Big Android Market expansion - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-countries-more-sellers-more-buyers.html

<comment><USER2> Great news, but long, long overdue (for example, it's been well over a year since Android launched in Canada).

The market is one of the weakest aspects of Android IMO, hopefully they'll add more features soon.

<comment><USER3> And the market could be improved so easily:

* Make the top listings more interesting by sorting them differently (eg. by a ratio of time, comments and ratings instead of the total number of downloads). There should be more change and not the same apps in the top positions for years.

* Combat spam publishers (those with hundreds of sound boards and similar apps, which pollute the new listings by pushing interesting apps way down, which happens rather frequently). One idea could be a timeout between publishing/updating apps, for example only one app per 12 or 24 hours. Could be adjusted depending on the rating of the apps.

* Make a market website where developers can link to their apps (a la AppStore)

* This app website should have an push-to-phone button. If clicked Google pushes the app's package name to the user's device, which opens a popup for installing it. That would _greatly_ simplify installing apps - QR codes simply don't provide enough usability.

* And as dpcan said, the ability to describe an app with more than 325 characters.

I get the feeling as if the Android market is just not a high priority project of Google.

<comment><USER4> They could very easily combat comment spam too. The DroidPhoneFiles comment is almost always the #1 comment on my free apps. I'd say it's updated automatically almost every couple hours.

Lastly, the ability to comment on our own apps from the dev console would be great so I could respond to buyer comments since we are not allowed to buy our own apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google is waay too slow on these issues.

Likewise, I can't feel but screwed by the new Chrome Web Store not supporting Google Checkout Merchant accounts from countries other than United States and UK. Thanks a lot for the competitive edge guys.

I'm scrambling to implement a payment processor as soon as I can, but the lack of simple one-click purchase will surely impact sales.

The Merchant forum is bloated with requests for expanding the service to other countries since the day they rolled it out. A mildly comforting assurance that the expansion is in the works is all they managed to reply for three years now.

Seriously dropping the ball (compared to Apple) from a developer perspective.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Market is expanding to 18 other countries in the next 2 weeks, which means this is probably the last chance for interested researchers to nail down before and after piracy figures. Results will be really interesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm happy because my apps are about to get an insane amount of exposure.

I'm scared because I know how many talented developers are about to compete with me.

At the moment, I'm the only app of my kind, but in the iPhone app store, there are PAGES of apps that would be considered similar.

I wonder if this means our ad-supported apps will finally make some money.... hmm.

<comment><USER7> _I'm happy because my apps are about to get an insane amount of exposure._

I am rooting for you, but I hope your understand that if there are pages upon pages of similar apps in the app store, your effort has already been marginalized. Good exposure it good, but it must hit a home run, or you are going to be called out.

<comment><USER4> Luckily I already feel like I've hit a home run. I'm fortunate enough to have a top 20 game in one category and over half a million downloads, lots of good feedback, and great ratings.

Right now, the thought of adding countries is more exciting than not. It's like I'm about to get a second at-bat.

My fear of competition is that I get a competitor who can update features even faster than I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Australians can now sell apps! My motivation for creating them just went up a bit.

<comment><USER9> Nice one, I will look into this now.

Why can I not scroll on that bloody page, do we really need javascript just to scroll down a page? Nice one google.

<comment><USER10> mouse wheel doesn't work (using noscript), but pg up/down does, go figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Off topic, but the Android Developer Blog's use of frames to always show navigation is really horrible. I've to use my mouse or TAB before scrolling with J/arrow-down. Haven't they heard about 'position: fixed'?

</comment><comment><USER12> From developer's perspective it's such a disadvantage when developers from other countries can sell apps in your country but you can't.

</comment><comment><USER13> Now companies can stop opening an American "office" just to sell apps on Android and other like hacks such as Paypal in app unlocking.

</comment><comment><USER14> Finally, takeing this long is frankly embarrassing.

Anybody know why this took Google so long?

</comment><comment><USER15> Developers have been asking for this for a long time. Hopefully soon we will also see

1\. Better app discoverability

2\. In app purchases

3\. More carrier billing

4\. Coupons and discounts

<comment><USER4> 5\. Ability to describe an app with more than 325 characters.

I can't even describe what's in an update with this much space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bah, why not open the market to developers from all countries? WTF can be that difficult at Google's scale?

It's like they want people to create an alternative marketplace or something.

<comment><USER17> I'm wondering if this news is related to the fact that Amazon launched their own marketplace recently.

Maybe the motivation came from realizing that if they don't do this fast enough, Amazon could eat the revenue from Android in a lot of countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well that deals with my comment over here... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734264>.

</comment><comment><USER19> Indians still can't sell. :(

</comment><comment><USER20> This ought to help with Android's worldwide adoption...

</comment><comment><USER21> it sux to live in croatia :(</comment>


Writing a Ph.D. thesis with Org Mode - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dangom/org-thesis <comment><USER2> I have been writing my thesis as an org-mode file in git that is automatically published [0] as a pdf every time I commit using a bash script tangled as a commit hook. Figures are (or can be) computed from live data, and org-ref can automatically manage and format all my references as I go without the insanity inducing workflows that one usually has to resort to. Another amazing thing about org-mode is that I can write a code block to hit a remote api (e.g. google docs) and fill and format entire chapters from a collaborative editing source that my advisor is comfortable using, C-c C-c and it is embedded in the document. Perfect for stitching papers together from a variety of sources.

While there is a learning curve, the peace of mind of having a single tool that enables me to use any tool I need to use was such a relief after years of other painful writing and publishing workflows.

If you are starting a PhD today and are going to do anything at all with code, I seriously suggest you learn org-mode. By the time you finish, not only will you have a PhD, but even if you don't you will have the power of one of the most amazing authoring tools under your command! (I would say, "Learn org- mode, simplify your life!" but emacs tends to lead to other complications).

0\. [https://orgmode.org/manual/Publishing.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/Publishing.html)

<comment><USER3> How do you deal with different sections from google docs? As in, how do you format these into markdown or latex sections?

I've been working with psychologists and I've taught them the basics of a latex document, but I see how extracting the sections they have written from a google doc could be useful.

<comment><USER2> I wrote a docs api v1 -> org converter in python. I just pulled it into its own repo and it still has a bunch of dependencies related to how I handle auth for other projects, but if you want to take a look it is at [0]. There is an example of how I use the Docs class in an org source bock in the readme (note that I use evil mode, and that you need to view raw to see everything that is going on with the headers). It currently requires a little dance to get everything in the right place at the right indent level, but it could be fully automated. I'm in the process of writing a converter going the other direction in elisp, and I will probably rewrite the python into elisp at some point as well, but for now, following the keystrokes is faster for me than trying to reimplement it to integrate with the org-mode api.

As an overview I use the heading level in the google doc as the corresponding * level (e.g. h1 -> _, h2 - > _*, etc.). Nearly every construct in the google doc has a 1:1 mapping with some org mode convention (there are some things that I still write in org-syntax in the google doc, such as figure captions and stuff like that.

If I need to export to markdown from org I usually try pandoc (I very rarely do this though). Importing from markdown I use pandoc as well, newer versions do a pretty good job and only need a few tweaks from time to time. Latex export is straight forward using org-mode's built in exporter [1] via the export dispatcher. For full pdf export I use lualatex via texlive with all the pain that that entails.

0\. [https://github.com/tgbugs/gdocorgpy](https://github.com/tgbugs/gdocorgpy) 1\. [https://orgmode.org/manual/LaTeX- export.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/LaTeX-export.html) 2\. [https://orgmode.org/manual/The-Export-Dispatcher.html#The- Ex...](https://orgmode.org/manual/The-Export-Dispatcher.html#The-Export- Dispatcher)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could be be done, but does not feel like the appropriate tool. Org mode translates to a basic latex only, that is a huge waste of TeX power.

I did my thesis entirely in LaTeX, so I have some experience in the theme, and it was a rollercoaster. There is always some really special table, graph, arrangement, extra space needs, that you can do only programming with the real stuff. Doing the same with org mode would have been stuff of nightmares (even if org tex has some nice qualities that LaTex does not have, like fast shrinkable text).

I missed only a thing. Being able to do in situ calculus in LaTeX (filling columns and totals in tables excel style), but is not really the right tool for that so you can't blame TeX for that. The team of R+Latex filled the gape nicely.

Apart of this, TeX environment has planned and build yet anything that you could dream when you write a PHD thesis. From basic, to really esotheric. Can be difficult sometimes, but is awesome.

<comment><USER5> What's the benefit of Latex over LyX? With LyX you can insert latex if you need it, but otherwise you are in a very nice Wysiwym environment

<comment><USER6> Essentially, Emacs + makefiles :)

Lyx is great for shorter things. I use it for presentations, where being able to see the images, colors, etc really helps.

For longer stuff, with a lot of text, a nice editor has its advantages. And you can split of chapters in extra files easily and all that.

<comment><USER7> You can see the images in emacs with org previews. [http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2016/11/06/Justifying...](http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2016/11/06/Justifying- LaTeX-preview-fragments-in-org-mode)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Back in the late 2000's I looked around for the right tool for my Ph.D. dissertation and quickly ruled out Word, Libre (or Open Office) Writer, or any wysiwyg tool, because they 1) lacked fast, easy ways to work at the structural (tree) level of the document, which is important when you have many sections and subsections to organize thoughts and arguments; 2) couldn't do mathematical notation well; 3) didn't integrate well with the reference management tool I was using then, Mendeley.

As an Emacs lover, I soon found Org, and it was (and remains) the perfect tool, for working in plain text — which will never be obsolete, and works easily with git or version control. Then and now, nothing could match Org speed and flexibility: structural editing (creating nodes, moving nodes, promote/out-dent a node, demote/in-dent a node) was and is fundamental to Org (unlike Markdown etc), and it's ridiculously easy to reorganize thinking and writing as you go. You can export to LaTeX (or HTML) and customize formatting as needed, while also including code blocks from multiple languages. Integration with BibTeX was tight, and made handling hundreds of references easy.

Where other writing tools for complex documents previously made me cringe and cuss, Org makes writing a pure joy, freeing the mind to work entirely on content and its structure.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure about other fields, but most theses in computer science these days are usually a stitch-up of your papers + some glue text/backstory. I.e. 80% of your thesis is already in LaTeX format. Org Mode only adds complexity to your workflow.

<comment><USER10> I doubt that anyone can be familiar with "most theses in computer science these days".

<comment><USER11> Depends on your threshold for "familiarity". Anyone currently working on theirs will likely have a number of friends/colleagues working on ones of their own, include second and third hand knowledge accumulated from conferences and likely any modestly sociable CS doctoral candidate would know at least the loose structure, if not 30 second blurb of quite a large number of theses in progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I liked the latex template, could you give more details about it? such as font name and so on.</comment>


Upgrading RAM on new iMac practically impossible - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9234218/Upgrading_RAM_on_new_iMac_practically_impossible

<comment><USER2> Apple clearly don't believe the marginal profit hit involved in appealing to nerds is required to maintain their market position. I do hope they're wrong.

I realize many _nerds_ are quite comfortable with the commoditization of computing equiment, and I appreciate many livelihoods depend on the shoehorning of new software through a requisite Apple ID and profit share with the app store, but somehow I still hope there are enough technology advocates left that have yet to sell their souls, to have some counterbearing on this brave new world of shitty, locked down, for-commercially-approved-consumption- and-entertainment-purposes-only overpriced disposable hardware.

Fuck the church of Apple and everything it stands for.

<comment><USER3> > Apple clearly don't believe the marginal profit hit involved in appealing to > nerds is required to maintain their market position.

Considering that the period over which they went from laying on their deathbed to becoming one of the most highly-valued companies in the world falls entirely within the period over which they started making these kinds of design changes, they'd have to be downright stupid to believe otherwise.

But for the sake of unpacking that idea anyway, let me advance that what's really going on is that they don't believe that the wallet of a nerd who is fundamentally opposed to the basic idea behind their business model in the first place isn't really worth chasing after. Apple deciding not to solder RAM to the motherboard because it might make their computers slightly less unappealing to a certain class of nerd makes about as much sense as your local butcher deciding to stop carrying veal in an effort to get more vegans to come through the door.

Besides, I'm not convinced that RAM soldered to the board is a real practical complaint so much as yet another lightning bolt for an ideological grudge (I can't help but note the phrase "church of Apple"). We don't see the same griping about how the Raspberry Pi's RAM is soldered to the board. This even though it's a computer that, unlike the iMac, is specifically made for us tinkerers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thinness vs upgradability! Such a huge tradeoff.

I really don't see the point in making desktop products super thin (there by making it inaccessible). Thinness is probably one of the last innovation area that customer may be excited for a desktop product. I would hope for better R&D direction in the future from Apple.

This was evident in the Apple stores this weekend, where I saw iMac tables failing to draw any crowd.

</comment><comment><USER5> As I paraphrased the article for my parents, "It's like buying a car with the hood welded shut."

<comment><USER6> And, a hood inaccessible to me wouldn't materially impact my purchase decision of a particular car, since my ability to service my own car is pretty much zero.

For example, I don't even know how one accesses the "engine" of the Teslas but it doesn't bother me one bit that I can't access it.

<comment><USER7> I don't know much about cars, but I still:

\- check my oil

\- replace my windshield washer fluid

\- check my coolant

\- jumpstart my engine

\- (rarely) jumpstart someone else's engine

I know most people on HN have already sold a company for seven or eight figures, but for the rest of us, it's nice to have some flexibility :)

<comment><USER8> Upgrading RAM in an iMac is honestly probably more like replacing the carb with a Holley 4-barrell (in an older car), or swapping in a larger turbo, or something similar, than any of the examples you listed above. Although we may be waist deep in the silly analogy weeds at this point... The number of people who will be impacted by this limitation is probably a rounding error versus the number of iMacs sold.

<comment><USER9> I'd say its considerably more common than a carb conversion. At the end of a Mac's life I typically keep bunging RAM in to keep it as powerful as possible. I know several people who do the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This only affects the 21.5" model - the 27" model is not affected.

<comment><USER11> Don't be so sure. What do you want to bet that the 27" display isn't also glued in place?

Yeah, you can upgrade the RAM, but how do you replace a failing drive?

<comment><USER12> He's not talking about the hard drive. Yes, the 27" will have the same epoxy around the rim of the display, but the RAM is very-much user-accessible via a port on the back of the 27" model. It's both marketed and intended to be user- replaceable. The hard drive is not user-replaceable on the 27" though it is possible if you're willing to assume the risk/liability of doing so.

A number of users on popular Mac forums have opened up their 21" iMac cases. It's definitely not ideal, and not something I'd recommend risk-adverse people to try, but from their descriptions, it hasn't been too difficult if you follow the procedures online. One guy used a knife and scratched the black off of the display. Most use a guitar pick and it doesn't have that problem.

The rub is your warranty. If you break the epoxy seal and don't re-seal it with a suitable epoxy strip you're probably running the risk of any under- warranty claims being rejected by Apple should you need to have them service your machine. Not a problem for hard drives or RAM (you've probably opened it up to swap them out anyway) but definitely an issue for the main logic board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice If this didn't actually matter now that RAM is so ridiculously cheap, but I imagine it's an easy resource for Apple to milk the customer for on optional upgrades and will be for a long time.

<comment><USER14> Oh, you'd like to upgrade from 1GB to 2GB in your new Mac? That will be $200.

<comment><USER15> It's $200 per marginal 8GB, actually. Per 1 GB, that's only a $20 markup over fair market value of the RAM. It's not so much when you say it that way, just like a text message is only 10c each, for each of the thousands Twitter/AIM generates.

<comment><USER14> Per 1GB, that's a $20 markup over $5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is one reason why I bought the 15" MBP instead of the Retina. I fully expect this to be the last user-upgradable Mac, they seem to be moving everything towards an iPhone-like closed system.

<comment><USER17> Honestly, if you want to send a signal about user upgradability you should probably avoid buying a Mac entirely.

<comment><USER18> A reasonable point, but assuming you want a Mac, on balance I think it's better to get a somewhat upgradeable model than abandon the platform altogether. Apple seems to be on the edge between continuing to support general purpose computing and migrating everyone to an iOS-style walled garden. By buying Macs but not iPhones or iPads, I'm hoping to increase the demand for actual computers over appliances that are locked down with the force of law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this is really a shame.

With things at apple going this direction it seems that they don't want to make technology as long lived as it could be. I know people don't buy new products with the long run in mind in many cases, leaving folks with little alternative to a full upgrade after the warranty has expired and something goes wrong.

I myself have always enjoyed getting every last drop of life out of my computers. There is some joy in getting usefulness out of technology ten years out of date.

</comment><comment><USER20> Everyone here needs to understand that they are talking about a computer WITH an understanding of computers. Ask mom and dad if they want to upgrade their ram. The answer is "huh?". The concept of upgrading computers doesn't exist to many MAC (or PC) owners.

Most users don't give a shit about upgrading. When I was working in support, I remember a kid who had 19238012983 viruses on his computer. We formatted, reinstalled and 3 weeks later he was back again with 6 billion viruses. After formatting again, installing AV etc, he came back a few weeks later with a NEW laptop (back in 2002) because he thought the computer was the issue. He bought a whole new computer because he was too dumb to realize that HE was the problem. Apple sees this, and makes their products to work for those people. And it works. Hard drive died on your MBpro? Ahh man, time to get a new computer. (WTF?!).

Apple takes advantage of this and they do it really well. They purposely build items that you can't fix/upgrade so you come back to them. Even if it is free, you come to the store and look at all the new stuff…which is enticing. It's quite brilliant. And this is why I don't like the company. They are actually encouraging ignorance.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've had my 24" iMacs apart to replace hard drives, fix CD drives, and above all to clean out dust.

You cannot even clean the dust out of the fan easily!

</comment><comment><USER22> Is anyone surprised? Apple is shifting to building appliances, it makes complete sense for them to do so.

<comment><USER15> Shifting? Apple has sold appliances for over 28 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Apple probably figures that the number of users who firstly are willing to shell out big $$$ for a new iMac, but then also care about saving $150 or so by doing a 3rd party RAM upgrade (and voiding warranty?) is fairly minimal.

</comment><comment><USER24> So it's just like my Mac Book Air, that is a shame. Personal irony noted.

</comment><comment><USER25> post jobs apple committee rule combined with their litigious policies towards android are the reason that I'm never giving any money to them again...(and I used to drop a lot of money their way)

</comment><comment><USER26> How much of this is a result of an actual design consideration rather than an active attempt to prevent modding? That is, is the decision to use glue instead of magnets out of an engineering concern? It just seems by now, Apple is making fistfuls of money and the average customer is so fine with letting AppleCare fix anything that only a small pct of users would ever try to take it apart to add third party upgrades.

I guess there is a strong incentive to force users to replace computers after 3 years...but that seems shortsighted...a lot of people were loyal to Macs because they lasted longer than PCs...a customer who is using the same Mac body for 6 years may not be spending as much on hardware in the short term, but they'll have basically become a customer for life from then on.

<comment><USER27> Question is, will you need more than 8GB of memory in 3 years time if you are not doing something "intensive" like video editing (in which case Apple feels justified in charging you more for your computer)?

I remember the memory requirements for computers rising sharply in 2000 but this was mainly because people were making the switch over from single user systems like Win95 to proper multiuser systems like Win2000/XP and starting to do things like play video on their computers.</comment></comment>


Never Use Source Control GUIs - <AUTHOR> http://late.am/post/2011/09/27/never-use-source-control-guis <comment><USER2> There are really really great Git GUIs out there. Tower is the one example everyone is citing. That said, Tower is a largely transparent wrapper around the git command line. Pretty much every button corresponds to one and only one command in the terminal. All it really does is to give you visual feedback and meta-information on what you are doing.

This works really well. You have to understand Git in order to use it efficiently, but once you do it is in many cases just a more convenient way of using Git. Well, and then it knows to do a `stash/pull --rebase/stash pop` instead of a simple pull if you want to.

On the very other end of the spectrum is Github for Windows, which literally only has one button "Sync" for all that is pull, push, fetch, rebase etc. It is a giant PITA. Also, it does have an interactive commit view with files and checkboxes BUT IT DOES NOT STAGE STUFF WHEN YOU CHECK THE BOXES. This drives me nuts! Also, it trips up and dies if you stage stuff externally. I die a little every time that app breaks something.

Thus, I don't have anything against VC GUIs at all as long as they stay true to the command line. But any kind of abstraction is bound to leak at some point. This might be OK in some places, but your VC is not the right place to store leaked Git abstractions.

In many other places though, command line abstractions work just fine. Maybe this is more a comment about Git being hard to abstract than an argument against abstracting command line tools in general. And maybe that does not say anything good about Git.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Never tell me what to do. How about "Why I don't.." instead. I'm not sure why you are qualified to give me an absolutism in the first place considering you've only been a professional developer for 5 years. Now get off my damn lawn.

2\. And you've apparently never used Tower.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a comment in the article that also recommends Tower. I've personally been looking for a Tortoise replacement. What makes Tower so good?

<comment><USER3> It's pretty much 1:1 to git command line.

Most times when someone on my team screws up a commit, it's because they botched the command line (the inverse of this article's claims). Fix it in Tower in a few minutes in a visually simple way that helps them understand what's going on.

It also makes submodule usage do what you think it should do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's an interesting stance.

There are things I can do in <http://git-cola.github.com/> that I simply can't do on the command-line. That's why I use a GUI.

To be fair, I wrote it, so I know _exactly_ what commands it runs. I do think I've done a decent job of making it very clear what's going on under the hood, though. I even have a mode where the tool prints every git command it runs.

In general, though, I agree that folks should have an understanding of the underlying concepts. That way the GUI becomes a supplementary tool (rather than a crutch). This advice is not limited to just GUIs, though.

<comment><USER5> agreed, git-cola is way more usable than the git command line for breaking your uncommitted changes into a series of partial commits. that's the one time i will absolutely use a gui tool as being the best tool for the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I claim that any GUI which sufficiently exposes the underlying tool's > features to know with confidence what clicking any button will do fails at > being any more intuitive than the command line tool itself;

I think this is the meat of the article here. Other commenters have noted that Tower more or less falls into this category, i.e. a mostly 1-to-1 mapping of GUI elements onto git commands, and you need to know git to use Tower. I would add Magit to this category as well. You could not use either one unless you already understand git itself and how to use it.

However, I don't think that these GUIs are useless simply because they are not more intuitive than the command line. While they may not abstract any of the intrinsic complexity of git, they certainly make git _much_ easier to use simply by taking away a lot of the _techincal_ complexity in day-to-day usage.

<comment><USER2> +1 for magit. That is an awesome wrapper for Git! (I pretty much stopped using Tower since I learned magit.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Actually, source control GUIs are excellent for less-technical team members. I've had great results using TortoiseSVN or the GitHub client with multiple distributed teams.

It's great to be able to tell a new team member: "Press this button to get everyone else's updates." "Press this button to push your updates to the server/current branch." Later, depending on their role and level of skill, we can cover branching, merging, tagging and other move advanced features.

<comment><USER8> My experience has been that developers using a gui make better commits. It is far easier to see what the changes are, see unintended code changes, make a more useful message and only pick a relevant subset of changed hunks.

The command line only folks tend to do 'git commit -a' or equivalent and have messy noisy commits.

Yes a highly skilled developer at the top of their game, paying attention to every detail and pumped full of caffeine is far less likely to do that, but they are rare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TortoiseHg is fantastic for Mercurial, but there are no comparable Git GUIs that I know of. Github for Windows looks nice, but it tends to be slightly unstable.

In my experience, open source GUIs for open tools generally have that unpolished "design by committee" feel of a Diablo 1 inventory hacker written in Visual Basic, so I can relate to the hate a little bit.

<comment><USER10> There is TortoiseGit Link: <http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _"I claim that any GUI which sufficiently exposes the underlying tool's features to know with confidence what clicking any button will do fails at being any more intuitive than the command line"_

Based on that claim, he should also be opposed to word processors, visual text differs, and vi. After all, all they expose are the features of troff+Ghostscript, diff, and the combination of ed and sh.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this fear common amongst developers? My startup <http://gitpilot.com> is trying to make collaboration amongst developers using Git stupidly simple. A by-product of doing this is a simplified Git process. However, maybe our approach is off. Any opinions on the matter?

<comment><USER8> It looks like just another github equivalent, and I spied a Mac dock so is it Mac specific too?

In any event what I have found missing is a goal oriented interface. To many of the guis and the git cli are all about tasks. If you know what tasks map to your goals then it works out ok, but if not (as is the case for perpetual intermediates) then it is a confusing maze of bizarre commands, useless messages and copy/paste from google search results hoping one of them will work. For context see this [http://www.drdobbs.com/goal-directed-software- design/1844099...](http://www.drdobbs.com/goal-directed-software- design/184409952?pgno=8)

Git also has all of its defaults setup for large groups. For example tags are not pushed unless you specify an additional flag. That is absolutely the right thing to do when there are lots of developers, but the "wrong" thing when there are only two.

Nirvana for me would be a gui tool (Linux and Mac) that interoperates with projects hosted at Github and has a goal oriented interface. It should be smart about things (eg tags not being pushed in a project of two people is worthy of attention), and it should enable a git workflow (eg topic branch, pull requests, reviews etc). I really don't care what the git commands are to do various things - there are often several needed in some particular order with various random flags. Just help me and other perpetual intermediates reach our goals and concentrate on our development efforts, not micromanaging a version control system.

Part of that also means having an attitude about the right way/best practise way of doing something. Rather than providing endless configurable ways (and dialog boxes) to do something, pick one right way even if not everyone would agree. An example would be to always push tags for projects with few developers.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for taking the time to provide some feedback. The article that you presented was really interesting and despite being over 15 years old, it seems that its insights are still valid today.

Regarding Gitpilot, I think that our biggest problem at the moment is that maybe we are miscommunicating its value proposition. As it's a compliment to Github and not a replacement. I think you'd also find that it's at least attempting to be goal oriented as opposed to being task oriented like most Git GUIs. For the sake of brevity, Gitpilot is best described as a git-flow GUI [<http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/>, <https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/>]. (Our branching model is a bit different though)

It is Mac specific at the moment and it's currently awaiting review for the Mac App store. If you're interested, when it's live, I'll send you and your team promo codes so that you can try it out at no cost. If so, send me an email to jp [AT] gitpilot.com

Thanks again.

<comment><USER8> Alan Cooper (article author) also has a company and wrote several books (About Face, Inmates etc). And is considered the father of Visual Basic! But yeah, goals are timeless. I wish software/website authors realised that the goal of most users is to use their software and site for as little time as possible because they manage to achieve their goals quickly. Dialog boxes and similar stuff annoy the crap out of me. The programmer of the app/site has deep comprehensive information and they can't make their mind up, then why dump it on the user? You can trivially mitigate most things. For example if you provide undo across sessions then you don't need to ask users if they really meant to delete. Firefox on Android does a great thing - any closed tabs are shown at the bottom for a short period of time somewhat faded. Touch it to bring it back to life.

We have 4 git users on the team. The one writing the most code (me) is Linux only. The next person (about half time git) is almost entirely Mac. Another two use git but have no idea what it does and do not care (both Mac). They merely run the tools we store in git. Additionally our stuff is scattered across several repositories (for good reason). To do work you need one more of them. The Github for Mac client only lets you sync one repository at a time which is painful. I wrote a script in the end that syncs all repositories.

I would love to have a goal oriented gui for a git flow since I'm very lax at the moment, not having time to learn how to micromanage the sequence of commands needed. Heck I still have to look up the flags to git stash everything time I use it.

But being Mac only means your software is of no value to us. Thanks for the offer though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing that I've noted about the git integration in XCode4 -- the thing seems to put me on a branch to commit and take me off of it right after. If one isn't aware of this happening, bad things can result from an ill-timed command line git command.

</comment><comment><USER14> Also, never generalize ;-)</comment>


What TouchPad's Fate Says About the Tablet Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/what-touchpads-fate-says-about-the-tablet-market-08222011.html <comment><USER2> This is pretty insightful in my opinion. The two key things are "people aren't buying potential, they are buying tools" and "the value comes from the applications." At $100 the HP Touchpad is a great value relative to its tools (actually I suspect the 'right' price for this tablet is about $150 but that is neither here nor there).

This example helps make the claim that there is a market for the things that smart phones do, in a larger form factor. The challenge is being able to do those things cost effectively.

Browse the web.

Watch a video, either 'YouTube' type or subscription type.

Read content formatted for the device (books, magazines, newspapers)

Buy content and applications from the device.

Listen to music / podcasts / lectures.

Entertaining diversions (games).

Say what you want about the iPad but the history of the iPod touch really gave it an edge here. It literally was an iPod Touch made bigger.

Google was caught flat footed (sorry but 2.x Android sucked horribly on tablets) and rather than sitting down and saying "Hmm, ok we misjudged this one, lets sit down and do this right" they started 'releasing early and often' (the Linux strategy they inherited). It iterates to a successful solution but it is so painful to watch.

HP on the other hand had a completely different problem, they actually bought a decent OS, with a solid design for tablet style interaction, but their DNA is shipping PCs and Laptops so they struggled to move it forward, they couldn't figure out why people would want it, and had no idea how to price it.

These are the scars that are both the most painful, and the most valuable later on.</comment>


Transmit 4 is Released - <AUTHOR> http://panic.com/transmit/

<comment><USER2> I never liked Transmit 3 for some reason and feel it doesn't worth $29.95 when I can do pretty much the same with Cyberduck for cheaper—free! But now I tried Transmit 4, and fall it love with it within 10 minutes. WebDAV is fast even on my faulty connection (listing over 3000 files, which Cadaver never seems to finish) and Disks pretty much replaced ExpanDrive for me.

Great job, Panic. +1 Purchase.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even if you're not a Mac/Transmit user you should check our their product page for this: <http://panic.com/transmit/>

It looks great and the attention to detail these guys have is pretty amazing.

<comment><USER4> Their release notes are pretty good too. ;)

<https://panic.com/transmit/releasenotes.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the reason why I prefer a Mac over a Windows PC: the attention to detail in Mac-only applications, such as Transmit, is unmatched on the PC.

Everything from the subtle animated transitions to the product's website radiates love for the work they're doing.

The only thing that can come close on Windows, in my opinion, is Google Chrome.

<comment><USER6> I've never used Chrome on Windows, but I must say I'm a bit disappointed using it on the Mac. I do like the technical side of it so I use it often for watching Hulu, but the polish is not there. Often times, keyboard shortcuts stop working completely for me and I'm pretty sure that the silent update roll borked my copy of the app once. Also, having the close buttons on the wrong side of the tab is really annoying and, similarly, they reversed the order of "open in new window" and "open in new tab" on the contextual menus for links.

<comment><USER7> > keyboard shortcuts stop working completely for me

Not just when a plugin like Flash has focus? (You do use it for Hulu)

<comment><USER6> Wow, you are exactly right! It is mostly the Cmd-L shortcut I notice going missing. I wonder why that one is getting eaten but Cmd-N, T, W, and Q all work?

Still a bug, it works on Safari.

<comment><USER8> I'm glad that happens to you too. I thought I was going insane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've got to say, I've been playing with it for a while, and it's absolutely beautiful in every way: snappy, pretty, useful, intuitive & feature-packed.

Panic does it again.

</comment><comment><USER9> Personally I'm a scp/ssh command-line user. The last time I used FTP as part of my regular workflow was many years ago.

However, that is one beautiful-looking app and one beautiful website.

<comment><USER10> I have always wondered whats the overhead of scp over ftp ? Especially when copying file locally, it's most of the time easier than ftp (activated by default on most OS).

<comment><USER11> I can't comment on scp, but sftp is much faster then ftp. It's a completely differen't protocol then ftp (not to be confused with ftps which is ssl'd ftp). It's basically a tunneled connection via ssh and does everything you'd expect ftp to do including, file listing, resume support and extended attributes. It's got some advantages over ftp such as multiple streams in one connection, and ssh level security (sftp itself provides no security it's all over ssh).

According to wikipedia, the overhead of scp is the same due to both using ssh, but scp can transfer a little faster by not waiting for packet conformations before sending data. This means unfortunately that transfers cant be stopped and resumed because packets aren't guaranteed to arrive in order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sure is fast. That finder integration is sweet as well. Bought. (45% discount for those who own T3)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great -- I'm upgrading now for the Disks feature alone. It already works better than MacFusion (no longer maintained?) and ExpanDrive (which is actually $5 more expensive than Transmit!).

<comment><USER14> MacFusion seems to be maintained to some extent. I just downloaded a version that works on 10.6.3.

<http://github.com/nall/MacFusion2>

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the link. Glad to see someone moving it forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've never been so excited about FTP in my life.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love the new two-in-one progressbar, showing overall progress and progress of current file in a single progressbar.

<comment><USER17> I agree - it is very Tufte-esque.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Website looks ... interesting in my chrome on OSX. All the text in the main panel with the flashing dots is displayed as a mirror image.

<comment><USER19> That happened for a moment for me too in Chrome on OSX, but it switched back to normal after a few seconds. Weird.

<comment><USER20> It's an effect of "-webkit-transform: rotateY(-180deg);" They have a nice flip effect for WebKit browsers: see it in action by clicking "See all new features".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does Transmit 4 have the ability to unpack a ZIP archive on the server? YummyFTP has it built in and it saves so much time being able to upload the wordpress.zip file and then select 'Unpack archive'.

This can probably be done with RAW FTP commands, but having it built in is great.

<comment><USER22> It is able to send SSH commands, so you could unzip via that. I don't know for sure if it also works via RAW FTP commands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been beta testing this for a few months now, and I have to say it's just a joy to use. Beautifully designed and unbelievably functional.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very cool and about time! I've been using Transmit 3.x for what seems like ages now. I've mostly switched to using Cyberduck for the last couple years, as it's matured quite a bit since the time I purchased Transmit, and remote editing over SFTP seems to work a whole lot better. From the look of it, that should be fixed now and I might just switch back to Transmit full time.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm a little disappointed there aren't more Amazon AWS features supported. It claims to support Cloudfront yet when I look at my S3 buckets, my CloudFront private repositories aren't showing up at all. It's sad that the best AWS/S3 client is Windows only (CloudBerry S3 Explorer)

</comment><comment><USER25> Apple Design Award, let me introduce you to your new best friend, Transmit 4 :)

<comment><USER25> Strike that: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1301503> :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wonder if there will be an upgrade for Coda to implement the new T4 engine?

</comment><comment><USER27> How does the Disks feature, using Amazon S3 as storage, compare to DropBox? It seems like it would do something similar, with the added complexity of setting up an Amazon S3 account.

<comment><USER28> There is a big difference, actually, that is better/worse depending on your needs. Dropbox (at least right now) automatically syncs all files to the local disk of all linked accounts. This is often advantageous (the files are ready right when you need them), but for some things, such as a large MP3 collection, is unnecessary and wasteful. For that use case, S3 or one of the other synching services would be a smarter choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> From Panic's website i can see these guys have fun at work!

</comment><comment><USER30> I've been beta testing this for a few weeks now and it's pure awesome. It's worth every penny.

</comment><comment><USER31> Looking at the features...I will upgrade when I get home.</comment>


Microsoft Displaying Ads in Powershell - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/brwb9h/new_nag_message_in_powershell/ <comment><USER2> "ads" as in recommending you get the next version of poweshell?

Not a huge thing of your ask me.

<comment><USER3> It's not really what I'd expect from a command line tool, quite the opposite in fact.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know where to bring this up. At this point it just feels like remote code execution. I filed an issue on PowerShell's github page. Please support me, maybe I can make my voice heard. I am tired of stuff like this. Notifications here and there, ads here and there.

[https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/10779](https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/10779)

I have been anoyed with my Android apps for a while now since every other update seems to change the UI randomly, I thought my shell was safe. This is not a desired piece of information, it is simply remote code execution. Somebody runs software on my computer and I don't get to decide what it is. I had Microsoft Teams installed, and now my shell is showing ads. If it wasn't for steam and photoshop, I wouldn't even run windows. So tired of your s __*, Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> This response feels very hyperbolic to me.

I can barley call this an ad, especially since the subject of the ad is free, open source and a successor product to the current one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Canonical has been doing this for ages now.

<comment><USER2> When?

They have a link to Amazon (it's not even an app, just a link) and that's about it.

<comment><USER6> * Kata Containers are now fully integrated in Charmed Kubernetes 1.16! Yes, charms take the Krazy out of K8s Kata Kluster Konstruction.

         https://ubuntu.com/kubernetes/docs/release-notes

     * Canonical Livepatch is available for installation.
       - Reduce system reboots and improve kernel security. Activate at:
         https://ubuntu.com/livepatch</comment></comment></comment>


An In-depth Look At Isilon's Scale-out Storage Solution (used by Apple) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/raising-your-tech-iq/2011/05/isilon-overview.ars

<comment><AUTHOR> Ars has stepped up its game.</comment>


Man in the Machine Argues Being an Asshole Was the Least of Steve Jobs's Flaws - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestranger.com/film/feature/2015/09/02/22794491/hatchet-jobs

<comment><USER2> Recommend anyone interested in this to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley. It's the only Jobs movie I recall Wozniak endorsing as accurate on overall events and personalities. Should be disturbing to Jobs fans given his portrayal:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG4DvM0wxdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG4DvM0wxdk)

Interesting part is that both Jobs and Gates were effectively psychopaths in action. In the movie, Jobs learned how to make people want what he made where Bill focused on making people need him. Interesting distinction. What do rest of you think about how accurate that was?</comment>


TOML for Modern C++ - <AUTHOR> https://marzer.github.io/tomlplusplus/ <comment><USER2> What are the advantages of this library over, say [https://github.com/ToruNiina/toml11](https://github.com/ToruNiina/toml11) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually tried using toml11 before writing toml++, and my main gripe with it was the complexity. It does a _lot_, and I found it to be pretty unergonomic to actually use.

That, and it's not as configurable (e.g. no support for exception-less).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a bit surprised by this snippet from the "Traversing and manipulating data" example:

      for (auto& elem : *arr) {
          // visitation helps deal with the polymorphic nature of TOML data
          elem.visit([=](auto&& el) noexcept
          {
              if constexpr (toml::is_number<decltype(el)>)
                  (*el)++;
              else if constexpr (toml::is_string<decltype(el)>)
                  el = "five"sv;
          });
      }

I thought constexpr would work at compile time but how can the compile here inside a loop "know" when this labmda will encounter an int or a string ?

<comment><USER4> It's tricky but I think visit is being passed a generic (templated) lambda, which is statically instantiated for each type that a node might be. (Once for int, once for string, etc) Since the type is static per template instantiation, constexpr works here.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the explanation!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hm, it looks like it is using things like std::vector and streams, etc.

So it does actually require exceptions and RTTI/still forces linkage against throwing functions, etc.

<comment><USER4> In no-exception builds, exceptions become crashes. RTTI is barely used anywhere in the STL.

As an example, Firefox uses STL without RTTI or exceptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > C++17

> Works with or without exceptions

Is anyone using C++17 features with exceptions disabled? I thought the "no exceptions" people were generally only using C++ as C-with-classes?

<comment><USER7> Yes, plenty, including Google.

If anything exceptions are declining in popularity, due to non-obvious and non-local effects.

Exceptions are an uber-goto, _that can jump outside entire functions._ Some people still like that, but very disciplined code bases (of which there are a lot in C++) tend to avoid them.

At the very least, utility libraries like this one tend to err on the side of most compatible: header only, no exceptions, user-chosen allocators, etc.

<comment><USER8> > Exceptions are an uber-goto, that can jump outside entire functions. Some > people still like that, but very disciplined code bases (of which there are > a lot in C++) tend to avoid them.

I've never heard discipline as a reason to be exceptionless, its always been performance related (specifically performance predictability).

<comment><USER7> Discipline can be mean strong performance too.

In any case, exceptions are really only a performance problem if there are frequent. [1] Modern compilers and machines have near zero overhead for unthrown exceptions and 20x the overhead of an if-else.

Chances are quite good that you have bigger performance problems than exceptions.

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13835817/are- exceptions-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13835817/are-exceptions- in-c-really-slow)

<comment><USER8> Like I said, performance predictability, not raw performance. if/else have predictable performance characteristics, while exceptions are fast usually and then occasionally very slow.

The idea being that in an area where you'd like performance to be predictable, even in cases of unexpected results, Sum types or if/else give the same performance all the time.

<comment><USER9> > Like I said, performance predictability, not raw performance.

Your argument makes absolutely no sense. Exceptions are used to handle exceptional events, the kind of stuff that would crash and shutdown your program. Exceptions are used to establish sanity checkpoints where any exceptional event can be caught and either recover from it or fail gracefully. Performance is measured on the happy path, and exceptions fall in the exact opposite of the happy path.

<comment><USER8> There are cases where you want exceptional performance to _also_ have predictable characteristics. I don't know why that doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't get why C++ programmers like to keep the namespace prefixes around. I'd just add lots of "using ..." statements and make my code more readable. What's the chance of conflicts anyway when you are already dealing with a tiny fraction of the code in the current file?

<comment><USER11> Besides the header issue mentioned in the sibling, sometimes the context is important too, for an example from Python, no one would `from os.path import join`— you always use `os.path.join` in its entirety.

<comment><USER12> :shrug: I've done that quite a bit. This randomly selected popular Python library does it, too[1]. The example for `os.walk` literally has `from os.path import join, getsize`[2]. The docs seem to back this up[3]:

"Remember, there is nothing wrong with using `from package import specific_submodule!` In fact, this is the recommended notation unless the importing module needs to use submodules with the same name from different packages."

I haven't dealt with a lot of C++ code but I feel like I see a lot of `using namespace ...` and haven't seen much `using ...;` (which I think is more readable/acceptable)

[1] [https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/df918c066fa275abc2bb0c9...](https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/df918c066fa275abc2bb0c960647dc064d136a01/requests/utils.py#L22)

[2] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.walk](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.walk)

[3] [https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/modules.html#importing- fr...](https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/modules.html#importing-from-a- package)</comment></comment></comment>


Unpaid Interns are Exploited? - <AUTHOR> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/05/unpaid_interns_are_exploited_105441.html

<comment><USER2> An internship should provide mutual advantage: the intern should learn skills or a body of knowledge he/she did not have before, the employer should get some work done, and perhaps have a chance to evaluate the intern for future hiring. I'd say it's fine not to pay a part-time intern who is given the chance to learn a lot.

"Please. A few years ago, my old employer, ABC, started paying our interns. That was good for well-connected students who got internships, but bad for those who were turned down. ABC cut the number of interns by more than half. There's no free lunch."

"Well-connected interns", then, replaced interns who could afford to work for no pay. Why do I doubt that the latter were less well connected.

"Minimum-wage law and union rules already killed off apprentice jobs on construction sites. Contractors say: If I must pay high union wages, I'll hire experienced workers. I'd lose money if I hired a kid and helped him learn on the job."

Contractors say, why should I pay union wages when I can pick up a guy at the Home Depot parking lot. Not quite the same thing.</comment>


FOSDEM 2018 – Live Streaming - <AUTHOR> https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/streaming/ <comment><USER2> This year it seems there are some official recordings on the FOSDEM channel: [https://www.youtube.com/user/fosdemtalks/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/fosdemtalks/videos)

I've also seen some unofficial stream dumps here: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYOPCKYceoPwLI-A7tck3wg/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYOPCKYceoPwLI-A7tck3wg/videos)

Enjoy the conference!

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone's interested, I'm doing a lighthearted fifteen-minute talk at 15:30 UTC tomorrow about how to do email validation (for signup forms and things like that).

Here's the link to the stream:

[https://live.fosdem.org/watch/k1105](https://live.fosdem.org/watch/k1105)

<comment><USER4> It was a great talk, it's in my top 3 of the weekend :)

<comment><USER3> Haha, thank you, I'm glad you liked it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a satirical summary of the agenda:

[http://n-gate.com/fosdem/2018/01/28/0/](http://n-gate.com/fosdem/2018/01/28/0/)

<comment><USER4> Apparently there's a "security check". I have to wonder what's being "secured".

<comment><USER6> Looks like a Referer header prank

<comment><USER7> A poorly implemented prank. :-( It's a permanent redirect, which browsers cache forever (or until you purge the cache).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tons of talks and the ones I heard today were really good.

<comment><USER9> And sadly tons of promising talks which are impossible to enter</comment></comment>


Regular-expression derivatives reexamined - <AUTHOR> http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/turon/re-deriv.pdf

<comment><USER2> Here's a short implementation (with explanation) in Scheme:

[http://matt.might.net/articles/implementation-of-regular- exp...](http://matt.might.net/articles/implementation-of-regular-expression- matching-in-scheme-with-derivatives/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how many of the HN members who vote up highly technical articles like this actually read them.

<comment><AUTHOR> The real hackers perhaps ;)

I think there are many computer science students on HN. They have been taught the standard but complicated Regex -> NFA -> DFA -> Minimal DFA construction in school. Generating almost optimal DFA's directly from regex by simple pattern matching on the structure of the regex may appeal to these students.

Anyway, I personally get much more out of technical articles than "fluff" philosophizing articles.</comment></comment>


U.S. Air Force Unveils Drone-Killing Microwave Weapon - <AUTHOR> https://taskandpurpose.com/air-force-thor-microwave-weapon <comment><USER2> > "Those tests, however, showed some limitations when integrating Raytheon's > system with other military technologies and battlefield tactics and > protocols, Hammett said. Raytheon has since invested more resources to > further develop its system, which could still be deployed in the future by > the military. "

Is this an indirect way of saying, "It'll disable our stuff too."?

<comment><USER3> There was some internet lore about patriot missiles being 'tricked' via consumer microwave ovens, with the doors opened, bypass switch activated, and powered w/ extension cords in the middle of a field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What makes this a specifically anti drone technology? Surely the electronic warfare community has been able to do directed EM pulses for long time, what stops it from being a generalized anti aircraft tool?

<comment><USER5> Range, I guess

<comment><USER6> There were a few vaporware corps that proposed ionizing atmosphere with an ultraviolet laser and then sending high voltage RF down that channel. It was supposed to be against cars but I imagine non-rad-hard electronics would find some induced currents troublesome.

<comment><USER7> That's where aluminum 'chemtrails' come into play, to create HE radio channels. [https://geopolitics.co/2015/04/03/chemtrail-pilot-blows- the-...](https://geopolitics.co/2015/04/03/chemtrail-pilot-blows-the-lid-off- operation-indigo-skyfold/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anti-drone guns exist. What is the difference? [https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2079045/chin...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2079045/chinese- police-force-equipped-anti-drone-guns)

<comment><USER9> Huge difference in power level, your link is to an RF jammer which would not work with drones using inertial or optical navigation, which is very practical for the short distance a drone needs to travel in sight of the target.

The original article shows what looks like a much more powerful system, that would induce high enough voltages/currents in the drone electronics to cause permanent damage, the same as if you put one in a microwave oven, they are really not comparable.

An interesting question would be how fast the original dish can turn, a slow traversal would very much limit its effectiveness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've put my toy drone in the microwave and can confirm that this technique works

<comment><USER11> This is off topic but if you put food in a small microwave then put the small microwave in a bigger microwave does the food cook faster?

<comment><USER12> > if you put food in a small microwave then put the small microwave in a > bigger microwave does the food cook faster?

No. The microwaves stay in the smaller microwave oven because it is a microwave-tight box. If you put that small microwave oven in a bigger microwave oven the bigger one will likely fry many of the component of the smaller one but the food inside the inner microwave oven is unlikely to be affected because the outer microwaves are unable to penetrate the inner microwave-tight box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how practical this actually is... There is of course almost no technical details provided but based on the dish this likely doesn't have more than a 30 degree beam width (and likely a smaller effective beam width).

It's impossible to tell from this video but the drone may need to stay in the beam for a certain amount of time before it gets taken out. I'm guessing this is more of a "we're heating the electronics beyond their operational capacity" than "we're inducing surges in the traces and overloading circuitry" kind of killing.

The video in that story shows it moving and it's not fast... Even a $50 toy drone can really cruise. So I'd question it's ability to track a moving target much less take out a swarm of them.

<comment><USER14> > I'm guessing this is more of a "we're heating the electronics beyond their > operational capacity" than "we're inducing surges in the traces and > overloading circuitry" kind of killing.

I suspect it's the opposite: very high-power but short duration microwave pulses that will induce sufficiently high voltages to blow insulation _somewhere_ important in the target device. I don't know enough about antenna/dish design to estimate what frequency band it operates in and the $15M price tag is low enough to rule out some of the really advanced microwave sources, but we could still potentially be looking at multi-MW pulses.

<comment><USER3> There was a demo some years ago about blue-screening a windows box via parts from a microwave oven at a decent distance.

I vaguely remember it being a Russian dude that also was making hydrochloric acid?

<comment><USER15> You may be referring to Kreosan?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One bullet from one drone, and the thing is a puff. It's more expensive to build than a drone? Why does this make sense?

<comment><USER17> The bullet has to connect with the drone, they can move very fast in a number of directions.

One bullet may not be enough unless it hit the flight computer.

When the navy shoots bullets at a incoming projectile, they pretty much create a wall of lead (Phalanx).

Even if you could shoot one bullet, one bullet could go through it and into the window of a high rise office building.

<comment><USER18> I believe the parent may be suggesting that one drone could take out the microwave weapon at a considerable cost imbalance between the two.

The answer to why it makes sense in that case, is that there are so few other viable alternatives to deal with swarms of drones (none currently).

<comment><USER16> > The answer to why it makes sense in that case, is that there are so few > other viable alternatives to deal with swarms of drones (none currently).

There are - if the AF was functional. Any viable alternative has to have the same form - low price, and distributed - from none of the Military contractors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Eventually we will see an air superiority war play out with drones the same way it did with fighter jets, although the drones are going to do far more insane maneuvers. The "Top Gun" dogfight scene for this era will be amazing.

<comment><USER20> I'm imagining massive fleets of coordinating drones fighting it out. More like a naval battle than a dog fight.

<comment><USER21> I suspect it'll actually become a war of attrition, won by whoever has the most industrial capacity on the ground to make more drones and supply their logistics.

Battles between adversaries of wildly different technological levels usually come down to whoever has the better technology. Battles between equal technological levels come down to whoever has better resources. Drone swarm vs. pilot isn't looking good for the pilots, but drone swarm vs. other drone swarm will probably go to whoever has the bigger drone swarm.

<comment><USER22> So China will always win by disallowing DJI exports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This system can be of good help in Gatwick like situations [1].

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england- sussex-46564814/p...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england- sussex-46564814/page/18)

<comment><USER24> My first thought as well. Though given strict safety requirements at airports I'm not sure how collateral damage from firing a microwave cannon around could be avoided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> No mention of power output anywhere I can find, so I guess that's classified?

It must be stupid high if they don't think "Oh, I guess we have to shield our electronics now..." is going to be a valid countermeasure.

<comment><USER26> Shielding costs money and will not be implemented on consumer drones. That means the cheapest/simplest options for would-be bad guys can be stopped by it. Also, if you shield a GPS antenna your simplest means of navigation won't work.

<comment><USER27> unless the shield IS the antenna

<comment><USER28> Help me understand how this makes sense, the antenna on most modern radios is directly connected to a front end amplifier, usually an extremely sensitive MOSFET circuit. The reason a Gaussian surface can block EMP from a circuit is because there's no conductive pathway into the part you don't want an EMP. When the shield is the antenna then the only part that can be hit by the EMP is one of the most fragile and sensitive ones.

I guess the idea is that once the drone reaches the enemy you can use an IMU for station keeping and expect GPS to get destroyed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR)

Oh come on...

<comment><USER30> I think it's safe to say a gift for wordplay is not high on the priority list of armed forces recruitment.

<comment><USER29> So why bother at all? Just give it some different name altogether.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I guess THPMOR didn't quite roll off the tongue, but dropping the PM makes no sense whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if this will become standard equipment at the airports.

<comment><USER33> Probably not. There'd be too much risk to planes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> No mention of range, seems pretty easy for drones just to use altitude. The drones could come in at 10,000 feet and drop whatever they came to deliver.

<comment><USER35> The type of drones this is talking about don't fly at 10,000 feet. There's a big difference between a predator and a DJI phantom with an IED strapped to it. That is really what this is meant to stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Url changed from [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18701267/us-air-force- tho...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18701267/us-air-force-thor-new- weapon-drone-swarms), which points to, and quotes from, this.

</comment><comment><USER37> What would happen if you wrapped the drone in tinfoil (leave only the blades out), or a metal sheet with holes like microwave doors?

<comment><USER38> For consumer drones, you wouldn't be able to communicate with the drone to control it or transmit any video or other data from it. Also, GPS or any other type of GNSS navigation wouldn't function.

<comment><USER39> What if you could communicate via optical laser between two drones that could relay information across the swarm? Especially when flying in a formation.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Family Plans and G Suite (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/play/86WVa8b_3i4 <comment><USER2> Um. I'm a legacy domain holder and I would never _ever_ have expected google to upgrade me to things like play family plan. It was clear the day they called me _legacy_ , what was happening.

It's still a sweet historic niche to be in.

But that feed:wow. Just.. wow. I stopped scrolling at "this is a human rights issue"</comment>


Ambit: In-Memory Accelerator for Bulk Bitwise Operations Using Commodity DRAM [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/pub/ambit-bulk-bitwise-dram_micro17.pdf <comment><USER2> Very interesting. At first, I thought this was pushing the processing closer to the data with some new special CPU logic inside the DRAM. I'm not sure, but it seems to be available in out of the box current memory.

The fact that Intel + NVidia are present in the paper is very exciting too. Does this mean we could see the improvements with a simple software update?

This end of 2017 and start of 2018 is very weird. We got industry-wide performance degradation with meltdown, and now we are seeing industry-wide performance upgrade with another hardware trick!

<comment><USER3> Huh? If I'm not mistaken, Ambit is not a new development. I remember reading about it. (or at least some other commodity DRAM bitwise accelerator)

<comment><USER4> Twenty years ago, Sun had special RAM in their Elite3D cards to do write-only alpha blending and z-buffering (saturated updates), instead of the much slower read-modify-write: one PCI write instead of one read + CPU computation + one write. That might have been UPA or even Sbus instead of PCI, but you get the idea. ATI and E&S later used it, too.

[http://www.michaelfrankdeering.com/Projects/HardWare/p3DRAM/...](http://www.michaelfrankdeering.com/Projects/HardWare/p3DRAM/p3DRAM.html)

This looks like a variant of the Sun/Mitsubishi work, after a quick skim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having RAM chips being able to do bzero() internally would give a general speedup in a pretty wide range of applications. Might help security with cheap zero-on-free too.

<comment><USER6> malloc and free could also be hardcoded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminiscent of HPE's comment at the In-Memory Compute Summit September 2017 - GSI's PIM paper would be interesting with a few changes. Also persistent memory will be announced most probably in May time frame which is required with GSI's which requires a non-destructive Read...,

</comment><comment><USER3> As an unrelated sidenote, I feel really bad for Onur Mutlu, his thesis, Runahead execution, basically became a giant attack vector thanks to Spectre (and also perhaps Meltdown).

<comment><USER8> I don't think speculation is dead, but I do think the MMU/L1/L2 system will be turned on its head.

It needed to anyway for cloud workloads. The peer guest VMs should have never been able to flush my caches. Modern CPUs are still designed for DOS with some extra cruft tacked on the side.

<comment><USER9> Meltdown is fairly well handled (per-process tagging of TLB entries and the separate kernel vs userspace top-level mappings solves the problem without much perf impact).

For Spectre the problem is ultimately a failure to completely roll-back processor state. I don't want to downplay the complexity but the state of the cache needs to be tracked and if speculative execution triggered loading of cache lines where the speculation was incorrect then those cache lines need to be thrown away, effectively rolling back the cache. That shouldn't have a huge performance impact but it seems to require new CPU designs.

<comment><USER10> Intel CAT (Cache Allocation Technology) and similar helps a bit by subdividing the cache between trust zones. So if you have two VMs rented by different tenants and you have set up CAT to isolate them then they shouldn't be able to interfere with each other. Of course CAT only covers the lowest layer of cache so there may be still be attacks on stuff in L1/L2.

Edit: Paper on this subject: [http://palms.ee.princeton.edu/system/files/CATalyst_vfinal_c...](http://palms.ee.princeton.edu/system/files/CATalyst_vfinal_correct.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robot Operating System 2.0: Ardent Apalone Release - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ros2/ros2/releases/tag/release-ardent <comment><USER2> Good to see that coming out the door. It's still in beta, though.

They need to get their act together and get this into the standard Ubuntu repositories for installation using the standard GUI tools. Or install into non-system folders. ROS is notorious for breaking Ubuntu auto-updating because of bad packaging.

I tried following their instructions, and the install didn't happen because, for some reason, their repository wasn't recognized. Don't have time to fix this; will wait until they're out of beta.

ROS has historically been such an install pain that some people install it in a Docker container. That has its own headaches.

<comment><USER3> I haven't used ROS in two years but it was such a painful experience at the time. We were stuck on an old, old build because we found that some of the drivers we used didn't work on anything newer. I spent so much time trying different Ubuntu versions paired with different ROS versions.

And this was with pretty popular consumer hardware. I can't imagine the experience with anything exotic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did they fix the build system or are they still going to use the weird catkin build system? I read the article, but it didn't mention it. I ask, because it has been consistently the most difficult part of using ROS for myself and everyone I know. Alternatively, is the difficulty I've experienced more of an indication of build systems being complicated things?

<comment><USER5> They are moving to ament. [http://design.ros2.org/articles/ament.html](http://design.ros2.org/articles/ament.html)

I think a lot of the difficulty is in the build system being federated. This makes it complex as it supports multiple build other systems for other ROS packages. I haven't looked into it much yet, but I'm curious about ROS 2 also supporting ROS on smaller micros now. I think this would make the build system more complex.

Modifying the how the devel space is handled seems like an improvement and making it more modular seems like it should help though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Changelog between ros 1 and ros 2 here [http://design.ros2.org/articles/changes.html](http://design.ros2.org/articles/changes.html), and you can find the general explanation for ros 2 design here [http://design.ros2.org/](http://design.ros2.org/)

<comment><USER7> As a lead developer in a ROS-based project, I'm not sure whether we'll adopt ROS2 in a couple of years or abandon it altogether. It seems like with ROS2 supporting integrated CMake builds will be a lot more difficult, and in our company we strongly prefer monorepos and integrated builds due to ease of debugging and optimization.

On the other hand, ROS2 aims to provide RTOS support and pluggable transport layers, which are rather serious benefits.

Also, their decision to abandon XML-based roslaunch is the right one: we had to roll out our own startup infrastructure as well, as it's much more convenient to have a definite init order with sequential checks and waits e.g. for hardware availability.

<comment><USER5> I think a lot of work has been undertaken for a ROS1->2 bridge. It should be feasible to use this to have ROS on a micro and bridge to an existing ROS 1 code base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone played with the RTOS implementation? I used ROS a ton for my thesis but was always left longing for true real time actions. I'd love to hear the story of someone who has tried to do a real project with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Why ROS 2.0? > [http://design.ros2.org/articles/why_ros2.html](http://design.ros2.org/articles/why_ros2.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> ROS = Robot Operating System</comment>


Passwords stolen in Rate My Professors data breach - <AUTHOR> http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/securityFAQs <comment><USER2> This is completely unacceptable. 1) they were storing passwords and 2) they were keeping an old database with sensitive information around that should have been deleted if it were no longer being used. You haven't seen indications that they altered professor ratings on your site? Who cares? What about the fact that email addresses and passwords are now in the hands of criminals? Companies really need to start being held responsible for the results of their lacklustre security efforts.

</comment><comment><USER3> > These hackers acquired email addresses and passwords for some registered > users of the active RateMyProfessors.com website ("Site"). We have not seen > indications that the compromised information has been used without > authorization or that ratings submitted to the Site were implicated in the > incident.

So passwords that likely match most of the email account passwords were stored in plaintext then...?</comment>


Why We Think GoLang Is Ready for Early Stage Startups - <AUTHOR> http://jellolabs.com/blog/why-golang-is-ready-for-early-stage-startups.html

<comment><USER2> I think it's fine that you're using Go. Lots of developers use it personally and would like to use it professionally, so you're going to have an advantage when hiring.

However, I'll say that some of your "cons" of using Go are pretty huge cons that all add up to lots of lost time:

\- "not as many libraries" is a huge time waster because you'll be writing lots of libs that exist in mature alternatives like Python. It's generally preferable for your coding time to be as specific to the project as possible. In Node, for example, 90%+ of my code is not reusable in other projects because there are so many libraries available.

\- "none of us is a seasoned Go developer" is again a big time suck. I think it's really cool that your team is learning Go professionally, but it's going to make you slower.

\- "migrating our early prototype to Go" seems painful.

But considering there are two Tisch's on your team, I'm guessing funding (and therefore time) are not a huge problem for you. I can certainly see the appeal of being to Go what Twitter was to Scala, except much earlier and more cheaply.

Anyway, I like Go and am looking forward to seeing what you guys put up on Github!</comment>


Twitter's heavy handed handling of data breach highlights industry fears - <AUTHOR> https://www.verdict.co.uk/twitter-password-change-a-jumpy-anxious-digital-communications-industry/ <comment><USER2> A log file with plain text passwords can be seen by some employees: maybe they are all honest, maybe not. I guess that a generous amount of money could motivate the right employee to disclose famous (and not) people's passwords.

<comment><USER3> You mention the carrot, there are sticks too - blackmail, threats, physical violence.

I can imagine that in a not so distant future, people will think twice before joining Twitter, FB, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is not really heavy handed. It is what it should be.</comment>


Duckling: a Clojure library that parses text into structured data - <AUTHOR> https://duckling.wit.ai/ <comment><USER2> The thing that I like about Duckling is that it is a rules based system, which can easily be interrogated. Model based text extraction is much harder to fix when there is a bug. I use Duckling as a service in value extraction from queries and content alongside a model based system for NER (such as spaCy). Using both together makes for more accurate enrichment in general (by cross referencing between the two for values, and adding exception rules)

<comment><USER3> It's exactly how we used it internally for wit.ai

(Very small correction: Duckling is rule-based but uses a super simple Naive Bayes classifier to prioritize between the many potential parses produced by the rules -- we see it as a hybrid approach)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hello HN, I'm the original author of Duckling (with @blandinw). As usual, always happy to get feedback and suggestions.

<comment><USER4> I must say it looks very eat from the point of view of usability. Are the training data sets open? Do you see feasible for small app coders (who don't have thousands of examples to train) to use Duckling as more or less NLP parser without getting too much deep into the NLP and AI theory?

Are the trained sets mean to be used by different client code or languages?

<comment><USER3> Yes all the training data is in the repo.

Duckling is relevant to parse very structured language, typically temporal expressions (dates and times...). It relies on a mix of rules and machine learning. Rules and datasets for many (human) languages are available in the repo. You don't need a lot of data to add support for what you need, owing to this hybrid rules+ML approach (as opposed to just ML).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a Haskell library now. [https://github.com/facebook/duckling](https://github.com/facebook/duckling)

<comment><USER6> I came here to mention the same thing. I experimented with the Clojure version a long while ago, and evaluated the Haskell version about a year ago for a project at work. Good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Glad to see there life beyond python for corporative AI usage.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14239942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14239942)

</comment><comment><USER8> You're a bit late to the party…</comment>


Comparing the security of voting schemes (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.attejuvonen.fi/thesis/ <comment><USER2> Excellent article, I had a bias to in person voting and had not heard of in person voting with "Floating Receipts" before. I thought this was a receipt indicating only that the voter had voted, I did not realize this apparently involves taking home a ballot from another (unknown) voter!?

The only reference I could quickly find to this "Floating Receipt" concept was: [https://static.usenix.org/event/evt07/tech/full_papers/rives...](https://static.usenix.org/event/evt07/tech/full_papers/rivest/rivest_html/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks (OP here). Floating Receipts hasn't really had the attention it deserves. Very few papers discuss it, even though it's very simple and has excellent security properties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool stuff, you have my vote.</comment>


Web 3.0: The Semantic Web, a short film - <AUTHOR> http://kateray.net/film <comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was really interesting that Slava from RethinkDB mentioned in his recent O'Reilly talk that the Semantic Web is something that people don't really care about.

I was shocked; I think it's _everything_.

The Semantic Web is the big nut. Just because we don't have a way to crack it yet, doesn't diminish it in terms of its importance. This video helps to hint at why that is and what's at stake.

<comment><USER2> I just don't think people will be willing to add the semantic data. Instead of the semantic web, I think we will see more and more services that can extract information automatically.

For example, if you tweet or blog about a place, it seems doable to automatically realize that it is a place. You don't have to tweet "Going to <semantic:place>Joe's Bar</semantic:place>". From knowing your default location, a clever computer could recognise "Joe's Bar" as a place, because your city has a place called "Joe's Bar".

I think there are already examples of this cropping up here and there (and Yahoo has a service for places you can use).

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't disagree more. I see your viewpoint, but I think think that's extrapolating based on our current perspective -- initiatives like LinkedData, which don't work.

If you give people a tool that can do it clearly, flexibly and easily, they will blow your mind.

<comment><USER2> What is the incentive for people to do it? It is work, so they should get something in return.

Maybe SEO for Google, ie if Google said "we'll improve your rank dramatically if you included semantic data". But even then - it would be an enormous amount of work to update all (or the majority of web sites).

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would they do it? To be found.

There are over a trillion web sites. Why did people put in so much work? Because they had something that they wanted to be found/seen/known by someone else.

The semantic web, in the form that it will come in, won't be nearly that much work. Instead of each business creating a web site, they'll just fill out the data of what makes them what they are and what makes them unique.

There are a trillion textual web sites, nearly all created in the last 15 years, most of which don't need to exist. My prediction: Very soon, they won't.

Edit: I'm _not_ talking about current initiatives like LinkedData. If the SW would only come like that, I would agree with you.

<comment><USER3> I think your reasoning about why people make web pages is error-prone.

Just another node on a semantic graph is not what anybody wants to be, otherwise the web would be populated with HTML 1.0 pages. It's not like making one of those is much harder than filling out a semantic form.

> most of which don't need to exist.

Who says that? I think my page on mauve socks should certainly exist. There's an awful lot of stuff like that on the web. And the SW is no more useful for finding that than search is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just shared the video on Twitter and LinkedIn. Great, informative video, if you ask me. It depicts both points of view.

However, I do agree that the word "semantic" has become too much of a buzzword and most people aren't really aware of it's true meaning.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well done short documentary on the promise and problems of the semantic web. A lot of familiar names interviewed on the topic. Berners-Lee, Shirky, etc.</comment>


"Chip and PIN is broken" - <AUTHOR> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/banking/nopin/oakland10chipbroken.pdf

<comment><USER2> Chip and PIN (EMV) is the main payment protocol for credit transactions in Europe. It is a big deal. The problem is that the cardholder authentication step is not properly tied to the bank authorization. Instead the bank only finds out "verification succeded" without knowing which type of verification was used (signature or PIN).

In particular, the MITM between the card and terminal does not interfere until the Terminal tries to send the PIN to the card. It blocks this message and instead says:

(As Card) "Dear Terminal, the entered PIN is ok"

(As Terminal) "Dear Card, let's assume I took a signature and continue straight on to authorizing the transaction"

I think the best decision would have been for the card to include the authentication method as part of the MAC for the transaction (PIN, signature, etc.) In particular, if the TVR message had the auth type requested (not just error codes), it would be MACd in the ARQC message and the bank could verify if the Terminal is lying in saying the card verified the PIN ok.

</comment><comment><USER3> This submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118659>

links to the web site version which is here:

[http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/11/chip-and- pin-i...](http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/11/chip-and-pin-is- broken/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, didn't see that.

<comment><USER3> You're welcome. I have a knack for spotting duplicates. Some call it useful, others call it incredibly irritating.

<comment><USER4> Upvoted, because I find it to be both.

<comment><USER3> Thank you - you made me smile.

However, I refer you to this comment and its parents: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1122023>

I'm not going to bother flagging such duplication any more. Even though I find it frustrating to see conversations split across effectively duplicate submissions, it will continue to happen, and I'm just wasting time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SAS clone maker World Programming wins court case against SAS - <AUTHOR> http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2010/1829.html

<comment><USER2> Select parts:

[on an assertion by the expert witness of SAS] That evidence was capable of seriously misleading a non-technical judge.

[judge doing fact checking from Wikipedia] In my judgment the SAS Language is a programming language. I am comforted by the fact that this assessment coincides not only with SAS Institute's own assessment in paragraph 6 of its Particulars of Claim and in its literature, but also with that of the anonymous author of the entry for "SAS language" in Wikipedia...

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow; read a bit of this just to get an idea of how stylistically different in presentation the judgments of US and U.K. courts are.</comment>


8 Reasons Why Your Parents Shouldn't Be Your Facebook Friend - <AUTHOR> http://www.shaanhaider.com/2011/08/8-reasons-why-your-parents-shouldnt-be.html

<comment><USER2> Wow.</comment>


HTML5 Video: Get Used to Multiple Formats - <AUTHOR> http://www.webvanta.com/post/129278-html5-video-br-get-used-to-multiple

<comment><AUTHOR> currently two other related HTML5 posts that went up over the weekend: HTML5: Over-Hyped or the Next Big Thing? <http://bit.ly/beu8pw> Video That Plays Everywhere: HTML5 + Flash <http://bit.ly/bDRZgU></comment>


Heated Ski Jacket Uses Breakthrough Carbon-Based Grahene for Heat w/o Bulk - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbgoxg.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Found this on ProductHunt - Looks super lightweight and a fresh take on the old ski jacket concept.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use any productivity tools across your whole company? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> For personal task management I use Nextcloud Tasks integrated with macOS Reminders and Android. With Nextcloud I've also integrated OnlyOffice for document editing and collaboration and for project management I use Wekan. All self hosted together with other stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Excel is a pretty good candidate for this. I've seen a lot of spreadsheets used to automate tasks written by folks who don't have programming experience.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Curious if people have company-wide productivity tools which simplify repetitive daily tasks - regardless of whether it's a vendor product or built in-house.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes Jira

</comment><comment><USER5> This post was dead for no obvious reason — new account, I guess? — so I vouched it.

<comment><AUTHOR> New account, yes. Thanks</comment></comment>


Women Who Code Moves Global HQ from SF to Atlanta with Help from Home Depot - <AUTHOR> https://hypepotamus.com/news/women-who-code-moves-hq-atlanta/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a great move. It will serve other industries which don't get the same press and accolades as SV. Also, it's just nice to see some geographical diversification in these efforts. And, plus, much better pries for housing and office space

<comment><USER3> And away from the toxic social atmosphere in California too, which seems to be the source of a lot of the workplace misogyny complaints and even never-ending dating scene of doom that I hear about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congratulations on the move. I've been working in tech for a decade in Atlanta and have always been impressed with the diversity here.</comment>


Google Reader may very well rise again… as part of Google+ - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/google-reader-will-rise-again-as-part-of-google/

<comment><USER2> Sure</comment>