New institute aims to make Toronto an 'intellectual centre' of AI capability - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestar.com/amp/news/gta/2017/03/28/new-toronto-institute-aims-to-be-worldwide-supplier-of-artificial-intelligence-capability.html <comment><USER2> The problem that I see (as a Canadian) is salaries. I'm not in Toronto but am in Canada, and I see people with 10 years experience making less than new grads in SV (without even factoring in the USD/CAD differential). Until that aligns, I don't think the brain drain will stop.

<comment><USER3> We may be able to get by with lower salaries than America if Americas immigration system continues to lag. It's easier for potential AI brains to immigrate here than the States under the current climate. I do agree that this is only of limited advantage, but it's something. I feel like because of structural and tax issues with our society, American style salaries will never be a thing here. That probably means that we will never be the tech power house that America is, but I think we can compete pretty effectively with Europe in getting the brains who, for whatever reason, choose not to go to America. And hey . . . second best ain't that bad.

<comment><USER4> What are Canada's "structural and tax issues"?

<comment><USER3> our taxes are much higher meaning people and companies have less disposable income - more money is in the public sector rather than the private sector. Structural is the way our society is set up, there are lots of public services so people rely on that more than on personal savings. We don't have as many venture capitalists as America, we don't have the same number of startups, the wealth in our nation is tied up in the hands of a few large corporations rather than spread out among many businesses.

<comment><USER5> Our taxes aren't that high compared to some states. California's are definitely higher. Toronto's housing market is stupid though. Would be better off in Waterloo, or Ottawa

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who haven't been, Toronto is a really wonderful city. Safe, great food, and has an awesome art and music scene. Lots of cool cultural events as well.

If it wasn't so hard to emigrate as an average America, I'd live there in a heartbeat. They do have a really good working holiday program for people in Asia and some parts of Europe.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, what is the difficulty in migrating from the U.S. to Canada? All we usually hear about is the difficulty in migrating to the U.S.

<comment><USER6> Canada only allows something like 300,000 long-term residents to move into the country per year, of which about half those slots are reserved for refugees and family reunification. They're immigrantion process is just as bureaucratic as the US (if not slightly more so), and they are very selective about whom they take (favoring the wealthy, those with advanced higher education, and French/English bilinguals).

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/move-to- canada...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/move-to-canada-trump- election-immigration)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google is also building an AI research lab in Montreal, which is supposedly a talent center for AI. According to this article from Wired: [https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-opens-montreal-ai- lab-s...](https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-opens-montreal-ai-lab-snag- scarce-global-talent/), Google _" donated about $13 million CAD to academic research in the country and about half was earmarked for AI research."_

</comment><comment><USER9> Toronto's problem (and to an extent the other major cities in Canada) isn't so much about the salary differences with SV so much as the entire tech ecosystem. The money and cost of living would probably affect decisions for people outside of the GTA trying to move here. But because Toronto is the largest city in the country and is the focal point of Southern Ontario, it could do well by simply retaining the talent it outputs.

The brain drain from the GTA and Southern Ontario has long been real. But alternatively, many people move from other places to Toronto. What makes it difficult for new grads and industry veterans from keeping shop in Toronto is that the mobility and learning experiences aren't there. There are a limited number of high-tech jobs here and anything else is likely in the medical, law, finance, or even media world. In that sense, I wouldn't even classify tech as a second-class citizen so much as being far down on the totem pole.

I partially wonder if the general inferiority complex of Torontonians/Canadians has created this effect. Because the city typically lusts for things from other places (such as SV or NY), it never develops its own reputation and chooses to be itself. Because of that, tech has never developed an identity because all of our tech talent chooses the shiny opportunity granted to them by some company because it's "from Silicon Valley". Just think of what the tech ecosystem would be like if all Torontonians simply stayed here.

For instance, I often posit what would have happened had the ML/DL community had stronger partnerships with AMD as opposed to building everything with CUDA/NVIDIA. AMD, afterall, is just up the street from the University of Toronto in Markham. A symbiotic relationship could've been built with Hinton's lab.

<comment><USER10> As one of those brains that drained out of Toronto, I would say that "limited number of spaces" is malarky. You can create the space. What I did find was that Toronto's investment community (at least a couple of decades ago) was much more conservative, so it was much harder to create the space in Toronto than it was south of the border.

<comment><USER9> I think you're overlooking the broader point I'm making by focusing on that one line. The point is that if Toronto had the same tech ecosystem as to say even Seattle or New York for salaries ranging between half to two-thirds of their American counterparts, I'd reasonably certain Canadians would opt to stay here.

Yes, the investment community has a broader effect on the startups within the city. But I'm not sure they have as significant of an effect on large tech companies setting up research or dev centres here. And ultimately, having the powerhouses here helps to retain talent probably greater than having hundreds of startups in the $10-50 million revenue range.

<comment><USER10> > I think you're overlooking the broader point I'm making by focusing on that > one line.

Sorry if my comment read that way. I was only critiquing the one line, not the entire post.

> But I'm not sure they have as significant of an effect on large tech > companies setting up research or dev centres here. And ultimately, having > the powerhouses here helps to retain talent probably greater than having > hundreds of startups in the $10-50 million revenue range.

I think you are getting cause and effect backwards here. In my experience, there were plenty of tech employers in Toronto, just not for the really interesting & challenging stuff. For example, IBM has had a very large presence there for decades, but twenty years ago the coolest software project they had going on up there was the Visual Age IDE's. Alias Systems was a big deal back in the day, but even that ended up being bought up and by Autodesk...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Non Google-AMP link: [https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/03/28/new-toronto- inst...](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/03/28/new-toronto-institute- aims-to-be-worldwide-supplier-of-artificial-intelligence-capability.html)

<comment><USER12> the AMP link really masks the original domain wow, thought the article was written by google for a second :/

<comment><USER13> Not sure why people are downvoting. This is a legit complaint about AMP. Even the HN homepage is showing this as "google.com", not "thestar.com".

<comment><USER14> I clicked thinking it was a google announcement and got redirected. Didn't even know what AMP was till i saw this thread and googled it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, is the great-great-grandson of George Boole, whose Boolean algebra is a keystone of digital computing—has sometimes been called the father of deep learning; it's a topic he's worked on since the mid-nineteen-seventies, and many of his students have become principal architects of the field today.

From: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/ai-versus- md](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/ai-versus-md)

</comment><comment><USER16> As someone who lived in Toronto and now lives in SV, this is great news for the region, which is flush with talent and is really doing everything to support researchers and entrepreneurs. However the cost of living(COL) is prohibitive, maybe even more than SV and the ratio of salary to COL is definitely higher than SV.

<comment><USER17> I don't think I believe this. Source?

<comment><USER18> Housing prices have been rising very rapidly over the last couple of years: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-03/million-d...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-03/million- dollar-home-contagion-spreads-to-toronto-suburbs)

<comment><USER19> House prices are skyrocketing but condos are still pretty cheap. There just isn't any more space for actual houses in the city so the ones that are there are extra valuable.

You can still find tons of 1+1 units in the city for under $2000/month which is the same as it was 3-4 years ago.

<comment><USER20> $2k per month is really high. Even if a tech worker can afford that, it really restricts the city to the rich, which is not good. Every city needs a balance of all classes for there to be stable growth.

<comment><USER19> $2k per month for a 1+1 in a 'luxury' condo building right in the core of the city isn't high by basically any standard. There are a lot of options in the city still that are a lot cheaper.

I see a lot of people complaining about high prices in the most prime of areas. So what do you think would be a good solution to the problem? Everyone wants to live in area X but obviously they can't all fit there. How do you let them all live there and keep it affordable?

<comment><USER20> I'd argue that the biggest factors creating the spike in housing cost is the of the centralization of most good jobs to a handful of urban centers, the purchase of housing by foreign investors as vacation or investment properties, and an artificially low housing inventory.

The centralization of most jobs to a handful of urban centers is the largest and most powerful force driving this spike in prices. Jobs are flying out of rural areas and less populated cities. It increases prices, making it very difficult for a newcomer to buy in the area, let alone rent. It creates pockets of areas that reap the benefits of globalization, creating a very stark contrast between areas that benefit from it and that don't. And all this is just so that the corporation benefits from the concentrated, highly technical labor pool.

The foreign investor cap should be easy to implement, but because our government is broken, it won't happen. There are lots of ways this could be addressed, with property taxes of unleased housing, taxing of a third home or beyond, and probably lots of other things smarter people could think of.

The artificially low housing inventory is difficult because that stems from local government more than anything else. Fixing this might take state laws to be passed since locals will have an incentive to not have new properties made.

Again, the centralization of the remaining jobs is the biggest factor in my opinion. It really needs to be addressed since it negatively hurts our society, but I don't know any other ideas on how to fix it without increasing demand for lower class labor via protectionism. That would drive companies to look to rural America for cheap labor vs Mexico or China which would weaken the requirement to live in an urban center, but obviously that would be very costly to our economy. If you have any other ideas on how to fix it, I'd definitely read it.

<comment><USER19> Do you think Toronto has an artificially low housing inventory? With the hundreds of 40 story condo towers popping up?

So how do you make the decentralization of jobs more appealing to employers? Say I own a tech business how do you convince me to move my company to Barrie for example? I now have the difficulty of finding local talent or convincing talent to relocate to me or deal with a very long commute. Where is the benefit for me? Network effects are real.

Besides this Toronto already essentially has a number of business cores that are distributed. You have the financial district, Young/Eg, Sauga, Markham, Vaughn and those are just the biggest ones.

None of that reduces demand for the core though because it is the most appealing place to live for most young people.

<comment><USER20> > So how do you make the decentralization of jobs more appealing to employers?

That's the tough thing. The only solution I can think of, protectionism, will be very rough on employers. The lower and middle classes would thrive, but corporations that previously had massive profit margins would see those almost disappear, especially after unions form again.

Obviously this would be very expensive, but I really fear that if we don't do something, our country will end up politically and socially unstable. A country with millions of minimum wage workers and a handful of rich-only cities is bound to have troubles.

As far as Toronto's housing inventory goes, I don't know enough about Toronto to comment.

<comment><USER19> What do you mean when you say protectionism?

Like what concrete actions would you take?

<comment><USER20> Global trade has benefits beyond cheap labor. Resource distribution between nations is not even. Because of that, I'd stop all or most trade with countries who don't have labor and environmental protection laws similar to our own, but still allow trade with countries with similar economies. That would allow the resource flow needed to give a balanced economy, but still bring manufacturing back. Over time, demand for lower class labor would raise, leading to higher wages and quality of life for most people.

That's the hope anyway. If you see any blaring flaws beyond the fact that multinational corporations would suffer, please let me know.

<comment><USER19> So you stop international trade but why wouldn't the manufacturing just build up on the edges of the cities? Why do you think that would distribute naturally throughout the country? The cities have a built in and stable workforce. Unless there is a natural resource that needs to be extracted from the area I'm just not seeing it.

Besides with the increase in automation the types of workers factories will need in the future will be high tech as well.

<comment><USER20> Good question. I don't know. I'll have to look into what caused work to go to rural towns in the first place.

Thank you for this post. This is exactly the kind of reply I was hoping to get.

<comment><USER19> Farming and natural resources generally. Where there was a mine to open or lumber to chop a town would spring up. Otherwise you'd typically get small towns springing up in the middle of farming areas. But back then a family might have 100 or 200 acres so you'd get a lot of people in a fairly small area. Now with modern tech farms can be 10 times that and corporations probably own most of them so they don't each have their own family.

Thank you as well. It was a good one for thinking about stuff even if we disagree on the basic idea. :)

<comment><USER20> I found this a couple of days after our discussion. I found it interesting and thought you would too.

[http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom- and-...](http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-bust/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And yet Google still won't open a local dev office apart from Waterloo (over an hour away).

<comment><USER22> [https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/research-s...](https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/research- scientist-google-brain-canada-111-richmond-st-w-toronto-on-canada-2491730056)

<comment><USER23> It was announced yesterday that Geoff Hinton will lead a google brain lab in Toronto.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I thought that Montréal was already the AI centre of Canada.

<comment><USER25> Correct, Montréal is already way way ahead of Toronto on the AI front. Google and Microsoft already invested heavily into Montréal. M$ donated 7 million to UdeM and McGill as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Institute...AI...Fallout</comment>


The Day the iPad Became the Mac - <AUTHOR> http://one37.net/blog/29/1/2013/the-day-the-ipad-became-the-mac <comment><USER2> In my household there are two iPads, two Mac's and three PC's (I am a professional software developer, and my girlfriend loooves her apple products). So I have used all of them pretty extensively.

The reason I have not used my iPad for serious work (As in, developing software, writing my documents, checking e-mails) has nothing at all to do with the storage available on it.

With my PC (Or even a Mac) I can do all the stuff I want to do on a Mac (given that I can replace the OS on the Mac with linux, as Mac OS is a bit too much of a (my personal opinion remember) toy for serious work other than writing, photoshop or any other artsy productivity). And I can do it all on my PC as well.

The reason the iPad pretty much solely as a reading device these days is simple. Its form factor and user interface suck (again, only my opinion). It is when I can install any software I want on it without being held back by the app store. The day it becomes professional is when I can load any music, files or documents onto it without the need of secondary software (iTunes). It is when I can actually do work on the iPad without feeling constrained by the display and size of the device.

It is when the device and its operating system stop feeling like a "gosh apple is cool" kind of advertisement/toy/gimmick.

That blog post read like the rant of a overzealous apple fan fawning over the newest apple product. What about extra space changes it towards being a professional-grade machine today when we have almost unlimited cloud storage at our disposal?

Absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER3> > Mac OS is a bit too much of a (my personal opinion remember) toy for serious > work other than writing, photoshop or any other artsy productivity

I've read a few comments that say the same but I've never understood why. What serious work do you do that OS X isn't good enough for or what does it not do well?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I don't get it either. I find OS X is my preferred environment for hardcore dev; I have the best of many worlds - terminal, multiple desktops, browsers, text editors, word processors, spreadsheets, email - I consider that pretty serious work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _sigh_

Form factor MATTERS.

I definitely envision a day where we only have one "computer" and whether that's used as a handheld, tablet, wall projection, or professional workstation just depends on where you choose to "throw" the IO (with all apps responding appropriately).

But we're not there yet. A 128GB iPad does not bring us closer to the true hardware and software changes we'll need to make this happen.

</comment><comment><USER6> The author says he can do "almost" anything he does on the iPad. Clearly he has no need for a general purpose computing device, then. Doesn't sound like he needs to (or can) type fast. No file system. Minimal, restricted connectivity to the outside world.

Anyone who thinks the iOS iWork apps are in any way remotely close to their desktop equivalents has blurred vision, the most likely cause of which is staring at an iPad screen, deciding to read something instead of smashing your head against the wall trying to do work on it.

The iPad is beautiful to look at. My 2 year old loves it, so it's totally crapped up with sticky stuff. I don't really have any use for it; the Air is superior in almost every way that matters.

</comment><comment><USER7> So they upgrade the storage, and suddenly the post-PC era as predicted by the prophet has cometh.

I thought in the post-PC era we store data on transient clouds with unlimited storage. Oops.

<comment><USER8> More money for Apple as people will have to purchase extra iCloud storage to backup their iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, I'll buy this the day I can run Xcode on my iPad.

</comment><comment><USER9> I see this as a defensive move against Surface Pro.

<comment><USER10> I don't see it - the Surface Pro is a x86 machine (i.e., it runs almost all of your favorite old apps), with a laptop-class spec sheet, a real digitizer (for creative types), and what is for all intents and purposes a desktop OS. You can even plug your printer, mice, and pretty much any USB device into it, just like you do on your laptop.

The Surface Pro is in actuality closer to a laptop than what comes to mind when we think of tablets.

The iPad has doubled its storage size - good news to many with lots of content no doubt, but I don't see how it gets it closer to the "laptop in all but form factor" ideal of the Surface.

<comment><USER9> If the iPad offered a keyboard, & OS X - you would see it be a very popular device very very fast. It would canabilize their laptop sales almost completely.

I see this as the first step in that direction.

The pen is optional. I won't say much about Windows 8, but there is no denying that the Surface has an awesome physical feel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That day will come the day we can install and run XCode at the same time we create an Excel Macro, all in an iPad.

</comment><comment><USER12> Additional storage is not enough to make a professional tier iPad that qualifies as a full-time workhorse device.</comment>


NoSQL GUI Application - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fastogt/fastonosql <comment><USER2> I too made a cross-platform GUI for Redis some time ago: [https://github.com/rbmkio/radish](https://github.com/rbmkio/radish)

Built with .NET Core and Avalonia

Screenshot: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rbmkio/radish/master/scree...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rbmkio/radish/master/screenshot.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> A good, free GUI is one thing the NoSQL world could really use. I think the GUI here could use some work. I might suggest more standard icons and reduced margins.

Whats the story behind the facebook and twitter buttons in the freebsd screenshot?

<comment><USER4> The tooling is generally shit and I wish there was a datagrip style app for nosql. This looks very cool

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool, is a native application too!

For MongoDB what I've been using is: [https://robomongo.org/](https://robomongo.org/)

Really fast and responsive native UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some time ago, our team help of the development of Robomongo, after that, we move to FastoRedis and FastoNoSQL.

<comment><USER6> What is the "banned users" statistic on your homepage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> for those who are curious like me:

the GUI is built with Qt (C++)</comment>


Farmer's scheme plants 240M trees in Africa - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/14/reforesting-world-australian-farmer-240m-trees <comment><AUTHOR> Someone give this guy a few billion dollars quickly please! We need more of this and fast.</comment>


Female drivers feel abandoned by Uber and Lyft after reporting a sexual assault - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/19/uber-lyft-female-drivers-sexual-assault <comment><USER2> Male passengers are more likely than female passengers to sexually assault female drivers, and male drivers are more likely to sexually assault female passengers. Laws could be changed to allow female drivers to express a preference for female passengers and vice versa. Sometimes "discrimination" is rational.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nearly 40 years ago, my wife worked as a bartender while a young woman. Two of the regular bar patrons sexually assaulted her at her home. Her boss threatened to fire her if she reported them because he would lose the revenue from those two heavy drinkers.

Why does this theme seem to persist nowadays?</comment>


Alfred, a Quicksilver replacement, launches speedy new 0.5.6 beta - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alfredapp.com/2010/04/05/release-0-5-6-beta-alfred-five-weeks-on/

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been looking for a Quicksilver replacement for quite some time, and while initial versions of Alfred were too slow for my liking, this new beta is super quick. I suggest everyone give it a try.</comment>


Tidying up after Pull Requests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1335-tidying-up-after-pull-requests <comment><USER2> Check out my command-line tool, rotten: <https://github.com/dtrejo/rotten>

        npm install -g rotten

It helps you discover

* Which remote branches are empty (all code is in master), also outputs a command to delete them all.

* Which remote branches still have lots of code that needs to be merged

* How long remote branches have been waiting to be merged.

.

Why is this useful?

* discover which projects are languishing

* discover which engineers are unhappy that their code is not being reviewed/merged

* discover how effective your development process is

<comment><USER3> That is a great looking tool

As a suggestion, I think you should include the list of features you wrote in this thread in your readme. That list made me really want to try out the tool. If I had only read your readme on github I would not have been as interested.

<comment><USER2> Just updated the readme; thanks for the suggestion :)

<comment><USER3> Cheers for that. I passed the github link and your list of features to the guys I used to work with on the Enterprise project I mention below. If it solves any pain I'll try to let you know :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To tidy up a repository with lots of merged branches, you can use this script: [http://snippets.freerobby.com/post/491644841/remove- merged-b...](http://snippets.freerobby.com/post/491644841/remove-merged- branches-in-git)

Although it seems the best approach would be to actually keep the branch pointers around, but have a way of hiding them to reduce the clutter

<comment><USER5> Some sort of "don't show if last used in > x days" would be handy to have in git (CLI) and gitk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On an Enterprise project I was on recently this was a real problem. With about 12 distinct and large (5-10 developers per team) all working on a single git repo, the lingering branches were out of control. They had built up over more than a year of abuse.

I think this issue is worth thinking about. For projects with a single owner or a small core set of contributors taking pull requests it is manageable. But when the responsibility is distributed, especially in the degenerate culture of Enterprise Java, uncontrolled branching can make git usage miserable.

The real problem was that we were using Git like an SVN server. But it was really interesting to see how bad it can be when branch pruning is not considered upfront.

Great feature github :)

<comment><USER6> Did you consider using forks more actively? E.g. each team has it's own fork where they commit, and one person is responsible for merging the fork upstream?

<comment><USER7> I second this. We really enjoyed the one fork per user model. Each fork's owner was responsible for their own branches, which was much more manageable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Way to go Github! I think it is quite clear that pull requests are the best feature of Github and a boon to the OSS community in general. This feature is a welcome tightening.

</comment><comment><USER9> Biggest pain point associated with code reviews are the lingering branches. So glad this has finally been bundled into Github. Thanks Github!

</comment><comment><USER10> Excellent... I've been manually sweeping for these about once a month on Enyo, but it will be nice to have it part of our merge flow.

<comment><USER11> Bitbucket asks the question about whether to close the branch in a pull request at the time you create it, e.g.,

      https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.hipchat.com/10804/29957/csa3g3hjsk6i27p/close-branch-after-merge.png

since the person creating it is usually in the best position to decide whether the feature branch they're working on is "complete".

Though I really like GitHub's implementation for cleaning up old pull requests (or ones you forgot to tick the close branch checkbox for).

(Full disclosure: I'm a developer on Bitbucket for Atlassian.)

<comment><USER12> Thank you for BitBucket! If you ever need a C# dev, let me know ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It always baffled me that this feature didn't exist before. I'm glad they implemented it.

</comment><comment><USER14> So when I merge a pull request on Github, it's rebased, not actually merged?

<comment><USER15> What makes you think that is the case? It looks equivalent to a "git merge --no-ff <feature-branch>" to me. The feature branch is then merged with master (or whatever the target branch was) and would appear if you ran "git branch [-r] --merged" from the target branch which is a good hint that it can be safely deleted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been waiting for this for quite some time now. Kudos!</comment>


Dancers and Diplomats: NYC Ballet in Moscow, October 1962 (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/dancers-and-diplomats-new-york-city-ballet-in-moscow-october-1962 <comment><USER2> I had the opportunity to tour the USSR in 1990, just before the USSR dissolved, with my college choir. We sang in Moscow, Leningrad and various smaller cities. An overwhelming experience with many echoes in this story.</comment>


Show HN: Product Hunt for new products you can buy - <AUTHOR> https://www.discoverylist.com <comment><AUTHOR> I'm Timothy, one of the founders of Discovery List. I'm really excited to be launching our site on Hacker News and over the next 24 hours, I'll be sending out invites immediately to people who request them.

I'd like this to be an Apply HN as well, so I'll be more than happy to answer any questions about the business model.

A few interesting (?) points:

\- we want Discovery List to be a detailed directory of everything buyable on the Internet

\- we make money when people buy products through links on our site; we're putting aside 30% of this affiliate revenue for users that contribute the most

\- every week, we give out $10 each to users that contribute the most; if 30% of our affiliate revenue is $10,000, we'll give out $10 to the top 1,000 contributors.

\- users that invite friends get 10% of their invited friend's Karma points

\- everyone can add products and reviews and everyone has commenting access

</comment><comment><USER2> The site looks great. The design is really clean and attractive. Best of luck!</comment>


Ask YC: Do consulting companies get funded? Why or why not? - <AUTHOR>

I suspect the answer is no, and I can think of some obvious disadvantages, but I would like to gain some perspective on this. Also, hybrid companies that are working on product, but aim to be somewhat self-funded by consulting at the same time.<p>(This doesn't have to be specifically for YC - anyone involved in angel or VC funding is welcome to share their perspective.) <comment><USER2> Generally no, to get investment you need to be able to offer a 10x return in a short time frame (3-5 years). Very few consultancy firms can offer that because it's hard to rapidly scale businesses where growth is restricted by number of employees. Scaling a people based business is hard (both because hiring is hard and also you can't stop people leaving to compete with you).

</comment><comment><USER3> No, unless you've found a way to make consulting companies scale.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can see a list of companies YC has funded at <http://yclist.com>

There's an awful lot of consumer facing web "product" companies (most of them clones like "Twitter for Teachers") and very few, if any all-purpose software/consulting companies. My only guess is they prefer companies that can be condensed into a laser-focused story in the form of a well-oiled slide-deck and elevator pitch for the YC Demo Day.

Meanwhile, software/consulting companies like Fog Creek or 37 Signals can do very well for themselves.</comment>


Better than Tesla? Lucid Air electric sedan pricing and specs revealed - <AUTHOR> https://thedriven.io/2020/09/10/better-than-tesla-lucid-air-electric-sedan-pricing-and-specs-revealed/ <comment><USER2> It is an impressive vehicle, but its also vastly narrower than the Model S, and actually also narrower than the Model 3. Their efficiency "advantage" is likely just a function of these differences. A long Model 3 would beat it on these parameters, if Tesla chose to do so.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would definitely "benefit all mankind," as the CEO claims, if all mankind was wealthy.

<comment><USER4> How is that reaction different than those that dismissed the iPhone in 2007 because it was sold for $500? Remember Ballmer laughing at the iPhone? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U)

<comment><USER2> Now $500 is pretty cheap for a powerful smartphone. Are you saying that in a few 12 years, $80k will be pretty inexpensive for a car like this?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to find raspberry Pi zero or alternative under $15 - <AUTHOR> I need about five for a diy project at home, but every where I look online you can order only one per customer, with $10 shipping per unit <comment><USER2> Unfortunately the CHIP ($9) hasn't shipped for a couple of months while they revamp their CPU. I have a few and they truly are exceptional hardware and probably better than the Zero for your needs due to onboard wifi, bluetooth and 4GB of storage.

[https://getchip.com/pages/chip](https://getchip.com/pages/chip)

Its big brother CHIP Pro ($16) can be ordered in any quantity but you will need to solder your own headers. Depending on what you want to do it might be a good fit:

[https://getchip.com/pages/chippro](https://getchip.com/pages/chippro)

Pine also has a $15 board that seems to be shipping:

[https://www.pine64.org/?product=pine-a64-board](https://www.pine64.org/?product=pine-a64-board)

<comment><USER3> I found the CHIP to be a bit unreliable (eg. only one of half a dozen Micro USB cables I have works for flashing)

Then again, I don't have a lot of experience with these DIY things, maybe random issues with everything are just to be expected.

<comment><USER2> Flashing can be a bit iffy, it being made as a Chrome extension is a weird choice. I never had any big issues with flashing, and once the device is running, I find it more stable than any of the Pis that I have, as the Pis always tend to get a corrupted filesystem within 6-12 months. They can blame SD all they want, there's something wrong with the chipset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have had really good luck with these boards. [http://nanopi.io/nanopi-neo- air.html](http://nanopi.io/nanopi-neo-air.html)

$20 but they do not need a permanent SD card and they need a heat sink. The Allwinner CPU's seem to get much hotter than the Raspi Broadcoms. The issues I have experienced really have been nuances of the Linux distros but very workable.

<comment><AUTHOR> they look great, do they have usable I2C, GPIO libs with support for python of I'm assuming they support some version of ubuntu/debian

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I understand the Pi Foundations "one per order/customer" rule - I share your frustration. There's a bunch of ideas I've got where 10 or so Pi Zeros would be both useful and affordable @ $5 ea or even $10 for the ZeroW, but I just can't buy them like that...

I wanted to make a "real working" diagram of our standard AWS platform as a wall chart - with 3 ELB load balancers, 5 autoscaling ec2 instances (3 "active" and two "spares"), and 3 "multi-az" RDS db servers - each represented by a Pi Zero, with ws2811 led strip running between them representing the network which lights up animating packet/data flow. It'd have big red killswitches next to everything, so you can push buttons to kill off bits of infrasructure and visualise how the platform responds (with the spare ec2 instances autoscaling in to replace dead ones, ELB and RDS traffic auto- rerouting). And I'd use this to run our "standard" backend, so people could connect with their phone (with a browser or test app) and "see" their own network traffic and watch how it still works even if you kill any 2 and up to 8 different parts in the right combination.

I think that'd be a really useful way to demonstrate to non-technical stakeholders why if they want better response times that "we'll get to that Monday morning" when something breaks after 5pm on a Friday - I'm going to charge them _way_ more to support their site if it's running on a $5 or $10 per month VPS than if they spend $120/month or so on AWS to host it.

(Oh, and I second zapt02's recommendation for the NextThing CHIP - I've got half a dozen of those, and they're working out really well in other projects - but I've also got another 5 on order and have been waiting several month for em...)</comment>


Technology Readiness Levels - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level <comment><AUTHOR> As a part time space geek I've always marvelled at the use of Technology Readiness Levels to work out the maturity of needed technology so that it is space worthy.

The defence industry uses this, as do nuclear agencies developing technology to decommision reactors. I haven't noticed the technology usage in many other industries.</comment>


US scientists see long fight against ebola - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/africa/us-scientists-see-long-fight-against-ebola.html?referrer=

<comment><USER2> Is the V-Tech BioInfo Institue even reputable? Seems like a front orginization (was established by Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Committee in the 90s I think). I dunno, I'm more willing to go with the World Health Orginization than them and say 9 months</comment>


Soustrop: Why I Created C++ [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBjjnqG0BP8&feature=relmfu

<comment><USER2> name is Stroustrup</comment>


The Retina War is upon us. - wells-riley http://blog.wells.ee/retina <comment><USER3> In my opinion Photoshop is absolutely inappropriate tool in this new era. It was never really meant to design user interfaces. Designers should finally stop thinking in terms of pixels as they don't really make any sense if your application will be shown on screens with more than one kind of pixel density.

There should be no problems with using vector graphics on high resolution screens and it will look much better on lower resolution screens than downscaled image. Not only will vector graphics make support of various screen densities easier it may also (significantly) decrease size of assets. Currently on iOS devices developers bundle two images for same purpose (1x and 2x). It could have been one vector image instead.

Please stop using tools which were made to edit images and start using ones which are made to design interfaces.

<comment><USER4> HTML doesn't support vector images well. Yeah, you have SVG in modern browsers, but which one is easier?

or

        <embed src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg" type="image/svg+xml" />

        (fails in IE8- and IE9 quirks)

<comment><USER5> You can do  in IE9 and every other browser. In fact, you can do an inline <svg> image inside of your HTML in all those browsers as well. The <embed> is long gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The solution is what it always was. Design in units like 'em's, don't override the user defaults, and let the page scale however the end user wants. This not only accomodates the retina/non-retina split, it lets users with bad eyesight increase the font size and still be able to read things.

Images? That's a bit harder, but it's not the end of the world. Vector images are useful here, but for higher detail raster images, designing in double size and scaling down for ordinary screens gets you a long way. For smaller icons, it might pay to have two versions, and I don't see a way around that for a while. Gnome has handled this for a long time by having specific sizes of icon that it tried to snap to, as well as vector fallbacks for when none of the sizes were appropriate.

The important thing is to give up on pixel perfection. Just let the user chose the size, and don't mess with their defaults.

<comment><USER7> I really like what you're saying.

I don't think designers have to give up on "pixel perfection" - well, they don't have to give everything up.

We already have an enormous gamut of displays for any website. Forcing iOS users to a broken "mobile website" is never going to satisfy the designers who care about being pixel perfect, so they were grappling with these issues already.

And I can't say it enough: we're finally getting past 1920x1080 screens again. CRTs had higher resolutions a decade ago.

Some of us _do_ have good enough eyesight, and some of us _do_ work with videos that big (and the associated images) - yes, there's the Apple 30" Cinema Display, but I seek real competition between manufacturers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> QUESTION: What makes vector graphics based UI's so hard?

I am not a UI designer, so I am ignorant. Please educate me.

Several other posters have mentioned the option of moving away from raster graphics, and indeed this was my own first thought. I remember using IRIX back in the glory-days of SGI. For those who have no idea what I'm blathering on about, IRIX was a professional workstation OS that had en entirely vector based UI. Yes, almost two decades ago an OS existed that was _immune_ to the retina problem. Pause for a moment and let that sink in.

IRIX was actually one of the first GUI-based OS's, and SGI's use of vector- based UI elements probably arose from specific needs SGI faced. I can only speculate on what they were, but one thing they had plenty of was raw power. SGI workstations were _very_ nice in their day! However, the average smartphone built these days probably has more power than all but the last SGI workstations, and perhaps even them too. Processing power is therefore likely not the issue. In fact, given that most desktop OS's already render your desktop in a 3D environment (OSX, Win7, and Linux (depending on what you're running) all do this), vector UI elements may actually be less intensive to draw than raster elements in these situations!

Wild speculation: Is it that UI building tools and API's make working with vector graphical elements painful, or are UI designers just ignorant after almost a decade without a major vector-based OS in common use?

<comment><USER9> There's really nothing hard about using vectors; they'll just be blurry because they're probably not pixel-fitted. Also, complex icons are much smaller and faster to render in raster format.

<comment><USER10> One other facet of vector graphics, they don't always look that great at all scales.

I seem to recall a graphics designer blog that compared a vector to an image that was tweaked at the same scale resolutions. The differences were staggering. I don't think vector graphics are a panacea anymore. I'll see if I can find the link, was rather eye opening.

<comment><USER11> Relevant links in this comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4252640>

<comment><USER8> One of the big things I noticed in the first link there was that a SVG icon scaled to different sizes didn't look as good as a hand-optimised set of raster icons, largely due to issues that could conceivable be addressed. e.g. When the SVG icon was scaled, the lines defining the shape also scaled up in thickness so that they appeared far too chunky in the largest version. What if line-width were kept constant as the SVG was scaled?

While that link makes me appreciate that SVG speficially might be hard to work with and that simply scaling everything proportionally might not make for good icons across all sizes, I remain unconvinced that vector icons are hopeless. Perhaps SVG's have the ability to do what I describe above, or perhaps we need a more powerful vector graphics format to work with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's great that these 2x res displays are becoming more accessible, but the state of web standards is dangerously behind in terms of support for them. Right now, the only way to serve images optimally for the various screens is to have the server attempt to assess the display resolution for the client using either JavaScript or CSS media queries, and then either send different HTML to different clients, with different content linked in img tags, or have exception handling for the CSS images.

This is completely broken, as a client that wishes to access various assets might be denied them by the server, which thinks it knows best what's good for the client. This system is also bound to break as clients with unexpected capabilities emerge. Instead, the server should be dumb, making all the assets available, and the client should be making the decision of which assets to request.

Apple is the obvious source of expected progress on this front, since they control the retina hardware, OS and browser rendering engine. Others are able to influence this as well. Until _someone_ fixes this broken mess we have now, however, retina users will not be getting widespread support. We can't expect big website operators to put up with the current horrible hacks people are using to support retina displays.

<comment><USER13> Safari in iOS 6 and Mountain Lion allegedly have support for -webkit-image-set to specify 1x and 2x imagesin your css.

background: -webkit-image-set( url(...) 1x, url(...) 2x) ... ;

<comment><USER12> That's 1) just for CSS, 2) incompatible with border-image and list-style-image properties and 3) horribly inefficient, with ugly syntax and a bunch of duplicated effort for developers (since filenames for 1x and 2x image variants are typically identical except for a few extra characters used site-wide for all 2x versions, there should be a way to allow developers to specify only these unique characters one time and avoid that extra work when possible).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is hilarious. Pro tip: not all your _users_ are graphic designers. It may be the case that the author, and everyone he knows, has new "retina" products from Apple. That's wonderful. But it can't be taken to represent a broader userbase.

It seems to me that the web's mainstream properties are built for workers in large corporations to fiddle with when they should be working. Most of these people have 1280x1024, 96 DPI screens attached to Windows XP or Windows 7 PCs.

I expect that to be the case for some years to come.

<comment><USER15> Speak again in 3 years.

Today, I am a geek (not really a designer) and 2 out of 3 of my devices have retina displays already (iPhone and iPad). Within much less than 3 years, all my devices will. Within 3 years, there will be no Apple device being sold that doesn't have a Retina display. Will other vendors follow suit? If they don't, they'll be left in the dust, so I imagine they will have to, if they can.

It's usually a good idea to skate where the puck is going, rather than where it is now. In 3 years, the puck will be retina. My Macbook Air is not Retina, so I can't be arsed to design for Retina... yet. Once my Mac has a Retina display, I will design for Retina, and let the lower-res experience be inferior. By then, most of the people who care about such things will have Retina displays anyway.

<comment><USER16> Just so you know, a whole bunch of laptops have been coming with "retina" displays for years now.

They'd call it a "Full HD" laptop so it doesn't sound as shiny, but it's still a 15 or 17 inch screen with a 1920x1080 resolution.

<comment><USER17> To put it into better perspective, put the resolutions into google:

(1920 * 1080) / (2880 * 1800) = 0.4

Your 1080p 15" display contains just 40% of the pixels of a single Retina 15" display. They even showed this in the demo. They edited a 1080p video in Final Cut at full resolution and there was plenty of room left for UI elements.

Apple is definitely the first to put a display of this _density_ into a consumer product, or maybe _any_ product.

<comment><USER18> No, definitely not. IBM sold a 22" 3840x2400 (205ppi) LCD monitor over a decade ago.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors>

Panasonic has also launched a 20" 3840x2160 IPS LCD display, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article raises the specter of a "1x-tax", along the lines of the "IE7 tax". The difference, of course, is that it's easy and free for people to upgrade their browsers, whereas upgrading the screen is not. As inconvenient as it is for the designers, it would be incredibly bad PR to say, in essence, "Only rich computer users should be using our site".

<comment><USER20> That should really not be a problem. Websites and apps can detect and load appropriate images for 2x or 1x displays. Same for apps. You design for 2x, and downsample for 1x.

<comment><USER21> They can, but that's a huge additional bandwidth/size cost for both web and native apps.

<comment><USER22> Native apps, maybe, since you'd probably have to include both versions in your download. But surely its a bandwidth saving for web apps? You just let the browser download the right size image. Now your low res users get low res icons, while high res users get high res icons. Less bandwidth than just sending everyone the high res icons, or both sets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This change will not be dramatic like this. "Retina Display" is a "very high resolution display". It is not magical. It is not a fundamental technological shift. It is only Apple fanboyism that makes it seem that way.

There have been "very high resolution displays" at the front edge of PC tech for decades, and the Internet has scaled slowly but surely to meet our current middle ground (probably approaching 1080p on desktops and something slightly lower on laptops this year). Most of the people here have been using "very high resolution displays" during most of the development of the web, designers in particular. PCs will, of course, reach the resolution of Apple's Retina Display; they'll have to in order to stay competitive. But, it'll happen gradually. Most people don't choose computers based on display resolution. I bought a new laptop a couple months ago, and went to Fry's (after buying online failed three times, and needing to get something quickly)...I bought the _only_ 15" laptop they had with a 1080p display. Literally, it was the display model and they didn't have any others in stock. Consumers buy cheap or buy a brand name. But, educated consumers will keep pushing things forward, slowly but surely.

So, yes, in three years, we'll mostly all be looking at "Retina Displays", but we'll just call them "displays". And we will have evolved the web slowly in that direction, just like we've been doing for decades.

Proof:

[http://web.archive.org/web/19970404064352/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/19970404064352/http://www.apple.com/)

Note that on a modern display, these graphics are tiny, and the site itself only takes up about a 5th of the page (if that much). We've "gone Retina" maybe three or four times since 1997, we just didn't have Apple telling us that doubling display resolution was an epochal shift in computing technology and a legion of fans to carry forth the message.

Final point: The shift from CRT to LCD was much more dramatic than this shift, and we all made it through. Scaremongering is pointless.

<comment><USER24> Like someone else says downthread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253475>):

(1920 * 1080) / (2880 * 1800) = 0.4 Your 1080p 15" display contains just 40% of the pixels of a single Retina 15" display. They even showed this in the demo. They edited a 1080p video in Final Cut at full resolution and there was plenty of room left for UI elements.

\---

Retina stuff isn't supposed to be remarkable just because the resolution is higher. It's remarkable because there are _drastically_ more pixels in the same size screen.

The reason why folks are talking about this as if it's different is because cramming that many more pixels in the same amount of space requires some technology for it not to get all screwed up. It's not a modest jump from, say, 1024 to 1280, the progression you're describe. It's from 1920 to 2880. That's big. You might not like it because it came from Apple and Apple people like it but it does matter.

<comment><USER23> The first display I browsed the web on was 640x400 (an Amiga) at 14" (but it was a 5:4 display, so it was bigger in surface area than a 14" 16:9 or 1.85:1 widescreen display, closer to 15" or 16" today). I'm currently browsing the web on a 15" 1080P display.

(640 * 400) / (1920 * 1080) = 0.123

As I mentioned, we have "gone retina" a few times since the beginning of the web.

And, it's not that I don't _like_ it. Of course I like it. I just explained that I went out of my way to obtain a 1080P laptop. I once went to great lengths (custom cable, huge and complicated custom X configuration file) to hook up a massive 75 lb workstation monitor to my PC because I wanted a really high resolution display. It's just that I think it is ridiculous to freak out about something that follows the natural progression of technology that we've been following for decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _2x scaled from 1x - <AUTHOR>

 _(Nearest Neighbor produced identical results)_

Sorry, then whatever software you're using to scale it is broken. The image pictured is obviously nearest neighbor; rescale with bicubic and it will look smooth but blurry.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just to clarify, Retina is an Apple brand for a screen with a significantly increased resolution and high pixel density.

Its definitely a brand name, so lets not confuse that. Maybe just refer to the actual pixels per inch or even easier, the screen size/type and resolution. MacBook Pro 2012: 2880×1800

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

<comment><USER27> This resonates with something I was thinking too. Basically everyone who has had a web experience hooked up to their 1080p TV has been screwed for a long time. Basically an '800px' layout has sucked for at least 5 years now on both 1920 x 1200 monitors and the aforementioned HD setup. There is no 'Retina' war, there is only web design stuck between the same rock and the same hard place. I feel for them but your tool box has to account for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think that Retina resolution displays will dominate the field in much less time than ten years: Since every mobile device maker has to match Apple I'd bet that by next year every new phone and tablet will feature a higher resolution screen. maybe that won't be 256, but maybe it will be at least 150. Then you can bet that in at least two years you'll see the same thing happen on laptops — and desktops will have to follow within five years.

The truth be told: It's sort of shocking to think that we've been using 72/96 for so long, I would have expected this shift to have happened ten years ago.

<comment><USER29> I agree... I think many of us have been saying that for years, too: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/where-are-the- high-...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/where-are-the-high- resolution-displays.html)

Despite the fact that many people primarily associate "Retina" with the iPhone (because that is where it was introduced first), I think this is the area in which it has actually had the least impact. Other phones had high DPIs before the iPhone 4, and the difference between the best Android displays and the iPhone 4 display was not overly dramatic.

OTOH, pushing laptops and tablets out of low-DPI land is a truly remarkable achievement. Other platforms are much farther behind in this area, IMO, and at least on laptops have a much longer path to catching up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm looking forward to the day when vector defined graphics are the norm and raster graphics are only used for things like pictures and games. There's really not much reason for UI and text to be defined by raster based graphics aside from the ease of creation, in my opinion. Using scalable graphics for layout removes the problems of resolution and DPI.

</comment><comment><USER31> "but it won't be long before Retina Cinema Displays replace their outdated siblings"

I was honestly surprised with each retina release by Apple starting with the IPhone4. After the initial "aww" of it had passed, it was easier to wrap your head around its production due to its relatively small screen. Now we have 15" macbook pro's with retina. Apple released a professional production machine for its retina ecosystem to thrive to aid its consumer mobile devices experience. This is exciting for us power users and geeks for sure.

A retina thunderbolt display(twenty seven inch), seems like quite a technological hurdle,. How much will you pay? $2000 for the screen? They could release such a product, again for professionals, to service professionals creating the content for their other devices to consume. You will pay for it though.

Does the average kitchen need retina imacs and will the market speak?

<comment><USER4> Search for "Catleap" or "Qnix" on e-bay.

2560x1440px 27" IPS displays at $295 (free shipping).

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Qnix-27-LED-Monitor-Full- HD-2560...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Qnix-27-LED-Monitor-Full- HD-2560x1440-high-resolution-S-IPS-DVI-dual- link-/320937121255?pt=Computer_Monitors&hash=item4ab957d5e7)

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Qnix-27-LED-Monitor-Full- HD-2560...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Qnix-27-LED-Monitor-Full- HD-2560x1440-high-resolution-S-IPS-DVI-dual- link-/200775098203?pt=Computer_Monitors&hash=item2ebf20df5b)

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/27-Inch-New- Potalion-2710QW-2560x144...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/27-Inch-New- Potalion-2710QW-2560x1440-WQHD-Quad-HD- Monitor-/140757463591?pt=Computer_Monitors&hash=item20c5cc7227)

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Tempered-Glass-27-Yamakasi- Catle...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Tempered-Glass-27-Yamakasi- Catleap-2703-LED-IPS-2560x1440-WQHD- Monitor-/130724901986?pt=Computer_Monitors&hash=item1e6fcfb462)

<comment><USER32> But the Retina MBP is already past that resolution on a 15" screen (2880x1800). If "Retina" means 2x the standard resolution, we'd need 24" monitors at 3840x2400 and 27" monitors at 5120x2880. I wonder if even Thunderbolt could drive that.

<comment><USER4> These screens are insanely expensive, and wouldn't make much sense. Nobody is looking at 27" monitors from such a small distance to distinguish between retina and simply good resolution.

Plus, I don't think there are affordable video cards to drive resolutions like 5120x2880.

<comment><USER32> Well, you make a good point. For comparison, my 17" MBP is at 133 ppi (1920x1200), while the base 15" is 110 ppi, and so the Retina 15" is 220 ppi. If you wanted the 17" screen to be around 220 ppi, you could go with 3072x1920, which would noticeably easier to make and to drive than 3840x2400. Given that full-size screens are usually viewed from farther away than laptop screens, I think it's fair to offer this as a "Retina" resolution for a 24" 8:5 screen.

Similarly, the 27" 16:9 screen could come in at maybe 3584x2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a ridiculous post by some random guy who is pro-Apple.

Do you know how long it took for 1024x768 to significantly vanish? And you're talking about retina's in 3 years. Lulz.

The world is huge my friend, and it includes a major portion where people don't (or even want to) own Macs and many of them are still on Legacy hardware. By many, I mean MANY. In three years, 1920x1024 might become fairly standard, but to even think of retina as a standard is definitely an overkill. I'm surprised this is even posted on HN.

Oh wait..its the same guy who wrote it..

</comment><comment><USER34> I enjoy the high pixel density displays on small devices like iPhone 4. However the iPad 3's display doesn't really interest me. I just don't hold the device that close to my eyes.

Snappy, responsive UIs are the most important thing to me. I'll trade the animations, rounded-corners, gradients, drop shadows and bouncy effects for a more craigslist-like UI. Something that's simple, basic and functional.

<comment><USER35> I've been using the new iPad for a few months now and I'm always bothereed to back to an iPad 2 for reading. I can just see the pixels on the iPad2 now, I didn't before, but now they bother me. Blast Apple for raising my standards!

<comment><USER34> Same for me when going back to 2nd gen iPod Touch. What really bugs me about the older iOS devices is the UI lag. It's not a huge deal if you use the device here and there. But where you use it constantly the lag becomes annoying. Hence my general desire to trade UI polish for decreased response time.

Google studied the impact of very small delays on users' search behavior. iirc reducing the search results loading time by 10 ms or so had a noticeable effect. I wonder if something similar could be applied to smart phone UIs? Might be an opportunity for a smart phone OS to substantially differentiate itself from iOS and Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone else find the 1x and 2x conventions confusing? I never realized it till I got a bit confused reading the article.

Also: I'm a bit surprised at the reverence Dustin Curtis is given for the pixel fitting article.

<comment><USER26> Its not just confusing, its misleading. The marketing copy is being confused for technical terminology.

At 2880 pixels wide, the new MacBook Pro resolution is about 1.5 times as many pixels across the screen as a typical high resolution display at 1900 pixels.

<comment><USER37> > At 2880 pixels wide, the new MacBook Pro resolution is about 1.5 times as > many pixels across the screen as a typical high resolution display at 1900 > pixels.

A typical high resolution display of what physical size? Using the resolution is meaningless, it's the DPI that's important in this case.

Also, the 2x is not really marketing copy. It's the number of physical pixels that make up each geometric "point" in an Apple retina display. Ideally applications and operating systems would be truly resolution-independent and this ratio could be any decimal number. In such a world, you could chose how to use your screen's resolution - for more space or for smoother rendering of on-screen elements.

Apple's solution is a hack that uses an integer ratio to make backwards compatibility easier. With a 2x ratio you can blow up a point from a non- retina app to exactly 4 pixels, avoiding some hairy rendering issues.

<comment><USER38> Resolution is only thing that matters. It tells how much information you can cram into a screen. If pixels are too large move back. If they are too small move closer. If your screen is glued to the keyboard. Detach it. Like in asus transformer.

<comment><USER39> The point of these displays is to (eventually) get away from slavery to the pixel. Just because a printer can render, say, 4800 dpi, doesn't mean you want to render your body copy in a 1pt text (which it can do with better letter- shape fidelity than any of my old dot-matrix impact printers); you still print at 9 or 10 points and enjoy sharper and better-defined type. Moving to high- linear-resolution screens does the same thing—you don't cram more stuff into the screen, you cram a better version of the same stuff into the screen.

<comment><USER38> Decorative visual information is still information and how much you can fit in a screen depends on it's resolution not dpi. To enjoy smoother visuals you just have to move away a bit from big screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What the cynic in me finds interesting in Retina displays is how people will tend to hit their data caps more quickly on their mobile plan merely because they are downloading more pixels.

<comment><USER41> "...hit their data caps more quickly on their mobile plan merely because they are downloading more pixels."

Surely the caps will increase in size as a consequence of improved mobile- data-pushing-technologies and to keep up with the need, just like the speeds of broadband-connections have since they were introduced?

<comment><USER10> It should also help at getting those caps increased. In a major city cell phone providers not having capacity in 2012 should be lambasted for not expecting usage to increase. This is only the harbinger of things to come, we need to provide pressure on the providers to drop the (when technically unnecessary) data caps. They don't fix the congestion problem and only exacerbate these problems.

Also, its about damn time we have high dpi displays, we've been stuck at 72/96dpi for far too long on regular computers. I welcome this change and all it brings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Easy solution: Use an external monitor to verify things still look good at 1x.

</comment><comment><USER43> I welcome the Retina Revolution (and look forward to its progression beyond the Apple world), despite the messy consequences. Three things plague my eyes and psyche:

      1) 1080p as a least common denominator
      2) composite analog video feeds
      3) low bitrate MPEG/JPEG/iDCT compression artefacts

Let the reader understand.

</comment><comment><USER44> A nitpick, but this author is absolutely using bicubic wrong. The only case where bicubic filtering appears identical to nearest neighbor is if the entire image has constant color.

Author probably forgot to turn off color indexing or something trivial.

</comment><comment><USER45> Ironically... when I visited on the link on my iPhone, the text appeared pixel doubled. If I go back, it appears correct. No idea why. :)

</comment><comment><USER46> I really think the @2x hack is absolutely revolting.

sigh...

</comment><comment><USER47> He's designing a website in Photoshop and complaining 800px is too small. Is that serious?

</comment><comment><USER48> These svbtle blogs render unfocused on iPad 1 in portrait orientation - <USER2> annoying.

</comment><comment><USER49> Isn't this something an asset pipeline should be handling?

</comment><comment><USER50> This guy's problem is that he thinks pixel-fitting is an appropriate technique at any resolution: it's not.</comment>


DNA Sequencing of 1000 Cannabis Strains Publicly Available in Google BigQuery - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@allenday/dna-sequencing-of-1000-cannabis-strains-publicly-available-in-google-bigquery-a33430d63998 <comment><USER2> It's still a poor-quality assembly and annotation, so not too terribly interesting, especially without phenotype data. This is mostly relevant if you're interested in a particular gene or gene family and want to study diversity. Good luck if there's splicing variation, though.</comment>


Why social media is terrible for multiethnic democracies - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/15/13593670/donald-trump-jonathan-haidt-social-media-polarization-europe-multiculturalism?utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=entry&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> The algorithms that govern things like Facebook feeds play a big part in polarization. The best confirmation bias is literally never being able to see information that disagress with your world view</comment>


Which new language to learn? - <AUTHOR>

I want to pick up a new language. My question is, how do I know which one will turn out to be valuable or here to stay? There's quite a few to choose from -- Julia, D, Go, etc --, so I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations? I mostly do web dev by the way. <comment><AUTHOR> Also Haskell is another option I was thinking about. I know C, Java, Javascript and Python. Node and Django are what I use. The language doesn't have to relate to web dev, I'm just interested in seeing how and where I could benefit from using a new language by learning one.

<comment><USER2> Haskell's good. I might recommend an ML first as a smaller step (type system much like Haskell's, mostly similar design patterns, but tackle pervasive laziness later...). YMMV, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you know any c based languages like C itself, C++, objective-C, c#? Any of those would be good to learn.

But you are asking the wrong questions. It is almost never the language that matters, it is the framework.

As a webdev, Rails or NodeJS would be good. Meteor is getting more and more interesting and if you want to stay employed and well paid for the next 20 years knowing asp.net would not hurt.

</comment><comment><USER2> What languages do you know? There's value to sampling a number of points in the space, whether or not they're "here to stay" (though of course, languages "here to stay" will have additional perks).

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want to do number crunching, julia, otherwise avoid it. There are just too many oddities that, imo, will limit it's acceptance as a general purpose programming language.</comment>


Shakeup at Wikipedia in Wake of Porn Purge - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/14/exclusive-shake-wikipedia-porn-pressure/?test=latestnews <comment><USER2> I'm confused. Exactly which images are at issue here?

It appears that the images originally complained about were the drawings of "child pornography" which were supposedly on Wikimedia Commons.But does it extend to the more encyclopaedically justifiable (though still occasionally somewhat gratuitous) photos which illustrate relevant articles on wikipedia?

Incidentally, I think wikipedia deserves credit for being one of the few places proudly exhibiting pictures of Muhammad.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I understand why the admins got so upset about it. If, in fact, Wikimedia Commons was hosting illegal images, why shouldn't the foundation take actions to ensure they were removed?

<comment><USER4> Why do you make an assumption that these images are illegal? Photographs of genitalia are not necessarily pornography, much less illegal or obscene. The hysteria that Fox seems to be trying to whip up is that children in school might learn about sex.

<comment><USER5> Osiris didn't say the images were illegal - Osiris asked whether the foundation had a right/obligation to remove the images _"if, in fact,"_ they were illegal. Seems like no one can say, at this point, whether the images were or were not illegal, since that question has not been decided by a court.

<comment><USER6> To clear this up (and as I mentioned on the original article):

No, these images are not illegal.

IANAL - but I am one better, someone who grades such images for court.

[on the issue raised; clearly the foundation _does_ have a right/obligation to remove illegal images. Indeed even if they _suspect_ them to be illegal. However any expert they could have found would have told them they are fine. I think the uprising is more against the impression that the foundation has bowed to their sponsors rather than take a realist/rational approach]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perfect example of how ridiculous the power structure is on Wikipedia. Administrators of the site seem to think that they must be consulted before the Wikimedia board can do anything. The Wikipedia community has some serious problems.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting topic, but could we find a better source than Fox News?

<comment><USER9> To the extent Fox New coverage of this has been driving any of it it's an important source. That's been reported and I think their contacting sponsors is a matter of record.

The article also seems to be accurate and exhaustive, maybe even fair and balanced ^_^.

<comment><USER8> To say that "[t]hose images have been the subject of heated discussion within the community since their existence was revealed exclusively by FoxNews.com on April 27" is disingenuous considering Larry Sanger has been ringing this bell for quite a while now.

To say "... the images, which legal analysts say may violate pornography and obscenity laws" is border-line FUDish. Even something like "there is no agreement among legal analysts whether or not some of the images violate pornography and obscenity laws" would be better. It would be nice if they would get some experts to go on record and explain their reasoning, but I'm truly not expecting that much.

To say "images ... that could be considered child pornography" is a smear. If they want to call it CP, or get an expert to go on record as calling it CP, go for it -- but don't hide behind the "could" while invoking a moral panic.

<comment><USER2> They undoubtedly violate the child pornography laws in some jurisdictions and are perfectly legal in some others. The US may be one of the borderline cases.

<comment><USER6> > They undoubtedly violate the child pornography laws in some jurisdictions

Not in any particularly relevant to this situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like Fox has played the Drama Monger card. Good move.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DramaMongerTCGproposal.png></comment>


I Got Covid-19 in March and Never Got Better - <AUTHOR> https://www.autostraddle.com/the-soft-butch-that-couldnt-or-i-got-covid-19-in-march-and-never-got-better/ <comment><USER2> This was a moving read. I wonder if her illness is an actual long-term complication from COVID-19, or a preexistent condition aggravated by COVID-19, or something completely unrelated. Anyways I'm happy she got someone taking care of her and hope she'll feel better soon.

<comment><USER3> The article says it was a cardiac problem most commonly caused by viral infection. Something that can be caused by a lot of viral illnesses. Although for all we know COVID-19 may have a disproportionate chance of causing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The virus is credited with leaving scar tissue on lungs similar to asthma in worst cases.</comment>


This is What 100 Feet of Snow Looks Like  - <AUTHOR> http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs065.snc6/167533_497423404715_506304715_6358582_5559914_n.jpg

<comment><USER2> Whoa. That's impressive. I'd like to see the snow blower they used to cut those (incredibly neat-looking) tunnels through the snow. It doesn't look like a plow was used, to me.

I doubt, however, that the depth is really 100 feet (30.5 meters). A regular car is what, 5 feet? Then it looks like maybe four or five cars tops, which would mean about 20-25 feet (around 6-7 meters).

<comment><USER3> Might be 100 feet of snow _fall_ , that has compressed under its own weight.</comment></comment>


'Serious' security flaws found on official UK tax site - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41188008 <comment><USER2> So although they are alright findings (arbitrary url redirect and dom-ish xss) the main take away from the article is that it is WAY too hard to contact anyone from any form of CERT in the UK whatsoever.

I've tried myself to report vulnerabilities[1] and it's nearly impossible to find even the most generic of contact emails. I usually end up passing the info on to friends who do more gov work than myself. There REALLY needs to be a generic email@example.com email somewhere.

[1] not going out of my way to find anything, but in the past if i receive a (usually HMRC related) phishing email from a .gov domain, i'll try and dig up a CERT email, or JANET if it is university related.

<comment><USER3> while, yes I did want to make out in the second half just how difficult it was to get in contact with a CERT, it's sad to hear the other half put down to 'alright findings'...

Sure, the first issue that made me get into tax bug hunting was a run-of-the- mill open redirect, but the second issue is an interesting DOMXSS in an obfuscated vendor codebase with a WAF bypass alongside some technical commentary I worked really hard on that allows you to _read and write financial data_. It's sad to see that equally significant portion of my work dismissed as 'alright findings'.

<comment><USER4> Don't feel diminished by comments like that. From a technical point of view the issues are great, but I think the parent comment was referring to the overall 'jist' of the issues - no SQL injection, RCE or other 'stupid' findings that indicate serious underlying problems with the site. The issues are 'alright', which lies between 'silly' (banner disclosure) and 'everything is fucked' (db access)

Also, more generally, don't take internet comments personally. You know how much effort you put in, and your writing reflects that. You're on BBC news for god's sake, congratulations.

Also 2, amazing writeup. I love your style, it rings a bell. #ezbake ?

<comment><USER3> thank you. I may have reacted excessively. I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the direct link to the report: [https://medium.com/@Zemnmez/how-to- hack-the-uk-tax-system-i-...](https://medium.com/@Zemnmez/how-to-hack-the-uk- tax-system-i-guess-3e84b70f8b)

It's a neat write-up - the security folks at Twitch do some great work and this is no exception.

Seems like HMRC really need to work on a responsible disclosure system of some sort, I'm surprised that there are no security@ emails.

I'm also left wondering if Content-Security-Policy could have helped with that XSS.

</comment><comment><USER6> Let me just share a moment of my personal pain.

In Portugal you fill the taxes in a java application that run in a browser after accepting an invalid security certificate and I always have the feeling that the app as way more access to my computer than it should (saving files is done in a custom interface, not native windows). I'm filled with deep profound sadness and conspiracy theories every single time I have to login to that system.

It is also presented in a web page with a scrollbar and an applet with it's own scrollbars, so it's always a mystery where you'll end up after a mouse scroll.

<comment><USER7> Brazil is not much different. And to make matters worse, almost every Brazilian government agency that offers online services do so using their "self" signed certificates. Now imagine how hard it's to educate people not to click on dodgy websites and certificates, when the whole government does exactly the opposite.

I say self signed certificates because it's been 10 years that Brazil nic is trying to get its CA approved.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438825](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438825)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh boy, I used to work at GDS and I met some people from HMRC about their Childcare voucher system thingy. And it used similar techniques to this, I raised it directly with them but they didn't think it was an issue, and my comments were drowned out by a talking shop of technocratic circle jerking.

<comment><USER9> At least GDS strong-armed HMRC into using CSS from the 21st century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't imagine the motives anyone would want to try and volunteer information about vulnerabilities to the UK gov. Maybe I'm naive, but there's so much hostility towards whitehat researchers that I'd assume Zemnmez is now on some "list" and being monitored/watched/flagged.

What's the reward/risk?

<comment><USER11> I think we are all on the list. Visiting Linux forums got some of us on the list. I can't imagine that visiting HN wouldn't.

I just assume they are monitoring everything I do online anyway.

<comment><USER12> why would HN put you on a list?

<comment><USER13> I read your parent as _others_ noticing you're visiting HN (or other sites), not that the site itself is keeping such lists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Since when did CSRF and open redirect exploits become serious? Quite common and minor really.

<comment><USER5> Why is CSRF relevant here?

It was an XSS, which has been considered high priority by most people for a while: [https://bugcrowd.com/vulnerability-rating- taxonomy](https://bugcrowd.com/vulnerability-rating-taxonomy)

As he mentioned in the write-up I linked, you could use this for both retrieving data and performing actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, then perhaps it's time to start talk of selling vulnerabilities on the Dark Web to compensate for our time?

It may be brutish, bad, evil, or whatever. Id report willingly for open source or software Ive bought for bug reports or vuln reports. But if I find a serious security issue, I expect to be compensated. And if an org makes it impossible to even contact them, I'll go to their, <ahem> competitors. They do pay.

Perhaps organizations need to be reminded of this.

</comment><comment><USER16> I once got a parking ticket, and I was trying to figure out how to pay it online. I found a site for the city that I was supposed to put in my license plate number and my date of birth to look up a parking ticket in order to pay it online. I realized that the car was registered to one of my parents, honestly I wasn't sure I had their birthdays exactly memorized, and I couldn't contact both of them at that very moment, so I tried guessing a few dates for the birthday field. I got frustrated, and ... well I've participated in a number of security CTF challenges / puzzle games, where SQL injection is a common technique you're expected to do, and step 1 of many CTF challenges is to literally put the following characters into each text field you find:

        ' OR 'A'='A

It's like the SQL-injection version of "open sesame". It's generic, fitting a common coding mistake, not tailored to any specific site. It's a force of habit to use while working on CTF challenges ... Desperate to solve my problem of finding my own parking ticket, I reached to that knowledge without really thinking about it and used it. It worked, and the page showed me hundreds of parking tickets with people's full names, license plate and driver license IDs, addresses, and ticket amounts and descriptions. (A glance showed a few people were racking up thousands of dollars of parking tickets, seriously wtf?) I worried about what I did and closed the site. (Well first I scrolled through the list to see if my own parking ticket was there. It wasn't. Turns out where my parking ticket was given was actually in a different city; I was checking the wrong site to begin with.)

I thought about reporting it, but given that I already exploited it and saw private information, I thought twice. I've reported security issues at sites before, but never at a government site or involving me having seen people's private information. I got panicky and just closed the site. I don't _owe_ them the report and the risk it puts me at. It's a nice thing I do for people who invite it or when the risk is low, but somehow I think legal actions are more likely from the site for a local court. If anyone _owes_ anyone, it's the developers for risking people's information so carelessly and for putting me into this type of bind, but somehow I think if I reported this I think I'd be the only one at risk of being treated as a criminal.

I'm not fully sure why I felt compelled to think this was all relevant to this thread. Maybe just to illustrate some of the stress that comes from the vulnerability-reporting side of things. If you want secure systems and for people to report issues as they see them, then sometimes you need to invite the reporters. The difficulty described in the article of even reporting the issue makes me think I'm probably very far from alone in avoiding reporting this type of thing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there a standard way to avoid attacks based on abusing your window.location.replace() calls?

<comment><USER18> NoScript

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A fun and informative write-up.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think this is a huge step up over a standard phishing attack. A savvy user would notice that the redirected URL doesn't have an EV cert (it might not even have SSL at all). They would probably check the email address the link came from as well.

A non-savvy user would not check the email and would click any link they're sent, redirect, ssl or not. So you might as well send them a standard phishing link.

This means you're targeting users inbetween these two classes, so maybe it's effective for a very specific attack. And if someone is that determined they'll get in no matter what.

Plus 2fa is there on HMRC, if they request a fresh code before any major changes are made it would make it very difficult to do any serious damage.

<comment><USER21> Read the actual blog: [https://medium.com/@Zemnmez/how-to-hack-the-uk-tax- system-i-...](https://medium.com/@Zemnmez/how-to-hack-the-uk-tax-system-i- guess-3e84b70f8b)

This is a perfect phishing attack (only short of being able to send a valid email from @gov.uk). The user is always on .gov.uk and it always has a valid EV certificate.</comment></comment>


Why are scans of Shakespeare's works locked behind academic paywalls? - <AUTHOR> http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/shakespeare-and-emoticons/

<comment><USER2> The scans are the rightful property of whoever took the trouble (money, time) to create them.

Scanning a valuable document is an expensive and difficult undertaking. There are loads of ways that you can damage the original! The equipment isn't free, either. Neither is the archivist's time!

If you want to make it your mission to produce your own scans just so you can give them away, you can. No one is stopping you.

<comment><USER3> What you are referring to is known as 'sweat of brow' copyright. The US rejected this doctrine in the supreme court case Feist v. Rural Telephone Service. The UK also rejects this doctrine under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

So no, these scans are not the rightful property of whoever took the trouble to scan them.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#US_copyright...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#US_copyright_law)

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure he was talking about copyright -- if I scan (or manually reproduce) something in the public domain, I of course own that copy and can do with it as I please.

I just can't go and prevent other people from copying my copy.

<comment><USER2> _I just can't go and prevent other people from copying my copy._

What about digital restoration, which often includes reconstruction of missing parts of the document? What if you do significant work to uncover a document hidden within a layer, as is the case with the Archimedes Palimpsest? (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest>)

I'm not making the argument that such images ought never to be available freely to the public. All I'm saying is that the terms of release ought to be up to the individual or institution that's doing the work, and that it's the government's job to protect that right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>