Show HN: Caspy – AI Assistant for Emails - <AUTHOR> http://caspy.com <comment><USER2> Anything that gets access to my E-mails and isn't an all-local app with local processing instantly raises a red flag. My E-mail is not something I want out there in public.

A quick glance at the page doesn't tell me if this thing processes my E-mail online, or locally, and what data gets shared where and with whom.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely understand your concerns. Your emails aren't sent anywhere; they are processed on our server. We have our own ML model so we don't share any of your data with a third party. Moreover, we don't store the content of your email. We just give emails scores based on various attributes and those scores are used to make all the predictions.

<comment><USER3> > Your emails aren't sent anywhere; they are processed on our server.

So, I need to move my email to be hosted on your servers? Because if not, the correct way to the describe what you're doing is: "email is sent to our servers" which is the opposite of: "Your emails aren't sent anywhere".

Do you manage your own servers? Is the answer really, "your email is sent to virtual servers we lease from Amazon" for example?

It's not that trusting (yet another) party with full access to every email is necessarily a deal breaker - but every additional service and ops team that gain access is another potential human error added, that could lead to compromise.

Even compromise of something as trivial as ones email address: I currently get almost all spam to the addresses I used to sign up for Adobe, LinkedIn and Dropbox before they each got hacked in turn.

The only sensible assumption about a new service is that it will be compromised at some point - it's important to be able to evaluate the risks involved. (So you not storing email in perpetuity is good to know. One does wonder how much data might be gleaned from getting a copy of a neural network trained on my personal correspondence for a decade though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm worried that with another free product like this, we'll get another Unroll.me on our hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't worry axyjo, its free for early users but we'll turn on pricing soon.

<comment><USER5> If you're going to charge me a subscription instead of mining and selling (even abstract insights), I'm game. But first you have to promise you'll never mine and sell my inbox.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mining and selling your Inbox data isn't our business strategy. We have a subscription-based pricing model and we'll turn that on soon (2 months).

<comment><AUTHOR> @stevesearer Both of those points are there so that we could train our ML Model. But I fully understand people's concerns.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I understand collecting data is a part of training your model but it could be worth explicitly saying that zero data (either personally identifiable or anonymized meta data or any data at all) will be sold or rented. And if a change to that policy happens, include in the language of the user agreement that it isn't retroactive and only applies to new accounts.

The vague language is what bothers people. Probably having very strong language in the opposite direction (that you will NEVER sell any data, and would shut down rather than sell it) would probably win you favor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this differ from Google Inbox? I love Inbox, it has completely changed my email habits. Inbox seems to already solve everything Caspy has, but I could be missing something.

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal of Caspy is to not just allow users to manage their Inboxes from anywhere in their browsers but to also help them build stronger relationships with Email contacts that they actually care about. It does a bunch of things (copy/pasting for the second time :P): 1\. Which Emails are important and need a reply. 2\. Which sent Emails require follow ups and what is the best time for a follow up. 3\. Which contacts are important to you and which ones are drifting away and need to be reconnected with.

<comment><USER8> I ask myself the same question.

> manage their Inboxes from anywhere in their browsers

I don't need this feature, I have a pinned tab with Google Inbox and it's one click away like your extension, and usually I deal with mails only when I want to, so it's a focused task that would be fullscreen anyway. You say «Email notifications can sometimes ruin your focus and hamper your creativity», but I would say the best way to stay focused is to consult mails only when decided.

> 1\. Which Emails are important and need a reply

Google Inbox is really smart and knows how to classify mails by category without any training (Travel, Shopping, Finance, Social Network, Notifications, Forums, Promotion), and for each category you can choose if A) you want to get notifications when you receive them, and B) If they should be shown grouped in the inbox. Nowadays, if I get a notification for a mail, it means that the mail is of interest. I don't receive anymore notifications for forums answers, promotions mails or notifications, neither on my computer nor my phone.

> 2\. Which sent Emails require follow ups and what is the best time for a > follow up.

Google Inbox let you use your inbox as a TODO list, where you can mark mails (or groups, as above) as done, which has the same effect has archiving it. Aside the "mark as done" feature, there is also a "snooze until" feature that let you in one click snooze the mail (hide it from inbox) until Tomorrow, This weekend, Next week, a given date, or even a place (looks awesome, I never saw it actually). You can also "pin" mails so they stay on top of your inbox.

> 3\. Which contacts are important to you and which ones are drifting away and > need to be reconnected with

I don't need this feature from my inbox, but maybe some people do.

So for me Google Inbox mostly solves the same problems, except it is free and you get all bonus points from using Google: Automatically detecting flights and travels mails, showing these info directly in the inbox, easy visualization of mail attachments, Android application of Google Inbox, etc. I don't know if you already tried Google Inbox, but if not you should, it is important to know your main concurrent.

My goal is not to be rude, I'm trying to help you by showing that Google Inbox solves already most of your problems, and people using it will notice that, whatever ways you turn your arguments. Maybe you should direct your arguments more on the «same features as Google, but without Google» side? Some people have concern about Google having all their data, it may be working, but this is just some thoughts that may be helping you. I wish you good luck for your project, I hope you will make it succeed :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems nice but I don't get where the AI is?

<comment><USER10> It is only AI to a layperson.

It seems like the "AI" is that it "learns" what emails you send replies to.

If it wants to be AI and useful, it should learn how to _reply_ to those emails. This is just another Chrome extension (useful but it doesn't clear my bar of AI)

<comment><USER11> I mean it's totally AI in that it's an example of weak AI or more precisely it's a type of machine learning. Neither it or anything else we have is any other type of AI, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a big fan of getting my Inbox managed by AI. I've found AI products to be rather quirky & obstinate at respecting my preferences. Simple tasks require a "learning" before it can be done right. I prefer rules that are predictable.

I can afford to miss out on news feed because it got mis-categorized by AI, but can't take that risk with my Inbox.

</comment><comment><USER13> How is this AI? Snooze, Reply-to and mute emails? Wow, needs hella brain for that. If-Statements are not AI.

The title is misleading.

<comment><USER14> I think it's doing a little more than that:

"Caspy's AI learns from your email history to figure out what types of emails you send replies to. With that knowledge, it will alert you only when an email needs a reply."

<comment> semi-extrinsic But that's hardly AI. I think even Thunderbird does this, learns that emails I click links in or reply to are important and flag them as such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are important emails I never reply to, like Uptime robot notifications. I would still like to be notified.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like this idea, but most of my email needs relate to work emails, and I don't have permission to share those with a third party. I'd love to try it if there were some way to install the thing locally or have it run from my browser.

</comment><comment><USER17> :D and again someone wants access to all my emails?

...no thanks.</comment>


Show HN: Twitter and Instagram photo aggregation based on hashtags. (Maybe NSFW) - <AUTHOR> http://hashpi.pe

<comment><AUTHOR> The code is also available at <https://github.com/RyanNielson/hashpipe> if anyone is interested.</comment>


The story of the 'secret' room at Pixar, frequented by Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/18/the-story-of-the-secret-room-at-pixar-frequented-by-steve-jobs-and-many-other-celebrities/

<comment><USER2> This is a story from TheNextWeb. Isn't that the same outfit that has been recently exposed for Plagiarism: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972651> while their CEO defended their behavior?

The story made it to the top of HN and earned an insane number of upvotes.

Is our memory really that short? Do we trust this story? Do we even want to read it?

<comment><USER3> Well, here it is from the horse's mouth itself (Pixar): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMrk_wyWM1w>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As I remember it, the love lounge and the lucky 7 are different rooms. When Animation moved to another part of the building and Andrew got a new office, he built lucky 7 and the love lounge stayed intact.

I sat in the office next to the love lounge for over a year. Great way to see all the celebrities visiting the studio.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm always surprised I've never heard anything about the similar room at Facebook's old California ave. hq. There was a secret door in the basement to a small "situation room" type place.

<comment><USER6> Do you know if anybody has pictures? That sounds interesting.

<comment> k-mcgrady I remember seeing a photo of it once when they were about to launch a new product. I can't seem to find it but I think Robert Scoble took it so try his Flickr account.

Edit: Here is the photo: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/5179450270/>

Scoble calls it the War Room but I presume it's the same place. More here: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/tags/facebook/>

<comment><USER7> That's a conference room at the St. Regis in San Francisco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Call me cynical, but I wonder if this would have the same number of points if Steve Jobs not namechecked in the title. I imagine a bunch of startups knocking holes in their walls first thing tomorrow morning.

<comment><USER9> Namedropping Pixar was probably sufficient

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I HAVE BEEN IN THIS ROOM. WHOO!

<comment><USER11> I have too! It's kind of the worst kept secret... Personally I'd be sort of annoyed at people wandering through my office all the time to show it off when I wasn't there, it's a great example of the creativity of the people who work there. Lots of the cubes are decorated to the extreme...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every building should have a secret room or two. There must be square miles worth of "wasted" interior room just like this in your average city.

Find it before the urbex/hobos do!

<comment><USER13> Not to be a party pooper, but firefighters _hate_ these things, especially when people build them into their houses for kids. They get skipped over when searching for people in a burning building.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really cool, but is it legal to do something like this in an office space? Just thinking about health and safety, accessibility etc. Would love to be enlightened.

God I'm such a bore.

</comment><comment><USER15> DreamWorks Animation also has a Secret Room, in the Lakeside building on their Glendale campus.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder whether this inspired the low access tunnel in Being John Malkovich?

</comment><comment><USER17> Slow new day?</comment>


Show HN: View your GitHub repositories automatically grouped by prefix - <AUTHOR> http://repos.alhur.es/docker/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you're feeling adventurous today, try [https://repos.alhur.es/substack](https://repos.alhur.es/substack)</comment>


Paid, an iOS app built on the Stripe API - <AUTHOR> http://paidhq.com With all the hackers on here, I thought it was worth a shameless plug of our new app Paid (built on top of the Stripe API). No more logging into the web control panel to check on your payments. <comment><USER2> How is this different from <https://www.pay-pad.com>?

<comment><AUTHOR> Functionality may not be all that different, but the design is certainly different as it's focused on user experience, and not just transactional events.

<comment><USER3> It looks great @rscherf. Happy to see some competition for Pay Pad!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @billycoover. When I ran my business, I opted to use the web interface provided by Stripe instead of downloading PayPad. It just didn't do it for me, so we created the app we wanted to use. Not a whole lot more to it.

<comment><USER3> Congrats on the launch!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A boilerplate for writing moduler Angular 1.X in ES6 using Webpack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/geniuscarrier/webpack-angular-es6 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, great tool!!, this boilerplate is a nice way to get started for new project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. Glad it helps.</comment></comment>


Google's silent experiment .. What do you love ? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wdyl.com

<comment><USER2> Am I the only person who's suspicious of a site that purports to be from Google, yet is not on a Google domain, doesn't work without the "www" and whose credibility comes entirely from the fact that there's a Google logo on it?

EDIT: I'm expecting it to be a real thing, but it's just weird that sources like TechCrunch and Fast Company don't have any statement from the company, just a "tipster," and it's not on a Labs domain like most Google Labs products.

<comment><USER3> and of course the whois information

        Domain wdyl.com:
          Margaret McLaughlin
          76 Ninth Avenue
          New York, NY 10013 US

        Administrative contact:
        Technical contact:
        Billing contact:

          Margaret McLaughlin

          76 Ninth Avenue
          New York, NY 10013 US
          Phone: +1.2125659741
          Fax:

        Record dates:
          Record created on: 2005-09-27 18:18:10 UTC
          Record modified on: 2011-06-24 16:36:56 UTC
          Record expires on: 2011-09-27 UTC

        Nameservers:
          myns2.fabulous.com:
            18.104.22.168
          myns1.fabulous.com:

Note taht the domain registrar "FABULOUS" is specifically intended as a service for "Domainers" people who buy and park||minimally build out||put up forsale signs on domains with the intention of turning a profit.

Check out the terms of opening a Fabulous account:

        Request Membership

        To be eligible for a Fabulous account we require
        that you meet at least one of the following:

            Domain portfolio must generate US$750+ per month
            Transfer 750+ domains to Fabulous

        If your portfolio generates US$750 a month or you are
        willing to transfer 750+ domains to Fabulous, please
        complete the form below.

So WDYL.com on a domainer's registrar and also a pretty shitty site? Yeah, more than just a little suspicious. I'm feeling pretty secure in saying that it's 100% _not_ google .. but I'd love to know a little more about this Margaret McLaughlin I bet a search would turn up a number of other domains that she's got her whois information tacked on to.

 __EDIT __oh my ... would you look at that. 76 Ninth Avenue in New York is apparently Google's new Manhattan office! Maybe it _IS_ google.

Damn. Now I've gone from thinking it's fake to thinking it has some chance of being real.

<comment><USER2> Well, the address on the whois record is just down the street from my office. I could stop by there this afternoon and see who's behind this.

EDIT - Never mind, I see that's the Google CoHo. Guess we'll just wait and see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site is awful, no explanation at all on the frontpage - it just asks you to provide them with something you love without any incentive. Then there's the slider thing on the top left of the search results which adds nothing at all.

"Explore your mom in 3D" was pretty amusing though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is that site registered to:

Domain wdyl.com: Margaret McLaughlin 76 Ninth Avenue New York, NY 10013 US

Nameservers: myns2.fabulous.com: 188.8.131.52 myns1.fabulous.com: 22.214.171.124

<comment><USER6> Good question, but the original site itself exists at

<http://www.google.com/whatdoyoulove/>

I assume it's a Google engineer's side project which has become a bit bigger over time

<comment><USER7> That site barfs with an 'over application quota', whereas the original link works fine. Strange...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used it on my phone and entered 'craft beer', and I was actually impressed. I don't think it means to offer anything new and revolutionary, but it does a great job of showing people how they can use the web in different ways (outside of just searching) to interact with things they enjoy. This would be great for people who are new to the internet. Obviously, HN is not the intended audience.

</comment><comment><USER9> I tried "my wife". God, so creepy..

(I know I know, it asks "what")

<comment><USER10> "find my wife nearby" "explore my wife in 3d"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The idea is great but somehow the suggestions are pretty weak. I don't know if it can be refined to something relevant, even with results improved with user tracking data.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The search button is shaped like a little heart .... I've never seen something like this from Google before !

<comment><USER12> I guess the intention is not to 'search' but to say that you love the terms you entered in the textbox. So, IMO the heart button looks very suitable for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I guess so. I seems to designed to give results for abstract things like "blue jeans" rather than a specific query like "nokia e65".

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Perhaps the better title would be "what do you care about?", "what are you passionate about?" or "what are you interested in?" Asking what people love doesn't really explain what the site is for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I typed in "cho", and the suggested search was "choking". I was going to type in "chocolate", but ok...

<comment><USER14> seems like david carradine was in the closed beta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> i love cats, and it didn't find anything in product search!

"Buy all kinds of cats stuff with Product Search No results were found.

 _Polite cough_ Couldn't find anything. Sorry. Try something simpler?"

</comment><comment><USER15> I had to enter "boobs" the result is just hilarious :)

<comment><USER11> "Find boobs nearby on Maps"

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> pretty good way to show off google's array of products. But also makes me wonder about the 'too many things going on at google' thing

</comment><comment><USER17> "Free Will". The results made no sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> oh geez internets, are we speculating over who owns a domain now?..</comment>


Ask HN: Baby steps for getting a job in the USA - <AUTHOR> I'm a Canadian with a bootcamp education and about 5 years experience doing web app development.<p>What is the best way to find employment in the united states? I would love the opportunity to move there for a little while. <comment><USER2> The easiest way to get a job in the US is via TN and a little harder than that is going through the H1B. The TN route is extremely simple, however you will need a degree in something related to what you plan on doing so in this case Computer science or computer engineering (a bootcamp will not be enough).

[https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary- worker...](https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/tn- nafta-professionals)

</comment><comment><USER3> Marry a wealthy American!</comment>


'Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz aren't Covid-19 experts, but they're talking about it on TV - <AUTHOR> https://www.boston.com/news/national-news-2/2020/04/18/dr-phil-and-dr-oz-arent-coronavirus-experts-so-why-are-they-talking-about-it-on-tv-news <comment><USER2> That's the great thing. You don't actually have to know anything about anything you're talking about and people will listen to you because you are a "celebrity". It happens all the time, across all spectrums and views. It's been happening for a very long time. This isn't particularly surprising, or unique.

<comment><USER3> I guess what makes this situation different is what their doing is borderline criminal and it's probably going to get people killed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure anyone is really a covid-19 expert, but at least Dr. Dre and Dr. Oz are actual physicians.</comment>


Google to acquire Apigee - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/09/Google-to-acquire-apigee.html <comment><USER2> Google didn't pay for the technology. Apigee has a good set of big enterprise customers that Google was missing on their cloud platform. As others mentioned, Google already have the tech: [https://cloud.google.com/endpoints/](https://cloud.google.com/endpoints/)

<comment><USER3> Google Endpoint was discussed last week on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12407061](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12407061)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 2018: Support is discontinued. Please use our forums where intelligent bots will reply you.

2020: We are now discontinuing Apigee.

<comment><USER5> I thought the same thing. We saw this play out before with Parse. Not saying they play in the same space, but I think Google could just roll the Apigee features into Firebase and shutter the platform.

<comment><USER6> The good ol' MS motto *(back in the days..): Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish)

<comment><USER7> That's not the same at all. EEE was about adopting existing standards used by other products and then extending them with features other products didn't support.

<comment><USER8> well, at that time we had standards...

and on the few places we still have, this is what google is doing with chrome on the w3c.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I misread that as "to acquire Apple". Then I misread that again as "to acquire Apogee" (as in, the name 3D Realms went by from 1987 to 1996).

Now I'm wondering behind the reasoning of the Apigee brand. Was it an intentional play on Apogee Software of the 80s/90s? If so, why? Something about "playing with APIs" I presume, but that seems confusing.

<comment><USER10> The word "apogee" literally means the highest point in the course of something. Apogee Software and Apigee both play off the english word meaning.

<comment><USER11> So there's that, and then the Apigee split out like Api-gee makes you think gee, that must have something to do with APIs.

<comment><USER12> Gee makes me think Ghee which makes me want Indian food. Indian food comes from India where we outsource software development and APIs are used in software development.

So it's a circular reference.

<comment><USER13> Gee!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apigee is a pretty decent product if you are in the space. It's sort of kinda like a "CDN for APIs", if that make sense, which I've always thought is a great idea.

(Yes, I realize my analogy has limits. Don't get too hung up on it though)

I didn't realize they were a public company though.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this is an excellent acquisition by Google, specifically for their cloud platform. It provides an excellent solution to the problem of managing apis and a tight integration with cloud platform will really make it stand out.

<comment><USER16> I think you work for apigee

<comment><USER12> Or he still has his stock options.

<comment><USER15> I wish. Can I get stock options for being optimistic?

<comment><USER16> Nah, only a useless job in mgmt or so. Maybe dogbert can help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> These various "API management" services have always struck me as value subtracting as much as value adding. Adding another moving part to a system doesn't make it more reliable.

One thing that has amazed me is that most of these services offer everything but the kitchen sink AND the one thing you need for a minimum viable product, which is the ability to charge for API calls.

<comment><USER18> Apigee provides the ability to charge the users of your APIs for API calls

<comment><USER19> So it's just a proxy on top?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What a bizarre acquisition. They say:

> _A good API needs to [...] give developers the freedom to work in the > development environment of their choice [...] a good API includes testing > support_

Those are two of the main reasons _not_ to use Apigee.

</comment><comment><USER21> 3Scale got acquired by IBM, and now APIGEE by google. Time to buy Layer7 shares?

API Gateways are big deal in API first initiatives.

<comment><USER22> Mashery was acquired by Intel [1] in April 2013, Layer7 was acquired by CA Technologies [2] the same month.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/17/source-mashery-is- selling-...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/17/source-mashery-is-selling-to- intel-for-more-than-180m/) [2] [https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/22/ca-acquires- layer-7-techno...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/22/ca-acquires- layer-7-technologies-to-connect-cloud-mobile-and-internet-of-things-as-api- market-starts-to-consolidate/)

<comment><USER23> Intel divested Mashery, along with Aepona and dropped their cloud services division.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They announced this a couple of weeks ago... im confused: [https://cloud.google.com/endpoints/](https://cloud.google.com/endpoints/)

<comment><USER25> Cloud Endpoints as announced is the second generation of Google's own system.

Apigee is a different company and set of products.

<comment><USER26> I wonder what the engineers on the Google team that just released that is thinking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well. At first I thought this was crazy, but then I realized Google was the only major cloud provider that didn't offer an API Gateway service... Azure and AWS both have one.

So, makes sense. They got them cheap as well, only a really small premium of the stock price.

<comment><USER28> Google has endpoints, but it's pretty low level and a little hard to manage that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Never understood Apigee's core product. I like their whitebooks though. quite informative. So congratulations.

<comment><USER30> We use Apigee's Edge product. It provides API management tools like authentication, authorization, rate limiting, etc before the request hits your actual API. Its a pretty good product, if that isn't your core competency.

<comment><USER31> But apigee becomes a man in the middle, which is very bad for your security.

<comment><USER32> I imagine it's a tradeoff. It's worse for your security if you try to roll your own auth/auth solution and botch it.

<comment><USER31> Auth is a routine job, only a really silly developer manages to make simple token auth vulnerable. There's no a "tradeoff" in leaving auth to MitM because it's "hard", oh also there's bunch of libraries out there doing it for you on your servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me, or should API management be done through GraphQL? It doesn't seem like Apigee even uses GraphQL (unless I missed something on their website). Been looking at GraphQL recently, and it looks like it could be a solution. Any experience on using GraphQL in a prod environment?

EDIT: I think Apigee has a great product, not wanting to put them down.

<comment><USER33> We moved our entire api to Apigee at my previous job (500+ person fast growing startup). It certainly has value and was a great fit for us. Many aspects of the Apigee stack felt kinda weird and cumbersome though and I saw such a huge potential for improvement if you started with GraphQL as the base assumption instead of REST. So that's what we are doing at [https://graph.cool/](https://graph.cool/) :-)

We are currently in closed beta, but I'd be happy to personally onboard you or chat if that would be helpful. (contact in profile)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the feedback, makes sense to me. Although,I don't understand why mentioning GraphQL gets me downvoted. I'm trying to understand what advantages Apigee has using REST over GraphQL. No hating, just curious.

[https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2015/05/01/graphql- int...](https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2015/05/01/graphql- introduction.html)

"We plan to open-source a reference implementation of a GraphQL server and publish a language specification in the coming months. Our goal is to evolve GraphQL to adapt to a wide range of backends, so that projects and companies can use this technology to access their own data. We believe that this is a compelling way to structure servers and to provide powerful abstractions, frameworks and tools – including, but not exclusively, Relay – for product developersWe plan to open-source a reference implementation of a GraphQL server and publish a language specification in the coming months. Our goal is to evolve GraphQL to adapt to a wide range of backends, so that projects and companies can use this technology to access their own data. (...)"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > As always, we'll make sure that these capabilities are available in the > public clouds and can also be used on-premises.

Does that mean there's a chance Apigee will get open sourced? (fingers crossed)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> $625 million in cash

<comment><USER35> Curious if they used cash from their domestic or international reserves.

<comment><USER36> Will have to be US cash because Apigee is based in the US.

They can use their Euro cash in Europe for acquisitions and not pay the US taxes.

Think Microsoft / Skype. Skype was based in Luxembourg.

<comment><USER37> They could sell bonds to Draghi and get paid to acquire it tax free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So does this mean Apigee will be the captive API gateway for Google's extensive portfolio of APIs, or will the Apigee gateway still be offered as a product to put in front of a customer's custom API?

<comment><USER38> It makes no mention of using it on Google's APIs at all.

Within the blog it elaborates on what they're doing by saying:

> Google cloud customers are already benefitting from no sys-ops dev > environments, including Google App Engine and Google Container Engine. Now, > with Apigee's API management platform, they'll be able to front these secure > and scalable services with a simple way to provide the exported APIs.

>As always, we'll make sure that these capabilities are available in the public clouds and can also be used on-premises.

If you click on the link and read the article it will give information behind the headline, possibly answering questions the headline brings up.

<comment><USER22> I appreciate the summary but I was speculating about things that weren't said (in the article). Specifically, as you point out, the article makes no statement on whether they will dogfood Apigee for internal use, but recently they acquired Firebase where dogfooding it was a part of the play.

Meanwhile, there's these lines:

> Google cloud customers are already benefitting from no sys-ops dev > environments, including Google App Engine and Google Container Engine. Now, > with Apigee's API management platform, they'll be able to front these secure > and scalable services with a simple way to provide the exported APIs.

>As always, we'll make sure that these capabilities are available in the public clouds and can also be used on-premises.

It unnecessarily combines two different things in the same sentence; "you can continue to rely on your stuff running in Google App Engine and Google Container Engine"; and "you can front your stuff with Apigee Edge" \-- yes, I can already do both of these things today. So what's the difference?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Buying offer is 17.40. Right now Apigee's trading at 17.42, short selling opportunity?

</comment><comment><USER40> Apigee has a lot of smart engineers working on nodejs based open source projects and contributing to OpenApi spec (fka Swagger). Good to see that Chet K chose Google to acquire these talented engineers. And ofcourse the Apigee community is A++.

<comment><USER41> Hi firefoxNX11, it looks like you misspelled a link a year and a half ago and accidentally linked to a phishing site. You have been shadowbanned since, I saw you with showdead on. It looks like you have made constructive comments otherwise, perhaps a mod can help out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I first read this as "Google to acquire Apple" and I found myself wondering if today was in the month of April.

</comment><comment><USER43> Aw man I bought a bunch of these shares last year at $7 and sold for $7.90 after a few months. I was happy about it. Wish I held onto them, it's trading at $17 now!

<comment><USER44> It's a bummer but you couldn't have known. Just keep making smart investments.</comment></comment>


In Response to "What Sucks About Erlang" - <AUTHOR> http://yarivsblog.com/articles/2008/03/09/in-response-to-what-sucks-about-erlang/

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't comment on how much Erlang sucks (or not) but this quote does bring back memories:

If you're writing code like in Damien's example and you want to be able to insert lines without changing a bunch of variable names, I have a tip: increment by 10.

<comment><USER2> The good old BASIC days :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Syntax annoyances can be forgiven but for a language interpreter to call exit(1) when unable to allocate memory is really bad. It should instead return an error to the app and let the app keep running.</comment>


Amazon workers in Scotland sleeping in tents near warehouse to save money - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/amazon-workers-sleep-tents-dunfermline-fife-scotland-a7467657.html <comment><AUTHOR> Now that's a sad future we're heading off too.</comment>


The Ultimate Digital Estate Planning Guide - <AUTHOR> http://aftersteps.com/posts/168-the_ultimate_guide_to_digital_estate_planning

<comment><USER2> Very informative. Keep up the great work.

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome!</comment>


Where are all those Galaxy Nexus subpixels? - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/where-are-all-those-galaxy-nexus-subpixels-20111221/

<comment><USER3> The real downside of OLED, as used in Galaxy Nexus and lots of other places, is the screen noise when the brightness is turned down. Intermediate brightness solid colours look textured, like very high weave linen. It's most noticeable when I'm using the Galaxy Nexus in bed, with the lights off. Worse, this linen texture remains in place even while the displayed image is being scrolled; it's a bit like the screen is permanently dirty.

It doesn't really bother me much. The Nexus One was similar, though with the larger pixels, the screen visibly "fizzed" in dark environments - you could see the noise continuously.

A bigger downside that _does_ bother me is how much the extra pixels reduce smoothness in the majority of apps that are not hardware accelerated - <USER2> replaced the launcher with LauncherPro to get rid of the Google search bar - and now scrolling between home pages is visibly jerky, compared to the Nexus One.

Another downside is all the application failures and silent terminations owing to (what I believe are) the extra video memory requirements. It used to be that e.g. after navigating to a web page from the stock news widget, pressing back would reliably take you back to the stock news widget page that you came from. But now, if you navigate to a large web page, it's quite likely that the news widget will have been evicted, and restarted when you press back; and you end up on the wrong tab of the widget, and have lost the scroll position. Similarly, switching between tabs in the browser, or reopening the browser after switching to an app, is much more likely to cause a page refresh. It all feels like a very memory constrained device, much more so than the Nexus One was with Gingerbread.

I wrote up my full thoughts on the Galaxy Nexus here: [https://plus.google.com/103375824955695810229/posts/A92mZqx7...](https://plus.google.com/103375824955695810229/posts/A92mZqx7ad1)

My personal verdict: if I could have gotten the Nexus One with larger internal memory (i.e. OK for apps to use) and a working power button, still running Gingerbread, I would prefer it to the Galaxy Nexus running Ice Cream Sandwich. Biggest thing I miss is a reliably located menu button.

<comment><USER4> > I replaced the launcher with LauncherPro to get rid of the Google search bar

Isn't the Google search bar just a (removable) widget?

I agree with your points about application eviction causing them to restart in a different state. I don't know why Google isn't stricter about requiring their applications to save state and restore to same (as iOS apps are supposed to). At least their first party apps should do this.

OTOH, I'm not sure that it is the extra video memory requiring this. I think it may be that they have increased the heap memory allowed for each application significantly. I'm not sure, though... I haven't used ICS yet.

<comment><USER5>
      > Isn't the Google search bar just a (removable) widget?

On the ICS launcher, no. It's a built-in on all home screens. Don't ask me why they ignored their nice widget system in favor of inflexibility, but there you have it.

<comment><USER4> Wow, that is really lame. I'm liking the idea of ICS less and less each day now it seems. Its ridiculous that they've gone so far backwards on both this and the voice search functionaity with this release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure the reviewer has a good understanding of how to interpret the Siemens star chart (referred to as a 600 dpi test image). I'm not entirely qualified to interpret the results either, but I know that differing anti- aliasing and image processing routines can produce significant artifacting in this type of image. This must be factored in to any evaluation.

My point is that the better perceived image quality of the star chart on the iPhone isn't necessarily an indicator that the "screen quality" is better. It's just as likely that the image processing in the iPhone has been tweaked to produce an image more in line with what we'd expect to see, at the price of accurate reproduction. This type of trade off is made all the time in image processors found in cameras, televisions, and computer displays.

Your preference for one or the other has to do with your priorities. Do you value rigid accuracy in reproduction, even if it results in some artifacts, or do you prefer an image that is free of artifacts at the expense of accuracy?

<comment><USER7> _what we'd expect to see, at the price of accurate reproduction_

Can you explain what this means. Since our eyes are the only reference we have for interpreting colors (the other being wavelength, and that's just a number) I'm curious what an accurate color really means. I know that we can see billions of colors but only a thousands at the same time.

<comment><USER6> I'm referring to the star chart, not the colors. You'll notice the curvy artifacts in the chart that looks like the ones found at this link:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=siemens+star+chart>

Those curves are an illusion. They don't actually appear in the image. We see them because of the tiny, staggered parallel lines required to reproduce an angled line using a grid pixel array. You can optimize to reduce this effect by using different anti-aliasing techniques that are specific to the type of display you're using. Apple tends to favor "soft" anti-aliasing techniques over accuracy. They also have the benefit of controlling the entire software stack, so their image processing can optimize for the IPS display used in iOS devices.

Some people find the softness downright obnoxious, while others think it results in the most pleasing image. I prefer Apple's method.

Color perception is a very broad topic. It's one of those "why is the sky blue" questions that we've all pondered (and frequently arrive at a false conclusion). I'm not nearly knowledgable enough to talk about it with authority, but you should definitely do some Googling, and be sure to keep an open mind. The answer is probably not what you think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The technical quality of the photos is quite poor. They're way too bright if we're looking for subpixels, since all we see are full pixels, smeared together into blooming white. Also, looking at the HTC Rezound's standard color test, the Verizon logo on the phone is blurred just like the display itself.

It would help if the photos were re-done to actually show subpixels, sharply. (Edit: unless I missed the point, in which case the Settings menu shot should suffice: "It's PenTile but it looks pretty nice in actual usage!")

<comment><USER9> or the lack of subpixels in the case of the Android devices.

</comment></comment><comment> alok-g OP's understanding of these test patterns is incorrect. 'bradleyland' has already commented on the star chart. I'll talk about the second set [1, 2].

>> As you get closer to the end of the spectrum, you can see that the color depth blends together

These images are not testing the "spectrum". These test the gamma curves of the display. With reference to [1], the center squares with checkerboard patterns spatially mix two sets of colors to check if the mixture matches the color shade in the surrounding box. If the gamma curves are tuned correctly, all of the outer and inner boxes should blend. Nearly none of the displays I have tested achieve this and calibration is quite involved.

[1] <http://www.nies.ch/pic/monitor-1280x1024.png> [2] [http://www.geek.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/12/REZPIXTEST2.j...](http://www.geek.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/12/REZPIXTEST2.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER10> My biggest beef with AMOLED displays is that they require more power. True, at all black they consume less, but in normal use it's more compared to LCDs. I just got a Nokia Lumia 800 and I'm down to one day of battery instead of two with the iPhone 4. The same issue was present with my previous Nexus One. Displaymate did a test to quantify this: <http://displaymate.com/Smartphone_ShootOut_1.htm>

Also when displaying text you are more likely to notice the pentile pattern which makes the text unclear at small sizes. Granted, it may not be a problem at 316 ppi of the Nexus, but it's noticeable at 252 ppi of the Lumia 800

</comment><comment><USER11> According to this wiki site, the iPhone 4 has 326ppi, the Galaxy Nexus 316ppi and the Rezound 342ppi. But I don't think that's the problem.

Also there is something about PenTileTechnology standing there, which the Nexus uses.

So in the end, it seems this is the reason the iPhone 4 produces a better picture than the Nexus.

But I don't know what the HTC problem is. Maybe the display technology? But a</comment>


Using Many Social Media Sites Tied to Depression - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/8607.html <comment><USER2> The downfall of society began when social media surfaced</comment>


Izm.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/izmjs/izmjs <comment><AUTHOR> I have recently open-sourced a new NodeJS boilerplate.

This is a small introduction video that demonstrates how the boilerplate can help you to build faster, beautiful and more documented APIs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqrCH25qjP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqrCH25qjP8)

The boilerplate helps you as well to organize your projects into small and reusable functional modules.

Functional modules can be added simply by cloning (or copying) them into the "modules" folder, and then install the dependencies.

I have already written some functional modules:

devtools: Helps you to achieve some basic tasks such as translating sentences, generating postman documentation of the whole project, viewing/installing dependencies graphically, configuring env variables... The source code can be found here: [https://github.com/izmjs/devtools](https://github.com/izmjs/devtools)

Chat FM: A simple chat module. A Redis server can be configured to ensure the scalability. [https://github.com/izmjs/chat-fm](https://github.com/izmjs/chat- fm)

Files manager: A simple files manager module. It uses GridFS to store the files. [https://github.com/izmjs/files-fm](https://github.com/izmjs/files-fm)

I am looking for developers who can help me documenting and writing more tests for the project.

Please, star and share the repository

</comment><comment><USER2> Very cool project. Thanks for sharing</comment>


Show HN: Clone all your GitHub repositories sorted by language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DylanMeeus/ghcloner <comment><AUTHOR> I hacked this together and thought some of you might enjoy it.

(I really just tested it for myself on a Debian machine but I think it'll work on other linux distros without issue. Windows and Mac might fail completely)</comment>


Novel Phage Therapy Saves Patient with Multidrug-Resistant Bacterial Infection - <AUTHOR> https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2017-04-25-novel-phage-therapy-saves-patient-with-multidrug-resistant-bacterial-infection.aspx <comment><USER2> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226790) (40 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> Better source from UC San Diego:

[https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2017-04-25-novel...](https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2017-04-25-novel- phage-therapy-saves-patient-with-multidrug-resistant-bacterial-infection.aspx)

<comment><USER4> > Better source from UC San Diego:

Because it isn't BuzzFeed?

I read both articles and the BuzzFeed one was much more extensive, covered both the background of his infection better and the process in which he ended up getting the phage treatment.

So no, your source isn't better in this case.

EDIT: Here it is since the mods swapped it out already, [https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/navy-phage- viruses-f...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/navy-phage-viruses-for- antibiotics-crisis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for changing the source. Seeing a science article from Buzzfeed on the front page of HN was pretty unsettling.</comment>


Roku is rolling out its own version of Alexa for home speakers and TV soundbars - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/1/3/16843348/roku-entertainment-assistant-amazon-alexa-apple-siri-google-video-music-streaming <comment><USER2> This is a pretty interesting move, particularly when you consider that consuming media is one of the biggest use cases for smart speakers and Roku already gets bundled into a lot of TVs.

I'm not sure that Amazon or Google will be thrilled with the idea of integrating an SDK into their speakers, but I could imagine Sonos doing so.</comment>


Nintendo Announces SNES Classic, Comes with 21 Games - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/nintendo-announces-snes-classic-1796418700 <comment><USER2> Nintendo needs to be clear on whether this product will actually be produced in enough quantities to reach customers, or whether it will be an extremely limited special product like the NES Classic.

I was able to get an NES Classic because I lined up a half hour before a store opened the first day and got in on the initial shipment. I never saw it in stores after.

Unless Nintendo is clear that things are going to be different this time, considering the popularity of the NES Classic, people are going to be lining up over night to try to get this SNES Classic.

<comment><USER3> "Nintendo needs to do X or people will line up for hours for a chance to get this product, creating media hype"

I don't think Nintendo needs to clarify anything. They're releasing a product people want, and there may or may not be a limited time to get one. This will sell like crazy.

<comment><USER4> Anecdotal evidence, but I have no interest in this product because I wasn't able to acquire the NES classic and have no desire to go through that process again.

<comment><USER5> I think a lot of people are in that boat. I would have happily paid good money for a NES Classic from Nintendo (I hate supporting scalpers) but I am not going to hassle with running all over town or constantly refreshing webpages to see if a video game system is available. If the NES classic had been readily available, I would be excited about this. As it is/was, I'm with you.

edit, to add: and I get the shortage at launch, but to not even manufacture enough units to even come close to meeting demand (which, I know, was unknown at the time) leaves an extra sour taste in my mouth.

<comment><USER6> It's the combination of seemingly arbitrary shortage combined with scalpers that ruins it for me. When I finally found a switch the staff didn't understand why I didn't want all 3 available units. These are supposed to be fun things - not a gotcha here and there.

<comment><USER7> It would be nice if stores would enforce a limit per customer on these. But what do they care?

<comment><USER6> Sell up should be enough reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really interesting that they're using this as an oppertunity to officially release Star Fox 2 [0]. It's neat to see and is pretty unexpected.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox_2)

<comment><USER9> It'll be interesting to see the actual ROM they use.

IIRC, the ROMs floating around on the internet needed some binary patching to run correctly. If Nintendo uses the pirated version that generally exists on the internet like they did for the NES classic, you could argue that they don't own all the copyright to it.

<comment><USER10> The final ROM was never leaked. They are using that.

[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/plug-and-play-snes- cl...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/plug-and-play-snes-classic- coming-sept-29-for-80-with-two-controllers/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150707132659/http://www.ninten...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150707132659/http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/05/feature_the_full_story_behind_star_fox_2_nintendos_most_famous_cancellation)

" "During development we received a copy of the mastered Star Fox 2 ROM to play, and it was quite a blast." This ROM would have been the final game, complete with QA tweaks and ready for a release that never happened. Cuthbert is keen to point out that this version is far superior to the numerous leaked prototype ROMs which are currently doing the rounds on the web - the leaking of which has been erroneously attributed to himself. "There are a few ROMs on the net in various conditions," he states. "But the ones I checked out are all old and they don't have the randomizing Rogue-like stuff working or all the encounters in place, so you don't really get the feel of the game we were making." "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not much of a gamer but I would buy this for the nostalgic factor alone.

I hope Nintendo actually produces enough to meet demand this time and doesn't cancel it after a few months like they did with the NES Classic. But then again I have a gamer friend who is still looking to buy a Switch and can't even find that in stock... perhaps Nintendo needs some help with their supply chain.

<comment><USER12> I've been wondering about this myself. I recall when the Wii came out there were shortages for what seemed like years. Now the Switch is difficult to find. Would they sell more if they were more available or does this (potentially artificial) scarcity keep interest up and amplify the hype?

I suspect they just need help with supply chain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am VERY surprised they picked Final Fantasy III (VI in reality) instead of Chrono Trigger (while including two Kirby games). The latter is way more popular, at least in the West. The former is the best Final Fantasy, though :-)

<comment><USER14> I had this thought as well. They've basically got everything I would want to play on this except for Chrono Trigger. On the other hand, I've bought Chrono Trigger on three or four different platforms at this point and not FF3, so maybe there are others like me and Square Enix wanted more money for it?

EDIT: On the Play Store, at least, FF3 has almost twice as many reviews as CT, so maybe this doesn't hold up.

<comment><USER13> Yeah not a problem for me. CT has a great DS port already. I was just surprised!

FFVI's ports have always had a negative (worse sound quality for GBA, awful art work for iOS/Steam, horrible load times on PSOne). The only negative of the SNES version is the translation and perhaps some bugs. If you don't own a Wii or Wii U (or Switch, if they ever get the VC working on there), this is the only legal way to play the SNES version of FFVI!

<comment><USER15> > horrible load times on PSOne

Does that load-time still exist if you're playing the downloadable version of the game released on the "PSOne Store", on e.g. a PS3? If yes, would it still exist if you stuck an SSD in the PS3?

<comment><USER13> Yes. It's not as bad as back in the PSOne with a CD, but compared to the SNES versions, it will feel slow. There's YouTube videos of it. If you've played it on the SNES before it's really annoying.

For what it's worth, I have FFIX on my PS3 digitally and it's still a bit too slow for me (the game pushed the PSOne capabilities a bit too much!).

No idea about PS3 with SSD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The whole supply thing always struck me a very fine balancing act overall, Nintendo were aiming for a limited supply but by underestimating demand it looked crazier than it really was.

If Nintendo released enough Mini-NESs last year to match the demand, by this point right now there would be thousands upon thousands of them lying around doing nothing and being resold for every decreasing prices. Most people surely bought it because the box was cute and/or it was a remarkably easy gift for someone, I can't imagine many of them are getting much use right now.

With an awareness they're no longer on sale and somewhat in-demand, people are going to less likely to get rid of theirs. By not satisfying demand they're managing to avoid long-term damage to the value of NES nostalgia.

Along with that, not only would saturating the market effectively kill the chances of simply rereleasing it for another wave of hype and high sales in a few years, it'd also potentially greatly cripple the market value of the games on the machine. Nintendo have made a killing from re-releasing Super Mario Bros alone over and over, if it's on the virtual store right now I imagine it's gotta be at least $5. That's achieved by treating it like a thing of value, not the kind of thing you find on some cheap "RETRO CLASSICS" type bundle, preventing the NES-mini from feeling disposable helps prevent the games on it from feeling worthless.

TL;DR? They're doing an approach which has worked very effectively for another company in the entertainment industry [http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Disney_Vault](http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Disney_Vault)

</comment><comment><USER17> So I made a list of 30 SNES games about 8 months ago as an exercise if this did get announced, and posted it here on Hacker News, and I just looked back at that list. 15 of the games I stated are included in these 21 games, and an additional 1 of them I just picked the wrong version (I picked Super Street Fighter 2 instead of Street Fighter 2 Turbo).

I only missed the 2 Kirby games, Star Fox 2, Super Mario RPG, and Contra III.

Here was my list:

* Chrono Trigger * Donkey Kong Country * Donkey Kong Country 2 * Earthbound * F-Zero * Final Fight * Final Fantasy 2 * Final Fantasy 3 * Harvest Moon * Illusion of Gaia * Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past * Mega Man X * Killer Instinct * NBA Jam * Pilotwings * Secret of Mana * Sim City * Star Fox * Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo * Super Castlevania IV * Super Ghouls n' Ghosts * Super Mario Kart * Super Mario World * Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island * Super Metroid * Super Punch-Out!!! * Super R-Type 3 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: Turtles in Time * Tetris Attack * Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Source: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12903399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12903399)

<comment><USER18> And of the games you missed, _nobody_ would have ever expected Star Fox 2. That one was a total bolt from the blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I hope they go all-out and produce 51 consoles instead of the 50 NES Classics they managed to scrape together and sell. /s

Availability of new systems has never been a strong point of Nintendo.

<comment><USER20> Except for the DS line. I never had trouble finding any of the non-special editions anywhere. If you want a Zelda or Pokemon one though (that isn't a 2DS, the 2DS that shipped with X/Y preinstalled was incredibly common) you are going to have a bad time.

<comment><USER21> Especially if the retailer lets you buy one then cancels it on you. I got a discounted regular New 3DS XL instead of a Zelda one because Best Buy let too many pre-orders in.

<comment><USER20> What really sucks is that the 3DS special editions I loved were JP only, such as the Pikachu ones and the Eevee one. Granted, I didn't totally love the Eevee one. My favorite is that the R/B 20th anniversary editions are only $300 on Amazon. And here's probably the coolest one for an easy $340 [0]. Sucks to be a Pokemon fan.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-New-3DS-Solgaleo-Lunala- Blac...](https://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-New-3DS-Solgaleo-Lunala- Black/dp/B01LVZ5SQV/ref=sr_1_15?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1498503555&sr=1-15&keywords=pokemon+3ds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What kind of connector does the controller use? It looks like a mini vintage SNES connector? Or are the ports on the front just for show, and the real connectors are on the back or something?

One of the nice things about the NES Classic was that it used the same port as a Nunchuck, meaning you could use it with your old modded Wii. Would be nice if the SNES controller had a similarly useful connector, perhaps for Switch compatibility.

<comment><USER23> I _really_ want a good to-USB adapter for those things. I love the Wii Classic Pro controller, and now these.... I've tried two different models from Mayflash, but the first stopped working after a couple months and the second liked to trigger wild, phantom stick movement every minute or two, making it unusable. No-one else seems to make such an adapter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your easiest bet might be just connecting it to a wiimote and finding a wiimote HID driver and connecting it to your computer via bluetooth.

<comment><USER23> I've had trouble getting it to "remember" the Wiimotes, so I always have to do manual fiddling to get them connected. Meanwhile PS3 controllers are working great over Bluetooth, no such problems and totally painless set-up. But they're more expensive and I kind of want to use them for my PS3 instead, meanwhile I've got a couple Classic Pro controllers that are otherwise unused and can pick up more on the cheap. Aside from not having rumble, which isn't a big deal to me, they're pretty much perfect—except I can't buy a reliable, durable wired adapter for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I look forward to getting into a brawl at Gamestop at 1am to get one.

<comment><USER25> It's weird, but I actually kind-of enjoy getting out and waiting in line in the middle of the night waiting for something. It's exciting.

<comment><USER6> Any idea how often that doesn't pan out for everyone? i.e. How often people camp all night for nothing.

<comment><USER24> They let you know how many they have available, so the line has a logical end to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> !!! Star Fox 2 !!!

I wonder how different it will be to the fan-edited ROM (if at all).

<comment><USER27> What a prize. Tricking customers into waiting 20 years

<comment><USER7> Nintendo playing the long game

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> update from TFA:

> UPDATE (1:53pm): And here's Nintendo, confirming that the company does plan > to ship more SNES Classics, but only this year.

>> We aren't providing specific numbers, but we will produce significantly more units of Super NES Classic Edition than we did of NES Classic Edition.

>>Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition is currently planned to ship from Sept. 29 until the end of calendar year 2017. At this time, we have nothing to announce regarding any possible shipments beyond this year.

>> Our long-term efforts are focused on delivering great games for the Nintendo Switch system and continuing to build momentum for that platform, as well as serving the more than 63 million owners of Nintendo 3DS family systems. We are offering Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition in special recognition of the fans who show tremendous interest our classic content.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it bad if I hope the zeitgeist of Shenzhen gets its hands on one of these and clones it part-for-part? It's likely the only way I'll ever be able to own one, given Nintendo's likely production run.

<comment><USER29> You can always build your own EmuBox, that does the same job and much more. For people who can't do that, I recommend looking into it, there are pre-build options, which require less effort to get running. Or "hire" a friend to build one.

Nintendo will always be the only one who can legally sell a finished product like that.

<comment><USER15> Sure; the thing I want from Nintendo is mostly 1. build quality and 2. the assurance of the games and emulators being tweaked to run at 100% speed + 100% fidelity, 100% of the time, on the system.

A random collection of parts can be made to run a random collection of games at "decent" fidelity+speed, but you get much better results by cloning the output of a megacorp's QA pipeline.

I'd much rather give Nintendo my money for the work they did designing the system, if they'll let me. But if they won't, their design will still likely be _better_ , such that the best third-party device to get will be the one that most closely rips it off.

<comment><USER30> There are a bunch of emulation machines from China. Many of them are handhelds. The build quality tends to be low; the specs are weird; the emulation is poor.

So I wouldn't be too hopeful for a decent clone.

If you want Nintendo build quality you can buy a Wii (dirt cheap) and a classic controller and set it up to run homebrew.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Oh man I wonder when N64 Classic is gonna come out /s

<comment><USER32> 2018 probably

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why buy this when you can run all these games and so many more on a Rasberry PI running RetroPie?

<comment><USER23> 1) no fussing about with stuff that most people can't or don't want to do, 2) nice controllers included, no config faffing about, 3) last I checked even the Rpi3 had noticeable slowdowns and/or frame drops on Starfox and Super Mario 2—it's getting close, though, so a hypothetical Rpi4 might get us to 100% acceptable SNES emulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm excited about this, but I really wish they'd provide a little more effort on these projects... if they spent a little more effort, they could have opened it up, make a retro platform, instead of a quick cash grab.

<comment><USER7> They'll release more games on the SNES Classic II coming in 2019 ;P

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'll have to buy two, then hope I can trade it for a Classic since I've missed out on that one. I really wanted the Classic but the Super Nintendo is great anyway as well.

<comment><USER36> Same I still want a NES classic. Nintendo is missing out on sales. I've seen the classic selling for 200 - 400.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> My only gripe is more Final Fantasys and more Mega Mans :(

But I'd say just Mario RPG alone is enough to buy this thing!

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm gonna definitely buy this. The library looks good also it comes with 2 controllers!

</comment><comment><USER39> I might actually buy this if theyre not sold out in 15 secs

</comment><comment><USER40> Star Fox 2!

Lord have mercy.

Never released before.

</comment><comment><USER41> I still have an original SNES with 25-30 games, including classics like Super Mario World, Super Metroid, and Link to the past. If I get an itch to play through one of those, I fire up an emulator. Literally, no reason to switch that old SNES on.

I guess this is for people who don't know how to make a folder on their PC?

<comment><USER23> Or they want it plugged into their TV and don't want a dedicated PC for that, or to have to move a laptop over by the TV every time. Or for someone to be able to play this while the PC's in use for something else. Or they like the well-made classic-style controllers—SNES knockoff USB controllers are usually garbage, and two new PS3 or PS4 controllers would be more expensive than an entire SNES classic with two included controllers. You could use 360 controllers, but awful dpad (have fun losing at Punch Out) and almost as expensive.

Or they want something people at get-togethers will pick up and play and don't want to run into "oh yeah, you need to make sure your controllers are off when it starts up or they won't connect" or "I just updated it and haven't forced HDMI audio in the config so the sound doesn't work right now, sorry" or any of a dozen other stupid problems that crop up with self-managed emulator boxes.

<comment><USER42> >>> SNES knockoff USB controllers are usually garbage

Not all are. I have nothing bad to say about the 8bitdo SNES30 replica controller. It feels almost exactly like the real mcoy (and actually feels a bit better IMO due to the slight added weight of the battery/bluetooth components) and functions flawlessly.

[http://www.8bitdo.com/snes30-sfc30/](http://www.8bitdo.com/snes30-sfc30/)

DISCLAIMER: I'm in no way involved with that company, just a really happy customer.</comment></comment></comment>


How Facebook policy changes affect you - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/11/27/how-facebook-policy-changes-affect/

<comment><USER2> They don't. Period.</comment>


The biggest obstacle to Martian colonization isn't technical - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rongarret.info/2016/06/the-biggest-obstacle-to-martian.html <comment><USER2> Actually, the _biggest_ obstacle to Martian colonization is the fact that Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere.</comment>


You Are Using Your Editor Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://luansantos.com/2012/08/01/you-are-using-your-editor-wrong/

<comment><USER2> More and more I feel like I should wean myself off NERDTree and back onto netrw like a grown-up. It would reduce the number of plugins I use to zero, and that would be an accomplishment.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious what the accomplishment would be?

I use a bunch of plugins, they help me be more productive...

<comment><USER2> The accomplishment is training myself to run as close to default as possible. I've gotten very accustomed to using NERDTree, for example, but that's because I never really took the time to learn to use netrw correctly. I seek to correct that now.

To misappropriate a Dawkins quote, I'm simply going one further, to zero.

<comment><USER4> Do it. netrw has a lot more features than NERDTree and comes as default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yay, yet another editor flamebait post. Wonderful.

TL;DR version: "I am trying to say that you can't be wrong if you are getting your job done" - IOW, don't bother.

</comment><comment><USER6> VIM FTW...

Or just

FTV (For the Vim)

Vim = Win!

o/</comment>


The Magical Art of Selling Soap - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/magical-art-selling-soap <comment><USER2> It seems that the trend of make-believe advertisement has gone worse and worse. Today's advertisements are way worse than those in the articles.

Everything must be "natural" and "chemical-free". This is home-made, and that is hand-crafted. Pills are better if they contains herbs. Buy the "smart" scale/hygrometer/ruler: it has a sleek design with no screen, and it connects to your phone. And of course, who doesn't want more "air freshener" on literally everything?

Maybe I'm too grumpy about it, and the ranting is hyperbolic. But it's genuinely hard to shop sometimes. There are too many buzz words. What's worse? Some descriptions on the packages are actually technical and important, but you need learn enough to figure it out.

I'm more inclined to purchase store-brand products these days, because at least it just says what's in the box.

<comment><USER3> Furthermore, the illustrations in old adverts were absolutely amazing. Just look at today's vast majority of the works - half-baked, traced in illustrator and even then not as refined and charming, full of frivolous colors and complete lack of mastery in drawing (if they ever learned attempted it).

We've regressed so much, it makes me upset. There are a few gems out there though.

Advertisement, marketing, business ethics, customer centricity, etc. have eroded in favor of high thrift, low margin disposable products we buy today.

The other day I was searching for a water pick machine. Amazon search returned a plastic palace worth of shit, each one competing for attention and none of the brands I've ever heard of. Every brand was some engrish name with spelling mistakes, definite chinese knockoff.

Good honest businesses are a rarity these days.

<comment><USER4> It's simply the (game theory) logical conclusion of capitalism and globalization

<comment><USER5> I'm interested in your opinion here. Will you elaborate and cite an example an example to justify your opinion?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the future, I imagine a similar write up will be made about the beauty products today and their advertising. I suspect Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop will surely be on the list that future people look look back on with laughter.

<comment><AUTHOR> we're already laughing! [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/08/what- goop...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/08/what-goop-really- sells-women/596773/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What amazes me here is how prevalent these advertising claims are even today. I wonder if these claims really originated from advertisers or if the advertisers themselves have a basis elsewhere (maybe folk medicine, or something they observed Native Americans did, etc.) and just gave it an audience.

Hydrotherapy sounds like the contemporary endorsement for cold showers (even if, _I think_ , some of the claimed benefits of cold showers have been proven).

> "quicken the blood supply, increase the scalp's nutrition, and thus aid > nature in keeping your hair alive and beautiful."

> Stimulating massage plus lather plus water flushes out "dead cells" and > "dust," leaving "the pores clear and free to do their work."

Are natural hair care advice you can get even today. I have completely no idea how these have fared against scientific testing. All I know is that there is still a lot we don't understand about hair care and so you are bound to get a lot of conflicting advice. Heck there isn't even a consensus how frequently should you shampoo your hair.

> Only the fresh-squeezed juice of a lemon, Sunkist offers helpfully, "cuts > the alkali in the soap and leaves the hair really clean."

I distinctly remember hearing this sort of advice in my school's grapevine just around the time we were going through adolescence[1] and just getting conscious about how we look. Even with the hormone-clouded judgement of an adolescent, I could tell this claim has disputable basis; citrus is acidic and why the hell would I want anything acidic on my scalp?

What really gets me is _I am not from the US_. Granted, we were a colony and not to mention US is influential even to non-colonies. But I find it very amusing and curious that I heard such a singular and obscure advice, which Sunkist apparently promoted almost a century before. I wonder, if I could trace back how this idea propagated to me as a pimply schoolboy, will it have originated to Sunkist's ad? Or perhaps share a common ancestor with it?

Man, ideas are damn hard to kill.

[1] If I really try to place this memory, I would say around 2004.

<comment><USER8> > citrus is acidic and why the hell would I want anything acidic on my scalp?

Because your skin is acidic - indeed it has a protective acid mantle [1]. The question you should actually be asking yourself is why would you want anything _alkaline_ (like soap & sodium lauryl sulphate detergents) on your skin.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You don't talk about fight club?</comment>


Desktop Linux needs salesmen - <AUTHOR> http://www.tech-no-media.com/2009/11/desktop-linux-needs-salesmen.html

<comment><USER2> Usability isn't "tweaks", its the product. I gave up on Linux when it didn't have a "Have Disk" button for my new video card driver - no, it was not amusing for me to rebuild my Linux kernel, I had an actual job to do which was unrelated to hacking. And Windows does have a "Have Disk" button.

</comment><comment><USER3> Desktop Linux needs people focused on making things work. For the typical case, it does just work, now, but almost everyone is atypical in some way. For example, I want to be able to play WoW without rebooting, and while if I had a different video card that would apparently be fairly easy, I gave up on it after three days and three attempts (wine, cedega, crossover). The average WoW-player probably wouldn't have got that far.

What Linux on the desktop really needs is a reference platform. If people could be sure that the hardware they were buying (or had) would work at least as well as Windows, it would help.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not that I would mind, but why does everyone need to use GNU/Linux? The only practical benefit would be better support for things like gaming. It seems much more important to increase mindshare for open standards and free software. GNU/Linux is perfectly viable as it is.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sort of.

But what it also needs, to really move into the desktop realm proper, is a more cohesive community. More effort spent on the mundane stuff like usability tweaks, interfaces and better package work.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hmm. We have people devoting their efforts coding, doing QA, triaging bugs, and probably even some people who are not technically inclined, but follow the philosophy and contribute art. Mabye sales people could be recruited that agree with the philosophy to donate their efforts in the same way.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think a lot of people are missing the future. Most people aren't going to have what we think of as a computer today. They will use their phone or some form of consumer electronic device that has a browser and an app store.

Linux needs to get a foothold in this market in an open way.

<comment><USER8> I like your thinking. And there's nothing stopping you from delivering on that idea (because it's open!)

<comment><USER7> I'm getting a beagleboard with a touchscreen for xmas and I plan to start hacking away :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Firefox got it's big push when the geeks forced it on their friends and family. Linux is probably nearing that point.

It's probably acceptable for the ordinary punter already, but whichever family member does their tech-support is probably happier in Windows or Mac OS X.

<comment><USER10> From the data-is-not-the-plural-of-anecdote department:

My sister co-founded and works full time at a small non-profit retail business with an extremely limited budget. Faced with a slowly-dying ancient Win98 laptop as her only computer and doing all the business's finances on paper, a few months ago I donated a slightly less ancient Dell laptop and a second-hand desktop box, after installing Ubuntu on both (the desktop also included a minimalist PoS system that I wrote over a few weekends, plus stuff like GNUCash already installed).

Talking to her since then, both machines seem to be giving her far fewer headaches than the Windows 98 box did, and despite me fishing for any complaints she seems perfectly happy with Ubuntu. For context, her level of technical sophistication is around the level of "knows the difference between hard drives and RAM, and writes HTML by hand (using table layouts)", so better than the average guy off the street but nowhere near stereotypical bearded Linux users (such as, um, myself).

So, what makes Linux work for her? 1) Support from a family member, though apparently so far everything just works 2) No requirements to use Windows-only software or unusual hardware 3) Extremely limited financial resources, combined with not using the typical means that reduce Windows' TCO to match Linux (bulk/academic discounts, hiding the cost in the price of new hardware, getting pirated copies, etc.).

These three factors are certainly not unique, but the combination is somewhat unusual, and I doubt _any_ amount of aggressive word-of-mouth marketing from Linux geeks is going to get people using it without those factors.

<comment><USER11> Is it really fair to compare the amount of headaches that an OS that came out in the middle of 1998 (and isn't even supported by the vendor anymore) gives with the amount that an OS that was just released this past year would give?

<comment><USER10> No, of course it's an unfair comparison. But back in '98 people were using that OS, including a lot of not particularly "technical" folks. The point is that Linux today is _substantially better_ than "good enough for regular people to use".

In other words, the issue is not why someone can't use Linux, but _what they would gain by using Linux_ \--such as the factors I outlined for my sister's situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Correction: GNU/Linux distributions that are aimed at desktop users need salespeople.

I would look towards Haiku OS as the future for Free Software desktop users. It's more integrated and much nicer to deal with.</comment>


The Pros and Cons of Stealing Fine Art - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-26/the-pros-and-cons-of-stealing-fine-art <comment><USER2> ... and speaking of criminality in fine art, let's not forget forgery which is and always has been a booming business. Or, as the ribald saying goes, "During his lifetime, Savador Dali created 1500 lithographs, 3000 of which are in galleries in Monterey." Who knows how many forgeries are on record as stolen originals.

</comment><comment><USER3> If only 1.5% of art thieves are caught and prosecuted, that suggests it's not nearly as difficult to sell stolen art as the rest of the article implies.

Wikipedia seems to think the real rate is "somewhere between 5% and 10%" \- which still suggests it's a relatively low-risk crime, roughly in line with other kinds of burglary, but potentially far more lucrative.

While galleries won't usually touch art known to be stolen, it's hard to believe there are no buyers for prestige high-value stolen works among oligarchs with criminal backgrounds of their own.

<comment><USER4> They mention it briefly, but it seems more like a guess than a hard stat:

> "People assume that they'll find criminal art collectors," Charney says, > "when in fact, we have very few historical examples—maybe a dozen to 20 who > fit the bill." Keep in mind that many hundreds of art objects are stolen > every year. Those, needless to say, are bad odds.

I'm imagining it would be difficult to rationalize buying black market art in the Western World for a few reasons:

1\. It's illegal to knowingly purchase or possess a stolen item

2\. Many art collectors buy art to impress their guests, but that's not exactly safe to do with stolen art. So, you need to find a buyer who's OK with the legal risk and would enjoy the art primarily for their own satisfaction and who doesn't mind depriving the museum or the general public of that same privilege.

So, your target market is a wealthy person who lives outside the legal reach of the Western World, or who loves art for art's sake, is OK with ethics of stealing and is OK with being complicit in a criminal conspiracy.

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that there's a huge market for stolen art where it acts as a clearing currency between organized crime syndicates.

At that point you don't really need to show it off, you just need to come to a consensus with regards to appraisal.

<comment><USER6> Did you get that from reading "The Goldfinch"?

<comment><USER5> I used to be connected to the wholesale broker level drug market. I heard rumors in a "if you happen to come across this, no promises, but we might be able to make a deal happen" kind of way. I never saw anything like it in person though.

<comment><USER7> Have you ever written about your experiences in the wholesale drug market?

<comment><USER5> Nah. Don't really have any desire to other than the occasional post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would have thought that art theft looked a lot like high-end auto theft - where the cars are stolen in the high "rule of law" countries and sold in low "rule of law" countries...whereas a stolen car kept in kept in a high "rule of law" country is risky and can probabaly only be parted out...

<comment> GuB-42 Even high-end cars are made in series. Fine art is usually unique.

It means you can show off in your stolen Ferrari an not raise too much suspicion, because there are plenty of cars just like yours that are not stolen. However, if you show off with a unique art piece, people who know about the theft will immediately recognize it as what it is.

You will also get a lot more people pissed off. By stealing a Ferrari, essentially, the only person who is going to get pissed off is the original owner. Steal fine art and you have all the art community against you, and some of them may be influential even in your shithole country.

<comment><USER8> That's a very fair point - and while with exception of lithographs, photography, etc. most art really is unique, but there are loads of artists whose art, while unique, would be hard to identify as a stolen to us layman - for example Monet painted ~250 paintings of water lilies alone, many of which trade hands in private sales, if for some reason I were to be at a Nigerian central banker's home and he and a Monet water lilies was on the wall, I would have no idea if that was one of the stolen ones (or a fake for that matter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is an article like this okay, but you'd never see a clickbait article for illegal activities called "pros and cons of embezzlement"? Is stealing fine art not really stealing?

<comment><USER10> In the documentary Blurred Lines, some people made the point that shady practices in the fine art world (like rigged auctions, fee gouging, and general lack of transparency) are sort of justified because it's just rich people scamming other rich people out of disposable income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> According to the article it seems like finding a buyer is the primary difficulty by a wide margin. I wonder if there's a website on the dark web that deals in these sorts of products. It seems like it would be a good opportunity to make a buck running an onion routed knockoff of eBay. If such a thing exists it seems like this should be a buyer's market.

<comment><USER12> How do you advertise only certainly to shady people?

<comment><USER13> I think it doesn't matter if they are shady or not.

As long as a way of transferring goods and payments can be agreed on I guess most thieves wouldn't care who their customers are?

<comment><USER14> They definitely care if their customer are cops, though.

<comment><USER13> Not necessarily: My point is as long as the handover can happen in a "safe" way and they are sure they haven't left any prints, dna or other traces, why should they care?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like there's money to be had by tracking art via the blockchain

<comment><USER14> What would that accomplish?</comment></comment>


The World of Olive Oil Is Murky. Here's Help for the Home Cook - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/dining/best-olive-oil.html <comment><USER2> > Two, we should be using much more of it, so that it doesn't languish in our > cupboards, but is used up and replaced while it is fresh and vibrant.

Or... we should be buying smaller bottles.

</comment><comment><USER3> While olive oil is a fascinating subject, there are much better pieces out there[1]. This one I think I could largely summarize as "people making and selling olive oil think you should use a lot of olive oil." News at 10.

1: The seminal NYT piece is supposedly at [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food- chains-extra-virgin-suicide.html) but it won't load for me (on Chrome, anyway). Regardless, a simple search for "olive oil fraud" will return sufficient reading on murkiness, in particular a pair from The New Yorker.

<comment><USER4> For the average USAn, the answer is to buy Costco Kirkland Signature to get real olive oil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a Tunisian American, so the use of olive oil is not murky at all to me.

Tunisians use olive oil for everything. It is a breakfast staple (ever tried dipping baguette in olive oil?). We try to cook and fry with it whenever possible, based on the cost and our economic situation.

I would argue that our olive oil is at the very least competitive with that of more "conventional" producers, especially to the average consumer.

If you ever drop by Walmart and want to try some Tunisian extra virgin olive oil, check out Terra Delyssa. It's reasonably priced and has an organic version as well. I've been buying it exclusively for the past year or so and it has been great.

</comment><comment><USER6> The most disappointing thing learned from that article is that California Olive Ranch is importing oil now.

<comment><USER7> This move may damage their brand significantly if awareness of olive oil fraud and certification becomes common knowledge among consumers, although for now it is probably still a smart business move.

I recall that brand growing in popularity due to recommendations from food writers. The oil was good, and a group of California olive oil producers was willing to stand behind it, assuring that it was unadulterated, California- grown, extra virgin olive oil.

Now that they have abandoned the California-only sourcing, expanding to have an internationally-sourced "Destinations Series" of blended oils, their brand is less of a standout. Nothing in their information on the Applied Sensory certification used for the "Destinations Series" reassures me that the bottle contains 100% olive oil. Yes, they now have a "Reserve Collection" that's certified by the relatively-new Olive Oil Commission of California, but I have yet to see it in stores since the introduction of the "Destinations Series".

In any case, their brand went from being a mark of assured quality to mark of mixed-and-somewhat-questionable quality. Whereas it used to be enough to see "California Olive Ranch" on the front label, now discerning customers will have to understand the product line naming (don't count on it), or check the back label for a certification seal.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I used to buy exclusively California Olive Ranch specifically because I could just grab a bottle of the desired size at the supermarket and trust it. Now I have to read the labels and figure out what exactly I'm getting, just like the other ten brands on the shelf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't doubt that there are probably Olive oils that different, possibly "better", but are there Double Blind tests similar to Wine to see how much people can even discern taste wise from these different brands?

I did some googling and found nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://youtu.be/t4QwfPVho3U](https://youtu.be/t4QwfPVho3U)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tfw you recommend people use tons more olive oil and also recommend and olive oil brand that is $37 for 375ml (or $3 an ounce!)

<comment><USER11> Yea, jeez. All I could think was submarine article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> is there a non paywall link ?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/cxYxX](http://archive.is/cxYxX)</comment></comment>


Microsoft releases specifications for binary formats - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/OfficeBinaryFormats.mspx

<comment><USER2> " _Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in these materials. Except as expressly provided in the Microsoft Open Specification Promise and this notice, the furnishing of these materials does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property._ "

It's better than nothing but it's still a dangerous format to use.

<comment><USER3> If you look at the Microsoft Open Specification Promise it says:

"Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification ("Covered Implementation"), subject to the following..." [Doesn't cover non-MSoft patents. Not surprising.]

Office Binary formats are under Covered Specifications.

I wouldn't use the format, but not sure it's "dangerous" to write apps that read or generate the format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome. I'm a junior trader at a major investment bank and I have to deal with Excel all the time... it would be great to be able to programmatically generate well-formed Excel files without having to deal with VBA, COM automation, or anything else. Now someone just has to write a nice Haskell library...

<comment><USER5> VB.NET (which now has static metaprogramming and closures) + COM automation isn't too bad in my experience. You could also use Python for COM.

(I've found that when you set the application to be visible and each command is carried out visually, it's very impressive to non-programmers, especially ones who don't use macros.)

Other than that, <http://poi.apache.org/> and a marginal language that targets the JVM is probably your best bet for now.

<comment><USER6> Poi has worked well for our projects where we have to export customer data to XLS (a commonly-requested feature that is almost like a checklist item)

I find the file system within a file (OLE2 compound document) fascinating. I wonder who at Microsoft came up with that idea (or was it really an idea by technical committee)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Word spec is 210 pages. Yikes! I wonder what kind of open-source tools these specs will spawn.

Related: anyone know how Scribd and folks like that read/display Microsoft- formatted documents?

<comment><USER8> It's a wild guess but I would have used COM access to the word.dll to convert it to a more reasonable format.

Again, a wild guess but that is how I would have done it, trying to reverse engineer formats as bloated as the office formats is generally not a good idea if avoidable.

<comment><USER9> "Antiword is a free MS Word reader for Linux and RISC OS. There are ports to FreeBSD, BeOS, OS/2, Mac OS X, Amiga, VMS, NetWare, Plan9, EPOC, Zaurus PDA, MorphOS, Tru64/OSF and DOS. Antiword converts the binary files from Word 2, 6, 7, 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 to plain text and to PostScript."

\- <http://www.winfield.demon.nl/>

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that'll work too. The point is that you need to leverage someone else's work to do it. Focus on your core, find shortcuts for everything else.

<comment><USER10> Well, given the release of these documents, as well as the existence of the Office Open XML format, there's nothing left to reverse engineer.

Granted, its no picnic implementing the specs these documents outline, but its certainly better than having to figure it all out from a binary file.

<comment><USER8> Well it is a picnic, a picnic in the park, Jurassic park that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has anybody with word parsing experience read these, that can speak to their level of detail?

Was this release prompted by any legal decision that anybody knows about?

<comment><USER8> EU antitrust litigation involving MS Office lack of interoperability , they were already fined 613M USD.</comment></comment>