is a better-established standard. Nice macro system. 3\. Easy Java integration and totally lispy...not 100% Schemey because you can't do continuation capture. 4\. It's way faster than PHP4. I haven't benchmarked it in years, because performance hasn't been an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Previous discussion of this article and the article that inspired it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=825746>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=416589>

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if Steve has updated his views on this since he wrote this (2006) in light of the emergence of clojure.

<comment><USER14> His come-back blogpost ends thus:

 _I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure._

Take what you will from that :)

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Link to where that came from:

<http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/07/blogger-finger.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In a real world of webs applications and jobs for the net, macros are a dream for another universe. Php people don't dream, they step by step are making what macros can't do: expanding their universe. Joomla! they say.

<comment><USER11> no the just really GROW the language. Some new features somewhere else that they don't understand just trick it somehow in there. convert it to string and back or just stuff everything in some global variable or something. If it breaks you can just make a ugly fix on it with the next version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anyone explain why Steve thinks Haskell is 'doing it wrong' when it comes to type systems?

<comment><USER17> My inference from the times I can remember him mentioning it: Basically, Steve likes dynamic typing. He feels that arbitrary language-enforced constraints just get in the way. Haskell is the most strongly statically typed language in existence, so obviously it's not his cup of tea.

If you read his most recent rant, you can see that although it's technically about visibility modifiers, it can read as a condemnation of compiler-enforced constraints in general.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Authpad - Elegant way to publish - <AUTHOR> http://authpad.com

<comment><USER2> What's up with the onscreen keyboard to type your username?

<comment><USER3> I guess it cuts down on scripts automatically opening and abusing accounts ?

<comment><USER4> How? You can still type in the box.

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's to work around public computers with keyloggers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice. I will add it to my list of "friction free" writing webapps. Others on the list include: <http://typerighter.com> , writespace (chrome plugin: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aimodnlfiikjjnmdch...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aimodnlfiikjjnmdchihablmkdeobhad)) and my personal favorite: <http://calepin.co>

<comment><USER7> Sorry for the off-topic: Could you (or anyone) explain why I need to sign-in to Google in order to install this?

<comment><USER6> which?

<comment><USER7> Sorry. I was referring to Writespace. For some reason, it requires a sign-in, but another extension that is similar doesn't. So, I was wondering if this is author-specified or what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here in my opinion what a blogging platform needs as a least minimum features:

\- Good SEO, signal. \- A sense of ownership and trust by the user community.

A blog is like a home. An average person would most likely have one home to live. So a platform should provide enough comfort and trust-worthy mechanism for users to adopt. I guess every blogging platform started with this vision but over time, they lost trust-worthiness and a feel of comfort for users (unless you self-host).

It didn't feel right when Blogger was littered with neighbors who were spammers and pornographers, although blogspot was a fine and crisp start.

The guinea-pig aspect of Wordpress.com and their lack of control for user over their own blogs is another negative. I don't know much about Tumblr and others so I won't speak about them.

Ultimately, if you are providing blogging services as a platform for users to adopt, than you have to ensure that your ground has a solid foundation for users to build their houses.

</comment><comment><USER9> Love the look and the speed of this.

The title to slug fails on non English text .. <http://minikomi.authpad.com/>

Also doubled up, or blank, slugs might be better handled more gracefully.

The view count is subtle but already gave me a grin !

</comment><comment><USER10> I've seen other minimalist blogging platforms and I have to admit this one seems a little more responsive (speed-wise), and truly simple to use while retaining the basic feature set that's necessary for a functional blog.

I've opened an account and will test it out. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't look like the about and legal links work. (Edit: They work when logged out, but not when logged in.) I do like it, though... reminds me of when Diary-X was still around. I mourned the loss of that site. The simplicity of it all makes my brain happy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very nice looking setup. Easy to use (as advertised) and attractive by default. I love the simple look of it.

[edit]Since advice is not forthcoming, I'll add a suggestion instead. A forgot password link would be great on the login page.[/edit]

Oddly, though, I can't log back in. I created an account, made some pages, and signed out. When I try to log in with the email address I used, it correctly changes to my username, but then it says that the username is invalid. Any thoughts? <http://d-rock.authpad.com>.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. The bug you reported is fixed. :) Try logging back in with your username or email.

<comment><USER12> Excellent, that works. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's pretty cool! But I've found a few bugs:

Code doesn't wrap, you can see the posts I did here:

<http://doug.authpad.com/>

The bottom post is using a codeblock, but it stretches out the pages.

Also, when I went to edit the page and updated it, it made a new post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the report. First bug is fixed. Quick question: does editing any page cause it to be reposted when you update?

<comment><USER13> Hey, sorry to get back to you so late. No, it actually didn't do it again when I replicated the issue. Maybe I hit the back button to edit it, and it reposted it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This makes me think of when Tumblr was still a nice, stripped down platform for blogging, instead of Livejournal 2.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice, I like. Performs real well on my phone (VZW stock GNexus) as well. I am really digging the simplicity and the combination of the typographical syntax and html within the textarea.

I wish I could think of some critiques, but I'm really at a loss right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> Please use https for logins..

</comment><comment><USER17> I like it. Nice and simple.

Is there any way to turn a timestamp off for a page? Also, is there/will there be an RSS feed for each blog? And I know it's early, but will you be adding domain name support?

</comment><comment><USER18> Really cool. UX-wise, I think you're missing a message that says: "That username is already taken. If it's your account, please _login_."

</comment><comment><USER19> When you hit 'preview' on your new post, the publish / draft buttons disappear in chrome on mac os x, leaving you to question your sanity.

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be even better if we also can edit post when offline and publish it when online (like jekyll and octopress).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback. We really appreciate it!

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah it was sweet and easy if you just want to get some text up there.

</comment><comment><USER22> Look great, this is actually something I've been looking for.

</comment><comment><USER23> Pretty nice work, thanks for sharing. Markdown is the best.

</comment><comment><USER24> Cool keyboard. I need to have a number in my username

</comment><comment><USER25> Cool, any way to float images?

</comment><comment><USER26> https will hopefully be added ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, nice.</comment>


Political Group Protests Facebook Ad Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook21nov21,1,2142037.story?coll=la-headlines-business

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this going to be a new trend? In this case the group used the site to create a group to protest the site! Is it just "shakedown" politics redux for the web?</comment>


Google in your Brain?  PageRank is a Decent Model of Semantic Memory - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/11/is_google_in_your_brain_pagera.php <comment><USER2> It's good work, and they're a good group. But the result shouldn't be too surprising. It's based on word association data (salt-pepper, bread-butter) and if there's anything Google does really well, it's that. And funny enough, the "search" area of the brain (left inferior prefrontal cortex) has been associated (using fMRI) with those types of linguistic relations and especially in amplifying them when they are weak. Still, that's a very small piece of semantic memory. Indeed, it leaves out the whole rest of the brain!

<comment><AUTHOR> You think that liPFC is involved in gain? An alternative is cue specification, which is consistent not only with the work purportedly showing a gain-like function in liPFC, but also with other work suggesting a role for liPFC in episodic retrieval.

what's your venture to "find brains" btw?

<comment><USER2> I think a lot of brain regions are involved in gain functions, but that the LIPFC is specifically involved in gain for word associations (which is no doubt multivariate). But that's saying a lot without really saying anything. A specific hypothesis is that the more you have to code knowledge in verbal (vs perceptual) terms (or with increasing "abstractness"), the more you rely on LIPFC. We have one paper out which supports this account.

The venture is geared to quantifying knowledge - what is it online and, more importantly, who has it best. The finding brains bit is just a simple way to describe what we'll do, where brain = storehouse of knowledge (versus database of information). In our formulation, real people, via the output of their grey matter, are wholly needed to compute ai (actual intelligence). I know I'd rather find, learn from, and interact with knowledgeable people, than "search" among pages.

If you're interested, feel free to send me a note at robg AT psych DOT upenn DOT edu and we can chat.</comment></comment></comment>


PowerBuilder History, Powersoft History (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://lannigan.org/powersoft_powerbuilder_history.htm <comment><USER2> Powerbuilder divided biz software developers into two camps: the smart people who hated because it was too opinionated and confined, and everyone else who understood that business results were what mattered.

Powerbuilder offered ROI like nothing else in that era if you needed custom software in your business.

It's interesting that the currently-hot idea of Entity Framework was the core advantage of Powerbuilder with the Datawindow. It still feels like the web is catching up to Powerbuilder in some ways.

<comment><USER3> While I'll definitely give PB credit for being one of the first, Delphi and VB gave it a run for its money in the custom business software space.

<comment><USER4> Maybe but Powerbuilder's components made it far more productive in building business software than VB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PowerBuilder was so far ahead of its time and did so many things right. Microsoft pretty much ripped the datawindow concept early on in .NET's life with datasets, but didn't get it nearly as right as PB did (in the beginning anyway).

Pity they don't open source the thing and maybe some life could be breathed into it.

<comment><USER6> Given that Visual Basic had it first, how come Microsoft ripped it off for .NET?

<comment><USER5> VB had the concept of a recordset, which is like a single dimension of a dataset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I spent 6 months moving 13 Microsoft Access apps to Powerbuilder equivalents. We went from daily problems to I could actually enjoy my morning cup of tea.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oddly enough as someone who graduated with a Bachelors in 2013, I never would have thought I would have had hands on experience with PowerBuilder. But my first job out of college was a company that sold a product built in PowerBuilder and they hired me to do some work to gradually phase in newer web technologies. Said employer actually paid to have a PowerBuilder consultant/trainer come in and give me (and some others) on site training. Of course by this time SAP already owned PowerBuilder.

To be honest, I don't hate it. It wouldn't be my first choice as a tool, but it really wasn't bad. It certainly made trade offs...but I can't remember any time I thought a design decision was "terrible".

</comment><comment><USER9> We still have some legacy PowerBuilder apps running today, and I am responsible for one. I still have to change some things in the app from time to time.

PowerBuilder is (was) an extremely powerful rad tool. The datawindow still has no rivals for crud operations on data and for reports.

The web has taken over, but the productivity this tool gives you is nowhere to be found in the modern dev stacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, nothing is close to PB's datawindow CRUD operations. As for GUI component development in Windows, same goes for Delphi's VCL, I still haven't seen anything close to it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I spent 4 or 5 years doing Powerbuilder apps, both for an Enterprise employer and as a consultant. I grew to know it inside and out, which made for a valuable skill for a while. But, as the article said, the web came along, and I hardly noticed when I closed up my Powerbuilder IDE for the last time.

</comment><comment><USER11> I worked with Powerbuilder for a year around 2012 as a junior. I have pretty fond memories of a completely broken workflow UI/UX. The project I was working on was an in-development replacement for a COTS COBOL application for use within a nieche market. I was just happy to land my first development job, but there were some alarm bells going off given the application hadn't had an initial release, some 10 years after development officially began.

The IDE view would allow you to select a function to view / modify via a dropdown list - it wouldn't jump to the section in code but be roughly similar to the usefulness of a one-function-per-file methodology might seem in Visual Studio, but without the Ctrl+Tab.

That in itself wouldn't have been completely horrible if you could actually navigate while the previous buffer had invalid code, or just had an intellisense equivalent that actually worked. Alas, if you couldn't remember some function or global variable name you'd need to comment out enough code to get the file into a buildable state in order for you to use your mouse to select the appropriate item from the function dropdown list in order to view the relevant section of code elsewhere within the same class file.

There was also inconsistent build behavior, I gather most compiled languages contain reference errors or similar when performing incremental builds but this fucker would actually fail mid build for no apparent reason - load it back up and rebuild the same stuff and it'd all work fine. It wasn't my computer, all devs had similar issues across multiple operating systems and minor revisions.

The application itself also had a crazy inheritance (think WYSIWYG objects with 8+ ancestors) and event hierarchy (pre-event, event, post-event. pre- save, save, post-save) which I think was sortof an immature OO and GUI ideals, implemented poorly. In powerbuilder terms this meant that not only did I have 400 events in my dropdown list of stuff that I can't access unless I create massive code blocks, but there was a second dropdown containing an equally crazy inheritance hierarchy with 400 functions at each level.

Oh, also don't forget that functions do not implicitly call their ancestors, but events do (or was it the other way around, I've tried my best to block this out of memory).

Needless to say, I bailed for greener pastures, I've since lost contact with everybody there but occasionally I check their website - they added some screenshots of the new application sometime in 2014 but I still can't find any indication it's actually sold to clients. I'm sure there are people out there that say Powerbuilder wasn't that bad, but personally I'd rather code in VB6.

</comment><comment><USER12> "It was an offer like no other offers. The groom asking for Powersoft's hand in marriage was Sybase and the billion dollar dowry offer was very seductive. So a wedding/merger was arranged on February 13, 1995. I hope they took pictures during the wedding ceremony and honeymoon because the "paper valuation" (the deal was done with Sybase stock—worth $904m) didn't last long. The bad news arrived in the form of fabricated (Sybase) sales results. Sybase stock took a tumble, along with the fortune of many Powersoft executives..."

</comment><comment><USER13> Whoa, flashbacks!

One of my first jobs as a grad was to build a telnet interface into a PB app. Fun times.

</comment><comment><USER14> Too bad it's basically dead at this point.

</comment><comment><USER15> I hate powerbuilder with a passion.

<comment><USER16> Care to elaborate? There's apparently some powerbuilder work in my near term future and I have no idea what to expect (good or bad).

<comment><USER17> From the general feedback I've gotten & my own experience, the summary is -- people hate bad PowerBuilder apps.

In the same way they'd hate bad apps written in any other framework.

PowerBuilder's honest biggest problem is that it was likely used by internal and consultant teams looking to quickly deliver value, sometimes to the detriment of solid architecture decisions. And that the resulting applications have been useful enough that people are still running them (without updates) a couple decades later.</comment></comment></comment>


World-Class Performers Don't Work - They Enjoy High Performance - <AUTHOR> http://personalmba.com/world-class-performance-secret/ <comment><USER2> I love that there is another reference to _Born to Run_ on HN. I think that the book appeals to the hacker in us with the way Chris McDougall ignores any pre-conceived notions of running and just starts looking for what is the simplest answer that works?

Shoes? Why use them when your feet are evolved into perfect shock absorbing springs.

Training Schedules? Here is this tribe of people who run only for the joy of it and to get where they want to go and they are some of the best runners in the world.

The whole book reads like a great paper. It makes something that once seemed complicated simple, and after you wonder how you could ever have thought that it was complicated.

<comment><USER3> >It makes something that once seemed complicated simple, and after you wonder how you could ever have thought that it was complicated.

"There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult."

-Warren Buffett

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with the point, but may draw different conclusions from it than most will.

My point of view is informed by the book, First, Break All The Rules. That started as a study by the Gallup organization on what divides great managers from normal ones. They learned that great managers implicitly understand that people have skills and talents. Skills, like how to drive a car, you can teach. But you can't remain focused on the road for hours, enjoy doing data entry, or make someone feel listened to without having a talent for it. And grownups are too hard to change to make it worthwhile finding talents they don't have. So it is best to make people productive by shaping jobs to their individual talents, and not by trying to "grow" them into people they aren't.

So I absolutely agree that world class performers enjoy performing at that level. You don't reach that level without having a talent, and you don't develop that talent without being wired to find pleasure in what you do. But that's better thought of as a way of recognizing existing talents than as a way to change people.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I read "The Lord of the Rings" for the first time as a kid, I remember reading the part where Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli ran "for two days and nights" (or something like that) chasing after the hobbits that had been taken by the orcs.

I thought to myself, "Two days, that doesn't sound too bad. I think I could do that." It seemed reasonable at the time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I started out thinking this would be kinda silly, but I really enjoyed it. I think there is definitely something to be said for having fun at work.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think there's a risk of overgeneralizing here. The title may hold true for world-class _athletes_ , but the author offers nothing to suggest this would be causally related to performance in business.

</comment><comment><USER8> _The Tarahumara simply start running, and by the time they stop, several hours (or days) have passed and they're tens (or hundreds) of miles from where they started._

This sounds like me programming. I simply start programming, and by the time I stop, several hours (or days) have passed and I'm hundreds (or thousands) of lines of code from where I thought I'd be. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but boy was it fun.

<comment><USER9> I know the feeling. But I also try hard to rein myself in -- isn't it a trap man startups fall into, over-engineering stuff that does not matter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can identify with this. I had to stop playing piano for about 20 years before I could really start playing piano.

I always did enjoy the flow experience, though. Mastery is its own reward. (not that I'm there yet...)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think you can see the application to business where the efficiency expert's systems to optimize costs becomes so extreme that it has unintended consequences for morale and productivity plummets.</comment>


43 Folders' guide to solve procrastination - <AUTHOR> http://www.43folders.com/howto <comment><USER2> So the solution to procrastination is to present me with 100 more things to read?

I guess that's true, for a given definition of "solution"....</comment>


Show HN: Find it hard to choose a mobile game engine, I've simplified it - <AUTHOR> http://MobileGameEngines.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey,

I'm launching <http://MobileGameEngines.com> today.

It's a simple site that lets anyone compare between all known iPhone, Android and HTML5 game engines.

I had the problem of trying to decide which game engine to choose for an iPhone game project and wrote about my efforts in a blog post. I noted that many others had been through the same pain and had written a similar blog post so I decided to collate all the information and build the site.

I've been in contact with the majority of the game engine developers listed to ensure all the information is correct and useful. We are sitting on 65 game engines listed and still growing.

Take a look and let me know what you think. Pass the link on to anyone you think might be experiencing this pain.

Regards,

Jason.</comment>


A Google a Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.agoogleaday.com/

<comment><USER2> Well, I was fun searching using it. Took me a while to get used to the idea of competing.</comment>


The open source debacle of HealthCare.gov; it's enough to make you sick - <AUTHOR> http://sdt.bz/65237

<comment><USER2> Wasn't the github repo (front end / open source) taken down because people were posting bug reports for the back end system (closed source & unrelated)?

<comment><USER3> I don't see why that warrants taking the github repo down.</comment></comment>


Deleting Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.feld.com/archives/2018/08/deleting-facebook.html <comment><USER2> Summary: Guy that didn't use Facebook much deleted his Facebook account.

</comment><comment><USER3> Deleting facebook is like saying bye to older contact or classmates. Most will not make it through the refriend on new social media platform stage. It is likely this will be the last time you ever have a chance to connect with this person.

<comment><USER4> Or google them or connect on linked in or send them an email.

Wait, you don't have their email? You've not sent them an email in 1/5/10 years? Why would you need to connect in the next 1/5/10 years?

Seriously though, if you really need to connect with someone and they are on the internet, google can help you find them.

You will miss out on serendipitous interaction with loose connections, and that is a real concern. However, the signal to noise ratio of my feeds was so low that such interaction rarely happened anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I once told my bookie to delete my account. He said he can't remove it from the db but he can try his best to not accept any wagers from the account. I've since wagered 100 + times that conversation. Maybe fb is the same. Maybe they know sooner or later, some how either through curiosity or some stupid link you click on, you'll be back?

<comment><USER6> It's the same way you can't delete your World of Warcraft account, only 'de- activate' it. They know you'll be back.

(Of course you can do things like trash all your gear, then delete all your characters, but unless you do that the temptation will always be there...)

<comment><USER7> Thats illegal since the GDPR.

<comment><USER6> Well, in Europe maybe. And only if a game character and items in their game count as your data. (IIRC there was actually something in the license agreement about all characters remaining property of Blizzard.)

<comment><USER8> The GDPR is about personal information. That is your name, address, email, IP address that you used to connect with, etc.

So yes, they can keep your character, but they have to delete anything that can link that character to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't FB have shadow accounts/profiles even of people not on FB? I seem to remember when I created my account it already suggested all sorts of people for me to connect with.

In which case...what is deletion?

<comment><USER10> Suspension of write access via the web to a node in the graph?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how deleting Facebook works with regards to shadow accounts - do they still store you in some DB as a shadow person just by being associated with somebody still using FB?

<comment><USER12> Yes they do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> People with huge networks like Brad leaving FB matters. A hub with many spokes leaves the network and influences others to leave, rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure it matters too much. A user can only have an absolute maximum of 5000 friends and most people don't ever reach that, including famous people. Networks like Twitter and Instagram which are focused on asymmetric "following" rather than friending have a lot more to lose when a "hub" leaves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Honestly, I don't really understand why we are getting posts like this one. People don't post 'How I deleted my Github account', right?

So what's the big deal? Is it some kind of accomplishment and people expect praise?

UPD: I mean, if you are not using FB anymore (like me), then does it really matter if you delete it or not? If you actually do use it, then why delete it?

</comment><comment><USER16> I have too many customer relationships on Facebook. It's my own fault for creating a Users Group for our software on Facebook.

If it wasn't for that, I would delete my account.

<comment><USER17> Should move that group to something off-network sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you never know when the rug gets pulled out by Facebook.

<comment><USER16> Agreed.</comment></comment></comment>


Using the Zillow API for New York Times Coverage - <AUTHOR> http://rememberthisguy.com/2008/08/24/how-i-used-the-zillow-api-to-get-press/

<comment><USER2> The API is nice - but Zillow has a lot of cobranding requirements that has resulted in my cofounder and I creating our own crawler to get the data from Public Record rather than Zillow.

<comment><USER3> wow, hope you're not trying to crawl all 3000ish counties instead..

<comment><USER2> We're not planning for 100% coverage, especially during our beta. But we do plan to add more markets (counties) as we roll out more.

I have yet to find a good alternative - there are a few places that offer up the data already indexed, but they either have limits on the searches per day, or a ToS that does not allow the data to be repackaged commercially. If there was an API out there, even if we had to pay for access, that allowed to search for the data we needed with no cobranding (or less cobranding than Zillow) we'd use it. For now, we'll put up a few more nodes and index the data ourselves.</comment></comment></comment>


How the Twitter "Force Follow" Bug was Discovered - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/05/10/twitocalypse-heavy-metal/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised that something so simple took so long to surface.</comment>