Read the TPP - <AUTHOR> https://www.readthetpp.com/ <comment><USER2> I opened this page up, skipped forward to the first highlighted section (18. Intellectual Property), and skimmed to the first annotation. The original text:

 _1\. A Party may, in formulating or amending its laws and regulations, adopt measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development, provided that such measures are consistent with the provisions of this Chapter._

The annotation:

 _In other words, the TPP overrides any domestic laws protecting public health and nutrition, or socio-economic development._

That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself.

I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Instead, it's annotated by the CTO of Fight For The Future. I'm not sure that's a win.

<comment><USER3> > That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign > governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims > against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary > to the agreements in the TPP itself.

Isn't this just semantics though? If you can use economic force (damage claims against the governments themselves), its just as effective as using executive/legislative force to "override" local law [1].

> I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts.

Luckily, they can! It's on Github. Its just a matter of finding legal experts willing to mark it up.

[1] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and- feat...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/big- tobacco-puts-countries-on-trial-as-concerns-over-ttip-deals- mount-9807478.html)

<comment><USER2> No, it's not just semantics. The plain wording of the annotation, by one of the site's sponsors, is that the TPP "overrides local laws". It does not.

The equivalence between allowing a trade treaty to literally rewrite our laws and allowing a trade treaty to settle economic claims is not at all clear to me.

This does not seem like a minor detail.

<comment><USER4> What exactly would be the point of finding the host government except to get them to change their laws?

<comment><USER2> Think about it in the abstract.

Country X and country Y are trading partners.

Country X wants concession A from Y, who in turn wants concession B from X. They agree to trade concessions and encode it in a treaty.

For several years, X and Y enjoy the economic benefits of those concessions.

Then X passes a law that vitiates, say, 50% of the economic benefit of concession B. It is now free-riding off Y; Y is giving it concession A, but X is only giving 50% of concession B owing to the law that contravenes the treaty.

Y is entitled to make a claim for damages. _Not_ to change the law (treaties don't work that way), but rather to make and resolve the argument of the form "I am giving you (A) and you're only giving me 0.5(B); make up the difference in cash."

<comment><USER5> So we're establishing a property-like right to a profit in perpetuity, and if the product in question is found to be harmful the seller is entitled to compensation?

[http://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2015/dec/18/austra...](http://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2015/dec/18/australia-wins-international-legal-battle-with-philip-morris- over-plain-packaging)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_v._Uruguay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_v._Uruguay)

That's how the "concession" will pay out in practice.

 _Y is entitled to make a claim for damages_

Your example is slightly off. In the TPP, it's not the countries that are parties to the treaty that are suing, but individual businesses.

(There are plenty of treaties that oblige the passing of laws directly, as a means of implementing the treaty; everything from the Montreal convention on air passenger compensation to NAFTA)

<comment><USER6> Edit: Oops, I misread your comment.

 _Party means any State or separate customs territory for which this Agreement is in force;_

[https://www.readthetpp.com/ch01.html](https://www.readthetpp.com/ch01.html)

Too bad they don't have anchors for significant sections/items, I'd direct link the definition of "Party" given in the treaty. But the text I quoted is on that page there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Citizen's Trade organized 1,500 groups to sign a letter to the US Congress, against the TPP, [http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2016/01/07/1500-groups...](http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2016/01/07/1500-groups- urge-congress-to-oppose-the-tpp/)

 _"... the TPP elevates investor rights over human rights and democracy, threatening an even broader array of public policy decisions than described above. This, unfortunately, is the all-too-predictable result of a secretive negotiating process in which hundreds of corporate advisors had privileged access to negotiating texts, while the public was barred from even reviewing what was being proposed in its name.

The TPP does not deserve your support. Had Fast Track not become law, Congress could work to remove the misguided and detrimental provisions of the TPP, strengthen weak ones and add new provisions designed to ensure that our most vulnerable families and communities do not bear the brunt of the TPP's many risks. Now that Fast Track authority is in place for it, Congress is left with no means of adequately amending the agreement without rejecting it entirely. We respectfully ask that you do just that."_

</comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a perfect proof of concept for genius.com if they're serious about becoming a way to annotate anything (not just songs).

[1] [http://genius.com/web-annotator](http://genius.com/web-annotator)

<comment><USER9> I believe this has already been started.

[http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp- negot...](http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-negotiating- parties)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great and all and is something that should absolutely be shared, however, if the intent behind this project is to share it with 'the average' person it's completely useless. No one's going to read through that entire thing, I'd expect them to at least put up a summarized version.

<comment><USER11> We should hire someone to do the summaries for us. And since they'll already understand it, we should have them vote for or against it based on our best interest.... wait...

<comment><USER12> except that we don't have that. we have representatives that have piles of money from corporations and special interests. these piles of money on the two sides of the scale are what drive any decision around voting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There really should be a stronger push to scrap this undemocratic monstrosity.

<comment><USER3> Have you called your congressional representatives to voice your opinion? If not, do so!

<comment><USER13> I did write to them, multiple times (and even got a response from one of them that they oppose it, which interestingly changed form the past). I'll give a call as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Read the TPP_.. Skipped right to the HN comments about the TPP.

<comment><USER15> It doesn't matter what the TPP actually says, or how that relates to the status quo. All that matters is that you are outraged about it, and you're angry and you're not going to take it for one more second. Whatever it is.

<comment><USER16> I am legitimately pissed that the entire treaty was negotiated behind closed doors and we the people won't get any say about something that will have a big impact on the joined economies.

<comment><USER17> There's no other sane way to negotiate large international treaties. The moment you open it to the public tens of thousands of political advocacy groups, lobbying groups, interest groups, protesters, etc from each country start yelling about all the things they want changed. You can't negotiate if your needs keep changing or are conflicting.

Whether we like it or not the TPP really is the "gold standard" of international treaties. Unfortunately it turns out no treaty at all is probably better anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is what happens when you try to visit this site with Tor: [https://anonm.gr/up/b386.png](https://anonm.gr/up/b386.png)

Cloudflare's captchas are nearly impossible to solve, which means that Tor users are effectively blocked from seeing the site. Would you consider using something other than Cloudflare to host the site?

<comment><USER19> When that happens I always just click "New Tor Circuit for this Site" repeatedly, until I get one of the other two forms of CAPTCHA, both of which are solveable.

<comment><USER18> I tried that, but I never got an easier captcha even after many attempts.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, it can take quite a while sometimes, but eventually I always get one. For this site I got an easy one on the second try.

I used to try to solve the hard ones, but I found I could not do it; it's most often impossible to guess what _all_ the letters are in the garbled mess with inverted blobs on top. From your example, I _think_ it's supposed to be "Thtllyt nthrwhyy", but I'm usually wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the positive benefit of this effort will likely be undermined (and it's already underway) by reactionary comments from uninformed people. They'll play well to people that already know the TPP sucks, but not from those on the fence or really wanting to learn about it.

</comment><comment><USER21> A brief question: should I know what this is if I'm not an USA citizen?

<comment><USER7> If you're one of 800 million people in the 13 countries which have signed the TPP, then your local laws will be revised to implement the TPP.

<comment><USER21> So, there isn't anything worth spending time understanding it for the outside viewer? Only for those who live inside this "TPP club" and care about local laws?

<comment><USER7> In Europe, there is TTIP. In Asia, there is RCEP. The three agreements regulate similar goods.

There is also TiSA, which covers services in 50 countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is ridiculous that after months of Obama telling people to "just read it", he dumped the agreement as ~268 separate PDFs.

No body has time for that. It's nice that they have pared this down to 31 different sections, but my guess is that they are not showing the full agreement here.

It would be much nicer if someone just dumped it all into a single PDF and HTML file.

Edit: Care to leave a comment rationalizing your downmods?

<comment><USER23> "He" didn't dump the agreement as separate PDFs; that's how these things are almost always handled because most people involved are focused on specific areas (be they negotiators, interest groups, or concerned citizens). Other governments published the text in exactly the same way [1].

The USTR also published the full text on Medium [2] for anyone who doesn't want to download a PDF.

There are plenty of issues worth discussing when it comes to the text itself and the way the original negotiations were conducted, but arguing that the final agreement hasn't been made accessible is really not a legitimate complaint.

[1] [https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty- makin...](https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty-making- process/trans-pacific-partnership-tpp/text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership) [2] [https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership](https://medium.com/the- trans-pacific-partnership)

<comment><USER22> [0] [https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership](https://medium.com/the- trans-pacific-partnership)

Authorship is claimed as "Barack Obama", @PresidentObama. [1] [https://medium.com/@PresidentObama](https://medium.com/@PresidentObama) (Even includes an avatar of Obama's face.)

[2] [https://ustr.gov/tpp/](https://ustr.gov/tpp/) The top header claims "Executive Office of The President".

[3] [https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade- agreements/tran...](https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade- agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text) Also claims "Executive Office of the President".

The US Constitution only grants treaty making powers to the President. Any treaty that claims to come from someone other than the current US President is not and cannot be a valid treaty.

Edit: "That's why I am posting the text of this agreement here for you to read and explore." (Authorship Claim: Barack Obama) [4]

[4] [https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s- the-...](https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s-the-deal-the- text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership-103adc324500#.6tyhpo5qc)

Edit2: Will soon be lobbying HN to publish all downmods.

<comment><USER24> SNAP! *

* There goes what little karma I had

<comment><USER22> ?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intel Develops Programming Language For Multi-Core Computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/development/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208403616 As Intel (INTC) and rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) increase computer performance by adding cores to microprocessors, software makers are left with the daunting task of writing applications that take full advantage of the complex environment. Intel hopes to lend a hand through a new programming language -- called Ct -- the chipmaker has developed specifically for multi-core computing. <comment><USER2> _Intel has yet to decide whether to release the language to the open source community or take another route in distributing it. "We have the technology in place, so it's now about adoption," Rajagopalan said._

I'll make a bold prediction: if they _don't_ open-source it, it'll be effectively stillborn.

I have to admit, I'm not particularly impressed with what I've seen of Ct so far. As far as I can tell, they've essentially introduced some SIMD-esque data structures that have multithreaded operations. This looks passable for numerical code, but limited to one machine. Maybe they can make a compiler smart enough to spread the load over a cluster, but I'm not holding my breath. The people I've met who do this kind of numerical stuff would never trust a compiler to do the parallelisation for them anyway.

For the 95%+ of software out there that's not bottlenecked on vector/matrix processing, this doesn't look promising. Besides, who is going to switch back to a C/C++-like language that can't be compiled with existing tools and will require some porting?

</comment><comment><USER3> _Most C/C++ programmers should be able to pick up Ct quickly, since less than 5% of the language will be new, according to Rajagopalan._

Obviously written by a non-coder; because 5% new/changed keywords is HUGE. And _learning_ the keywords isn't the problem, it's knowing how and when to use them. Every modern (real) language has multi-threading support (albeit not as described in the article), just most people don't know how to use it.

At any rate, it uses a runtime environment. If I wanted multi-threaded code that uses a runtime environment, I'd turn to C# or Java, not Ct. What Intel _should_ have focused on (in addition to the extension to the language's own library) is making pure compile-time changes to the language that enable such features, not mixed compile/run-time platforms.

<comment><USER4> Ct seems to be similar to MapReduce. So you would need a run-time in order to dynamically load-balance the calculations to the individual processor cores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not open-sourcing the project is a huge miss.

Being able to program against multiple cores/processors/machines is one of the biggest "unsolved" problems facing us right now.

Intel could make itself a real brand boost by embracing external developers, especially if you plan on hacking C/C++.

<comment><USER6> _Being able to program against multiple cores/processors/machines is one of the biggest "unsolved" problems facing us right now._

It's not much of a problem if you use correctly use multithreading. See also: Erlang

<comment><USER7> "if you use correctly use multithreading" Good luck doing that 100% of the time!

As for Erlang, I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant for numerical calculations, and since it's interpreter, it can't really be used for all real-time apps. Although it's process model is novel, the implementation might not be perfect for everything right now. Correct me if I'm wrong on this (which I might well be, since I have not spent too much time writing Erlang code.)

I think what the parent meant is that writing multithreaded programs easily and quickly (not to mention bug-free) is hard, hard enough to be called a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here a more technical link on Ct: <http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/Tera-Scale/1514.htm>

</comment><comment><USER9> Cray has also developed a new language for parallel programming <http://chapel.cs.washington.edu/>

</comment><comment><USER10> When will they move beyond C/C++?</comment>


Who's Right? The Debate Between Two Major Groups of AI Scientists - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ai-revolution/who-s-right-8870778dd408#.ybmg7rrxf <comment><USER2> I think that a major issue overlooked in discussions like these is the effect of how _interesting_ an idea is.

I could tell you that computing in 2029 is going to be more interconnected, more ubiquitous, with more surveillance and more ads -- but otherwise about the same. Or Ray Kurzweil could tell you that the future is going to be _amazing_!!! He is offered thousands of dollars to speak to crowds, gets book deals, etc. I am not. Because what he is saying is much more interesting than what I am saying.

But that does not mean that what he is saying is more likely to be true. What we have here is a battle of ideas where the best clickbait gets a huge advantage.

Not that this means Kurzweil is wrong, either. But it's something to keep in mind.</comment>


Processor Utilization Difference Between IBM AIX and Linux on Power - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-processor-utilization-difference-aix-lop-trs/index.html <comment><USER2> All I know is that we once had to temporarily move a cvs repository from a brand new and crazy expensive pSeries 660 (?) running AIX to a really old and retired Pentium III laptop that we had found in a drawer and installed linux on. This was almost 15 years ago, but the laptop was easily 3 years old at that time - possibly older and positively not a 4 or 6 core server with gigabytes of ram and a big SCSI raid array.

The linux laptop was then connected to a well used wan-connection in another location, and we tunneled to it using ssh, instead of just accessing it on the 100 mbit lan, and sent out an apologetic email notifying the developers that things would be really slow until we had sorted things out with the AIX systems. ( They had to be moved to another location.)

We found to our surprise that the throughput dramatically improved and checkout times where reduced to almost nothing compared to the AIX machine it usually ran on.

Now, maybe CVS is an exceptionally bad workload for AIX or something, but I doubt that it's an uncommon workload. AIX might possibly scale to more CPUs efficiently, but it was a clear disappointment nevertheless.

<comment><USER3> It's entirely possible back in those days that you had a tiny LPAR (VM) for your CVS data on a big pSeries box that was shared with a bunch of other resources.

On top of that, it wasn't uncommon to connect those tiny LPARs to shared storage RAID arrays with hundreds of machines on the same array, and allocate them a tiny chunk of two or three disks, and deal with all the contention there.

During that time period, I worked for a hot second at EMC, and was always fascinated to see these types of configurations - where it was very clear you could get MUCH better price/performance by buying Linux pizza boxes and connecting them to local storage - but back in those days it was not acceptable at big companies to do that.

On the flip side, those pSeries and high-end Sun boxes _screamed_ when they were optimized for high I/O and high performance workloads. 15 years ago, and you'd see clusters of these pSeries boxes processing 400k-500k writes/second and up on Oracle and DB2. Truly impressive stuff for 2000 & 2001.

<comment><USER2> Hm, no not really. The cvs daemon had the whole machine for itself.

<comment><USER4> Hm, bullshit. Seriously.

<comment><USER2> Seriously not bullshit.

To be fair it can be due to a crappy cvs port or related to something that cvs do that does not work well on the non-unixy memmory mapped io model on AIX.

<comment><USER4> I've used AIX since it ran on the RT. I've used CVS since a buddy said "hey...this guy has some shell scripts that work better than SCCS" (i.e. the late 80s). I've done OS performance analysis for decades. I'm quite clear on how those boxes perform. Quit doubling down on the bullshit that an unloaded 660 with server class I/O is outperformed by a mobile P3 cramming data down a laptop IDE bus. It never happened. What happened is something like what mattzito described and you just have no idea how real systems are deployed and managed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once upon a time a customer asked why Linux was more efficient on the same Power hardware than AIX. IBM assigned a customer engineer to write a paper explaining this, making sure that IBM's own product looked good no matter what.

This paper may or may not mean anything else.

<comment><USER6> Back at my last employer when we were looking at setting a new server standard platform. I once got pulled into an all-day meeting with our IBM rep and a contingent of IBM sales guys from the Power division and another contingent of IBM Intel server guys. It was pretty comical listening to their conflicting sales pitches and the side conversations during the breaks where the IBM Power guys would bad-mouth the IBM Intel guys and vice versa when the others were out of the room.

I also had some interesting conversations with some of the Websphere product team at the IBM lab in Toronto where they told us "off the record" that we'd get better performance running Websphere Commerce Server on Linux vs AIX according to their internal tests and that they develop first for Linux and port to AIX.

I've always liked AIX and found the tools and overall experience very solid. It's just so darn expensive to scale and maintain it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As true or not true as this may be, it's worth pointing out:

The users are highly likely to continue to measure things the wrong way, and come up with the wrong answers, until you change the way you display numbers.

Regardless of the good or bad reasons[1], telling users to stop reading the numbers and comparing them never works in practice.

[1]they say: "PURR- and SPURR- based processor utilization were introduced. This helps better in the CAPEX planning and actual performance expectation in the SMT8 mode when compared to the single-threaded mode.". I'm not sure i would ever use these numbers directly for capex planning, but okay .....

</comment><comment><USER8> so.. a Unix operating system that IBM developed specifically for the rs6000/pseries/power8 servers runs better than Linux. shocking.. even more shocking that the article is hosted on IBM's own site to tell us so.

obviously, AIX has existed longer than Linux, so it's code maturity is better. Linux on the other hand runs on way more processors then AIX has ever existed on. with the flexibility and portability that Linux has to new processors there is going to be a processor specific performance drop.

<comment><USER4> So supporting more platforms at the cost of performance is a uncontested good? Not for everyone, for every use case. AIX has it's place, just like Linux.</comment></comment>


Hundreds injured as meteorite explodes over Russian city - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/15/hundreds-injured-meteorite-russian-city-chelyabinsk

<comment><USER2> [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3Amet...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3Ameteorite&sortby=create_ts+desc)

Here's the major discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5224616></comment>


Math disorder makes consumers easy prey - <AUTHOR> http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/13/6851179-math-disorder-makes-consumers-easy-prey

<comment><AUTHOR> Originally submitted by brandall10 - but now deleted. Not sure why - I thought it was interesting.

<comment><USER2> It also makes me wonder if there's a market here for mobile software that helps with basic math. These people might even benefit from something as basic as software that can translate back and forth between a decimal number and a quantity of dots.

<comment><USER3> Possibly. This was being discussed on NPR a few weeks back and I seem to remember the expert saying the real key, as usual, is catching it when people are young and spending more time with fundamentals like counting/sorting physical objects.</comment></comment></comment>


The Veil of Ignorance - <AUTHOR> http://mrmrs.io/writing/2016/03/23/the-veil-of-ignorance <comment><USER2> I love this. Nothing really groundbreaking here, but it's still true from my experience.

A few weeks ago, I went to a hackathon for domestic violence. It was.. interesting. Lots of cool designs and products came out of it, but none of them actually had any interest in designing a problem that had a broad and proper enough solution. The biggest problem? Everyone created a smartphone app except for mine and two others'.

One of the lawyers who hosted the event and I had a conversation about this and agreed - this is the class of problem that prevents _so many people_ from getting the help they need. They're simply aren't represented because they don't have the luxury of having a smart phone or constant internet access.

(mildly shameful plug) - My submission [0] was a map of all DV centers, as nothing like that exists or even close. It was made by scraping domesticshelters.com's center names and plugging it into a geocode service. domesticshelters' owner refuses to use it because of the privacy issues of an abuser being able to find a shelter just as easily as the abused - which is easily solved by mapping to a city center as my code does with an attached phone number. I received last place, with 'honorable mention'.

Point is, very few in tech really ever want to take on these hard issues since they're not fun, or they're not easy, or they involve social interaction with those they're helping. It's sad.

red-bin.github.io [0]

<comment><USER3> To be fair, couldn't that just be because generic mobile apps are seen as a way to get rich quick?

Okay, maybe you'd expect a bit more from someone attending a hackathon, but from my experiences, every time I mention the word 'startup', someone immediately suggests or asks about a mobile app.

For them, the only use of tech is mobile app that somehow blows up like Uber. It might be less about whether it's fun or easy or involve social interaction and more about whether the founder can see the dollar signs in his/her eyes.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I think that's exactly the reason. Which is also why I'm a critic of SV.

There definitely are great things that come out of the ability to quickly identify and create helpful apps/sites, but these days I'm wondering if the nuance of those who needs help is far more nuanced than app developers think. Or that maybe they they're aware, but they think "good enough" will inspire others to create their own, better/helpful service.

In my personal experience again, the problem happens when the need for wages and time (jobs, unemployment, family, health, etc etc etc,..., etc) completely de-mantles that motivation. It's these sorts of things that make basic income seem to make sense.. as in, if addressing socioeconomic nuance is solvable only time and motivation, the only limiting factor is money on an individual level.

My cynic side wants to call this "wage slavery", despite fucking hating that phrase.

\--- For what it's worth, the hackathon winners created an app for reporting DV by hiding it as a calculator with a passcode. It was neat, but after having dated someone VERY technical and someone who's NOT technical, these sorts of things would fall flat on their face. It's surprising how far their technical thoroughness went in both cases.

non-tech girl: "My friend told me how to look at DNS cache and you were clearly looking at porn earlier."

tech-girl: "I sniffed my ex's AIM traffic to find out he was cheating. Don't cheat on me."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the topic of physical disabilities in particular (social and intellectual challenges are more tricky) - I think we need better ways of simulating disability for able-bodied folks, and more willingness to have people use those tools.

This can be as simple as a tool on your desktop that limits the color output of your machine (in various types of color blindness), or blurs the screen to particular partially sighted simulations. Not in-app, but general. And we need to enforce their use as part of development.

Physically, there are companies that will train staff by putting them in wheelchairs and asking them to navigate their space. How welcoming is it for a wheelchair user? Can they get through the pull to open door? Can they get into the bathroom to get as far as the accessible stall? As a wheelchair user myself, I often get the feedback that people just didn't realise how difficult things were in their ADA compliant buildings, because nobody had tested it out.

We test things on multiple devices, with multiple sets of capabilities, but we don't do a good job of testing as users with multiple sets of capabilities.

<comment><USER5> It's pretty easy to approximate the experience of a totally blind user if you use a Mac. Just turn off your monitor or put on a blindfold, then press Command+F5 to enable VoiceOver. On iOS, you can find VoiceOver in Settings -> General -> Accessibility. For Android, there's TalkBack. Windows has a built- in screen reader called Narrator, but it's still limited enough that practically nobody uses it as their primary screen reader, so instead I'd recommend NVDA ([http://www.nvaccess.org/](http://www.nvaccess.org/)). For desktop Linux, there's Orca.

There's a danger, though, that a sighted person using a screen reader for a short time will come away with misguided ideas about what is practical for a blind person that uses these tools day in and day out. For example, see this thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284567)

<comment><USER4> Yes, the same is definitely true of wheelchair use - you get the problems without the hard-won tactics for coping. I'm going to navigate a space better than you in a chair, mostly. Simulation is not perfect, but lack of simulation- just thinking hard - obviously doesn't work, to anyone who's rolled around shaking their heads at 'best practice'.

Still, having a worse-case experience is not necessarily a bad thing. There are people who are newly blind, people who are newly disabled, people who are newly incapacitated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My experience has been that the thought process involved in creating accessible designs results in systems that are easier to use for people without disabilities. For example, curb cuts were designed to benefit people in wheelchairs, but they make life easier for delivery people with hand trucks, people with strollers, etc.

It's the same for UX design. Features designed to increase accessibility, such as better contrast, reasonably large fonts, etc. seem to make software more usable period.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes, but not always. While I'm a fan of larger fonts and click targets, a lot of people like to have these thugs be a lot smaller so they can have more information-dense screens.

…which itself is an accessibility issue; if you have good eyes but rotten limbs, you'll want to increase the information density of your screens so you have to scroll as little as possible. Most voice recognition systems accept one or more of:

\- space

\- page down

\- scroll down one page

Now imagine needing to say that every time you want to page down; you'd turn the font size down as low as possible, sit closer to your monitor, and turn it 90° so it's taller than it is wider.

It's nice when accessible designs provide benefits to people who don't _need_ them, but sometimes a design that's better for people with one class of disabilities will end up being a worse design for normal people or differently disabled people.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but if you do the work to make it user resizable then you help both groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a big fan of Rawls' Veil and use it in my own thinking about what is just.

I do want to add, though: "No one complains that typefaces set at 20px are too big to read." \- I do, very often, when reading on my phone. If the font is so big that only three or four words fit on a line, I cannot read the paragraph - the vertical scrolling & concentration required is too fatiguing. I'd say it happens on 10-20% of mobile sites today, and it's an increasing proportion. I strongly prefer tiny text with very little scrolling to the opposite. Browser text size preference don't help much; the setting often doesn't have any effect.

This site is fine on mobile (for me), though. And I fully agree with the message, with my caveat.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to see a source to the claim that at 40, fully fifty percent of the light that reaches your eye didn't get to the retina.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'm only a couple years off from forty and I'm pretty sure my vision is not nearly fifty percent dimmer than twenty years ago. Certainly my glasses prescription has changed slightly, but that is more about redirecting the light.

<comment><USER12> Having 50% less light getting to the retina is not necessarily that it looks 50% dimmer subjectively.

E.g. it's not like having a dimmer for your room lights at 100% and 50%.

I guess it's more like a 1-stop difference in photography (where again, half as much light hits the film/sensor from one stop to the next).

Here's an example with half the 50% less light hitting the sensor between the two pictures. It's not as dramatic as you expect (except in the "depth of field", e.g. how focused stuff is):

[http://www.adammoroz.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/10/Untitled...](http://www.adammoroz.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/10/Untitled-1.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this isn't fair to Rawls. If you had to design the internet today, you would probably design the internet just as it is today. Not because you want to exclude 'people that are 80 and have really bad vision', but because even if you made every page have high contrast and an 60pt font, there are almost no 80 year olds on the internet compared to 20 year olds, and you have to cater to your actual audience, not your 'in some universe where old people were on the internet what would be the best way to make it easy for them' universe.

This isn't really so crazy, and it's not some kind of ableist ageist blind spot that content creators have. There is no demand for 60pt fonts, the people that need them, who are extremely few, are more able to adapt the world to their needs than the world is able to adapt itself. Or maybe their needs are totally missed, but you can say that about literally any tiny group.

</comment><comment><USER14> This was a very interesting read!</comment>


Why we're better at making athletes than writers - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2289380/

<comment><USER2> Also of worth noting is that guys like Shakespeare and Dickens were not as well regarded in their own day as they are today. They were the equivalent of 'trash' or 'pulp' writers. If I remember correctly Dickens pumped out most of his work in the form of penny serials, printed on crappy paper and sold by street vendors. Shakespeare was regarded as low-brow and theatre was not held in high regard, basically the "Jack-Ass" or "low production values couple of kids on youtube" equivalent of his day.

And, to be honest, most of the elite athletes don't make a lasting name for themselves. Willie Mays, yes... Michael Jordan perhaps... but Larry Bird? A great, even dominant player but do the kids of today even know who he is? I've _heard_ of Kareem Abdul Jabar, but I couldn't tell you which team (or teams?) he played for.

The star of 'elite' athletes burns brightly, but fades quickly, whereas literary achievement can be passed on and on and on from generation to generation. The good stuff endures.

<comment><USER3> I think you may be overstating exactly how "low brow" Shakespeare was. At the time, high/low brow was pretty much determined by asking, "was this written by the Greeks or the Romans?" So their concept of quality was based on what we moderns consider antiquated rubrics.

I think low production value and Jackass are pretty far off base. You are correct that nobody thought of the bard as highly as Virgil; it is also true, however, that the only way for him to reach that rarified air would have been literally impossible. (Travel time and become an ancient Roman).

Not sure what I'd consider something equivalent in modernity. Maybe something like Lord of the Rings? Hugely popular appeal, enjoyed by a wide range of social classes (something Shakespeare was famous for as well), yet incredibly rich and deep.

I guess I'm just nit picking here, but it is an exaggeration to make too strong of a comparison between a low quality YouTube video and Shakespeare, even looking in the context of their histories.

<comment><USER2> The modern equivalent is probably something like Harry Potter - mass popular appeal but from a technical point of view not well written, or maybe Stephen King - extremely prolific within his particular niche.

I think you are grossly overestimating the social position of actors in the days of Shakespeare, from what I've read they were regarded as little better than prostitutes (and some were, they were not at all well paid for their stage work).

Additionally, your 'nitpick' about Shakespeare being compared to Virgil etc actually _proves my point_ , that we tend to hold older writings in higher regard than modern writings. Whereas with athletes, this is not the case. Roger Bannister is famous for running the first (recorded) four minute mile, whereas today running a four minute mile isn't even considered noteworthy. Sporting records regularly tumble, and when they do the athlete that set the previous record diminishes a little in our eyes (I'm not arguing that this is good or right, just that _it is_ ), whereas Shakespeare and Tolkein are always going to be up on their pedestals.

When I used to read lots of Fantasy I would pick up books in shops and read the blurbs on the back, and almost everyone was going to be 'the next Tolkein' or 'bigger and better than Tolkein' or some such hyperbole. Now I can easily imagine someone being better than Tolkein (he spends an entire page describing a forest just talking about _trees_ for goodness sake. They're big green and leafy, move on for goodness sake!), but you're not the next Tolkein until everyone compares their books to you instead of him. If you see what I mean.

<comment><USER3> I think the King comparison might be the most apt yet. Most people view him as a Crichton/Tom Clancy level populist, but his Dark Tower series really is an impressive literary piece.

WRT the sports thing: do you think some of that difference could be ascribed to the simple fact that we don't play the same sports as they did back in the day? While sport isn't a modern invention, the particular sports (and the fierceness of pursuit due to the money, fame, etc.) are new.

And finally, I'm not sure if my comment further proves your point, or if it means that we can only compare literature to sport in comparable times. If you accept the idea that sports used to be less important (possible due to the physical nature of regular work and the lack of leisure time), then you can really only compare sports (nearly exclusively happening in the 20th century) to 20th century literature.

In short, sports have just started to catch their stride.

Further, it could be argued that the ethos of the warrior was the true analogue of athletes in premodern times. Hercules, et al.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article misses the big difference between Shakespeare in Elizabethan London and Shakespeare in twenty-first century Topeka - today's Shakespeare has far more competition. He's not just competing against Topeka's Marlowe _et al._ , but against those of Kansas City, St. Louis, New York, London, Shanghai, LA, and everywhere else in the world. His $15 million dollar vision for Topeka's very own Globe Theater has to compete with Google, T-bills, and an Arby's franchise for investment.

And of course Shakespeare of Topeka is also competing against the established brand of the original for access to existing theaters and against all those athletes for a slice of the public's leisure time and disposable dollars.

In many ways the Bard had it easy, there's only so much entertainment value in gin and whoring. If he had to go up against American Idol, things might have been quite different.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article does mention that "there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through." The author makes the point that it is this competition that creates the best of athletes in our society, and fosters the necessary talent to be come a good athlete.

I do think that the author misses the point when he compares producing a major league player every 10-15 years to be the same as producing a "Shakespeare" every 10-15 years. Producing a "Shakespeare" every 10-15 years is like producing the best of the best every 10-15 years. To play in the Major Leagues, you have to be one of the best, but amongst that elite group, only a select few can achieve "Shakespearean" status.

To produce a Shakespeare, Einstein, or a Michael Jordan requires some luck, and they are characters in history that will be remembered for a while. But it should be possible to cultivate a culture that can foster more talent in the academic fields.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Can also apply to engineering...

<comment><USER5> And science... How about developing 5000 Isaac Newtons? There are lots of problems in the world that could be solved by producing more great scientists and engineers.</comment></comment>


Why AT&T's deal for T-Mobile must be blocked - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-atts-deal-for-t-mobile-must-be-blocked-2011-03-21

<comment><USER2> This quote summarizes the whole issue for me:

 _Two weeks ago, as it happens, I took my business away from AT &T. The reason? Simple. T-Mobile offered me a better deal.

Lower prices. No two-year contract. And monthy savings because I brought my own phone.

It was a free market. So I moved._

And now, that choice is gone. Sure, you can choose between companies A, B, & C. All of which cost roughly the same, nickel & dime you to death, and make similar efforts to restrict customer freedom.

Did I mention I will theoretically have to pay an extra $50 to use tethering the same way I've been doing since I got T-Mobile?!?

<comment><USER3> I'm actually not so sure. At least for me, the problem has always been that it's so hard to switch carriers because of handset lock-in and the different radio bands/technologies the different carriers are using.

Seems to me that if ATT buys Tmob, and maybe Vzn buys Sprint, it'll be a duopoly, but at least they'll both be converging on the LTE standard, which would theoretically make it easier to switch between the two with a single handset, making them actually compete on price/coverage/speed/service, etc.

<comment><USER2> I don't believe can be considered open and fair competition until the US outlaws selling cell phones which are carrier locked and all providers are required to offer fair discounts for unsubsidized/no-contract customers.

Even then, you'll have 2 options, both of which suck.

<comment><USER3> I pretty much agree with you, but right now we have four options that all mostly suck. I think that's partly because of the tech/bands. If it were two companies with handsets that worked on both, I think it would help.

But you're probably right that the subsidization/contract model is a bigger problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mr. Arends makes a very strong argument. And really, if you need a shorthand way to understand this issue, all you need to know is that the Bush Administration stripped away the limits on one company's ownership of spectrum. Republicans talk a good game about the "free market", but it's internally inconsistent talk; you can't have a free market if the number of players in said market gets below a certain level. 4-5 is probably a pretty good guess at what that level is, and in the GSM market, we're now down to 1 player if this deal goes through. Since many customers are forced into choosing GSM for compatibility when they travel, that's an effective monopoly, just like Arends says.

I'm an AT&T customer. But I'm not optimistic about what this deal will mean. I know what it won't mean: cheaper and better service, as guaranteed by a healthy fear of competitors.

<comment><USER5> What's so bad about a monopoly in a free market?

Doesn't that just create opportunity for some other carrier, perhaps a currently small regional company, to step up and fill that hole?

If the pain is big enough, there will be competition. If we mandate competition, it's not a FREE market.

<comment><USER6> "If we mandate competition, it's not a FREE market."

In addition to the other fine replies made, I want to highlight this to strongly disagree with it. In fact actually having a free market requires aggressively protecting it when a given market naturally coalesces into a monopoly or oligarchy. Trust-busting isn't an anti-free-market position, it's a pro-free-market position. The anti-free-market actions come from governments picking winners and enshrining monopolies/oligarchies through regulatory capture.

In particular, when advocates of other social organizations level this as a criticism of free market, my response is to point out that when you have lack of mandated competition with some form of government-selected winners, be it communism, socialism, or "crony capitalism", you don't have a free market at all and the criticism is more generally applicable to the social organization being argued for by the person raising this criticism.

In a free market, a new company always ought to be able to come along and completely destroy an existing company if they do a good enough job. If you don't have this, you don't have a free market.

<comment><USER7> Trust busting is an anti-free-market position. The freemarket consists of individuals voluntarily interacting. Any position that advocates coercion, i.e. government interference, is anti-free-market.

<comment><USER6> Trusts are a coercion, and a crime greater than a bit of government trust- busting. (Or, in really far-out versions of anarchist theory, non-government trust busting. I don't know of any real-world examples of that, though.) I do not naively believe that an economy can be run completely without coercion, but that such coercion as is necessary should be turned to keeping the market free. The optimal ideal case for free markets simply doesn't obtain everywhere. Spectrum is at least dubious; perhaps now we could just run it as a free market and it could work (people with far more knowledge about radio issues than me have argued both sides of this, I can only sit on the sidelines of that one and wave genially) but that certainly wasn't the case in the analog radio era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We can bitch and moan all we want, but the truth is that this deal will absolutely go through. If there's enough outcry, expect a dog-and-pony show on C-SPAN; in the end, they'll approve the merger with a "stern warning." Count on it.

<comment><USER9> I actually doubt this merger will go through. This would put AT&T far ahead of Verizon in term of subscribers, even if they are less desirable due to the low ARPU. There isn't enough churn in the wireless market to balance the AT&T and Verizon out over a reasonable time, and Sprint would now be a distant third. Effectively this will shut anyone else out of the National carrier business, and eliminate the possibility of any new MVNOs, since customer acquisition costs would be very high, and you only have two parties to negotiate licenses with.

<comment><USER10> You care to put your money where your mouth is? I've got 500 bucks that says you're wrong.

<comment><USER11> 500? Sounds good to me. Meet me in the options market.

Edit: Bought 10 July 28 puts and sold 10 July 27 puts against it. If AT&T is below 27 by July expiration I make $500. If the stock is above 28 by July expiration I lose $500.

<comment> X-Istence I had never thought about this, but that is one hell of a way to put your money where your mouth is.

Interesting ... very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author captures this point perfectly: AT&T and T-Mobile merger will create a "GSM Monopoly" in the American market. This will be bad news for any customer who has to use GSM handsets as Europe, Asia, etc have GSM. So if you ever have to travel internationally you are better off with GSM phones. AT&T must not be allowed to Monopolize this key market.

<comment><USER13> Everyone is moving to LTE, so this really doesn't sound like a huge deal, at least in the medium-to-long term. You will be able to get LTE from AT&T/T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon, at least.

<comment><USER14> It's a reasonable point, but we don't yet know whether there will be LTE phones that work on both AT&T and Verizon, let alone when roaming abroad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My response to this related HN post: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2349678>

My proudest accomplishment in law school was a research paper I wrote entitled "Anti-Antitrust: The Need for Antitrust Law Reform."

In that paper, I argued that antitrust law as applied today totally misses the point: the issue shouldn't be whether a company, otherwise satisfying the elements of a monopoly, is harming competitors, but whether a company is actually harming consumers. Put another way: who is complaining about the alleged anticompetitive tactics: competitors, or consumers?

If one studies all the big antitrust cases of the 20th century -- from Alcoa, to DuPont, to Microsoft -- a curious trend emerges: it was always those companies' competitors who took issue with seemingly anticompetitive tactics of the big evil "trusts," and rarely -- if ever -- was it the consumers themselves.

A great example of this is Microsoft in the 1990s: do any of you -- aside from our realm of early adopter computer savvy tech types -- genuinely remember any everyday computer users actually complaining that Windows came preinstalled with IE instead of Netscape? Were consumers actually harmed, were they actually suffering? No: the only "people" who had an issue with MS bundling IE with Windows -- frankly, a brilliant strategy -- were Microsoft's competitors, and not, in fact, MS's customers.

So my take on this ATT & T-mobile merger is simple: the investigation should not focus on whether ATT/T-mobile is a monopoly from competitors' points of view, but whether it is anticompetitive to the point of actually harming consumers, e.g., with higher prices, etc.

Frankly, a good example of a company that really deserves a DOJ investigation is Apple -- IFF customers start to actually complain, and not not just Apple's competitors' start to complain.

Put more simply: a DOJ investigation into whether a company is a monopoly should be based upon whether consumers -- not competitors -- are actually being harmed by the allegedly anticompetitive tactics of a "monopoly."

After all, a company could not become a monopoly without customers' support in the first place. So clearly they have done something right that customers appreciate.

A "monopoly" that is not causing harm to consumers, either directly or indirectly, is not necessarily so terrible a thing. In fact, as with Apple, it is often the case that consumers enjoy a net benefit from such a company.

<comment><USER16> "do any of you -- aside from our realm of early adopter computer savvy tech types -- genuinely remember any everyday computer users actually complaining that Windows came preinstalled with IE instead of Netscape?"

That's a really narrow view of the damage done by the IE monopoly. The ubiquity of IE6 continues to stifle the development of new web technology by requiring developers to cater to hapless prisoners of corporate IT policy.

I don't have the patience to spell it out, but i'm sure you'll piece it together if you lurk moar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Without knowing much about the mechanics of acquisitions of this magnitude, how plausible is it that AT&T made the offer simply to prevent Sprint from acquiring T-Mobile and creating another competitor? I mean, if they're pretty sure the FTC would block them anyway, if they set a high price, they've just made it harder for Sprint to attain their size.

<comment><USER18> There is probably a hefty break up fee in an acquisition this big which would make this scenario unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sure enough, it happened just like the author says. Tuned in to CNN this morning and the announcer cheerfully smiled (?!) and said that ATT will acquire TMobile and this is great because we will now get access to iPhones! Nevermind that ATT's service is horrible and their costs are high. Made me want to hit my forehead.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yep. AT&T would not even let you use a different smartphone even if you already are on the iPhone data plan! Of course they don't let you use a smartphone without a data plan at all. So this sucks.

<comment><USER21> They won't? When I got my Nexus One back in april, I just put my iPhone's sim card into my Nexus One and blammo, works fine. Same data plan. Grandfathered in to the unmetered plan, too.

I still hate AT&T more than anything and wish to the silicon gods that I could cut both them and Cablevision out of my life like the malignant tumors they are.

<comment><USER20> Nope. They don't. I am an iPhone user but bought a Nexus one to develop on and put a sim card from an old dumb phone into it after disabling the data option on the phone. AT&T immediately recognized the smartphone and automatically added the data plan to my bill. When I called them they said I cannot even use my iPhone sim with the Nexus one as they come under two different data plans even though its costs the same freaking amount of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having just been mugged by T-Mobile (read here for the details: <http://nyti.ms/dRW9yO>), I can't say I expect worse customer service from AT&T, but that certainly isn't saying much. Oligopoly means _rarely_ having to say you're sorry; monopoly means _never_ having to say you're sorry.

</comment><comment><USER23> Its pretty fascinating to think that in the US there will now be really only one GSM choice until 4G is ubiquitous. Only one carrier where you can use unlocked phones etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> This article comes off as very whiny. It may decrease competition, but that doesn't mean it creates a monopoly.

<comment><USER4> It creates a monopoly in the GSM space and an effective duopoly overall.

Pretty darn close.

<comment><USER25> Even if this deal goes through, you'll have three national carriers to choose from and, depending on where you live, one or more regional carriers, plus VoIP. That's not pretty darn close to a monopoly at all.

I think there's a stronger case for a GSM monopoly, but at some point the argument becomes silly - where do you draw the line between an uncompetitive market and a market with product differentiation? Would you have broken up Standard Oil because they were the only ones offering Super Unleaded?

<comment><USER4> What do you mean, "a stronger case" for a GSM monopoly? There will now be one (1) GSM provider in the US. Near as I can tell, the "mono" in "monopoly" refers to "one", as well.

1=1.

This isn't a debate about how "strong" my case is. It's a monopoly in the GSM space, by definition.

<comment><USER25> First of all, below (a) is the list of mobile providers in the US. Note that, even if T-Mobile were removed, there would be more than one (1) GSM provider. So your "mono" comment is both unnecessarily snarky and wrong.

But, if you really, wanted to push it, you could probably find a way to claim that T-Mobile/AT&T had a monopoly. You could also claim that _any_ company had a monopoly on their product, simply because the product that this company sells is going to be somewhat different than those of its competitors. Yeah, true, so what?

(a)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers)

<comment><USER4> Ah yes, because Northeastern Alaska Sanskrit 2400-baud Modem Wireless has sooooo many subscribers. Yeah, that argument will hold up.

There are no other GSM providers of note which offer modern, up-to-date services (and handsets) and are a serious option now, besides ATT. I was snarky because I suspected obtuseness; I think that obtuseness has now been confirmed.

<comment><USER25> Of course my argument holds up. It's true by definition. But remember, my first post said that I thought there was a stronger case for a GSM monopoly.

Look, the term "monopoly" is a pretty strong word, and it carries with it certain connotations that I don't think apply here. So if you want to use it in the strictest sense of "a market with only one seller" then I agree with you, but saying that "AT&T has a monopoly on GSM mobile coverage" has about as much weight as saying "Apple has a monopoly on iPods." Yeah, true, so what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how much of this deal was made with the intention of acquiring T-Mobiles spectrum rights? I'm under the impression that GSM was mainly a technology focused in the time domain, and the newer 4G technologies seem like they're more centered around the frequency domain. It occurs to me that if lack of spectrum is a problem for 1 it is probably a problem for the other, so it would make sense for both carriers to merge?

<comment><USER27> Nailed it.</comment></comment>


Apple Increases iPad with Retina Display to 128GB - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/01/29Apple-Increases-iPad-with-Retina-Display-to-128GB.html <comment><USER2> This is a paradigm shift. Apple is embracing three numeral technology while their competitors are stuck in the two numeral age. Apple's ability to increase numerals a full fifty percent when pundits were expecting a mere incremental refresh is perhaps the most amazing news of 2013.

<comment><USER3> What are you talking about!? There are loads of 128GB tablets available on the market.

Edit: for more info check out Samsungs 128GB eMMC memory chip

<comment><USER4> I only know of the Surface Pro with 128Gb built in.

Edit: Removed Surface RT as it only provides 32/64Gb options

<comment><USER5> While the Surface Pro offers a 128GB model, the device itself only provides 83GB of that space to the user. The remainder is used by the operating system and its files.

[http://gizmodo.com/5979796/the-128gb-microsoft-surface- pro-o...](http://gizmodo.com/5979796/the-128gb-microsoft-surface-pro-only- offers-83gb-of-usable-space)

<comment><USER6> Let's add it up:

128GB (not GiB) = 119GiB of actual space.

System requirement to install Microsoft Office = 3.0 GiB of space

System requirement to install Windows 8 Pro = 20.0 GiB of space

(119GiB - 3.0GiB - 20GiB) = 96GiB of usable space.

Now what programs or files could explain that difference of 13GiB?

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing, but perhaps a recovery partition?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is just another step towards tablets replacing personal portable computers(notebooks, netbooks). More storage on the tablet means less dependency on other devices.

<comment><USER6> I don't think storage is something that is standing in the way for tablets to replace portable computers. If it was, all you need to do is to slap in cloud storage and voila, theoretically unlimited space. Its more to do with productivity and flexibility and these two things can never be fully achieved under walled gardens. Once OS providers start porting their full OS suite to tablets, we might see a good traction. Glad to see Windows and Ubuntu are moving in that direction and hoping others to follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess Apple has decided to no longer make it easy to own "the best" of any given Apple device for more than a few months. I don't really see a problem with this (although maybe it will hurt the generally-strong resale value, although that will put less expensive but still great devices into the secondary market faster).

<comment><USER9> I am more on the theory that storage will be a selling point on the surface pro since it has the 128GB option, and Apple's reaction to that.

<comment><USER10> > it has the 128GB option

The 112GB option, 16 is tied up in the operating system on the RT. Presumably even more would be consumed on the Surface Pro.

ED: Fixed math.

<comment><USER11> how much does ios take? and how about a comparison in functionality?

<comment><USER10> A little under a gigabyte for iOS 6.1. This has increased over the 150mb for iOS 1.0, before it was even called iOS.

I'm not sure how you'd even do a feature comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is interesting to see Apple release a bump up in specs outside of a staged presentation. Does this mean their product release cycle will become leaner and quicker to update instead of being on the January -> June -> October release cycle?

</comment><comment><USER13> What's the difference between the iPad 3 (retina) and this 4th generation they're talking about? Are they referring to an iPad Mini as 4th gen or are they saying the retina iPad (3rd gen) is 4th gen now?

<comment><USER14> Thunderbolt. When the iPad Mini was announced, they announced the new iPad (regular) would have a Thunderbolt port, which put them at 4th gen.

<comment><USER15> Apple call it a "lightning" connector, and I don't think its mechanicalally or electrically compatible with the Thunderbolt port... I think it even connects to bog standard USB 2.0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apple obviously knows how to squeeze every ounce of profit margin they can out of the consumer. But why does it cost the same amount to double the 16 GB model as it does to double the 64 GB model?

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure that first $100 upgrade from 16 to 32 is a huge profit maker. It only costs Apple a few bucks, and anyone who wants to seriously use their iPad has to do it because 16GB is just too small.

<comment><USER18> I find 16GB satisfactory. If I would store tons of videos and audio I'd want more but I stream all the audio and video. (I agree that it's a huge profit maker for them though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> $900 for a tablet. Damn.

That's a lot of space, considering my movies/TV shows are on Netflix, and music on Spotify. Still, makes sense to offer it.

</comment><comment><USER20> 128GBs is still not enough. That should be the base storage for a Retina iPad. How can they even sell a 16GB one with a straight face?

<comment><USER21> What are you putting on a tablet that fills up 128GB of space?

<comment><USER20> Well, I stand corrected and am again pushed into the marginal category. That's OK. But it seems to me that if you're going to push HD video, you need the storage capacity to match it. And my overall point is that if the iPad is intended to be the next computing revolution, it needs to offer the storage capacity to get a lot of things done. Could any of you plop your entire photo, music, video, and eBook collections into an iPad and still have space leftover even with 128GBs? I couldn't. How many of you would want to pare down a 1TB hard drive down to 128GBs because, for some odd reason, that was now the maximum storage capacity any device offered? Maybe I'm still not making myself clear, but I think we should be far beyond 128GBs of storage by now.

<comment><USER21> I guess I'm also kinda marginal too. I don't expect my main device, be it a desktop, laptop or tablet, to be where I store everything. It's way too subject to data loss. I can steam (from personal sources or services) most of the time, and if I need access while radio quiet, 8GB is more than enough to cache a few interesting things locally.

<comment><USER20> I guess I'm too old school. I want my stuff with me, on my device. And I worry about public WiFi and the threat of my stuff being hacked if I'm accessing it that way -- and not having WiFi to access it too.

<comment><USER21> What do you use to sync your 100GB+ of stuff across your devices?

<comment><USER20> Sync? What sync? Even though I have a lot of _stuff_ , I'm not dealing with _all_ of it at one time. I can keep track of what's being done because it's just a handful. But it's the _access_ to all of it that I need because who knows when I'll need what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What reason is there for the capacity not being 128, 256, 512GB?

<comment><USER23> Because that's incredibly expensive to produce and hard to sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It will be interesting to find out if most of the people buying the 128GB models will either be affluent assholes or those who do a shit ton of photo/video(/music?) editing on their iPads.

</comment><comment><USER25> RIP Apple. Your products are no longer interesting...Sad to see such a great company fall to pieces.

Apple's only strength was the desirability factor. And this desirability factor arose from the fact that they had really few product lines that were easy to remember - There was only ONE good iPhone and ONE iPad at any given point in time, so, people would easily remember those.

Right now, what's the newest/best iPad out there? Is it the iPad 3? The iPad Mini?? The iPad 4?? (I was aware of the 4th version only a few days back).

And what's the newest/best iPhone? The iPhone 4S? The iPhone 5?? The iPhone 5S??

When Steve was alive, the most recent product line from Apple would automatically mean that it was the best. However, that isn't the case anymore. Now, they just increment technical aspects (screen resolution, storage size..etc) of their products to fake desirability.

This was the only difference between Apple's strategy and other companies like Sony/Samsung/HTC's strategy. Heck, even HTC is getting better, they are having fewer phones that make it easier to remember (The two latest and best phones from HTC are the Butterfly J and the One X+)

If Apple is going to follow its competitors, destroying its only edge over the others (ie, desirability), I fail to see how they can sustain this way. In other words, they are digging their own grave.

Just FYI - If you are wondering if I'm a fanboy, no I'm not. I lost all respect for them the day they sued Samsung.

<comment><USER26> It's not like they are promoting this on their front page. It's just a spec bump.</comment></comment>


Setting a maximum wage for CEOs would be good for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://spiekermann.com/en/setting-a-maximum-wage-for-ceos-would-be-good-for-everyone/ <comment><USER2> Disagree with the first sentence, "Capitalism is every man for himself." It was actually created to pool money for larger endeavors that required more resources Thana single entity could provide for, outside of the monarchs of the time.

How about we cap the salaries of athletes and entertainment first, who it could be argued add far less to society.</comment>


Show HN: Cosmic 3D - <AUTHOR> http://cosmic3d.com

<comment><USER2> nice idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> How much would you pay for it?</comment></comment>


Fuzzing FFmpeg for fun and profit - <AUTHOR> http://obe.tv/about-us/obe-blog/item/26-fuzzing-ffmpeg-for-fun-and-profit <comment><USER2> I can't wait for the time when if your project reads files, fuzzing it is a well-known, recommended practice. (unless you're writing fully managed code)

There were some fuzzing projects before afl, but even with afl's recent popularity we're still in the situation where you just have to grab a random application, point afl at it and get some basic crashes in a few minutes. With clang-analyzer, coverity, afl, and many other projects available for free, there's no reason this should be possible.

Then again, I'm still waiting for the time when people don't code with sql injection issues...

<comment><USER3> Even if you're writing fully managed code you should still fuzz. It can help find logic errors in the code which can cause erroneous program states or crashes.

The fact that the code is managed helps prevent against some nasty exploits, but it doesn't necessarily mean the code always does what the programmer intended.

<comment><USER4> Agreed! I like to think of the fuzzers as merely an automated tool to drive test cases, maximizing on coverage.

So when asked, "Why fuzz test?" I can answer, "remember when you wrote fifteen test cases and wondered to yourself whether you needed a sixteenth? But then you decided that it would take more work than it's worth to do that. -- Well, now we can tell the computer to just keep trying stuff until it finds unique cases."

<comment><USER5> There is also generative testing, which can be a good middle-ground between hand-crafted tests and fuzzing. You can think of it as a fuzzer with more guidance regarding input generation, and can uncover edge-cases that a fuzzer would take forever to discover. I tend to think of those 3 approaches as complementary.

Example in Clojure: [https://github.com/clojure/test.check](https://github.com/clojure/test.check)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain why you would want to fuzz ffmpeg?

What's wrong with ffmpeg crashing when you feed it invalid input? What's the alternative to it not crashing? Should it continue transcoding or should it exit quietly?

What's the problem here trying to be solved?

<comment><USER7> Fuzzing is useful for finding bugs that may or may not be serious security issues. If a program crashes when you feed it invalid input, it could potentially crash in a way that allows code execution.

After finding a crash, a researcher will generally explore this to see if it allows for arbitrary code execution. If it does, it is possible for someone to create a weaponized exploit.

For a utility as widely-used as ffmpeg, any bugs pose a threat to many systems. Fuzzing it makes the Linux ecosystem safer for all of us (hopefully).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> afl [0] is awesome. I have it running right now. It found some of bugs in arachne-pnr [1].

I wish someone would do a JVM version (combined with the lines of QuickCheck and typed generators).

[0] [http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/)

[1] [https://github.com/cseed/arachne-pnr](https://github.com/cseed/arachne- pnr)

<comment><USER9> As a Java programmer I would love a version of afl. The JVM certainly exposes enough information for other profilers/tracers and things dynamically adding code (spring/hibernate) that it seems like it should be possible.

<comment><USER10> There's a tool that does similar to AFL called EvoSuite ([http://www.evosuite.org](http://www.evosuite.org)). It uses a genetic algorithm like AFL and generates JUnit suites for the target classes. It doesn't look for crashes like AFL - it's closer to MS's IntelliTest tool but uses metaheuristics instead of SMT to break conditions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google has done a lot of work [1] with respect to fuzzing ffmpeg because it's included in Chrome.

[1] [https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/01/ffmpeg- and...](https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/01/ffmpeg-and-thousand- fixes.html)

<comment><USER2> It probably helps that AFL's author works for Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting and thought provoking. The article links to Google's page on finding 1000 bugs in FFmpeg ([https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/ffmpeg-a...](https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/ffmpeg- and-thousand-fixes.html)).

This mentions the fixes they found (NULL pointer dereferences, Invalid pointer arithmetic leading to SIGSEGV due to unmapped memory access, Out-of-bounds reads and writes to stack, heap and static-based arrays, Invalid free() calls, Double free() calls over the same pointer, Division errors, Assertion failures, Use of uninitialized memory.)

Some of those things could have been caught by static code analysis or stricter coding standards. Or, if it had been a C++ project you could replace some of those problems (NULL pointer dereferences) with using references in the first place instead of passing pointers around. That might be a bit of an oversimplification as it is a very complex project but for me it was a reminder to change my coding style in C++ instead of sticking with the C-style way of doing it.

<comment><USER13> C++ would make it a horrible project to work on. No doubt you would advocate for it to use the slow features of c++. Templates or something, right? Then you would probably say that it should use boost too because that seems to be the standard library of c++.

<comment><USER12> Wrong. I WOULD NOT advocate the use of templates just because I use C++. But I WOULD advocate using safe language features and compile-time type checking. Throwing pointers around is bad practice, hence C++'s encouragement to use references, move semantics and emphasis on use of containers, clear tidy-up practices, obvious demarkation of what owns an object, RAII etc. This moves the burden onto the compiler, not the developer or team of developers to understand where data is owned, when it will be cleaned up etc. etc.

Further, templates do not make C++ slow; it is simply compile-time polymorphism.

Does runtime polymorphism make software slow? Does casting to or from a void* in C suddenly make it slow? The entire emphasis in C++ for templates is that you pass the error checking to the compiler, not at runtime to guess that this incoming void* is the type that you want. reinterpret_cast is only used where absolutely necessary!! It is far safer to NOT cast. Avoid casting. Templates (and the STL) help out in this regard.

I would use the STL for projects, and encourage every else in C++ land to do the same. Containers make sense, as do the algorithms associated with them (and they save you reinventing the wheel).

But I would NOT advocate use of Boost just because it is popular or written in C++. That would be a stupid reason to encourage its use; I personally do not use Boost. Boost != STL. You appear to be confusing Boost with the STL ??

No doubt your unbridled hatred of C++ and libraries written in C++ (eg. Boost) has stopped you reading reference works on the STL. You can find a comprehensive reference here: [http://en.cppreference.com/w/](http://en.cppreference.com/w/)

There's no Boost on there, btw. That's at boost.org.

Personally, I was only making the comment regarding a reminder of my own coding style in light of the problems they found in their C codebase. I do not write C, but I can see that the pitfalls they fell into could easily be carried out by me in C++ if I stuck to unsafe coding styles.

Furthermore, many of their problems could be solved in C++ land very easily: NULL pointer dereferences (don't use pointers, use references - it'll never be NULL), Invalid pointer arithmetic leading to SIGSEGV due to unmapped memory access (use STL containers), Out-of-bounds reads and writes to stack, heap and static-based arrays (use STL containers, you may still get out-of-bounds problems but at least an exception is thrown), Invalid free() calls, Double free() calls over the same pointer (use move semantics, never see a new or delete ever again), Division errors (use a static_assert to check that a value is in range, if possible. Or use an assert in a defensive coding style), Assertion failures (use static_assert to catch at compile time if possible), Use of uninitialized memory (RAII - initialise before use).

Your (or anyone's) invalid use of C++ does not make the language invalid, in the same way that stabbing someone with a knife does not suddenly mean all knives must be banned.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't STL containers make your program slower though (e.g. game devs generally manage memory manually, for better performance)? For something like FFmpeg, that's a valid concern.

<comment><USER12> I thought typically for efficient pipelines on x86 hardware, or to avoid cache hits where the data being shoved in does not fit the hardware perfectly.

For FFmpeg that is a concern, but I believe the replier to my original comment was disparaging C++ for no good reason, other than it wasn't C...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No mention of security impact of these bugs in the tracker. Anyone know if FFmpeg has some vulnerability process, or do they just commit fixes and let other people worry about exploitability, security hotfixes and CVEs, like Linux?

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice work! Can you share some details on the time/resource requirements for this tests/setup?

</comment><comment><USER17> I didn't see any note about what version these bugs were found in, or will be fixed in. For reference, at the time of this writing, my GNU/Linux box has ffmpeg 2.8.1.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed in whatever git master was at the time and I believe they were backported to the latest maintenance version at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> OT: I can't describe how much I loathe "for fun and for profit" in titles - especially since the majority aren't linked to anything describing a monetary or resource gain. If you want to say something is useful, find a different way to say it!

I wish those titles had a weight to drag them off the front page much quicker.

<comment><USER19> Maybe you know this, maybe you do not but these are all a nod to [http://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html](http://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html) which itself did not directly involve profit. It's a security thing.

<comment><USER18> I know, but it's the equivalent of "x considered harmful". It just shows a lack of originality.</comment></comment></comment>


AWS Lambda Update: Python, VPC, Increased Function Duration, Scheduling - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-lambda-update-python-vpc-increased-function-duration-scheduling-and-more/?sc_campaign=launch&sc_category=cloudwatch&sc_channel=SM&sc_content=reInvent&sc_detail=std&sc_medium=aws&sc_publisher=tw_go&adbsc=social_launches_20151008_53681166&adbid=652161420398727169&adbpl=tw&adbpr=66780587 <comment><USER2> Python 2.7? Really? Why not 3.4!

<comment><USER3> I believe Lambda runs on AWS linux distributions, and 2.7 is the default Python version for those [1].

1\. [https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/2015.03-release- note...](https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/2015.03-release-notes/)</comment></comment>


Meerkat manifesto suggests mentor-learner pairs speed up learning of tech stacks - <AUTHOR> http://datascienceretreat.com/meerkat-method.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here, happy to follow up. We wrote the Meerkat manifesto after our experience Hacker Retreat batch 01. The meerkat method should be more effective than the (few) alternatives we tried. If you hear from people having success doing something similar systematically (pair up; mentor picks a project, gives it to learner, only simplifies if learner is really stuck)... let me know. General lore says that people who pair up more improve faster. The twist here is to pair up with a person who is far more advanced and is invested in getting you up to speed.

<comment><USER2> Great idea! I think bloc.io, AirPair follow a similar concept. Now I have some questions.

1\. Are you planning to offer this online? Not everyone can afford to take time off to attend a hacker retreat.

2\. How much does this cost?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My first thought on reading this is that it's counter to what's recommended with Deliberate Practice. This system seems to start with failure and then backs off on the difficulty until the learner succeeds. Deliberate Practice starts within the learner's capability, and pushes outward, trying to stay right at the edge of the learner's capability. I don't see how starting out with failure is going to be very encouraging to the learner.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's failure in a controlled manner. They know the task is a scorpion, ie, demanding enough for the mentor to not be bored. It could even come out of the Mentor's own daily practice.

Did you read about a 10-year-old who was complaining that calculus (integrals) was hard, but did them anyway thanks to Kahn academy? I think it's mentioned in one of his TED talks. If you don't know that something is too difficult, you may do it anyway.

My experience with say universities is that you get stuck in exercises for far too long. At universities you rarely get to the point of 'project' (unknown solution, creative work needed). At that point they call it research.

I think the weak spot of the Meerkat method is to find a way to keep mentors motivated. For data science retreat, mentors are paid, but they do it because they think it's the right thing to do too. In the wild, one would have to think about why the mentor will want to sit with the learner. One possible way is to let them own the results of the learner's work, and let them work on projects that the mentor had to do anyway. For example, chunks of a freelance job that the mentor had to deliver and could partially unload to the learners. For this, learners must be competent enough to ship production code; which puts even more pressure on both sides, but I think it's the right kind of pressure :)

This is how it worked in middle-age and Renaissance guilds. The master outsourced say 'painting of hands'. The learner did nothing but hands, and the master owned the final work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i'm actually doing the mentor role atm for a couple of people, but in one or two of the situations I can't really send them work home to do on their own.

So i'm taking the active role in the pair programming, and showing rather than having them doing. At least they will have the reference afterward.

gitbook looks like a pretty nice way to collect all that knowledge though.

[http://www.gitbook.io](http://www.gitbook.io)</comment>


Cordova Hot Code Push - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nordnet/cordova-hot-code-push

<comment><AUTHOR> Yesterday we released our, previously internal, approach to doing hot code push for hybrid apps as an Open Source native cordova plugin for iOS and Android. It should work well with any cordova/phonegap based app.

We would welcome your feedback.</comment>


Knuth is so revered among computer scientists that they won't cash his checks. - <AUTHOR> http://www.futilitycloset.com/2009/05/26/finders-fees/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know who wrote that blog? If so, can you tell him that the routing number and account number on the bottom of the check are sufficient information to print demand drafts out for Knuth's account, which will let you drain it at will?

[Edit: Nevermind, found the contact link.]

<comment><USER3> Don't sweat it. Knuth now writes checks for brownie points, drawn on a fictional bank.

<http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> _"Instead of writing personal checks, I'll write personal certificates of deposit to each awardee's account at the Bank of San Serriffe, which is an offshore institution that has branches in Blefuscu and Elbonia on the planet Pincus."_

Dr. Knuth has a sense of humor...

<comment><USER4> Myself, I liked _turns out that only 9 of the first 275 checks that I've sent out since the beginning of 2006 have actually been cashed. The others have apparently been cached._ (from the same page)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Intelligence: Finding an error in a Knuth text.

Stupidity: Cashing that $2.56 check you got.

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check>)

<comment><USER6> Live and learn, I thought the reward for bugs in Tex increased by a nickel for each new one found. Could this Wikipedia entry be wrong?

In any event I wouldn't cash a check like that, it's a nice keepsake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He could start a company without cash flow since none of his employees would ever cash their paychecks!

</comment><comment><USER8> so his books contained 8000 errors?</comment>


Http upstream check - <AUTHOR> http://tengine.taobao.org/document/http_upstream_check.html <comment><USER2> Because they were planning on putting it in Nginx Plus: [http://nginx.com/products/](http://nginx.com/products/)

<comment><USER3> I didn't find much detail on what they mean by "advanced load balancing" in nginx+. Anyone else with luck?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The lack of a good upstream health check capable of millisecond timing in core Nginx is largely why I use HAProxy in stacks where, in theory, Nginx could replace both HAProxy and the web server behind it (which is often Nginx).

Compare, for example, this:

[https://www.exratione.com/2012/12/websockets-over-ssl- haprox...](https://www.exratione.com/2012/12/websockets-over-ssl-haproxy- nodejs-nginx/)

With this:

[https://www.exratione.com/2013/06/websockets-over-ssl- with-n...](https://www.exratione.com/2013/06/websockets-over-ssl-with-nodejs- and-nginx/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it the granularity of the health check that you're wondering about? I've got a deployment where nginx delegates the health check / load balance component to haproxy.

Keep in mind that the "heavier duty" the health check, the less frequently it can be run at scale.

edit: The best clue is probably the phrase "available as part of our commercial subscription only" appearing all over the upstream module documentation.[0]

[0] [http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html](http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> OT but do people prevent direct access to the upstream servers (i.e. only allow the downstream proxy to make any queries) and if yes, how ?

<comment><USER7> There are several ways to achieve that:

1\. Listen on UNIX socket only 2\. Bind TCP socket to localhost only 3\. Bind TCP socket and port, cut off connections at firewall level

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As I remember a year or two ago they were convinced, that it is ok to send real user's request to a dead backend from time to time to check if it's alive, arguing that dedicated health check wasn't going to make a difference.

<comment><USER9> The problem with that is the user's request may have generated a legitimate error, or it may not be a good test of all the functionally.

If you write your software with a dedicated healthcheck url, it's much more robust because you can test all critical functionality with that helthcheck (just make sure you block access to it from the outside otherwise someone has a really easy way to DDOS you!).</comment></comment>


Apple starts selling Mac Pro wheels for $699 and feet for $299 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/15/21222310/apple-mac-pro-feet-wheels-kits-stainless-steel-price-delivery <comment><USER2> Can't wait for the 3D printed alternative. You'd probably be able to buy the printer and the feet+wheels for less.</comment>


The Graphic Art of Incredibles 2 - <AUTHOR> http://joshholtsclaw.com/blog/2018/3/5/the-graphic-art-of-incredibles-2 <comment><USER2> This was so much more rich, detailed, and fantastic of a read than I initially expected it to be. I assumed it would just be a short-ish blog post on the style of the movie but it really goes into detail on so many aspects from the behind-the-scenes. And I learned that some places in Palm Springs are like some sort of time capsule oasis time traveling machine back to 50 years ago. It's so cool that these houses haven't been renovated or torn down to be replaced with something more modern in such a long span of time.

This must've taken a while to put together and Josh Holtsclaw did a great job with it.

Is there a place that captures these types of details for lots of other movies? If not, I think there's an opportunity to collect all of these types of design analysis in one place. I can't imagine the audience would be huge, but I would guess they're passionate and super interested in this type of thing. I didn't think I would be going into this article but I came away wanting more of these types of articles.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if it's what you're looking for (it's definitely more short-form at least) but I loved browsing round this site when I first saw it: [http://moviesincolor.com/](http://moviesincolor.com/)

<comment><USER2> This is not exactly the same in my mind as the original link, however it's great in its own way! It's a very cool analysis.

Thank you for the link

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very thorough piece, it's good seeing all the images that form the inspiration. I'd like to see something similar for the original Incredibles.

The original Incredibles is one of my favorites. There's a simplicity, pace and elegance to everything that makes it very tight and watchable.

I enjoyed Incredibles II but thought it suffered a little from "sequel ramp- up" where everything is required to be "bigger" and "better". Story is displaced by action, and then you end up rating the movie on the action scenes and sequences rather than a unified whole with story, dialog and action in balance. The visuals were excellent but even then, sometimes too much was crammed in, and not easy to take in due to pace of story advancing quickly.

<comment><USER5> Action?

All I remember is the father -- a superhero -- unable to perform basic child rearing tasks and I tuned out. I don't know what Bird's intention was, but I felt it played into current gender politics rather than addressing them. The first movie was a critique of culture, this was -- an attempt to please?

I don't get worked up about 'dumb men' stereotypes since I'm not dumb and take an active role in raising my children but I felt the second needlessly betrayed the first film. Elastigirl was a superhero. She and her husband may have had somewhat gender-appropriate powers (brawn vs flexibility?) but she was his equal in fighting bad guys. Her becoming a housewife was the satirical part of the film.

So in the second we have a woman who never lived in her husband's shadow -- beyond their assumed identities -- but now the thrust of the story is her outshining her husband?

You can argue that his was satire -- since in the story her taking center stage was a plan driven by PR people and expected ratings -- but I really don't think it hit the mark. Instead of backing it up with something appropriate, Bird just gave us, _see, isn 't being a housewife hard!_ Again, Mr Incredible is a superhero, I'm sure he can manage.

My wife felt the same way. Loved the first one, was disappointed by the gender politics of the second.

<comment><USER6> Bear in mind both films are set in 1962...

I'm a father who shares duties equally with my wife. Between us, we cope. When one of us is away, all hell is prone to break loose. That's what's I interpreted Mr Incredible's struggles as - not incompetence, but being overwhelmed by being the sole parent.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, being a single parent is difficult for many reasons but the non obvious one is sleep deprivation, or lack of rest.

<comment><USER8> If it were not for the sleep deprivation and the subsequent memory loss, we'd probably all stop at one kid and go extinct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I appreciate how much work went into this, but what a fun job to have. Compared to that writing code is dull and lifeless.

<comment><USER10> Ah yes, the grass is always greener on the other side - what a common fallacy! I'm also prone to thinking this. But the truth is that a job is a job: you are under presssure to perform, no matter what you do. And in the case of designing for a movie, you have to churn out dozens or hundreds of images of a certain type and style and actually creating them can turn into a dull task.

Having said that, I find the sheer amount of work that has gone into thendesign of the movie astounding. Having to design every aspect of an imaginary world to that level of detail is hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Incredible craftsmanship. Even when Pixar makes turds like The Good Dinosaur they are a pleasure for the eyeballs.

<comment><USER12> The environments in The Good Dinosaur were stunning....and then the characters were less so. It's like they were designed by two completely different studios.

<comment><USER13> Pixar really wants to stay out of the uncanny valley with their characters, so they intentionally design them to look "cartoony"\--closer to the classic hand-drawn animation of the past. They want their movies to look like animated movies.

"Live action" movies try to make it to the other side of the uncanny valley. Usually the most successful efforts cheat a bit by avoiding human characters. Think Avatar, Gollum, Snoke, Thanoes, etc. They look so real! (If aliens or ring-wracked wretches were real...)

Where movies looks weird is when there are elements on both sides of the uncanny valley--in the case of The Good Dinosaur, the backgrounds look real and the characters look like cartoons.

This was surprising because Pixar is usually careful to avoid this. The sea in Finding Nemo looked amazing, but it didn't really look 100% real--it looked like a beautiful stylized version of a sea. Same with the environments in The Incredibles, as the top blog here details.

<comment><USER14> Good Dinosaur and Up are both interesting cases of Pixar's environment team exploring if they could use Google Earth (and equivalents) for location scouting, to the point where Good Dinosaur used a lot of direct satellite imagery and terrain data to bootstrap the animation process. Which is fascinating technically, but absolutely an interesting comparison to the less realistic approaches of everything else in the film. Up they managed it quite well because the real place they found as example is fantastic enough to support the rest of the film and the pulp adventure storyline supported that uncanny valley realism; The Good Dinosaur did not find something fantastic enough nor did it really support the story near as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>