German tank problem - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem <comment> T-hawk This actually hit my previous company in a software context.

We would number our hotfixes sequentially. Many would be items demanded by a single client, so would get deployed as hotfixes only to that customer's site, and just rolled into the main trunk for the next quarterly release for everyone else. Clients would always be notified about hotfixes going onto their live sites.

One savvy client noticed the hotfix numbering sequence. Naturally, that ensued quite a number of extremely awkward discussions as they would regularly ask why our software needed so many hotfixes (tens per week) and why they weren't entitled to all of them right away.

Solution: a new policy to randomly generate hotfix numbers. Which of course led to the next problem, that now the sequence was not obvious from the names, so dependent hotfixes would sometimes get deployed in the wrong order. Why can't anything be easy...

<comment><USER2> Just name the hotfixes by day (140222). It monotically increases, and if you do multiple hotfixes in one day, suffix a/b/c etc. Generally you're unlikely to get up to b or c, and there's no clue to how many previous versions there's been.

<comment><USER3> Drop the a,b,c... just timestamp it.

<comment><USER2> Leads to longer timestamps though, when you include the HHMM. If you're generally not doing more than one per day, this makes it a little easier - usually six digits instead of ten.

<comment><USER4> If only we had access to some kind of machine that made dealing with long numbers easy.

<comment><USER2> Except that a hotfix number is a human-interaction number, not an automation device. Speaking as someone who has worked on the support phones, I'd much, much, much rather someone only have to read back a six-digit number than a ten-digit one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is some practical relevance to software development here. One shouldn't expose sequential IDs (a.k.a. serial numbers) to the public for anything non- public.

I see this Hacker News post has a numerical ID in the URL, for example; I can estimate the size of Hacker News given enough of these numbers... More directly, I can modify that numerical ID to crawl Hacker News.

Many sites do this; it's generally better to generate a (random or hashed or generated from a natural key) 'slug' to use as the key instead. For example, Amazon generates a unique, non-sequential, 10-digit alphanumeric string for each item in their catalog.

<comment><USER6> The flipside is that you can give off the impression of having a large user base/product catalog/etc if you number things sequentially... but start at a large non-round number.

<comment><USER5> It seems like one could use the same technique to estimate the initial (lowest-observable) serial number...

From the article:

      If starting with an initial gap between 0 and the lowest
      sample (sample minimum), the average gap between samples is
      (m - k)/k; the -k being because the samples themselves are
      not counted in computing the gap between samples.

Perhaps someone with a better grasp on the math can confirm that this makes 'obfuscating size by starting with a higher serial number' an ineffective mechanism?

<comment><USER7> Yes. If you're only looking at the gaps between the numbers, adding a constant offset to the serial numbers would have no effect on the estimate.

On the other hand, if instead of ordering them sequentually I roll a die and add the number of spots to the previous serial number, I think I can trick you into thinking I have three times as many tanks as I actually do. In fact, I feel quite confident of it.

<comment><USER8> If I find sufficiently many of your tanks, the distribution of the differences in serial numbers would start showing that we aren't talking about a random sample from 1…n

For example, having seen 250 IDs in the 1…1000 range and 200 in the 1001…2000 range, the next ID in the 1…2000 range I see should fall in the 1…1000 range with probability 750/(750 + 800) ~= 0.48 in the 'normal' case, and around 36/(36 + 86) ~= 0.30 with your method of doling out IDs.

And I think it would be a factor of 3.5 (the expected number of eyes on a throw of a die). That's why I expect your method to dole out 286 out of every 1000 IDs.

But it would require me from checking for this, depend on finding such discrepancies in samples, and increase the variance on my estimates for a given sample size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's astounding how accurate they were using only statistical methods:

> Analysis of wheels from two tanks (48 wheels each, 96 wheels total) yielded > __an estimate of 270 produced in February 1944 __, substantially more than > had previously been suspected.

> German records after the war showed production for the month of February > 1944 was __276 __.

<comment><USER10> It wasn't exclusively statistical:

        The analysis of tank wheels yielded an estimate for the
        number of wheel molds that were in use. A discussion with
        British road wheel makers then estimated the number of
        wheels that could be produced from this many molds...

<comment><USER8> You can't do statistics without data. You aren't complaining that they used wheel data, either, did you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Huh, I once visited a military base where people on the trip wanted to be photographed with a tank. The soldiers said it was OK, as long as somebody obscured the tank's serial number by standing in front of it. I wonder if their training in this respect was inspired by this history!

(But if so, why not print the serial numbers inside the tank, not outside? Or maybe encrypt or HMAC them?)

<comment><USER12> Apparently encryption is weak because the plaintext has a very simmple pattern (increasing numbers).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem#Countermeas...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem#Countermeasures) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known- plaintext_attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known-plaintext_attack)

I can't understand HMAC enough to know whether it solves it, but there seems to be a trade-off between keeping it secure and introducing randomness and making people do lookups on the other end (which would have been super slow then, and I don't know how feasable hash tables are when dealing with punchcards)

<comment><USER13> A MAC of a message m can only be computed with the knowledge of a key K. Specifically, with a cryptographic hash function h,

      HMAC(K, m) = h(K + a || h(K + b || m)),

where + is addition mod 2 (xor), || is concatenation and a and b are constants. (This construction takes into account possible length extension attacks on h.)

Given that h is secure, knowledge of any reasonable number of pairs (m, HMAC(K, m)) does not allow you to recover K, and without K, you cannot compute HMAC(K, m) for known m, i.e. enumerate all the possible MACs for serial numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Don't remember where I read it at least 12 years ago, but someone talked about an April Fools prank where they released three pigs in their high school, with numbers 1, 2, and 4 written on them. Allegedly the administrators spent weeks looking for number 3.

<comment><USER15> The "weeks looking for number 3" part sounds apocryphal to me.

Snopes [0] has one real example and one television example of this prank. In the real example, the students were caught on camera, and there was no long search for the remaining livestock.

[0] [http://www.snopes.com/college/pranks/livestock.asp](http://www.snopes.com/college/pranks/livestock.asp)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for actually researching this. As I remember, I read this bash.org, so I was pretty skeptical of the story just because of the source. It's one of those stories I'd like to believe was true just because I like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My favorite explanation of this (posed instead as the Locomotive problem) is in Allen Downey's "Think Bayes," pp.22

It's online too, and worth reading!

[http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkbayes/](http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkbayes/)

<comment><USER17> Book seems nice, but its discussion on the German Tank problem sets up code to calculate posteriors from priors that are more detailed than the Bayesian argument in the Wikipedia article. That is useful, but you don't get the problem intuition that the answer is the maximum ID you saw inflated by a factor depending on the expect ID-gap. There are some assumptions in the Wikipedia Bayesian analysis, but they are less determining than the ones in the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The frequentist and Bayesian analyses give different answers to the central question. Which one is more correct?

<comment><USER19> There isn't really 'a' correct frequentist or Bayesian answer to the problem; it's more two different ways of thinking about the problem, which could well get you the same numerical results (though they might not).

The frequentist way of thinking about it is to ask what you mean by "more correct", i.e. what properties do you want an optimal estimator to have? Another way of putting this is: if you were to set up a simulation where the real answer is known and data is sampled, and then you judge estimators by how close they get (according to some penalty function scoring closeness) when you run this simulation 10,000 times, which estimator would score the best? The estimator with the minimum variance of all unbiased estimators (the MVUE) will do optimally under some definitions of optimal; the MLE is another one that is optimal for other definitions. Note that they're both frequentist and give different answers.

The Bayesian analysis of the situation is that it basically comes down to your choice of prior: the observed information is not in itself sufficient to produce a single "best" estimate, but rather you combine it with your prior distribution to produce an estimate. The Bayesian could end up producing exactly the same estimate as the estimators this article labels "frequentist". The Bayesian argument would be that what these estimators are really doing under the language of MVUE/MLE/etc. is implicitly choosing priors, whereas the Bayesian would explicitly choose one. The Bayesian would also probably not really like the simulation-experiment idea (which is a pretty directly frequentist thought experiment).

<comment><USER20> _The Bayesian argument would be that what these estimators are really doing under the language of MVUE /MLE/etc. is implicitly choosing priors_

I'm curious, which choice of priors corresponds to the frequentist answer? It looks like it comes down to the distribution (n|k)? Seems like something that must've been studied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is why the whole secret agent "#3" thing in movies like Bourne Legacy, James Bond etc are so ridiculous.

That's a worse code name then just using the person real name as it gives hints of the total participation in the secret organization.

<comment><USER22> The name's Agent 127356 617521 468927 932557 316478 323374 395995 326630 491034 217268 274611 237524 337188 146754 679652 340738 635877 617517 992248 343367 515750 470302 132876 177599 156605 28370 149544 889133 470520 994752 52998 306348 827980 134251 494718 157786 643512 976648 676871 335476 314504 786821 432468 815692 537830 465962 245564 22239 948088 588642 356978 27525 7635 565720 138592 82302 437935 431429 66539 283187 428296 276837 52407 584999 385187 461461 616784 947454 981732 580233 239585 601256 943780 385422 669503 579611 619964 902619 999399 317012 976906 634968 515478 979532 360526 554976 333481 560942 196337 397222 19738 518392 842556 570366 142058 557450 818663 997306 239940 429107 Shaken not stirred.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting. Especially because there is no German translation or Wikipedia entry for this article.

<comment><USER24> Unsurprisingly, ...German Wikipedia has (sadly) some badly behaved admins that delete pages because the are not "relevant". These admins that delete pages like at _random_ are called "Löschnazi" by the community [1].

My observation is that one has to resort to the English version, because either the page is missing or it is biased to Germany (albeit German language is also the native language of Austria, Switzerland, etc.).

German Wikipedia has of course also a lot of good efforts like the WikiData and Geolocation sub-project, etc. Hopefully they can kick the badly behaved admins soon... the reader to author ratio is already alarming.

[1] [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6schnazi](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6schnazi) of course the page got deleted as well so there is a backup: [http://de.pluspedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6schnazi](http://de.pluspedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6schnazi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I remember my theoretical stats teacher showing us this problem. It's used all the time in ecology. His example used it to estimate the number of alligators in Louisiana swamps. They tag the alligators, release, and then using the tags they re-capture over subsequent years, they can get an estimate of how many alligators exist in the wild!

<comment><USER26> The German tank problem applies when all the alligators come pre-tagged with serial numbers :) Capture-recapture is a slightly different problem: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_and_recapture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_and_recapture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So here's an idea. Conventional intelligence was off by quite a bit, spurring the allies to overproduce tanks (which was possible due to the absurd American industrial capacity), which then allowed the allies to cleanly overwhelm the order of magnitude fewer tanks they actually came in kinetic contact with.

<comment><USER28> In case anyone is interested in the numbers, USA produced in the region of 50,000 Sherman tanks during the Second World War. 5-10x more than Germany. Plus the British tanks. It didn't take all that long to reach Berlin!

<comment><USER29> Actually, the US produced 102,000 tanks and self propelled guns, while Germany produced 67,000.

Russia produced 105,000 which was the real difference.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wo...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This sounds like an excerpt from the Cryptonomicon, which I happen to be reading right now.

</comment><comment><USER31> I first read about this work a few years ago, but had I encountered it before college, I think I might have majored in statistics. Such powerful results - feel like magic.

</comment><comment><USER32> Tank #7, you are now known as tank #22347.

Tank #1 and tank #22347, report to the commander for the orders related to your suicide mission ...

</comment><comment><USER33> I encountered a slightly different problem trying to find the size of the union of a bunch of sets. We ended up just storing the smallest k int64 hashes of each item in each set, and computing 2^64 / ((largest hash - smallest hash) / (k - 1) as an estimate of the size of the union.

<comment><USER34> This is a very old (and nice) problem in streaming algorithms. The solution currently used in most places is HyperLogLog[1], which basically uses the distribution of log(minimum value of hash) for a set of hashes.

[1] [http://algo.inria.fr/flajolet/Publications/FlFuGaMe07.pdf](http://algo.inria.fr/flajolet/Publications/FlFuGaMe07.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think the most important information is the table: Month Statistical estimate Intelligence estimate German records June 1940 169 1,000 122 June 1941 244 1,550 271 August 1942 327 1,550 342

Intelligence estimates... so off the mark.

<comment><USER36> But these estimates were derived directly from a graph in the Germans' pitch deck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The Germans should have sanded off the serial numbers.</comment>


Squeak 4.0 released - now under MIT/Apache license - The H Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Squeak-4-0-released-now-under-MIT-Apache-license-956267.html <comment><USER2> I'll always have a soft spot for Squeak. And still don't totally understand the damn thing.

Pharo is pretty slick, <http://www.pharo-project.org/home>. And Gilad Bracha of Strongtalk and JVM fame is also doing interesting work with Newspeak, <http://newspeaklanguage.org/>.

<comment><USER3> If you haven't already, you should have a look at the free Pharo by Example book. <http://www.pharobyexample.org/>

The Blue Book (Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation by Adele Goldberg and David Robson) is quite old but still one of the best book about Smalltalk. You can get it for free in PDF.

<comment><USER4> Or the equally fine <http://squeakbyexample.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I keep reminding myself I should do something on top of Squeak/Seaside. Is anyone using it?

<comment><USER5> I am. I hack in a lot of different languages/environments, but I'm still most productive by far in Squeak.

<comment><USER4> That's very cool. I am using (and like it) Django a lot, but when compared to Squeak, everything looks rather primitive.

Guess I will run out of excuses soon. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nothing new except the license.

<comment><USER7> Good call. BTW, after having fun with Squeak and VisualWorks for a long time, I have switched to the Squeak fork project Pharo (<http://www.pharo- project.org/home>).

<comment><USER6> Another great project being built on Squeak (although the Squeak/Smalltalk underpinnings are being replaced) is Gilad Bracha's Newspeak: <http://newspeaklanguage.org>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Primary source: <http://squeak.org></comment>


Ask HN: What are the implications of increased mask use on surveilence systems? - <AUTHOR> <comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 I'm guessing you mean something like 'how are surveillance systems adapting to the wide use of face masks in public'. *

There are a few techniques including

1) Gait analysis [1]

2) Ear shape analysis [2]

3) Running image recognition on something the person is wearing rather than on their masked face. I can't find it right now but I recall reading a Google research paper a few years back that managed a high (+87% certainty) just based on a person's shoes. [Edit, after a bit of 'Ducking' came across [3] which is a 2016 patent awarded to Disney which is close enough]

Think about how often you see someone wearing the exact same shoe as you are. Same goes for things like backpacks, caps with logo on etc.

At some point 'Bob' or 'Alice' is likely to be carrying a cell-phone (sadly an almost certainty these days) or have to use public transport or leave their house or walk in to a shop and buy a drink on the way. There is a push in a lot of parts of the world to pay by card only and some shops are starting to refuse to accept cash and the same goes for public transport.

With sufficient coverage once you have managed to 'lock on' to a unique characteristic (shoe, gait, distinctive item of clothing) even if you don't manage to get lucky that time you just let the image recognition trawl through all the archived footage and at some point chances are good that you can identify them well enough to know which door to knock on. Given that people are creatures of habit (daily commute, same route, same time of day) even if unable to track back to a physical location you just wait where they tend to be at certain times. The hunter only has to get lucky once, the rabbit has to be lucky each time they pop their heads out.

[1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/motion-capture- su...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/motion-capture- surveillance/) & [https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a](https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a)

[2] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09574...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0957417416304341)

[3] [https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/29/foot- fetish/](https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/29/foot-fetish/)

* Where possible I have used links that are a few years old. Feel free to Google some of the terms used in the research papers for more up to date information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is exactly what I meant. Thank you for this very thorough response!

<comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 You're very welcome and thank you for taking the time to say 'Thanks'.

I saw this post bubbling up and down the HN submission rank for a while (12+ hours) before posting my comment.

Here on HN there are undoubtedly many people more familiar with (and more up to date with) this particular topic than I am (and I was rather hoping that they would chip in with something but understand why they haven't).

At this moment of history - Topics and discussions on what the state-of-the- art computing horsepower can and cannot achieve is (being blunt) not something that could ever freely be discussed in a public forum.

Which ever side you happen to be on. Welcome to the Future.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: 9S – Basic multithreaded ping program in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Daniel-Liu-c0deb0t/9S <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a high school student that is quite new to Rust, and I am liking it so far. I learned a lot from this project and I hope that it can be a good learning resource for others.

In addition to this, I am also working on a SIMD edit distance library in Rust.</comment>


Pakible (YC W15) Makes It Dead Simple for Businesses to Design, Ship Packaging - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/16/yc-backed-pakible-makes-it-dead-simple-for-businesses-to-design-ship-packaging/ <comment><USER2> Hey guys and gals,

Glad you are tackling this problem. I run a company that rebrands and does some ODM designs in China. Getting packaging quotes in the US has been a frustrating and confusing process.

Here's a few reasons I still get all my packaging done in china:

1\. Instruction Manuals. Ever tried to have them printed to go with your box designs? Box designers are typically not "full service" in that respect. Here are two examples of instruction manuals that I need:

a) High gloss, multi-page booklet. [https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0123/9252/files/Ambassador...](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0123/9252/files/AmbassadorV4_Instruction_Manual.pdf?1118) b) Single folded piece of paper: [http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0123/9252/files/instruction...](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0123/9252/files/instructions_Saboteur- Tank.jpg?1117)

2\. Foam inserts. Offer me paper inserts to hold my product or cut EVA foam.

As a small business owner you need _full service_ to make your offer attractive. Foam cutting may be more difficult but please let customers print small instruction manuals on paper or folded booklets at reasonable prices.

</comment><comment><USER3> > We assumed there would be a Teespring for packaging. But there wasn't, so we > decided to go ahead and do it.

Have you folks seen the bags that Teespring ships with? All cool branded logos and such on them. Do you imagine that you'll be offering something like this? To me, it seems by selling branded courier bags like that would mean people purchase in bulk from you and can be used for more rather than just focusing on boxes. (I imagine there'd be a whole lot less overhead and such. But I'm no expert!)

They also ship air fresher stuff in their bags. I imagine that would be a pretty neat thing to have with your service!

Best of luck. I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

EDIT: Have you guys seen this? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLDA2miW7gg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLDA2miW7gg) I've got a few friends that sell their music on vinyl, and they would literally go crazy and throw money at you if they could get something like in that video, but branded etc. (sorry if these suggestions have been put into the idea bin already!)

<comment><AUTHOR> We love Teespring's bags.

We're trying to find a good way to make these available to customize at low volume.

<comment><USER3> Can't wait to see!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few observations:

\- from your configurator, it's not 100% clear where each bit of info from the Text form goes on the box and if they're optional or not

\- the sample boxes on your site appear to show a mark only logo, no text (judging from its side placement on LaunchBox and Mini boxes). in this particular case, it makes sense that a Brand/Company/Product name at the very least would have to be additionally printed.

1) What happens when a user insists on printing a more complex logo containing both a mark and text typeset in their preferred typeface?

\- It is enough to just upload a flattened vectorised file and simply leave the Brand Name and/or Tagline field(s) empty?

2) What file types do you accept for the logo?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) We handle this offline with the customer. The prototype 3D/2D editors we're developing right now should make it a lot easier in the future.

2) ai, eps, svg, png, jpg, pdf... anything really. But preferably vector graphics (will give best print resolution)

<comment><USER5> Awesome service and dead simple to use. I got 10 boxes made in no time at all. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome. I was planning on doing custom boxes for us someday, but I put it off because of the headache of dealing with existing companies in the industry. Excited to use Pakible, and to be able to test out different designs without sending a freaking fax (or 20 emails).

</comment><comment><USER7> Dang, this is perfect, but none of your box sizes fit what I'm shipping. Any plans to add more size options?

<comment><USER8> +1. I need to be able to ship 20x20" matted prints (so, big but relatively flat), and finding a safe and easy means to ship these prints sucks.

Incidentally, I'd _love_ to be able to ship a bunch of product off to Level and have them frame and drop-ship my prints (hint, hint!)

<comment><USER9> Additionally, we did product packaging for Level, custom. For now, if you need 1,000+ units we can do custom!

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, I'm not quite at the point of shipping off 1,000+ hand printed and toned silver gelatin prints, but someday, I hope :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would create 3D WebGL animations for every box type, updated in real time.

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed. we have a prototype of that feature using three.js to give you a 3D look at your packaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about customizations like foam or polystyrene inserts? Is the design process just limited to the box itself?

</comment><comment><USER12> Wish there was samples or at least an example creator so I can see what our branded box would look like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Working on adding that shortly. In the meantime we do email you a proof of your design before we send it for print

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The site's design is not terrible, it is quite unique and therefore interesting. But I still gotta say that the elements on the main page are too drawn out: [https://i.imgur.com/Xvs0F80.png](https://i.imgur.com/Xvs0F80.png)

Also, kinda nitpicky but still, while the page is loading it looks like this which is quite ugly: [https://i.imgur.com/dIBdD5g.png](https://i.imgur.com/dIBdD5g.png)

</comment><comment><USER14> When this business name was chosen, did that process actually involve the firing of a synapse in someone's cerebral cortex?

People are going to be put off by a by what looks like a portmanteau of "Paki" and some word ending in "ble".

Large numbers of people, I suspect.

Gee, let's make up a venture name by adding a common suffix to an ethnic slur!

<comment><USER15> Paki, an ethnic slur? I would've thought it was short for Pakistani.

<comment><USER14> Maybe this will help you:

[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Paki](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Paki)

Starting with the very first sentence under "Usage notes".

In summary, a strict prefix of some place name or nationality is not automatically a harmless contraction. For instance, "Jap" is not a word which has exactly the same nuance as "person of Japanese descent".

<comment><USER15> Fair enough, but it's not a US-centric thing (which is the bulk of YC companies), so I highly doubt that "fired a synapse" for the founders when they came up with the name.

When the Pakistan cricket team tours down here in Australia, they're colloquially referred to as "the Pakis", but that's because we colloquialise EVERYTHING, and has nothing to do with slurring anybody.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to find and delete where Google knows you've been - <AUTHOR> https://www.apnews.com/b031ee35d4534f548e43b7575f4ab494 <comment><USER2> This is tangential, or only a part, of the current tracking concern. But the accelerometer in my 2013 Nexus 7 died, perhaps after a relatively minor blow it took when I was taking it out of its storage space and mis-judged clearance. (Accelerometer death is a known issue for this model.)

That doesn't fix the GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth logging, nor the screen activity tracking, but it does "fix" the tracking of how I hold it, move it around my person, and so on.

Maybe we will be taking to deliberately, physically crippling our devices, to keep their overlords from "observing" our every moment and action. We already tape over our cameras...

In a more sane -- for me -- world, I'd have controls to turn this crap off. Not / no longer being very trusting, I'd have physical controls.

Instead, science fiction is again becoming reality, where we will seek out device and tech "gurus" to kill the malicious functionality in our "own" devices.

</comment><comment><USER3> To put my point of view bluntly, this is going to be a never ending game of whack-a-mole. Even if someone documents how to cleanup your location history across all of Google's properties/services/databases, nobody can guarantee that it'll solve the problem forever — except Google.

And Google's business model as well as response to this finding make it clear (at this point) that Google won't "solve this" and won't do anything to make this less confusing and easier.

This is not the first time that Google had been found collecting and storing location information contrary to its claims or its explanation in help pages. Every time someone does an exposé, certain things may change (in this case it did not).

The writing on the wall has been clear for a long time — if you don't like Google tracking your location, stop using its products/services or at least avoid creating an account with Google. I'd guess that the latter is highly impractical for most people. "Choose your battles" is what can be said when there's no hope.</comment>


A leap of faith: Committing to open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/readme/henry-zhu <comment><USER2> I don't know if I've had my head under a rock, but Github's README[0] is the bigger news to me -- Are we going to finally see the end of technical posting on Medium in ~5 years? I never even knew README existed until seeing this post.

[0]: [https://github.com/readme](https://github.com/readme)

<comment><USER3> It doesn't look like an alternative to Medium to me – its a collection of posts by _nominated_ open source developers, as opposed to a technical blogging platform

<comment><USER2> Yeah you're right -- this is very much a curated selection, but the amount of social-ish features that github has taken on lately like the customizable profile pages[0][1] suggests that they might want to occupy this space...

Adding an offering of developer blogging seems like a slam dunk if they want to continue being a fixture of developers world wide. Arguably it's not so great for other alternatives (GitLab, BitBucket, etc) and more lock-in is probably not great, even if the garden aren't locked around us right now.

[0]: [https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing- yo...](https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-your-github- profile/managing-your-profile-readme)

[1]: [https://oddblogger.com/personalizing-github- profile](https://oddblogger.com/personalizing-github-profile)

<comment><USER4> I fully expect Github to go down the dangerous path of becoming a walled garden. Big companies like Microsoft just can't help themselves. Give it 10 years absolutely max. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, but don't expect it to last forever. Google Code, Sourceforge, etc. Been there done that. These things rise and fall constantly.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I agree, but can you blame them? They've almost single-handedly borne the cost of supporting open source in the most tangible way you can (hosting the code, supporting "remixing" and innovation) for so long. As you say, these things never last, but this is what happens when you don't have a Stallman- esque BDFL/figure involved in some product. People (myself included) might under-estimate how insane the free software movement was/is -- it just isn't normal to find something that is free and _stays_ free.

Whether I/we can blame them or not, it does feel good that there are some other business models in the space, I personally am a huge fan of GitLab[0] (I pay for an upgrade membership though it's nothing crazy), and on the more home-brewed front there's HN darling sourcehut[1]. Honestly if I was a GitLab project manager that browses HN... I might try and shark this idea -- you already "pay" for Gitlab Pages, why not streamline it, offer a netlify-like experience on top of it and try to get there ahead of Github?

[EDIT] - the "them" in "can you blame them" is intended to be the early Github team and/or their Microsoft equivalents. People like to put out good PR releases, but selling means something. The people who sold are aware of the the risks of selling and the loss of control/vision. Along with that realization/knowledge I think it's expected for them to have felt some fatigue/been expectant of some recompense for supporting open source as much as they have over the years.

[0]: [https://about.gitlab.com/](https://about.gitlab.com/)

[1]: [https://sourcehut.org/](https://sourcehut.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A great article - and lines like this really resonate with me "More than project management skills or technical expertise, empathy is the most important skill in open source."

However, the article doesn't address the most obvious question, how does Henry fund this activity?

<comment><USER6> Well, the article mentions his Patreon, as well as features a GitHub Sponsors button at the end of it.

<comment><USER5> True, both were mentioned in passing - but it would be good to hear about how sustainable this is?

If an open source maintainer relies on GH sponsors, Patreon, Open Collective then they are going to have to invest time in marketing themselves to the community. It's an odd dynamic.

<comment><USER7> Gotta have some hustle if you wanna get paid.

<comment><USER8> ..which is a real shame, as there are very talented people working on public goods who don't have that "hustle" and could do with the support.

Open source / Free software has been valued over $400 billion, and supports our entire economy, funding developers shouldn't be a problem.

Open source / Free software is a public goods issue, and we should be looking for the best ways to support them.

Quadratic funding could be a useful mechanism for this:

[https://wtfisqf.com/](https://wtfisqf.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Man I hate emojis. But that's probably because they make me feel old. When I was a teen I was :p'ing and :)'ing on IRC. How times have changed

<comment><USER10> Here's a question I've vaguely wondered but never mustered the effort to actually look up: how does IRC work? Like, if two people want to talk to each other over IRC, do they need to be connected to the same same IRC server at the same time?

If so, does that mean that IRC is basically like instant messaging along the lines of AOL Instant Messanger, or Google chat? Or is there something that makes IRC very different?

<comment><USER11> For standalone IRC servers, yes. But many IRC servers are collected together into networks (Undernet, Freenode, EFnet, and so on) and in that case all you need to be is in the same channel on the same network.

IRC is "very different" in the sense that it's more open and more freewheeling than, say, Slack. Slack is basically IRC with a slicker coat of paint and more monetization.

<comment><USER10> Never tried Slack, so that comparison doesn't help too much :)

But I think I'm getting the idea now. It's a similar idea to a typical instant messenger, except that since the protocol is standard, you have federation that actually works, much like someone who uses gmail can email someone else who uses yahoo.

Plus you have the concept of a channel, which seems to have no direct analog in a typical instant messenger, but seems to be essentially a persistent chatroom that doesn't vanish even if nobody is in the channel at the moment.

Is that about right?

<comment><USER12> Most of IRC is on those 'channels' (#whatever). and most channels (at least back in the day) were public, so you could just go to #books or whatever. For example, I spent my formative years on #uiuc, where there was a healthy community of 50-100 people from the university I was at. Newcomers would stop by on a regular basis and ask a question or just start chatting or troll or even grief--there were kickbans and scripts and bots to help manage larger communities.

Also these persistent channels are created just by joining the channel with that name; they disappear when the last person leaves. Notably, the first person to join a chatroom gets "operator" status, and thus the rights to change channel settings and kick/ban people etc. So there evolved a culture of bots, who would sit in channels with op status and 'occupy' it in case someone came along; these bots had op status themselves, and were programmed to auto- ban certain users or even domains, and auto-op their owners and their owners' friends. slap me summa dat +o.

And of course, there were the bot wars and the attempts at deliberate netsplits to try and steal op status, which were fun games for the script kiddies, but would really take the piss out of your evening chat when they would come by.

<comment><USER13> Totally forgot about the slap command. Thought of it because you said to 'slap you some of that +O'.

shifto slaps rabidrat around a bit with a large trout

<comment><USER14> Fun fact: slap was a client command that just sent "action" over the channel/privmsg, which would get rendered as something like:

* <nick> <action text>

More generally, on most clients you could use "/me <text" command to do the same thing. And on the protocol level, it was done by a mini-protocol on top of IRC, called DCC (direct client-connection), that would look like:

PRIVMSG #channel :^AACTION text^A

(where "PRIVMSG #channel :text" was a way to send a normal message, and ^A is Ctrl-A).

DCC was also used as signalling for file transfer. Clients wishing to send files would open a high-end port on their machine and send a DCC message with the file name, IP and port to connect to (similar to active FTP).

(yes, I spent an inordinate amount on time on IRC...)

<comment><USER13> Fun fact indeed! I knew all these things but never how they actually worked. When I was deep into IRC I was a bit too young to understand the technical side of it but I sure knew how to download a lot of warez over DCC!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$65,000 Raised for Robocop Statue in Detroit - <AUTHOR> http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/17/detroit-raises-funds-for-robocop-statue/

<comment><USER2> It's hard to think of anything Detroit needs less than a Robocop statue, especially for $65K.

Consider an alternative: [http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/02/18/robocop- statue-ron-...](http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/02/18/robocop-statue-ron- marz-forgotten-harvest-donations/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A movement to build a statue of a character from a movie where Detroit has become an unlivable dystopia waiting to be demolished.

I don't know whether that's the worst civic symbolism I've seen in a while, or the _best_.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Go Robo!

Donate with kickstarter here:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imaginationstation/detro...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imaginationstation/detroit- needs-a-statue-of-robocop)</comment>


Are You a Responsible Owner of Your Availability? - <AUTHOR> http://somic.org/2010/07/06/are-you-a-responsible-owner-of-your-availability/

<comment><USER2> I originally thought this was about _personal_ availability. It isn't, but it prompted some interesting ideas about being mindful about how open I am to interruption, and the value of my attention. Perhaps I need to think about what my priorities are and think of some strategies to make it easier to keep them in the face of client/colleague interruptions.</comment>


How Nasa brought the monstrous F-1 'moon rocket' engine back to life (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/16/f-1-moon-rocket/viewall <comment><USER2> Fascinating.

The original Ars Technica article, with more visuals, is here:

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought- the-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the- monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/)</comment>


Is it possible to be a software billionaire and don't live in Palo Alto, ca? - <AUTHOR>

Really, is it possible to be successful in software business, startups, apps, web, etc and don't live in California? <comment><USER2> Dietmar Hopp[0] and Hasso Plattner[1] prove that this was possible in the 1970s. Just found another SAP.

[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietmar_Hopp>

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasso_Plattner>

</comment><comment><USER3> Ever hear of Bill Gates? Or Jack Ma? Jeff Bezos ring a bell?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> yeah, i guess i forgot to add the words new a current to it. Seems like every successful and new software developer is (must be) around this area</comment>


China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/30/political-pressure-before-arrest-of-chinese-dissident-london <comment><USER2> There was a parallel story in Denmark where the Danish police prevented free Tibet demonstrators demonstrating during the visit of the Chinese president in 2012. It led to an official inquiry but the trail ended blind where the leading police officers giving orders to detain the demonstrators could not remember where their instructions came from and the electronic paper trail had been deleted.

To me the Danish story was less a story about Chinese influence and more about our democracy's separation of powers or lack thereof. How our most powerful politicians and their minions basically can have our police do anything even if it is obviously wrong.

<comment><USER3> I've read similar stories about lost police documents. A public blockchain could be useful to prevent that.

<comment><USER2> The issue was not the internal communication within the police. For that there was a complete paper trail. But the top police officers got their instructions from somewhere; probably high ranking civil servants, spin doctors or maybe even politicians in the then government. Those communications were gone.

<comment><USER4> Really for cases like this the only way through is the Nuremberg one: "only following orders" is not a defence, especially if you can't or won't say who gave the order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Police watchdog investigators then found evidence that the Met's treatment > of Shao, one of the last protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, was > influenced by pressure from Beijing to ensure Xi was not "embarrassed" by > protests during his visit.

I'd say no countries dare to not please China. Blatantly attacks the people who risk their lives to say.

<comment><USER6> Canada upset China recently and China reacted by arresting some of our people for espionage and executing a suspected Canadian drug dealer. I imagine our next election will have some cyber attacks against the liberals but we'll see

<comment> T-A > executing a suspected Canadian drug dealer

I don't think he's been executed yet?

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/08/asia- pacific/ca...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/08/asia- pacific/canadian-drug-smuggler-robert-lloyd-schellenberg-appeal-death- sentence-china/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Coming from a free speech country I'm kinda curious about this. In the UK can they arrest you for peacefully protesting? I'm looking at the law the paper cites that he was arrested under[0][1].

1) I'm _ASTOUNDED_ that "insulting" was in there from 1986-2014. 2) This is extremely vague and seems like it could be used to arrest any protestor.

> (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is > threatening [or abusive],

> within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, > alarm or distress thereby.

Seriously? Causing people distress is a crime? Distress with words? We're not allowed to make direct threats of violence either, but this seems like a substantially lower bar.

So from [1] the lawyer has to argue that the conduct was reasonable? This is extremely subjective too.

This just seems weird to me, coming from a country where freedom of speech is so highly regarded (and here it has been a little controversial lately). It just feels undemocratic to me.

I understand my neighbors across the pond may not feel that way and I'd be curious about their thoughts. Is this just an abuse of that law? Does that law also feel undemocratic? Other more nuanced position?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_5_Public_Order_Act_198...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_5_Public_Order_Act_1986)

[1] [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/5](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/5)

<comment><USER8> > I understand my neighbors across the pond may not feel that way and I'd be > curious about their thoughts. Is this just an abuse of that law? Does that > law also feel undemocratic? Other more nuanced position?

I'm from Europe, though not from the UK. That law feels abhorrent.

You'll often hear the claim that "other countries have a more nuanced view of free speech". It's certainly true free speech protections are weaker elsewhere, but using that to imply all the citizens agree with that is extremely misleading. Plenty of us subscribe to a more 1st Amendment style view on free speech.

<comment><USER9> I think article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights is much more like the first amendment that what the UK has. How they can have the laws they do while still pretending to follow them makes me wonder though.

> _Article 19._

> _Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right > includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive > and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of > frontiers._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."

The more the West is condemning China without any results, the more we normalise this kind of behaviour, which in turn makes Westerners tolerate unfreedom.

</comment><comment><USER11> Someone in the Home Office needs to be kicked out... rather than this false narrative of China strong arming the UK, to create manufactured consent against China. Someone in the Home Office bent over backwards to appease autocracy.

<comment><USER12> > Someone in the Home Office bent over backwards to appease autocracy.

That sounds like a different spin on the exact same narrative to me. Which would appear to contradict your claim about this being a false narrative.

<comment><USER11> The difference is China made me do it vs. I chose to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If liberalism, democratic values, multilaterialism, cultural open-mindedness, and compromise aren't at the very forefront of the foreign policy of Western countries, then this is what they will have to look forward to in the next century and beyond.

This is why projects like the EU, NATO, & NAFTA that require compromise for the sake of mutually beneficial cooperation should be supported. This is why continuing any policy of exploitation in the developing world is unacceptable. This is why countries must be actively engaged in the rest of the world, instead of selfishly retreating inwards. This is why making sacrifices in good faith, with no expectation that rivals will reciprocate, is necessary.

Otherwise, these previously powerful countries will quickly discover that when the shoe is on the other foot, there's no reason to believe that China, Russia, or even India will treat them any better than Westerners treated those at their mercy during their own centuries of supremacy.

<comment><USER14> There is a bit of a problem considering that the organizations that you name are also in blatant violoation of the principles that you name. As the EU is growing, it has incorporated countries with not very strong liberal values, so liberalism may not have a majority in the decision making process. Also, the EU is a very non-democratic organization. The executive power of the countries ends up in the lawgiver seat when they go visit Brussels and the power of the European parliament pales in comparison to that. Also, it is very convenient for the large companies that they mostly can just lobby in Brussels instead of in every indivudal country. What the people want is in the mean time an unasked question.

Also, these trade agreements tend to come with 'intellectual property' agreements which is the government handing out monopolies to the large companies. Also, when trade is governed by treaties of 10000 pages length this is quite the opposite of free trade.

<comment><USER15> > Also, the EU is a very non-democratic organization.

Can you more concisely (or just differently) elaborate on why you think this is the case? I'm not sure I got it from what you said.

<comment><USER14> The essential characteristics of democracy are that the three powers (executive, law giving, judicial) are separated and that at least the law giving power is in the hands of the people, perhaps by representation and perhaps directly. If these conditions are not being met bad things can easily happen. E.g., if the executive branch is also writing laws it is way too easy to get laws that are handy for the executives but not very fair to the public. In democracies these separations tend not to be perfect but at least an attempt is made to put sufficient separation in place. E.g., if one appoints judges for life the incentive of the judicial power to appease the executive branch becomes much smaller.

The EU is both undermining the separation of powers in its member states and also is in itself weak as a democracy. The council of ministers is the executive branch in the member countries but in Europe they write law. As such this would not be that bad if the parliament could change this law. It looks like they can but after parliament is done the law goes back to the council of ministers that has the option to undo what parliament has done. After that it returns to parliament again but now parliament has to reach a 2/3 majority to do something about it. 2/3 is quite hard to get so this procedure severely limits the power of the parliament.

<comment><USER15> Now that I understand what you see as the problem I don't really see what the alternative is. From your wording I'm going to assume you think the US is a strong democracy, but from the perspective of a lot of other (well-off) places in the world it's not a very good place to live. Regardless of how strong the democracy is by your definition.

If it doesn't yield a better life for it's citizens, what is the merit of the system you are espousing?

<comment><USER14> Both the US and most other western countries have a reasonably good separation of powers. Also, the US and other western countries both are clearly the most attractive places to live in the world. And democracy is a large part in this.

However, in both cases there are worrisome trends. It is as if they got it organized reasonably well and then stopped improving and started backsliding. There are many things that the western democracies could do better.

To name one, the huge and ever-expanding regulatory state is severely harming democracy in both Europe and the US. This tends to be seen as a talking-point of what is called the 'right' (but, indeed, mostly a talking-point, as opposed to an action point) and as such does not need more elaboration but it could be a talking-point (but often is not) for what is called the 'left' as well by noticing that much lobbying is involved in creating regulation and that the outcome is therefore not going to be in the citizens interest. Regulation is where the executive branch is sitting in the chair of the legislative branch and because of this the citizens have little influence.

To name another point, western countries have been far too friendly with countries that have a very bad human rights situation. I think that taxes on import should be proportional to the amount of human rights violations and other failures in democracy that a country has. That way every improvement that a country makes regarding to human rights immediately leads to a financial gain. The US being so very friendly to Saudi Arabia is just terrible. I think this is a thing that if you keep it up for a few decades it would enormously improve the lives of people all over the world. Note that this is also something that takes away discretionary and rather arbitrary power from the executive branch by basing the policy in a very simple and objective law instead. I think one could gain votes by campaigning for this. And this is what law should be. Simple rules that feel like they are discovered rather than invented as opposed to rules so convoluted that only the executive branch has the means to write them.

You talk about the difference between the US and other western countries. Many things could be said about this but one thing that seems to be on most peoples mind in regard to this is that the US has less social security and some European countries have quite a bit more. Well, I think that is mostly an orthogonal issue to the point of democracy. The respective peoples of respective countries can choose for themselves the amount of social security that they consider to be correct. Let me say that from a democratic point of view it is much more acceptable to 'bail out' citizens that get into trouble than to 'bail out' banks that get into trouble. The latter being a prime example of where lobbying has led to a situation that is in the interest of the sector being regulated and not at all in the interest of the citizens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> {China,USA} pressured London police to arrest political enemy, says watchdog

The first time you compromise your principles is hard. Extraordinary circumstances, a special request in a special relationship, etc. The second time is easier…</comment>


Tail-call optimization proposal for WASM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WebAssembly/meetings/blob/master/2017/CG-07.md#tail-call <comment><USER2> Didn't even realize TCO wasn't just an assumed featured, but wow, we need it. Frankly surprised it's not been added to JavaScript yet either.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree TCO is an essential part of the Web ecosystem. What's interesting there is an ensuing discussion with panels from MS where they argue difficulties of having TCOs due to Windows calling conventions.</comment></comment>


A schema language for defining the structure of JSON data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mschema/mschema

<comment><USER2> This is great, I often start projects with JSON response that I build out so it's great to have a standard to work with.

One question I have is how does it differentiate between the spec and the structure? Like if I actually have a property called type?

All-in-all this is an exciting time for JavaScript devs with all the JSON stuff going on. Here's another JSON-centric project I discovered recently: [http://jsonpatch.com/](http://jsonpatch.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use Feedback Tabs? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the process of developing my MVP, and I'm on the fence about implementing a feedback tab. You know, the ones that appear of the side of your browser. What are your thoughts on these? Do they actually increase feedback from users?<p>I feel like I used to see the tabs everywhere, but not so much anymore. Maybe they were simply a fad that didn't prove valuable. <comment><USER2> We have a tab and a mailto link on www.trybloc.com, no one uses the email link and everyone uses the feedback tab. Totally worth it IMO, but we built our own in a day and aren't paying for a third party service.</comment>


Intendix, The Brain Computer Interface Goes Commercial - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/07/intendix-the-brain-computer-interface-goes-commercial-video/

<comment><USER3> I'm patiently waiting for computer assisted telepathy to go commercial. Imagine a bluetooth headset that reads your brain waves, and lets you write SMS-like messages by thought. And when you receive an SMS, it reads it back into your ear.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is certainly a step in the right direction, but EEG are not the way forward in this field, imho.

The point of a brain-computer interface isn't to free your hands, or even to allow paralysed people to type, but to increase the bandwidth of communication (so you can interact a lot faster, whether through text or otherwise) and decrease the amount of attention required to use it (so you can use it while doing something else, without having to stop what you're doing to look at a keyboard).

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't decide if the advert is being ironic (pretty girl, black and white, eye coloured, hair blowing in wind etc.) or just deliberate, and therefore corny :)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is definitely the kind of thing tech should be focusing on, not developing yet another tactile input mechanism. The type of computer interaction described in the Otherland series, a "neural shunt" that intercepts the signals from the brain to motor neurons and from sensory neurons to the brain to create true VR, is the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the videos shows a QWERTY layout, the other two - <USER2> ordered letters: history is repeating itself.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you mention pending patents on your resume? - <AUTHOR> I recently filed a patent through work and I'm wondering if it's a good idea to mention that in my resume since it's only a 'pending' patent. <comment><USER2> Check with your employer and see how this fits into their intellectual property strategy. Some organizations want to be loud about pending patents, others want to keep it quiet.</comment>


America's misguided culture of overwork  - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010 <comment><USER2> can't disagree with the idea that Americans work more than Europeans, but surely this whole concept of 'work life' balance is exclusive to western cultures. Does it exist in the same way in China or India?

<comment><USER3> I'm from the UK, but I've lived and worked in France and Spain. Neither of those two countries is anything like the UK or each other in terms of working practices. So, to group Europe doesn't make a lot of sense to be honest.

I've worked in the US too, and in the UK with a direct report to the US, so always find these comparisons interesting.</comment></comment>


Rethinking The Book - <AUTHOR> http://bennesvig.com/2011/12/29/rethinking-the-book/

<comment><USER2> Just see this made me think about The Well. On the Well new users get access to a forum for their first year, after which it's archived, just for those users. (Going by memory, it was a long time since I had a well.com account.)

What if your purchase of an eBook gave you an exclusive license to a private on-line community of readers of that book? Might be a reason to buy it.</comment>


Laptop of choice for a Programmer, Need Help - <AUTHOR> I'm going to be getting a new laptop soon for a variety of reasons. Also, I have a list of necessities and niceties I'd like to see in a laptop.
Reasons for getting a new laptop: 1. My 14" Dell 600m is falling apart, literally. Pieces of the case are falling off. I get electrocuted by the battery regularly. The screen hinges are on their last leg.
2. I need a reliable back-up machine because my desktop has some serious irreconcilable gremlims. This is particularly true because I tend to rage if I lose code when a machine goes down.
3. I just lost ~$1500 of stuff including my desktop computer monitor (amongst other things) and had to borrow a couple CRTs from some friends to get my desktop back up and running. I'd like to invest in a machine I tote with me.
Necessities: 1. DVD Burner. Non-negotiable. 2. Not 17", not a netbook.
Niceties: 1. Mac OS X. Huge bonus. This means hardware that can run mac OS X natively that isn't a netbook, or an actual macbook if there are no options. (I haven't found such a non-apple laptop that is not a netbook and can run leopard natively, do you guys know of one that isn't an MSI Wind or Dell Mini 9?)
I want the unix without the hassle. I likes my bash, but the situation with Linux and the lack of robustness for the power user/home user is getting absurd. I've been using Linux for a decade, and I'm tired of hoping it'll sort itself out.
2. Something under $1.5k, preferably under $1k. I'll take suggestions above that mark if they're sufficiently z0mg-great, but I just had a lot of stuff stolen and don't need to dump a car worth's of cash on a laptop.
3. Within the 13-14" range. 12s are too small for long-term use, 15s too big for what I use a laptop for. 13 and 14 is usually perfect. I can deal with 15 for the right laptop.
4. A graphics chip that can run a few games (Eve Online in my case) is a plus. This is particularly notable because again, if deskie goes down, it'd be nice if this could take up all functions inherent to my desktop. Not a necessity for the right laptop.
5. Illuminated keyboard. Wicked yo.
CANDIDATES SO FAR:
New Last-gen Macbook: $999 <=== this is shaping up to be a poor deal. No DVD-burner, integrated graphics, and high'ish price. However, this can be rectified with a refurb model I found from apple. $949 for 2.4GHz White model with DVD Burner and 2 GB of ram.
XPS M1330: This occurred to me because of CodingHorror, but fer godssakes, in order to get the dedicated graphics I hit the macbook price point, which at that point, I'm buying a macbook.
Dell Studios and Inspirons are out of the question. Price efficient to an extent, but too big and the reasonable-sized Inspiron (13") isn't easy to turn into an all-rounder without making it get within sniffing distance of the $949 Macbook.
Lenovo Thinkpads (T400/X300?): Wonderful machines, and I love the hardware compatibility with Linux/BSD. However, the price enters the stratosphere quickly (buying a macbook at that point, again), and the build quality isn't as good as it used to be. I have nothing but love for the trackpoint though. A trackpoint is the only interface related improvement I could make upon a macbook pro personally.
Sony VAIO Laptops: Great build quality, I like the chiclet keyboards (not just because apple uses them, I'm just fast with them). Nice machines, and the price isn't as bad as it used to be, but it's impossible to get one with something better than integrated graphics without bumping into macbook territory. The accessories are hell on earth expensive too, like Lenovo.
What do you guys use? How do you use it? How many of you are using Macs? Seems like a lot these days.
Software I use:
I do do some .NET programming, but I'd like to migrate to using more python/ruby. I don't mind dual-booting a mac in case I need to.
EDIT: Another plus to the Macs is I'd love to give iphone dev a try!
Suggestions? <comment><USER2> Sounds like you really want a MacBook - you'll find a way to amortize the couple of hundred bucks extra it'll cost.

As for me, I use a 1st gen black MacBook w/Leopard, added a bigger HDD and aftermarket RAM to 2GB. I use a Logitech V470 bluetooth mouse which I carry everywhere, and I've got a couple of bluetooth apple keyboards (shorties without the num pad) - one for the office and one at home. For external monitors I've got a cheap Dell 23" widescreen in each location.

For the occasional Windows mission (usually to load updates to my N95) I was using Win XP via Parallels, but my experience with the performance of the last few releases has left me wanting and I'm currently using a trial copy of VMWare Fusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> How's fusion?

<comment><USER3> VirtualBox is free / open source: <http://www.virtualbox.org/>

From the site: Runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.

On this site, you can find sources, binaries, documentation and other resources for VirtualBox. For up-to-date press coverage about VirtualBox: blogs.sun.com/VirtualBoxBuzz

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This may not be popular, but, I use HP laptops almost exclusively, I'm a Python and PHP mostly programmer (I have been learning Java for about a year), and I have three HP laptops. A dv2300 pavilion, an HDX 16, and an older one, can't remember series, that still works. They all dual boot windows and linux (sorry, no OSX, just doesn't appeal to me). As long as you can easily add ram and HDD's (one of the reasons apple doesn't appeal to me), almost any mainstream laptop will suit your needs

<comment><AUTHOR> I've used HPs, they feel like they're made of the plastic they make trash cans out of. Keyboards are just as bad. They make me want to cry because I know what kind of hardware HP is capable of making.

<comment><USER5> actually the new HP line is really really popular (HP has surpassed dell as the #1 PC maker) -- and the quality isn't bad at all. you can get the latest nvidia geforce 9800go with a 17 inch screen, dvd burner. if you get the really popular models, hackintosh is a snap (there's one hackintosh thing that makes it super easy, I dont remember if its iatkos or something else...) -- and linux is also.

keep in mind that on ANY computer, you can install windows and dual boot ubuntu with the WUBI installer, which is a REAL linux installation that uses your windows partition to run (so it doesnt use the extention filesystem). that solves the "hassle free linux" problem.

I personally have been using a Dell Precision M70 Workstation with a Quadro 1400go gfx (1920x1200 res) for the past 3 and a half years, which has been awesome. Like you, my system got old, and I customized a cyberpower laptop for 1 grand. I got geforce 8600gt (yes last gen I know but that was months ago), core 2 duo (the fastest I could afford at the time), minimum ram (I bought another 4gb later to install), dvd burner, and all that jazz.

Love it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using Linux for a long time. What exactly is the hassle with repartitioning a machine or resizing an NTFS partition?

The partitions were _never_ my problem.

Here are my problems:

Fucking sound will break when I update my software as Ubuntu asks me to do.

I'll fix this, install compiz, then X.org will break. Uninstall compiz, get X back, but on the wrong resolution.

Fix the xorg.conf, get my resolution back. Now my 3d Acceleration isn't working.

Install propietary drivers, fix xorg.conf AGAIN. Fix my resolution AGAIN.

Now I'm back in my desktop, and I haven't installed Java, flash, mono (UGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH), or much of anything else.

Wubi slows it down too.

There is no single laptop model that I know of that is 100% hackintosh compatible other than the MSI Wind, and I'm not looking to purchase a toy.

<comment><USER5> I don't know, when you said you had linux problems I assumed you were new to it and that installation might be a problem. Sorry I assumed wrong...

If you're asking for anything 100% "hackintosh compatible" I don't know what to tell you. By 100% you mean pop DVD, install and go, no? Well, that's asking for a bit much. I have friends who have it running on dell and HP laptops all around. All took plenty of screwing around. And same goes for linux. If you can't deal with driver issues, you probably shouldn't be using linux...though you say you've used it for a long time. Are you just fed up now?

May I add that Wubi eliminates all those problems, and the slowdown is minimal. It really is, I used a wubi installation for quite a long time.

There is another option: install ubuntu with wubi, and then use LVPM.

here: [http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2008/12/06/graduate-from-a-wubi- in...](http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2008/12/06/graduate-from-a-wubi-install-to-a- dedicated-partition/)

It even says "Purely performance wise you won't see much difference when you move from a wubi install to a dedicated install - considering that you have a fairly fast hard drive and that your windows partition is not heavily fragmented."

Also, you have been checking dealcatcher.com and slickdeals.net right? there are a lot of sites out there with awesome deals on laptops that you can get cheap (and reliable). I mean if the only game you're playing is EVE, you really don't need more than any discrete gfx card 2 or 3 generations old, counting from today, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Capable of handling driver issues, I'm just losing my patience with how it seems to waste gobs of my time.

You're correct on the gfx chip.

I've been having stability issues on my desktop that prevent me of late from using anything other than...get this...Windows XP. Everything else freezes in the install. I'd forgotten about wubi. I'll get my unix fix that way.

Make no mistake, I'm not comfortable with the control Apple exerts over the hardware and software.

EDIT: Btw, Windows 7 is very nice if you use windows on a regular basis. Very fast on my 14" Dell 1.4 GHz Celeron 1GB Radeon 9000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> old-gregg Ughh... Tough times... Seems like right now there aren't any usable notebooks on the market. I have two of the "dream" machines you have mentioned: Thinkpad T61 and prev. generation Macbook Pro. Both are junk: Lenovo uses one of those el-cheapo dim and terrible colored screens and MBP also uses a 6-bit LCD albeit with LED backlight. My MBP also runs OSX, which blows ass compared to superior Ubuntu/Gnome on a Thinkpad. Please don't moan: I've learned to be _VERY_ productive in Gnome+Compiz and while I like Macs, I highly recommend you guys check those out.

Back to the hardware: I keep jumping between the two. I wish I could just run Ubuntu on a Mac, but I absolutely need Adobe software for work: our designers as well as business people use Fireworks and Photoshop all the time, so I gotta be able to read and modify those files, so I'm trying to bear with OSX/Finder... Ughh.

I am also a photography nut and the situation with laptop LCDs is grim right now: the total degradation compared to what we've had 2-3 years ago. I don't know a single laptop manufacturer who offers 16.7 million colors on a laptop LCD... So if you pay any attention to LCD quality, I don't think you'll be happy with anything.

But it's either Thinkpads or Macs, as always. There aren't anything else out there. DELL makes the nice Latitude series, but as always, they couldn't resist the urge of saving a few dollars and opted for the cheapest touchpad possible, rendering the machine useless: that ALPS junk just doesn't work.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried Dell's Precision Mobile Workstation series? They're brilliant. Plus goldcare support = god. they send technicians to your house to fix anything. burnt motherboards, shattered screens, etc.

Then again I got this laptop on a research grant...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just got a Dell XPS 1530 - bigger than you probably want, but for me it's outstanding. 1920x1200 LCD, HDMI out, 4GB RAM, Core2 Duo, 320GB haard drive - for under $1500. A huge seling point for me was that it can be ordered with Ubuntu so it's fully linux compatable.

<comment><AUTHOR> As soon as a windows laptop cracks 1k, it's macbook buying time I'm afraid.

<comment><USER5> Hey hey hey, you spend $2k on a REALLY nice PC, and install Ubuntu via wubi for ZERO driver problems (granted you need to install windows beforehand but that doesn't look troublesome since you play eve online).

Who said macbook was the only way to go over 1k? ever read zed shaw's horror story? yeah.

<comment><USER5> Another question, gherlein's suggestion actually sounded really good. What makes over $1000 automatically a macbook? Is there something about over $1000 PCs that you can't stand? Does the fact that the XPS can come with preinstalled linux (meaning minimal driver issues as dell probably extensively tested it to work) not help? 1920 res (meaning good gfx), dvd burner, 4gb ram, great processor, solid support (I will vouch for dell support believe it or not as almost a 4 year dell user), and everything else you've asked for....

Or are you just hell-bent on getting a mac and none of this discussion really matters?

<comment><AUTHOR> I want a unix-based OS that isn't going to waste gobs of my time on hardware/software-package related issues. Mac OS X is the only one that fits the bill.

Failing that, it makes me nauseous thinking of paying over 1k for hardware that is as poorly constructed and ugly as most PC laptops tend to be.

Exception: Sony VAIOs. Pretty little thangs, and the predominance of intel hardware makes me think they're Linux compatible. If I can configure a sharp looking VAIO with dedicated graphics for under 1k, she's mine.

<comment><USER5> Hm, you probably could have simplified your original post to:

"I want a mac, but anyone have suggestions for decent PCs under 1k with DVD burners?"

and then when your karma hit 150, you could start a poll for "how many people use macs" like you asked --

...instead of a tirade about electrocuting batteries and whatever the heck else you talked about cause mix a mac survey with computer suggestions and you're looking for a mess.

And seriously, VAIOs? You might as well go for a Mac. I mean, all that tells me is that you care about how your lappy looks and not about what it does. Get a Sager for god's sake. you can configure one for about 1k and it will run better and last longer than any silly overpriced vaio out there. I mean if you're looking for 1k computers, you should chuck the word vaio out the window.

<comment><AUTHOR> I configured a rather nice 15.4" from Sager with 1920x1200, HDMI out, and a 9800M, but christ almighty it's 1.8k

The sagers look (reviews back this up) sturdy though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just picked up a Sager NP7350 a few weeks ago, in part because Sager resellers like PC Torque or Xotic PC will sell you a laptop without a Windows license (and I'm going to use it entirely with Linux).

$1750 including 13" screen with LED backlight, and one of those Intel solid- state disks. Believe the hype, they are ridiculously fast. The machine is dead silent when the unfortunately loud fan isn't running.

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid supported most hardware out of the box, aside from a nasty bug in the wifi support that will be solved in a kernel update, hopefully soon. No support for the fingerprint scanner and possibly the webcam, I haven't tried it.

Sager is essentially rebranding machines made by a Taiwanese company called Clevo, and cater mostly to highly technical users. Most tech support won't ask you to open up the back panel and reset the CMOS battery yourself before RMAing (true story), and I like that.

<http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1017> is a big hub of information.

One thing I would watch out for, Intel VT is not yet enabled in the mainline BIOS. Clevo just recently enabled it, and Sager has yet to get their rebranded BIOS in stock yet. However, one BIOS flash will fix this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just started poking around and checking out some of the Sager laptops. Oddly enough, taking from the reviews, they seem to be the only well built laptops anymore. I'm poking around the 12 and 13". If I do the SSD, I'll but it separately, they're way overpriced if you get them from a reseller. That and I'm holding out for the inevitable price-drop from SanDisk and their SSDs.

<comment><USER7> The reseller price for the Intel X-25M solid state disk seemed to be in line with what Newegg was charging, and there is a huge difference in write performance between the Intel MLC disks and everything else on the market right now. Some of the other MLC disks have such latency problems with random writes that they can cause your OS to panic.

You are right that there is going to be a big price drop, though. Samsung will have an Intel competitor with larger capacity on the market soon, and that's just the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> just wanted to say that Macbooks DO come with a DVD burner (SuperDrive) even the last gen ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> For extra money (last gen ones).

The $949 model I mentioned that is refurb has a DVD-Burner.

<comment><USER9> The last-gen $999 model for sale at the Apple Store right now contains a DVD burner. But I couldn't see getting the last-gen. $300 more and you get a big upgrade. If you keep it a while, you'll never go back and wish you had the $300.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which makes this none the easier. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Second hand (or refurbished), last gen 15" Macbook Pro. I use one of these for development, no complaints.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Find a mac addict on craigslist who bought one right before the new ones came out. Spend 50 bucks at crucial to max out the memory to 4GB. Mmmm. Tasty memory.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a bad idea at all, finding one that is affordable is critical. Also, I don't even own a mac other than my powermac G4 and I still check (macrumors is it?) that one site that has a guesstimate on when new models are due to come out. That way if I buy a new one, I don't get screwed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 15.4" Lenovo Thinkpad with the WUXGA+ display really really provides valuable screen real estate for code

<comment><AUTHOR> Well over the mac price point. Nice machines, but not as well built as they used to be.

<comment><USER13> Well over the macbook (not mbpro) price point - and for a reason.

I don't think Macbook could ever compare to Thinkpad T61/T500 for some serious development. Ever.

Macbook Pro is another story, with another price tag too :)

<comment><AUTHOR> FBSD compatibility is a plus and a half.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, you want a cheap(er) Mac laptop, 13-14"...sounds like you've already made up your mind.

</comment><comment><USER15> I _strongly_ suggest looking on Craigslist. I got my last two laptops there and they were both way above what I could have gotten new at that price point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Been poking around on there. Might try to snag a cheap MBP off of there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been a long time Linux user and recently got a macbook, partly because it just works and I don't have to read 1001 web forums trying to decide whether the specific NVidia chipset is compatible with the latest Xorg driver.

So it's really easy to set up and easy to use, once you get used to the oddities (command Q...). It's basically a BSD, so you get Bash and Python and gcc and Vim etc.

However, I'm starting to discover while it is Unix, it's got its problems. On Ubuntu, everything is just an apt-get away. I can check out bug reports on launchpad and get unstable fixes, and not have to wait for an update from the Apple gods. On OSX, you need to use fink or darwinports, which isn't integrated with the OS (anyone said Apple gcc vs fink gcc?). Apple just likes doing things its own way, like rewriting config files for you (even though you edited them manually), having obscure config options (.MacOSX/environment.plist???).

So as much as I enjoy the interface, I think my next machine will be some sort of Thinkpad + Ubuntu, for all that brown themed ugliness :)

(oh, and I swear the white macbook scratches and scuffs the second you take it out of the box, get a black one or a pro.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been poking around a cheap Thinkpad on Craigslist.

I didn't know the situation was that hairy with the ports on mac os x. From the way others spoke of macports and fink, it had that same apple 'just works' going on.

<comment><USER16> Fink/ports work enough, but like I said it doesn't integrate with the OS like on Debian/Ubuntu. I've already mentioned the issue of clashing versions (gcc from Fink vs from Apple, etc.)

But OS X is nice, if only Ubuntu and Linux in general had the drivers, the overall polish, better menus (System Preferences on OS X are nice, on gnome they are a dog's breakfast) and dropped the ugly brown theme...

I think I'll stick to Mac laptops and Linux desktops and enjoy the best of both worlds :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Get the current gen MacBook (MB466LL/A) if you can swing the price. The extra $200 over your budget is well worth it.

It's $1229.99 (1179.99 after $50 rebate) at Amazon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Checking that out right now, didn't know they had them on sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd get a XPS M1330. I dual boot Windows 7 Beta and OS X 10.5.6 with no problems. Got 4 GB of RAM, and both OS fly. I've installed Ubuntu on it as well and everything works.

Only things that don't work in OS X are Ethernet, Card Reader, and you have to manually press the Power button for 5 seconds to power down. Other than that, it's great.

<comment><USER19> Maybe I'm wrong here, but what good is a laptop to a .NET developer if it doesn't have ethernet? Do you mean the wired card doesn't work, but wi-fi still works?

<comment><AUTHOR> He does, which is highly bothersome to me.

<comment><USER20> [http://www.tuaw.com/2008/01/15/accessories-for-macbook- air-u...](http://www.tuaw.com/2008/01/15/accessories-for-macbook-air-usb- ethernet/)

Possibly compatible, who knows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, I know for a fact that works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love my MBP 17" with 1900x resolution. It allows me to pack my screen full. It sounds like it isn't in your budget, but as a developer, you might think about screen real estate.

I had a 15" but couldn't develop on it. Since I got this 17", I've used it 100% of the time, 10+ hours a day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eh, this needs to be a portable machine, and I fully expect to have an extra monitor available to plug into if I need the real estate for coding. I've simply never needed that much space while on the go. Can't say I'd mind the space, but it's not feasible with my budget.

If the Dell Studio 15's were compatible with leopard, I'd go with that because there's a 1900x1200 resolution upgrade that is VERY reasonably priced.

<comment><USER21> I have a backpack and I take it everywhere. Not sometimes, but every single day I hit up a coffeeshop. So it's very portable.

If you regularly plug into a bigger screen, a smaller machine might be better. If the Dell isn't compatible yet, I'm sure it will be in the future. Darn hackers!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not that simple. There just isn't a lot of people working on the OS X x86 situation. There was one guy making tons of progress single-handedly, but he _disappeared_.

There just isn't much in the way of progress. The only people out there making any (somewhat) progress is the macvidia team and they're still fundamentally reliant upon Apple's willingness to support a given chip for the Mac Pro.

It's not a matter of time if no one cares.

The problem is that people either already own a mac and don't care about people who can't afford one, or they don't care about using the OS.

I love the hardware, I really really do, but I'm not dumping that kind of money into a machine. It's not feasible on my income (meager).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Definitely go with a MacBook. Seems perfect for you

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, it's just financially painful compared to a natively compatible hackbook or other idea.

<comment><USER23> If you're a student (it doesn't sounds like you are, but...) you can get the student discount, which can be around ~$200 for most laptops that apple sells. Maybe you know a student who can actually make the purchase for you? Just a thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> The student thing is a good idea, and no I'm not a student. I've already made a post looking for ideas on how to get back into school. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thinkpad T42p 14" with ubuntu 8.10 + 24" LCD with USB hub + keyboard + wireless logitech mouse, + 2 GB RAM

Laptops are like cars - they depreciate the most in the first year or two. Go for a corporate laptop just off the refresh cycle.

\- IBM build quality \- fast enough as a decent backup to a desktop \- runs windows in vmware for testing, .net apps \- Ubuntu just works \- good size, weight \- Costs approximately laptop: $350 + LCD $300

Alternately I bought my daughter an MSI Wind with Suse (switched to Ubuntu) and I find myself using it quite frequently. Very light, great build quality + great screen.(Also Mac Compatibility now with the Realtek 8187SE drivers).

<comment><AUTHOR> Seriously considering a Thinkpad so that I can run BSD/Linux without hassle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm using two HP/Compaq Presarios, both with Ubuntu v8.10 and Mac4Lin. I was going to buy a Mac, but considering the price differential the Compaq's are a better deal. Ubuntu upgrades also come at the right price.

<comment><AUTHOR> :\

I don't want Mac OS X because of the appearance. I want it because:

My 3d acceleration will always work. My sound will always work. My resolution will display properly. Shit won't break FREQUENTLY when I upgrade software. Shit won't break FREQUENTLY when I upgrade "os" versions. There's non-trash software available for Mac OS X. (Textmate, darkroom, etc) Media will playback without complaint, hassle, or copyright-related zealotry. If I plug in a second monitor, it will _just work_. No config file editing, no bullshit. Just work.

<comment><USER5> _My 3d acceleration will always work. My sound will always work. My resolution will display properly. Shit won't break FREQUENTLY when I upgrade software. Shit won't break FREQUENTLY when I upgrade "os" versions. There's non-trash software available for Mac OS X. (Textmate, darkroom, etc) Media will playback without complaint, hassle, or copyright-related zealotry. If I plug in a second monitor, it will just work. No config file editing, no bullshit. Just work._

This may sound slightly crazy.... but you might want to try a PC with windows.

You're on a budget, play EVE, do some .net, and don't care about UI. You _could_ dual boot some sort of linux (hell if you hate upgrades so much, then just install slackware and stop updating your kernel. if it aint broke don't break it) for whatever *nix shit you need to do, and the rest...all work. You want instant compatibility with about EVERYTHING. Okay man, Windoze seems to suit you well.

;) and don't forget AVG antivirus. It's a dangerous world out there!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's my current situation, I'm using Windows right now. (Installing Windows 7 as we speak)

However, I happen to rather like GNU tools and the unix-style shell environment (bash).

Windows doesn't offer either, and it isn't conducive to contributing my time to an open source project either.

<comment><USER5> Question: So if you get a mac, are you going to install windows on it also?

<comment><AUTHOR> For .NET work, yes. I have to. Might do VMWare Fusion but I'd be worried about IIS or something going pissy on me about the networking when running under a virtual machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> To echo what a lot of people are saying: It sounds like you really want a mac, so I'd say go ahead and swallow the cost and just get it.

Personal testimonial: I own a G4 Powerbook that I bought about 5 years ago, and a MacBook Pro that I acquired about three years ago. Both work really well, and their longevity has been more than worth the price tag. My Powerbook still runs Halo flawlessly on medium settings. Any time I've had a problem with either, I've gone to an apple store and they've fixed any and all problems I've had.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have an ancient PowerMac G4 (500 MHz) that still works to this day. Too bad I can't get XCode to install properly. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Every passionate developer deserves an aluminum MacBook + an extremely big external screen with resolution at least 1920x1280.

No, don't go for the plastic refurbs, even it saves you some bucks. In the long run you'll be much much happier.

Dell 600m ... I used to live in the same dorm with a guy owning such a machine back in college. Things impressed me include:

\- key caps kept falling out while typing

\- hot enough to burn your hands in summer (turned out to be very useful in winter, though)

\- extremely noisy fan

\- battery recalled due to possibility to explode (Sony's fault, as I remember)

</comment><comment><USER27> I dind't read all ur long post, but the only rational choice is a mac book pro 15" do bootcamp if you want windows or need to flip over to test something. all doors are open with the macbook, why even consider anything else? you wouldnt run mac os on a HP.

look, mac is about the hardware. it's superior hardware. run whatever OS you want on top of it, the hardware is the best in the industry, there just isn't any comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the comments, it seems like that is what I'm gonna do, but I'll have to get a used one. I _cannot_ afford a new one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This depends on how urgent it is, but if you have some time and really want to save some cash, keep checking the refurbished Apple store a couple times a day for a week or two. The listings change regularly, but the good deals can be gone within hours.

<http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac>

</comment><comment><USER29> you obviously want a mac, so just get a mac. you aren't going to regret it.

<comment> old-gregg Sure about that? I bought two (Macbook + MBP) and I do regret. Wasted $3.5K. LCDs on regular Macbooks are as cheap and healthy as $0.99 cheeseburgers and OSX/Finder can't hold a handle to Ghone/Compiz when to comes to window/file management. Font rendering isn't in the same league as what Linux/Freetype is capable of, especially in languages other than English. And lots of interesting software requires googling to install: most are 1st class citizens on Linux and 2nd - everywhere else.

Both of my Macs developed some hardware issues in their first year, and both issues are quite widespread among other Mac users according to Apple forums.

Just pointing out that the world is bigger than it seems.

<comment><USER30> While I certainly haven't had the same experience when it comes to the hardware or installation issues, I couldn't agree more with the first part of your post. I moved over to the mac for a long time, but I find myself more at ease in Linux.

In fact, I never understood why the RoR guys insist on macs for development - I've found development much easier on linux. On the other hand, I'm also not trading in my mac any time soon - it's by far the best music recording platform out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I highly recommend the last gen macbooks. I have a second to last gen one and it's a great computer besides the fact that it can only address 3gb of ram. I've recently upgraded to the new unibody macbook which is an amazing machine, but a little beyond your price point of $1000

<comment><AUTHOR> Most are recommending that I either get a lastgen mac or the current-gen. The current-gen is _quite_ an upgrade, and it seems that I might just sell off some stuff to make up the difference and get a current-gen. There's just too much great software on OS X for me to pass up.

<comment><USER32> Depending on timelines - don't forget that snow-leopard is coming out soon... Not sure if it's worth the extra couple of months waiting?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can wait. If I do, I'll def. have the money for a macbook/macbook pro outright.

<comment><USER5> Wow...then just WAIT if you can, buy what you want, and don't start huge threads on news.yc that essentially become macvangelist madness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the alternate option is buy a Sager now, now that you've directed me to them. Which was the point of this. I knew there had to be a decent no-name'ish brand out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems like you really want a macbook so you should get it. I've found that academic stores usually have very good prices. My alum is currently clearing out the old MBP for ~1200.

</comment><comment><USER34> I am impressed that you keep reviving yourself from electrocution.

Anyway, I love my XPS m1330, and I picked up the 3GB RAM/250GB HDD/dedicated graphics version for $500 just over a year ago. If you get it on sale, it's excellent value.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just explained that my Dell regularly shocks me because of the shoddy construction and you recommend another one? :(

Also: yes the M1330 is okay, and if you get it refurb/on-sale the dedicated graphics model is respectable, but bleurgh. Dell's build-quality makes me sick to my stomach.

<comment> old-gregg _... my Dell regularly shocks me ..._

Shut the fuck up. I bet you're lying your ass off. Computers are designed not to shock people. This is why I'm starting to steer towards enterprise as opposed to consumer market: making products for regular folks just isn't worth it because of little lying bitches like you.

<comment><USER5> Whoa there calm down he's probably just over-exaggerating some small problem. We get the point.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a small problem in the grand scheme of things, but the battery contacts _are_ exposed and they _do_ arc into me, and it _is_ painful.

Am I suing? hahahah, fuck no. That shit is funny as hell more than anything, I don't like dozing off to a movie in bed with the laptop...shifting a leg, then getting woke the fuck up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Darkleaks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ZozanCudi/darkleaks-information-blackmarket-1ee5ac28c892

<comment><USER2> I guess it was a matter of time before someone wrote something like this.

Terminology complaint: if you're selling the information, it's not really a leak so much as corporate espionage, right? Why not just call it DarkInformationMarket or something?</comment>


Freeman Dyson talks about math, nuclear rockets, and the universe - ezequiel-garzon http://www.businessinsider.com/freeman-dyson-interview-2016-9 <comment> ezequiel-garzon I hope my edit of the title to fit 80 characters is OK. What a fascinating man... I once emailed him a question about one of his articles, and to this day remember the thrill of receiving a prompt and thorough answer.</comment>


Awesome indie game coder makes his own jaw-dropping tools - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/18423305

<comment><USER2> Its great how he says he can do alone if only he generates procedural worls, and avoid textures, etc. Unfortunately his game is kinda hard to understand.

Related, he gives programming tips for the beginner: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Rq8nZzL...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Rq8nZzLLKqQJ:iloapp.quelsolaar.com/blog/news%3FHome%26post%3D45+&cd=2&hl=pt- BR&ct=clnk)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tools are like 16 minutes in</comment>