os-x lion: this is why i hatelike it. - <AUTHOR>

i installed the developer preview of os-x lion some days ago. following are my first impressions. let me know how you think about apple's newest os.
performance
at first i thought lions performance sucks, but mdworker and kextcache processes are re-initializing spotlight right after installation which slows down the system and heats up the cpu. after two hours of fan-noise and heat the system seems to be fine and is running smoothly now.
mail
the new mail is great. finally email conversations are grouped. it features a new 3-column view, which imho is sub-optimal when working with loads of emails. fortunately the classic view also supports grouped conversations. i like
launchpad
well guys. this is a super use-less feature, as i setup my application folder as a dock-folder anyhow. for me at least there's no need to have an ios view of apps on a desktop computer or notebook.
mission control
this actually combines spaces and expose. unfortunately it adds nothing to my personal workflow as i rarely use those features.
calendar
the new calendar is actually a huge disappointment as i'm working with mutliple calendars of different people (synched via google calendar). it's not possible anymore to permanently display the list of calendars in a sidebar. this suxx big time. besides that the switching of calendars with the new dropdown kind of list is totally unreliable and the calendars don't seem to update properly when working with multiple windows :( i'll probably have to switch to google calendar or something else. any recommendations for a good calendar desktop app for os-x which can handle multiple gcal accounts?
trim support for ssd
finally there's trim support for ssd drives. this is totally overdue since windows and linux support this since quite a long time. i know that this is more a long term performance feature, but actually hoped that this would increase my ssd performance. unfortunately the xbench results did not get any better. sidenode: i'm not really convinced from the ssd performance under os-x (maybe it's the apple ssds which aren't that good, but colleagues have much much better results with linux).
versions
the integrated document versioning is quite cool and i'm sure this will save my * at some point in the future :)
conclusion
well as stated above there are some good things about lion like mail, versions and trim support, but also several downsides. i actually expected more and am a bit disappointed. there are also some other features, like fullscreen support for apps and airdrop which i didnt really test yet...
what do you guys think about lion?
cheers, karlton <comment><USER2> Thanks for the fan noise explanation...I was going crazy.

I agree with your review. I'll add:

\- It's fun just to update and play around and see what's new. \- X-Code is free again in the Mac App Store! (requires Lion) \- Backwards scrolling is driving me crazy, but I'll get used to it. \- Worth the $29.</comment>


Education course on hiring for startups - <AUTHOR> http://sduniversityhiring.eventbrite.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> A lot of my startup friends have been having a terribly hard time hiring people here in the bay area and in NYC so we are putting together this educational event around the topic of hiring.

Tried to bring together the best people we knew who have hired successfully in the past to share their tactical knowledge on the subject.</comment>


MacBook (Model 2007) for charity - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for someone who needs a 'new' computer. I've a MacBook (model 2007) collecting dust and I've been wanting to give it away to someone who really needs it. For example; you can't code due to yours is broken or stolen and you can't buy a new one because, simply put, you don't have the money.
I've always been wanting to give this MacBook away for free. This post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3007650) made me realize this could be right place.
If there are many people needing it, I'll randomly pick someone Sunday 23:00 GMT +1
So are you a programmer who desperately needs a new mac for programming? Leave a response :)
PS. The battery is broken, you'll have to leave it connected to a wall socket. <comment><USER2> So glad I saw this. I am a 20 year old living in New Delhi, India. I am in 3rd year studying to be a computer science engineer and aspire to launch a startup in a year. I have just started object-oriented programming and am getting the hang of the startup scene by following Hacker News and other relevant stuff.

I already make websites as a side hobby and plan to launch a web startup focused on education(LMS). I own an HP dv1000 laptop which is 6 years old and about to die any second. Last week, I got the motherboard repaired and have replaced the battery, hinges, Ethernet card and whatnot.

My dreams and plans are in place but I don't want to get in the VC scene for a few years till my product matures. I will keep things bootstrapped for a while and I will need a Mac for Objective-C development. Even if I buy a new laptop, it won't be a Mac as they are sold at outrageous prices in India and my parents will never agree for one. Just calculated with Google, my pocket money per month is ~$64 which is just enough for food, commuting, cellphone expenses for a college student in India. Saving money for a Mac would be a laughable thing to try.

So this could be a lovely chance for me to work on a Mac as part of my product development. If you are interested, email me for further discussion and any details/proofs you want: an.yamnat[at]gmail[dot]com

</comment><comment><USER3> Since you made a new item for it, I'll reupload my kind of egoistic comment here: I'm in desperate need of a laptop to do my development on. I do algorithms in C and C++ for the next International Olympiad in Informatics and my laptop (an el-cheapo ~220EUR I bought 4 years before) is completely broken down, The keys merely work, the touchpad doesn't really work as well. Linux won't work on this thing so I have to use Windows XP and putty (and it's really laggy) to do my job and this sucks.

I need to speed up the development process and get up an running with a machine that will always work. I'm not asking directly for your machine, it's just that I'd like to have it, and by that I mean that it would certainly help me but I'm pretty sure people out there need it more deeply.

What I do is here: <https://github.com/karantias/training>

Also, I'm 15 years old and believe me I'm completely broke. :)

\--gtklocker

karantiaskostis[at]gmail[dot]com

</comment><comment><USER4> I fulfill the two conditions. My laptop needs a reboot every 15-20 minutes and sometimes goes berserk all together and I can't afford a new one in near future. I too think, I am eligible for your generosity. I vow that I will refurbish it and pass it on whenever I am capable of buying a new one for myself.

<comment><USER3> That's good, actually, that's something I've thought of.

Whoever gets it should pass it on or donate something else to the community. That would indicate a good and open spirit. :)

<comment><USER5> No offense, but why is thread starting to sound like a Ms. World speech?

Just be frank and let the guy decide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another young fellow here. I had an older Macbook which recently died. I had programmed in Objective-C (for both Mac and iOS) but can't resume it as I don't have the money for another Mac so your old one could get me back on track again.

_Johan @Josso000

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm Mridul, 15. I need a mac. I want to dive into iOS programming, but, don't have any money. But, I have iOS developer membership, which someone gave me when I made a script for them.

(yes, I'm begging )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yesterday evening I placed everyone's 'name' in a jar (yes old-school) and picked: an_yamnat.

I've mailed you so check your inbox :) Congrats!

<comment><USER3> Picking blindly isn't really a good choice.

But well, enjoy your new toy an_yamnat!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think everyone deserved a fair change. That's why I picked blindly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> hey there, I m in desperate need of a laptop, I have a liver disease and have to spend most of my money on medication. Here's my website : jumplinkdesign.com I think I have the potential to become a good front-end developer. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> my email sebastienpaquet[at]hotmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a web developer @ Nicaragua. And I would love to have it.

</comment><comment><USER10> hey im not gonna sell bs. im poor like all people here. itd be cool if you choose me. im a novice rail developer. xelnyq[at]gmaildotcom</comment>


Dismemberment Killing of Tech CEO 'Looks Like Professional Job' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/nyregion/fahim-saleh-lower-east-side-murder.html <comment><USER2> I don't get how decapitating and dismembering the body with an electric saw is a mark of a professional. It seems like a very messy and over complicated way to kill someone.

<comment><USER3> > over complicated way to kill someone.

What if the person was killed first with another simpler method, and the electric saw was used after, for _disappearing_ purposes?

"Some time after, the assailant killed Mr. Saleh, decapitated him and dismembered his body with an electric saw."

<comment><USER2> I considered this but it was still naive of the attacker to think he could avoid CCTV.

<comment><USER4> I don't think naivety rules out professionalism. Perhaps he normally works in a location where CCTV footage never makes it to court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There doesn't seem to be any info yet, but he did build companies in the taxi industry in 3rd world countries. I can only imagine how entrenched those industries are, and how interested they might be in getting rid of the new competition.

<comment><USER6> Please this your angle is wrong. His firm was in a motorbike taxi-like business. And it was not across the nation because some states had already banned such business a decade before his came onboard. His was limited to Lagos area and was also knocked of business some months ago because of inherent risk associated with it.

It is too early to make unguarded and careless statements in this issue. Let's wait for investigation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jesus. That's gruesome. And trust that the initial comments on HN are about how to most efficiently kill someone, rather than any visceral reaction.

<comment><USER8> There's always Twitter for some of that visceral reaction you might be looking for. And Facebook and everything else.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there an ethical approach to tracking users? - <AUTHOR>

I've got an idea for an app that could provide value to the user but would require tracking their browsing history.<p>How do I do this without being a douche? <comment><USER2> Depends on your definition of ethics. * Consequentialism ethics: make sure the benefits to users outweighs the harm to them (in your judgment) * Deontological ethics: do the morally right thing (for some definition of morally right) * Or pick some other ethical theory

Pragmatically, you want users and prospective users to feel that you are being ethical (assuming they know what your app is up to). Technical people often have a hard time putting themselves in the user's shoes (when users are non- technical). Just pitch your idea to some non-technical friends and ask them if your plan sounds "ethical."

</comment><comment><USER3> Be completely transparent with what you are doing. Let the users know how you are tracking them and what you are going to do with that information. Even get their consent if you want before tracking them.

If you provide enough value, and are honest with your plans, most users will participate.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there an ethical reason for Tracking users? Just asking. Off hand I cant think of one.

<comment><USER5> Depends on your definition of "tracking users". Netflix tracks your viewing history to recommend new movies and TV shows. Amazon tracks your purchasing and browsing history to recommend items for you to purchase.

In my opinion, neither of these is inherently unethical.</comment></comment>


U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailouts as Senate Votes   - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok <comment><AUTHOR> I've been wondering how close the US itself is to going bankrupt? Who would buy our treasuries? What would happen to the economy? Things seem to be getting out of control financially.</comment>


Want to start a podcast? Need a co-host? Find them here. - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to partner up with a podcaster, maybe someone who is recording solo and could use a co-host.<p>Others on HN might be looking for the same, so go ahead and state whether you're a podcaster (and what the podcast is) or if you're looking to co-host (and what topics you'd be comfortable talking about). <comment><AUTHOR> BTW, the topics I'm comfortable chatting about include entrepreneurship, SEO, copywriting, marketing strategy, independent publishing and health and fitness (I include personal productivity, lifehacks and accelerated learning in the health and fitness category).</comment>


The increasingly long lives of old Macs - chris-at http://www.macworld.com/article/2971085/macbooks/the-increasingly-long-lives-of-old-macs.html#tk.rss_all <comment><USER3> 2009 octo mac pro with only 8 GB of ram ... still using it daily for all rsync.net work related duties (which includes at least 2 vmware fusion VMs running at all times). Works perfectly. Is fast. Runs snow leopard without a hitch.

2008 Macbook air was in (hard) daily use and travel from end of 2008 to beginning of 2015. Would still be using it if not for 2 GB of RAM becoming insufficient for a browser with many open tabs.

I've owned a lot of computers of many different form factors and it's hard to think of anything that comes close in terms of physical design and durability. _Maybe_ SGI workstations from the Octane2/Tezro years ... and current model supermicro rackmount servers.

I'm worried, however ... the new 12" macbook with a _single_ port (which gets used up by the power adaptor) is a fatal flaw. I've wanted a retina MBA for years now and now that there is one, there is no way I can use it. I predict buying a max-spec 11" MBA[1] just before they go out of production and using that for many years.

[1] with two full-sized USB ports in addition to thunderbolt.

EDIT: also, I haven't checked recently, but I _think_ there now exists a _bootable_ PCIe SSD for 2009 Mac Pros ... which means if I max out my ram and switch to PCIe SSD I could very easily run this Mac Pro for _another five years_. I think there is a 4k capable video card available for it and the lack of fast SATA is obviated by the pcie SSD ... really the only thing missing would be USB3, but I can live without that...

<comment><USER4> My wife just got the new macbook and freaking loves it. I have not heard a single complaint about the single port. She uses an adapter for the rare case where she needs to plug anything additional in.

Her biggest complaint is she sometimes forgets whether she has it in her bag or not because there is so little weight difference either way.

<comment><USER3> I have an almost daily use-case of USB modem and AC power simultaneously.

AFAIK there are not any USB modems in the new USB form factor. I haven't looked at what the adaptor chain looks like for "old USB and power at the same time" ... what does that look like ?

I think a single USB port on the new 12" is designed to be flawed. Apple _knows_ these things last 5+ years so the second release of the 12" will have a second USB port on the other side and X% of folks will re-buy that to remove the original flaw. That's one way to combat hardware that lasts "too long".

<comment><USER5> I have a 12" MacBook and I don't think Apple will ever add a second USB-C port to it. There simply isn't space. From my review[1]:

> Remember, the keyboard abuts the side. The only areas where ports wouldn't > intersect with the keyboard are already taken: USB-C on the left, headphone > jack on the right. Adding another USB-C port would require sacrificing the > headphone jack. I doubt that will happen any time soon.

Apple's solution is to sell an adapter that lets you charge and use USB[2]. Not pretty, but fewer peripherals need wires these days. Heck, I use the MacBook as my primary dev machine and the only adapter I use is for my Yubikey.

1\. [http://geoff.greer.fm/2015/04/19/2015-macbook- review/](http://geoff.greer.fm/2015/04/19/2015-macbook-review/)

2\. [http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital- av...](http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-av-multiport- adapter)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your answer, but I don't understand ...

The keyboard appears to abut both sides equally ... so while there may be an internal component in the _current_ iteration that takes up internal space, it's not the external footprint of the keyboard that is determining port or no-port.

Perhaps I am missing something ? Genuinely curious...

<comment><USER5> The keyboard has depth from mechanical linkages, sensors, and a frame to mount everything on. It's also recessed so it doesn't touch the screen when closed. See a teardown for the exact details. Since the keyboard can't be made any thinner, the only way to add more ports would be to make the laptop wider or thicker. Neither is going to happen.

<comment><USER3> Then how do they have the port on the left hand side ?

What I am saying is, the laptop (and the keyboard) are symmetrical left to right ... so if they can squeeze the port in on the left side, they should be able to squeeze an identical port in on the right side.

<comment><USER5> The headphone port is on the right. With the current form factor, there isn't room for both a headphone port and a USB-C port on one side. I said as much originally:

> Adding another USB-C port would require sacrificing the headphone jack.

Have you seen a MacBook in person? As soon as I did, I found this quite apparent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Adorable! I've got a Dell E1505 laptop that I bought refurbished in mid-2006 for $650 that is currently running Windows 10. The biggest bottleneck was the hard drive, which I'd swap out to an SSD if I really intended to give it any heavy use. The Dell came with XP, I upgraded to the Windows 7 preview and let it sit, upgraded to the Windows 8 preview and let it sit, upgraded to the Windows 10 preview, and now it has full-fledged Windows 10 - so I ended up with a completely free OS upgrade path, too.

You can't run new Mac operating systems on old hardware, and for a few iterations now, you can't upgrade Mac laptop hardware. That's great that the writer thinks functioning computer hardware from 2008 is old, and that Apple hardware is that much better than alternatives. Working for a company where everyone's on Macbook pros (myself included since last August), the reality of Apple hardware reliability is quite different than what articles like this project.

<comment><USER7> > You can't run new Mac operating systems on old hardware

Uhm.. aside from when OSX began requiring a 64bit CPU, what are you talking about? I have a 2008 Macbook Pro and it's happily running Yosemite with no issues. Sure, it's slower than modern hardware, but not overly so.

<comment><USER6> I apologize, I should have been more specific - OS X operates on post-PowerPC Apple hardware just fine up until the 64-bit requirement, but Windows 10 runs on hardware dating as far back as 2003 - <AUTHOR> [http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/operating- systems/...](http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/operating-systems/you- don-t-need-a-crazy-powerful-pc-to-run-windows-10-here-s-the-proof-1288287) for specs.

<comment><USER7> So then, to extend your original comment... "You also can't run new Windows operating systems on old hardware."

There's going to be some point where old hardware will cease to run the latest OS... wherever the OS makers decide to draw the line, the line WILL exist, so it's not a valid argument for or against, it's just... a fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this article is a little misleading. I'm running a 2010 Macbook Pro that still works great. But the only reason I'm able to do so is because of its upgradability. Over its life, I doubled the ram and swapped in an SSD.

The Macbook Pros sold today do not allow HD upgrades. (I'm not sure about ram.) I doubt they will last as long as my current one has.

<comment><USER9> I think this is a common path for MBPs of the same age. I've got a 2009 model and upgraded the HD to SSD and memory a couple of times. The processor can feel a little sluggish but it still handles what I need it to. But that's not really special to macs. Hardware just got to the point where it was mostly good enough. Not being able to upgrade the new MBPs does make me think twice. Either I fully load it and pay the premium or risk feeling I need more of XYZ later.

Something I do like about my MBP, even after quite a few years of abuse it still looks in decent shape. The case, screen hinge and keyboard all still feel solid. Which is where lots of other laptops seem to fall apart. Though the battery and trackpad have seen better days. Something nice about macs is they are usually serviceable for quite some time, either via Apple or third parties - I needed a new power adapter recently and could walk into a shop and get a new one there and then. Trying to track down power adapters etc for short lived models from other manufacturers can often be a pain.

All in all I don't think it's anything magic about macs. If you bought a similarly specd and built machine from someone else you'd be in the same position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My current daily work machine is a Thinkpad X61; according to the corporate property tracking system, it was acquired in October of 2007. It's never been upgraded, but with a dual-core 64-bit processor and 4 GB of RAM I can run most things I need and even start up a VM if necessary. I've been using it for several weeks now because I don't have a proper desk at my new location yet.

There's nothing magical about a Mac, you just have to pick something comparable instead of a $300 Best Buy HP.

<comment><USER3> I sort of agree with this, except ... there _is_ something magical about unibody metal construction. By anyone.

I don't understand why nobody else can make this leap ... it's a tremendous step forward in look, feel and function.

I don't have any particular affinity for apple, but there is no way I am ever buying a plastic computer again.

<comment><USER11> For those saying it's not unique to Mac. The Unibody pricing _is_ one key factor that makes a portable device that doesn't fall apart at the seams and internal connections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not a unique property of Macs. I've got the cheapest laptop I could buy in August 2001, a Toshiba that still runs...and runs fine with Wary Puppy or Win2k despite it's CopperMine 800mhz Celeron for many tasks. I've got a Dell workstation from 2008 that still has more cores than I can light up unless I try...and this Thinkpad, bought used, is 2010 vintage.

Computers tend not to go bad. Instead, jumping on the feature bandwagon that drives the product line model to profitability makes us feel that 800 million cycles per second is useless. In the early aughts, out in my garage I had bootlegged Windows Advanced Server running on a 40mhz 486DX2 with 8 megs of RAM full time to serve up the occasional file off the 340meg disk.

<comment><USER13> heck, I still drag around an old 2005/06 era 8.9" netbook I picked up for $300. It's tiny, gets on the internet ok, can connect to an external monitor/kb/mouse to turn into an impromptu desktop in a pinch, has a 250GB HD and two SD card slot so I use it to offload photos from my sd card at the end of a shooting day while out traveling and the other slot lets me expand the storage if I need.

I can use it to review my photos from the day and do some minor edits with gimp.

Bonus, it's about fast enough to run dosbox or scummvm and play standard def movies in vlc well enough. I can even emulate a Sega Genesis and hook up a controller and use it as a mini console.

It's been around the world with me many times, fits into the space a large paperback book would take. It's not "modern" by any stretch, is pretty beat up, but the large cheap storage device that happens to be a computer is very hard to come by these days. I've seen some newer devices with better specs, but they all insist on tiny SSDs, like 32GB drives, so they're an instant no- go.

<comment><USER14> 32GB with a couple different SD cards for different use cases would probably work well. They've got 256GB SD cards now, so you could even just get one for all your needs.

I miss my netbook, which was terrible by current standards, I made it work as a dev machine for a couple months while in-between workstations at home. It wasn't ideal, but it also wasn't as bad as I would have thought. I'm sure it would still see use if my son hadn't somehow destroyed the screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Every version of OS X prior to Tiger (2012) dropped support for something (e.g. x86, PowerPC, G4s, G3s, !Firewire etc). Every version of OS X since Tiger has supported Macs as far back as 2009. The only systems supported prior 2009 by post Tiger OS X are the Core 2 Duo units were only in the high-end. If you happened to buy an x86 ( not x64) Mac then you got upgraded once from Leopard to Snow Leopard and that was it. iOS has even spottier support for hardware with older versions dropped at almost every release.

The reason for this period of longevity isn't that Apple dedicated itself to supporting these legacy systems, that's a decidedly unApple thing to do. When Apple adopts a new technology that changes something fundamental about their operating system (e.g. PPC->x86, 32bit->64bit), they dump support for legacy systems in 1 or 2 versions. The reason for this long period of stability is that hardware performance reached a plateau and the focus shifted towards smaller and lighter systems with increasingly longer lasting batteries.

Let's also remember that if you counted up every Apple Mac regardless of OS, they would account for less of the PC market than the number of machines running Windows XP (a 14 year old OS that Microsoft still supports). Or that Microsoft Windows 10 can run on any x86 or x64 CPU 1Ghz with 1GB RAM made in the last 15 years.

<comment><USER16> Windows 10 on any x86 since 2000? Not true. Windows 10 requires PAE, NX, and SSE2; and 64-bit additionally requires CMPXCHG16b, PrefetchW, and LAHF/SAHF.

In practice, this means Athlon64 (2003) or Prescott Pentium 4 (2004) or VIA C7 (2005) or later, minus some models due to Intel's insane market segmentation policy or driver issues.

Full 64-bit Windows requires a CPU from about 2006. After spending way too much time looking, I'm still not sure which ones.

<comment><USER15> Good to know, the specifications pages just indicate a 1Ghz processor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have and use a 2006 MacBook Pro 17" which Apple treats in a bizarre way. Latest version of Mac OS X works on it fine as do things like Photos (which sucks but that's another story) and iTunes.

But they don't support the hardware. It is considered (their word): obsolete. The battery died long ago (Apple actually replaced it once years ago when it swelled up) and needs replacing (the replacement battery also swelled up) and they won't replace it.

<comment><USER18> I also have a MacBook Pro 17" with a swollen battery (a bit newer though: early 2009)

Did you try having the battery fixed by a 3rd party? I remember a few years ago I mailed a broken Powerbook battery to some guy who replaced the cells. I think it was a a NiMH battery, but maybe it works with lithium-ion batteries as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My parents still use an old G4 tower of mine I got in 1999/2000\. They mainly use an iPad but they use it from time to time for accounting things and basic tasks an iPad can't handle.

Honestly, the case is still unbelievably cool looking. I want it when they eventually decide to get rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER20> _Good for you, good for me, good for America_

In some ways this is good, but in others—a la Peter Thiel in _Zero to One_ [1]—it isn't: if so many computers are "good enough," that indicates that innovation in the sector has slowed and that many people don't find the newer models compelling.

Another reading could be, "No killer apps take advantage of much faster processors and interconnects."

[1] My thoughts: [http://jakeseliger.com/2014/09/24/zero-to-one-peter-thiel- an...](http://jakeseliger.com/2014/09/24/zero-to-one-peter-thiel-and-blake- masters).

<comment><USER21> >"No killer apps take advantage of much faster processors and interconnects."

This is what keeps me from upgrading my phone (a 5s). I don't need a larger screen, and everything else is an increase in hardware performance. Okay, so the OS will be a little bit more zippy, but I've yet to run into an app or game that runs sluggish or won't run at all. There's nothing there that compels me to upgrade. Shy of this phone breaking, I don't see myself upgrading for a few more years. And judging by how many times I've dropped my phone on a hard surface with nothing but a few scratches/dents in the metal backing, I don't see that happening any time soon.

As for computers, were it not for gaming I'd probably still be using a machine I built in 2008. It was a dual core with 8GB RAM and an 8800 Ultra GPU. Then again it was built for the purpose of gaming, so of course it's going to have extra good hardware meant to last years. Nothing else I use my computer for is hardware-intensive enough to justify an upgrade.

And I'd imagine were it not for the tech un-savvy buying super cheap, under- powered machines that they promptly bog down with viruses, not many people would have a need to upgrade their compueters since all they do is use a browser and Office

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of the reasons I think is the magsafe connectors. I have recycled a stack of other laptops where the power port (and PCB underneath) were ground up from the inherit abuse and prybar leverage of a traditional connector.

<comment><USER23> I hate that they ditched it on the new 12". Seems like a step back. With a personal laptop that lives in the living room and dogs in the house, the MagSafe has saved many a fall from the sofa or side-table onto the ground.

<comment><USER15> It didn't save my wife's from being yanked on the floor. The newer Airs are so light that the force to pull them off some surfaces is less than what's required to break the magsafe connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "If you look at the system requirements for the upcoming OS X El Capitan, for example, you'll see that it'll run on computers as old as a mid–2007 iMac. More to the point, you'll notice that those requirements are unchanged from its predecessor, Yosemite". Wrong. I updated my 2007 iMac to Yosemite and it was unusable. Each clicks takes seconds to respond. That is after I added RAM. I replaced it with Mint which works just fine. While hardware is durable, their system requirements are misleading.

<comment><USER25> My 2007 iMac runs Yosemite fine. Yosemite has bugs, but I don't think it's the hardware. That's why I'm liking forward to the stability release, El Capitan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I got a white MacBook in 2006. My school bought it for me because they had to burn some money budgeted for disabled students (I'm deaf) and I was doing a correspondence course that required a computer. I bought it off the school minus depreciation when I graduated and used it for several more years. When I upgraded in 2011, I gave the white MacBook to my brother, who is still using it to this day. I replaced the ram, battery, hard drive and power cord (twice). The trackpad and screen hinge are a bit tired. But as a netflix/email/facebook machine, it's still providing my brother with reliable service after 9 years. I'm awestruck. Neither my brother or I is particularly gentle with our electronics, either.

The 2011 MacBook Pro is also still running fine.

<comment><USER27> you can get the same life out of a Windows machine if you don't install updates and don't install shady executables.

<comment><USER15> I have a couple netbooks with the latest Windows 7 patches and they run just as bad as they did when I first got them with Windows XP. I've been debating upgrading them to Windows 10...

<comment><USER27> try 7 RTM without updates and Opera browser. that was my only config that worked just barely

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've got a free mac from a friend who upgraded to a latest retina model - <USER2> was a 2009 Core2Duo 15" MacBook Pro. I've put a 128GB SSD in(cheapest kingston one), bought a new charger, cleaned it throughout and it works perfectly well. It's really impressive.

</comment><comment><USER29> At our company we are normally not allowed to order Mac laptops. An argument similar to the one in this post while pointing to my 2007 MBP that I was still using convinced my manager to shell out the extra $500 or so compared to the crappy HP laptop last year.

<comment><USER15> It's not that Macs last longer than PCs or are somehow more robust, most $1000+ machines will last longer than $500 machines.

My Lenovo W510 benchmarks the same or better than the T430s they're handing out now at my office. The only reason I have to upgrade is that I'd like a battery that last longer than the walk from 1 meeting to the next.

<comment><USER29> That was my point: they _do_ last longer. Our preferred laptop was around $2,200 and the MBP came to around $2,800 (including Apple support) so they were both high end laptops. However, my colleagues who got the HPs two years ago already have had keyboard failures, characters on keys being rubbed off, etc. Not to mention the horrible cheap plastic feeling throughout that I feel after using a MBP for so long.

<comment><USER15> I think you're pigeon holing all PCs based on a bad experience with 1 brand. That's like saying all gasoline cars are poor quality and you should only buy electric cars based on a poor experience with GM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As a hobbyist I have always been frustrated with the price of used Macs, even ones that weren't even usable anymore. I just wanted an old G3 or Quadra to goof around on, and guy still wanted $600 for them. C'mon!

<comment><USER31> Keep hunting around. I was able to get my "dream Mac" of 15 years ago (a PowerBook Pismo G3 with max RAM) for just over $100. Still works fine and was a nice separate screen for chat or distraction free writing with WriteRoom, at least until Dropbox discontinued PPC support this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The thing is that this is mostly anecdotal. I had a mid-2010 MacBook Pro and I finally had to replace it at the end of last year after a whole year of trouble with the hard disk - got the cable replaced first (which helped for a while), then tried to put the HDD in the CD drive slot using an enclosure (so I could use the CD drive port) but that failed after a while too. Seems like the logic board is kaputt.

I did drop it a few times over the course of its life - that could've had an impact (pun intended!) but that's difficult to say.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been planning to replace my 2010 MacBook 13" for a few years. Each year it keeps doing everything I need it too, and the new systems don't seem like enough of a jump. I upgraded to 16gb of RAM and a 750gb hybrid drive. It hates doing anything computationally intensive, my IDEs take another few milliseconds to respond, but if I am patient it does everything I need.

I have no idea how long it will last at this point, I think it could be good enough for a few more years. If I put in an SSD it would give it another life.

<comment><USER34> Same here. My 2011 15" MBP is actually my fastest Mac by many regards. 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 + pretty nice GPU. I think I put it at 16GB ram, and installed an SSD. I still use it for all of my music stuff, and it doesn't feel slower at all than my 2014 MBP 13" Retina. For what I do with it, I don't see needing to change it at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> My daughter is using my old 2008 aluminum MacBook daily. I've replaced the battery, swapped out the HDD for an SDD and bumped up the RAM from 2 Gb to 4 Gb. It's running Yosemite and everything is working great. Keeping my fingers crossed we can get another 2-3 years out of this machine.

I had a 2006 MacBook that finally gave up the ghost a few months ago after nine years of daily use.

Finally, I have an iPad 3 that's still going strong and running the latest version of iOS.

I replace my iPhones every couple of years so I can't speak to their longevity.

<comment><USER36> Although the original spec limited the 2008 alu Macbooks to 4Gb RAM one of the post-release firmware updates upped that limit to 8Gb. Mine's been running fine with that, at least. Also, it's on the support schedule for El Capitan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Half of the appeal of using a Mac for me is being able to sell and buy used and keep up to what was up to date a year ago for >100$ annually.

</comment><comment><USER38> Recently retired my early 2008 mac pro; replaced by... a hackintosh! I used to use that machine as a linux workstation, but I've replaced /that/ by a bigger one still.

And yeah, if there was a pro machine that wasn't ridiculous like the ashtray, I'd buy one... Instead, it's the first time I don't own an apple machine since the SE/30 days...

</comment><comment><USER39> Hah, I still use my 2003 PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5GHz every now and then.

The 30" Cinema Display I got with it is STILL my daily monitor, although I generally hook it up to my MacBook Pro instead.

I can't believe how long they lasted, and the money I spent on them has been absolutely worth it. A lot cheaper than spending $600 every 2 years on a new system.

</comment><comment><USER40> I gave my kids an ipad 2 and it's been through 3 years of hell, but it still works like a champ.

</comment><comment><USER41> I still use my 1999 Powermac every week to drive my drum scanner, which requires a proprietary card and OS9 drivers. Works flawlessly, with original keyboard and mouse!

My other machines are a BTO 2010 Macbook Air and a 2011 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM and two SSDs.

</comment><comment><USER42> Using same 2008 macbook as article mentions with same upgrades, going great. Same can't be said for all macbooks though, 2011 range springs to mind as particularly prone to failure and the newer ones just don't feel as sturdy to me.

</comment><comment><USER43> I still have a 2007 (or 08?) iMac in my office that I use to watch Netflix. I just replaced the HDD with a SSD some years ago. The machine still runs great on OS X 10.10.

The only thing that's a little off-putting is the screen's CFL backlight.

<comment><USER44> Was the backlight always off-putting or did it become off-putting gradually over the years?

If the former, can you describe what about the light is off-putting?

I ask because I'm interested in the aesthetics of lighting technologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I had an auto mechanic circa 5 years ago that ran his whole business from a System 7 mac, I think it was a Quadra series. The thing was caked in garage soot but seemed to be cranking along quite comfortably churning out estimates etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> I have a Mac SE/30 FDHD (dual floppy) with external LaCie hard drive that still works.

Not that it's useful but kind of fun to boot up every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER47> I have an original Apple Macintosh and 512Ke still in working order. Can't say the same for most of the floppy disks.

</comment><comment><USER48> Proud mid-2010 MacBook Pro here. Replaced the HD for a 700 Tb ( or Gb can't recall ) for 30 USD. Replaced the top panel for FREE ( love Youth Apple in Taiwan, they used glue on a dislodged key then owned the mistake when the whole keyboard broke and replaced the whole top panel for FREE ). Everything else awesome. Only thing missing is HandOff with my iPhone 5s ( damn old bluetooth ).

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm using my Quadra 950 right now, just updating the OS.</comment>


Ask HN: How can you keep a non-evil company on track? - <AUTHOR> Here's a bit of a "corporate charter hacking" question. If you're founding a company in order to effect social good - some specific purpose that goes beyond shareholder value, that is - is there any way of being reasonably sure it will continue to fulfill its purpose after you've retired?
There are organizations that have stayed true to purpose for long periods of time (the ACLU comes to mind) but if the intent is also to make a profit, I've heard of too many companies that lose track of the purpose of social benefit in pursuit of the profit.
Is this a circle that can't be squared? What mechanisms are already out there? I'm not even sure where to start. <comment><USER3> You might want to look into creating a benefit corporation, which is essentially a for-profit entity with goals beyond maximizing shareholder value: [http://benefitcorp.net/faq](http://benefitcorp.net/faq)

In terms of making sure the company stays true to your purpose, that's what board seats and voting shares are for. Beyond that part of entrepreneurship, and working with others in general, is accepting that we won't always get what we want. You might have to accept that your company at some point focuses more on profit than you'd prefer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the public benefit company is already something we're looking at - Kickstarter is one.

And the knowledge that we don't control our children is also something we're looking at, on a philosophical level.

To be honest, I keep thinking about Charlie Stross and his corporate charters written in Python, then reminding myself that is not yet a practicable plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Training seven or more people to "carry the baton of culture" once core leadership is gone. Making sure they keep their kinetic cultural fire going, so-to-speak.

That and getting more artists into the mix. Also, having a good corporate slogan can help. I think if your company contributes knowingly to the greater good, and you make that a core foundation of your company culture, it can last far beyond one person's contributions.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can do it! Have a mission.

Imagine a kid dribbling a basketball along the baseline, while staring intently out-of-bounds. "What are you doing, kid?" "Making sure I don't go over the line!" Coach tells the kid to focus instead on moving toward the goal.

It's definitely possible to do well while doing good, but in order for that to happen, you really need to focus on what the good is, not on not-evil. It may require a suspension of your belief that the two are in tension; Kierkegaard might call this a "teleological suspension of the ethical."

I think a great example of this is news organizations (there is also a warning there, I suppose). The focus isn't "maximize shareholder value while hopefully not forgetting about news" (well, again, a warning). The focus is "truth at all costs" and the profit is a thing that inevitably happens by running it as a business.

<comment><AUTHOR> See, now this is the kind of thing I want. No discussion is really a true discussion until you get to Kierkegaard.

What concerns me is that profit is _not_ assured by the "truth at all costs" DNA. You need a plan to make sure your family gets to eat and go to college. Some middle ground is necessary.

<comment><USER5> Yeah! Kierkegaard!

I agree with your point, even though I wouldn't call it a middle ground. I think, "make as much money as you can without being evil" is, maybe a middle ground. I think, "make money while doing a particular, real good in the world" is not- it's a thing that actually happens in the world we live in.

Maybe the news example is a little of a red herring (both an example and a counter-example in one).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All companies with human shareholders will work to maximize profits, be it short- or long-term.

If you can provide the environment where any 'evilness' will actually work _against_ bigger profit, then the shareholders will try to make sure this doesn't happen.

<comment><USER7> Profits are proof of societal benefit. The ability to make something customers value at greater than it's cost of creation is the definition of the creation of value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you read Brian Alexander's Glass House yet, about how private equity profit was not creating value for Lancaster, Ohio? I encourage it, especially if you're from the Midwest. It's more than a bit confusing from the timeline perspective, but illuminating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You're asking a question about how your company should continue on in its legacy when you haven't even started it yet.

Just get started. Over the span of your working lifetime the approaches to this are going to change a great deal, and you can always change your approach later on.

But, at the end of the day start a private company so you eliminate the concern of being pushed towards maximizing profit. If later you need to take on investment, take on small minority investments from groups that truly believe in the same goals you do.

If the company is mostly kept in your control, then when you decide to retire you can appoint a replacement who truly holds the same values you do and allow it to continue in that vein.

Doing good and making money are not mutually exclusive. The problem becomes when companies aggressively try to maximize their returns by sacrificing their product or their users. A modern corporation is kind of pushed this way especially after IPOs or in situations of minority control - but, if the individual at the helm and those invested in the product truly believe in the mission then it is easy to meet the standards of fiduciary duty ([https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fiduciary_duty](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fiduciary_duty)) whilst remaining true to a social good mission.

I'm fortunate to work at a company where members of our team strongly believe in our mission, and so does our CEO and investors. I think if that runs through the veins of your company it will be fine long term. You just need to ask yourself, would this person I am hiring sell out value X for $Y - as long as the answer is no then you're good to go.

So:

Step 1: Actually start your business. Stop worrying and dive in.

Step 2: Do social good, start to make some money.

Step 3: Hire people with as much belief in the mission as you have.

Step 4: Retain as much private control of the company as possible, or seek investors who believe deeply in your mission.

Step 5: Do more social good - because we need more of that in the world!

<comment><AUTHOR> But what would the world _be_ without carts before horses?

No, but seriously - this isn't (entirely) a delaying tactic before diving in, this is me actually getting to the point where I will soon _be_ diving in, and wanting to feel more competent about what it means to have a company that's more than just me. I've put a _lot_ of thought into how to solve my technical problems, because that's what I do - but soon, like within three years, I'm going to be in the position to make decisions that will affect human beings who aren't my family. I'd like to think I have the competence to do that right. But I don't.

Fortunately, I still have some technical problems to work out before I can make a credible start on the business per se! So I can kick that can down the road a little, and hopefully read and think some more about these things that worry me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The nature of human beings, who are able to convince themselves they are doing good while in fact being quite destructive - means you can't set up something great and good that will last forever, with any mechanisms. I think the Cooper Union scandal shows this well enough. Still, Cooper Union lasted a long time in roughly its original form, before our corrupt generation took it down. That much you can hope for. [http://fusion.net/story/192436/cooper-union-endowment- traged...](http://fusion.net/story/192436/cooper-union-endowment-tragedy- betrayed-legacy/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly the kind of situation it would be nice to avoid. It's probably impossible. I'll keep thinking. This is the kind of thing I was looking for, though - thanks!

<comment><USER9> I too will keep thinking on this, hoping to come up with a better mousetrap. Let us know if you come up with a better mousetrap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Might want to read [http://zebrasunite.com/](http://zebrasunite.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah - thank you!

(edit) More than thank you - _thank you_! (Now that I've read it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As long as the profit motive incentivizes bad things, you probably won't be able to escape it.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Very true. I'm more concerned about profit to top management outweighing profit to the company, though.

Or more accurately, I'm thinking about two different situations here - one is a startup a friend is founding; he wants to keep it true to purpose. The other is a company I plan to found in the future; I intend to make sure it provides economic stability to the community for the long term.

To be honest, I keep conflating these two goals, but they're not the same; they just fall into the same kind of ballpark, which is: how do you guard against poor judgment on the part of top management? And the answer is: you can't, not perfectly. Because if you could, they wouldn't be top management.

<comment><USER11> Maybe a for-profit company isn't the structure you want to establish towards that goal. Such an entity is going to have inherent incentives to generate and increase profits through any means, good or bad. Management will have to bow to those needs and they'll have their own profit motive to do so. It would take a miracle of human nature to make sure the company behaves in a 'non- evil' manner to that end in every situation for all of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> "All of time" is maybe overstating my ambition, and "non-evil" was not the best choice of title. You're not wrong, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not taking external funding is a good start imo

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Actually a very good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I happen to have tripped across this yesterday and you might find it pertinent:

[http://redf.org](http://redf.org)

But I will suggest that you also reconsider your view that business is inherently evil or inherently prone to evil.

Historically, some of our most civilized civilizations, like Persia and Greece, revered the honey bee. The honey bee is a metaphor or mental model for trade. The bee benefits the flowers without harming them and it also benefits from the flowers.

Trade is a civilizing force. Yes, trade can be done badly and people can be exploited. But that isn't something inherent to trade per se. At its core, good business benefits both sides. That's why customers will pay you.

I am a woman and former homemaker and former bleeding heart idealist who used to do a lot of volunteer work. I have thought a lot about not for profit vs for profit organizations and I do not believe not for profits are inherently better. In fact, many of them require people to first be "losers" and also self identify that way in order to get assistance. This inherently tends to go bad places.

I have been homeless for over five years. I have seen how easily charity can go bad places. The longer I have been on the street, the more I have looked for market based solutions. The food at an eatery is better quality, thus healthier, than the food at a soup kitchen and there are government controls insisting on cleanliness, etc of the establishment. It is a vastly superior way to feed people.

I also would rather earn an income than seek charity. It is a better experience, it gives me more agency and it has a more positive impact on my life.

There are ways to do charity well and there are forms of charity that I am happy to receive and that I think are fundamentally healthy things. But a lot of charitable organizations strike me as a cancer upon society that the world would be better off without.

I will also suggest you read up on Deere. I wrote about it here, but should probably update it some time:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/04/lemon- mering...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/04/lemon-meringue-pie- is-better-than-sour.html)

The pertinent section says:

 _So here is a bit of history of some "PR" done right. According to the history section of the John Deere site: 1933 Business is almost at a standstill. Sales plunge to $8.7 million. Though it is losing money, the company decides to carry debtor farmers as long as necessary, greatly strengthening farmer loyalty.

As I understand it, John Deere was the only tractor company that made that choice during The Great Depression. Other companies repossessed the tractors when farmers could not pay. This really did them no good because there was no market for them. It really did not recoup them much, if anything, and it burned the farmers when life was at it's toughest.

The mild statement above about "strengthening farmer loyalty" does not give the same impression that I got from some article elsewhere. According to the article I read, for decades after The Great Depression, if you were a salesman for another tractor company and you saw a John Deere on the property, you might as well keep driving and not bother to stop and make a sales pitch because John Deere had that family's undying loyalty for generations to come._

<comment><AUTHOR> It's precisely that attitude embodied in Deere in the 1930's that I aim to get back to - I'm from Indiana farm country myself, though, and I can tell you that Deere is no longer that benefactor. Nor are the many other once- community-minded companies that used to employ the heartland.

As a freelancer myself, I certainly don't think that business is inherently evil. I do, however, think that today's insistence on shareholder returns to the exclusion of all other principles (up to and including stewardship of long-term value) is hollowing us out from the inside. Find me a large American company who would _ever_ do the kind of long-term thinking Deere exhibited in the 30's. There aren't any.

Charity is not at all what I'm talking about. Charity is good for what it's good for - but it can't keep a society afloat for the long term. Only a healthy business ecology can do that. Long-term prosperity is the only possible goal, and it can't be done with handouts or noblesse oblige.

I currently live in Puerto Rico. We have a lot of problems here - <USER2> that are deep and long-lasting - but I think they can be solved with a business model that focuses on long-term stability even if short-term profit will be lower. And it will be.

I really need to write some kind of long-form coherent presentation of what I'm talking about in Puerto Rico, but frankly I'm still learning a lot of basic things about the economic situation here that have a direct bearing on how I see the future. So I'm not ready yet.

But thanks for your input! This is very useful.

<comment><USER13> I actually have done some recent reading on developments in Puerto Rico. I gathered some of that here: [http://www.metafilter.com/162634/Salud](http://www.metafilter.com/162634/Salud)

Maybe that will help you do a long form write up on Puerto Rico.

Best.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know who's actually doing the most for sustainable local agriculture here? Walmart. It just plain freaks me out. But they have an angel fund to support local farmers, and preferentially deal with them. They're the only chain I know of where you can get bagged coffee that's not produced by a Coca-Cola subsidiary.

Thanks for the link! MeFi FTW!

<comment><USER13> I am actually a fan of Walmart. I respectfully suggest that Walmart is a good example of good business that is not evil, in spite of how much people talk trash about it. I suggest it is good food for thought that, no, not everything has completely gone to hell, in spite of how easy it is to feel that way thanks to the 24 hour news cycle where "news" is always bad news, basically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Walmart has done incredible damage to the local economies of the Midwest - they've essentially eliminated small retailers over much of the country. It's true that they're simply part of an existing larger trend - but they've profited hugely from it and have cut a lot of ethical corners in making one family the richest people in the world.

Walmart Puerto Rico is a wholly-owned subsidiary. Here, they've done less damage (there wasn't as much damage to be done) and they've done positive good.

<comment><USER13> Eh, I see it differently. I think Walmart gets blamed for those trends and no one thinks about what the world would look like with those same trends and no one like Walmart to serve certain purposes.

There are 7 or 8 billion people globally and in my lifetime we went from being mostly agrarian to having more than half of all people living in cities. These are unprecedented global changes. We have nothing to compare them to.

And people keep bellyaching about overpopulation and global warming and THE SKY IS FALLING, meanwhile, people are living longer...etc.

I fundamentally don't agree with some of the assumptions behind accusations that Walmart is evil and predatory. That doesn't mean they are a white knight or have room for improvement, mind you.

Best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Look into Toyota

<comment><AUTHOR> Toyota is not at all a bad model!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you generate documentation? - <AUTHOR> It seems there's a new Open Source documentation generator project out there pretty regularly and I'm sure a litany of paid services to manage better docs. In the past we've used lots of different tools from jsdoc parsers to stoplight; however we're in the need for a new solution that can work well for a very small team.<p>Primarily looking for:<p>- API Docs - SDK Docs - Code structure docs (beyond tests and codecoverage) <comment><USER2> Sphinx is very nice to work with, and it's been around for a long time. I've used it for Python projects, C++ projects (with doxygen and breathe), and some programming language agnostic things. It's almost trivial to pair Sphinx docs with readthedocs.org as well. For smaller pieces of documentation (and many personal things) I use Org mode in Emacs. Org mode supports exporting to a wide variety of formats.

<comment><USER3> We use Sphinx extensively in our organization, as it's text based (works nicely with GIT) and extensible (we can add the necessary directives to support domain specific documentation requirements from CENELEC standards).

Our product is a railway signalling onboard system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After sweating drops of blood through my forehead and recording the results with Libre Office, I then export it to PDF.

I've tried super-duper generators in the past. They never seem to give you results that are worth the effort and time spent.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm using OpenAPI, Doxygen and Asciidoctor. We also have Phabrixator for internal wiki and project tools</comment>


PlaceIt by Breezi - Generate Product Screenshots in Realistic Environments - <AUTHOR> http://placeit.breezi.com/

<comment><USER2> Love this idea and the final images look great. One gripe with the UX, and I'm starting to see this everywhere, is that the only way to upload a file is to drag it onto the browser. Why not add the option for a standard file input form? Drag and drop uploading breaks my workflow substantially - am I alone in this?

<comment><USER3> Came here to say the same thing - I hate drag and drop everywhere! I have to resize my browser window, move it around, open up a file browser, resize that, find the file, drag and drop it, close the file browser, and resize my web browser. How annoying! I think it's because it's an OSX paradigm, so stuff that's very design-y tend to use it, and it ends up with the usual OSX "looks nice, isn't very practical" effect.

I love the service though - could use some 'outdoor' shots in urban environments, a crowd, a concert, a subway stop, stuff like that. Bookmarked.

<comment><USER4> you guys should use <http://mizage.com/divvy/> is great for resize windows without touching the mouse.

<comment><USER2> I love divvy, but a file input field is still easier. Both options require you to go through a file browser to find your file, but a file input doesn't make you resize any windows then resize them back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get why so many product screenshots focus on showing use on an Apple computer/device when statistically most of your users will not be using Apple.

Perhaps more early adopters are using Apple? Or it just makes it look cooler?

<comment><USER6> If you're making a mobile app, or especially something for tablets, in a lot of cases most of your users WILL be using Apple products even if it's not specific to iOS.

<comment><USER7> Market share and pictures of a hand holding an iPhone disagree with you.

<comment><USER6> Market share? It's been shown that even though a lot of "android" devices may be out there, the majority of use and engagement from mobile platforms is still coming from iOS.

See this post on asymco:

[http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/26/the-android-engagement- para...](http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/26/the-android-engagement-paradox/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very cute idea.

I might be missing something here, but - where's the license to the photos? These would obviously be useful for commercial purposes, but I have to see some usage license for it.

<comment><USER9> The 3D ones we rendered ourselves and the others are photos we took.

<comment><USER8> That's awesome, now put a link to a license that legally defines how can one use them, to avoid legal confusions.

May I suggest CC <http://creativecommons.org/> ? :)

<comment><USER9> Done!

<comment><USER8> Sweet! :) I love your responsiveness here on HN, pretty impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's nice but only for Apple products...

<comment><USER9> We'll put up a few new android stages up in a few hours.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I'll love you if you do that.

<comment><USER9> There are a few up there now

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome idea. I was thinking that I needed something like this just this past weekend. I was working on a demo for my iPhone and the product actually works, but it was pouring rain all weekend in SF so I couldn't go outside and take a good pic.

Adding a few more devices or even shots with multiple devices would be a great addition, but the core concept is great.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would love MacBook Air, but with no (transparent) background.

<comment><USER9> We'll add that for you - check back in 1 hr

<comment><USER12> Can I get <http://placeit.breezi.com/productshots/12> and <http://placeit.breezi.com/productshots/15> in transparent background.

Thank you very much.

<comment><USER9> Sure. We'll probably add them at some point this week

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is cool, but I think more transparent background scenes would be useful.

<comment><USER9> Great suggestion. Yes makes a lot of sense. We'll add those today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Excellent idea. I'd love to have MS Surface as an option (in horizontal orientation). I'd also love the ability to do it with a video.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks great -- As a note, I got a response after about a 1-2 minute process time. Would be great for you to show where I am in the process queue location instead of just the loader so that I don't think there was a browser or server error.

Is it possible to also have a multi-device template (showing the screen simultaneously on iPhone, Macbook, etc?)

<comment><USER9> Sorry, yes there is a lot of people hitting the server right now. Yes, that would be possible but I think what we're going to do is add PNG outputs so you can place them together with your own backgrounds as well.

<comment><USER16> Seems like it should be possible to do everything in the browser using canvas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is fantastic! Kudos for coming up with this amazing service. We just launched our software for Mac and putting the screenshot of the app in a Macbook makes it so much more beautiful!

If you can also add some Windows monitors and desktops on transparent background then other non Apple folks would also be able to use it. :)

<comment><USER9> Sure thing. We'll add some on Tuesday. Please check back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Suggestion - You might look into creating some templates pre-sized to be ready to upload to the appropriate app store(s). Something like <http://android-ui- utils.googlecode.com/hg/asset-studio> but for promotional graphics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh, that moment of frisson when a piece of the future arrives. This is so excellent, thank you!

<comment><USER9> :) glad you like it

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is cool. If you don't mind my asking, are you using imagemagick to generate the final image? I went through some of the js/css and I didn't see any CSS transforms or js trickery (funny comment about IE in there though).

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems like it's broken at the moment. I'll check in later. Neat idea and execution!

<comment><USER9> Should be ok now - sry about that - we ran out of space

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Really cool idea. Is there any website providing the same for Android Platforms?

<comment><USER9> We'll add them in a few hours

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Woww Amazing! PlaceIt also available in the Chrome Store: <http://goo.gl/XtUDJ> in 3 Languages (English, Spanish and Arabic)

<comment><USER24> Aw come on, you got on the front page didn't you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Did we break it?

      We're sorry, but something went wrong.

      We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.

<comment><USER9> Hey, jut ran out of disk space. Will be back in 20 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love the idea, but I worry it has little practical use for business - it'll be the web faux pas equivalent of using unmodified Bootstrap!

<comment><USER27> I don't really have a problem with people using a standard form for content, I understand it's nice to make engaging interactive content, and artistic projects that entertain, inspire or amuse, sometimes though, you just want to read some words, look at some images and find out some facts, a standard form can be very good for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We just need those plastic guns that deliver the drug which takes away mutant powers.

<comment><USER29> I think you may have commented on the wrong post :)

<comment><USER28> Haha yes I did. Not sure how I managed that. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is pretty awesome! Are there plans to charge for this? Keep it free?

<comment><USER9> I can't see us ever charging for this. Just wanted to give out something valuable to the community

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> 'cause the only customers worth having use apple products!

</comment><comment><USER32> Perfect and just in time for when I go back to work!

</comment><comment><USER33> Just yesterday, I was looking for this. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER34> If only there were some non-Apple devices...

<comment><USER9> We'll add about 5 more non-apple device today. Check back around this afternoon (pst). Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wow brilliant, what a handy tool, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER36> very cool I would add rotated iPhone (Landscape) scenes to the mix</comment>


How key-based cache expiration works - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3113-how-key-based-cache-expiration-works <comment><USER2> It's good to see this written up somewhere. The technique is widely known in the Rails community but I haven't seen it explained in one place. (For example, the Rails API documentation and guides don't even mention that the cache helper can take an Active Record instance as the key, so you'd be hard pressed to discover this technique without reading the Action Pack source.)

As DHH says, the upside is that it's simple and, as long as you get the cascading updates right, makes sure you don't ever show stale content.

There are a couple of downsides.

Firstly, once a fragment becomes invalid, it's not regenerated until the next request that needs it, so someone somewhere gets a slow[er] page load; even worse, if yours is a large public site with lots of long-tail pages, that "someone" is likely to be the Googlebot, and the slower page times might adversely affect your search ranking. You could ameliorate this by having some kind of automated process for periodically pre-warming certain parts of the cache after certain kinds of update, but that can get difficult to maintain.

Secondly, this technique is very conservative: the goal is to invalidate _all_ fragments which _might_ have been affected by an update, rather than _only_ the fragments which _actually_ have been. (It's less brute-force than the even simpler "invalidate the entire cache every time any record is updated" strategy, but it's making a similar trade-off.) This works well for an application like Basecamp where the hierarchical presentation of the data matches its hierarchical organisation at the model level, but is more problematic in applications with lots of different ways of presenting the same underlying data; if you have lots of cached representations of projects which don't actually include any information about the child todo lists or todos, then tough shit, those are all going to be invalidated when a single todo is updated, and you'll have to spend (page load) time waiting for them to be regenerated. In principle you can get around this by having multiple timestamps per model to represent different kinds of update, but again that's more difficult to manage correctly over time.

An interesting alternative approach is James Coglan's experimental Primer (<https://github.com/jcoglan/primer>), which dynamically tracks which Active Record instances & attributes are used during the generation of a cached fragment, and then actively invalidates that cache when any of those attributes change. The downside to Primer is that it's more complex, not production-ready, and may contain traces of magic.

<comment><USER3> Best writeup on the topic of caching in rails that I've seen is [http://broadcastingadam.com/2011/05/advanced_caching_in_rail...](http://broadcastingadam.com/2011/05/advanced_caching_in_rails)

<comment><USER4> Hey, I wrote that! Thanks for the compliment :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work on memcache at Facebook, and cache invalidation is a hard, hard problem. It's easy to think that we just overlooked this trivial fix, but the reality is that this just doesn't solve all possible cache consistency problems. Namely, how do you deal with racing writes where the clocks are skewed? How do you deal with multiple copies of the same data in different caches (different data centers, for example). What about axe-murdering your top level db because that data is inherently uncacheable using this scheme?

I'm not trying to hate on the post at all, I think it's awesome that product people are thinking about this problem, and the more of them that do the better the world is going to be for guys like me. I just want them to continue to think hard about it :)

<comment><USER6> good points. but to be fair most problems become hard, hard problems when your site operates at large, large scale. for small traffic sites, caching architecture is easy and most of the subtle vulnerabilities don't manifest.

background: i've been a senior staff engineer at Orbitz and i did a lot of work on the caches at Cheaptickets.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do they pull the memcached key with the latest timestamp? Is there a memcached equivalent of "SELECT value FROM memcached WHERE key LIKE 'prefix%' ORDER BY key DESC LIMIT 1;"?

<comment><USER8> See step 6. The view is pulling the cache key straight from the domain model. It relies on being the informed as well about changes in its children to do that, which is what the setup in step 5 is about.

<comment><USER9> Do am I wrong or you still hit the DB for each model object? But of course you save all the complex rendering (possibly SELECT for children) from the key, right?

<comment><USER8> You hit the DB for the top-level. So in step 6, we'll always hit the db for the latest project, but we will not hit the db for the todolists or the todos of those todolists if the project cache is fresh.

So you save the render plus any db calls that would be triggered as part of that render.

<comment><USER10> So simple yet so brilliant!

I can't believe I didn't think of this before. My initial reaction after I skimmed the post was "uhh, so you still hit the db? what's the point?"

Thanks for sharing this! I definitely want to implement something similar for my future projects!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was thinking the other day, wouldn't it be easyish and optimal to specify/calculate all the data that is used to generate a fragment, store the information in a tree, and invalidate the parents when a node changes.

This would only invalidate data that needs to be invalidated, and it doesn't sound too hard to implement... Does it exist anywhere? What are downsides I haven't thought of?

<comment><USER12> not being an expert in this field, one hazard that comes to mind is that a key look up could turn into a tree traversal problem, which defeats the purpose of having a cache in the first place..

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I haven't heard people talk about this for a long time..

[http://code.google.com/p/memcached/wiki/NewProgrammingTricks...](http://code.google.com/p/memcached/wiki/NewProgrammingTricks#Namespacing)

Anyway, if you use this method, you would expect to have long key, so base64 or binary protocol would be useful.

</comment><comment><USER14> I read the initial post about this on Friday morning and spend the rest of the day adding this caching scheme to my almost finished Rails app.

In addition, I added the pjax system to my app.

In less than 1 day of work, my app feels significantly more responsive to user commands.

</comment><comment><USER15> I assume this has the effect that memcached is always full. How do you know when the hot cache is starting to fill memcached? Ie, how do you know when your cache memory is closing up to beeing to small?

<comment><USER16> You probably calculate the ratio of hot requests vs cold ones. Or in other words, the cache miss ratio.

<comment><USER15> But that wont show anything until it most likely already is to late. You dont realy want that value to ever go down, then you already have customers with a worse experience, and when that starts, it goes very fast down the hill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds... different than the caching I knew before. Problem is, I don't know Rails at all. Can anyone explaing this in non-rails speech for me?

(Links are fine, of course)

<comment><USER18> The general gist of it is that you store HTML snippets (e.g. a todo, a list containing, or a project containing lists) in some quick storage medium (in this case Memcached). Each snippet is stored under and accessed by a key that uniquely identifies the version saved (object type + ID + update timestamp). When a new version is cached, the old version stays in the cache, unused, until it is eventially dropped out by Memcached.

Now all you need to do is to ensure that whenever an object or its children change, you update their timestamp (the "touch" part), and if you make a changes to the code, you increment the version key for said cache piece. This way new requests will not hit old cached content.

<comment><USER17> Ok, so the first interesting part is that instead of caching the result of a database request we cache the complete rendered result. And the bigger rendered parts are just constructed by combining the smaller (also cached) parts, right?

How does the application learn which version an element is at right now? Don't you have to call the database to find out?

<comment><USER19> If you're rendering an object, you've likely already fetched it from the DB. Rails models (by default) will have a created_at and updated_at datetime columns that are automatically set and updated for you, and you can use them for exactly what is shown in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there a way to pull this off when the fragments in question are JSON?

<comment><USER8> If you use something like jbuilder to build your JSON, then this exact same technique will work just as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It sounds really impressive, smart, innovative UI and underlying architecture. 37 signals did it again! What is the minimum requirements of a team, programmers/skills/time, to get into such a project and actually deliver?

<comment><USER21> Why the downvote? It looks like a very promising attitude, but one has to consider if this added complexity is feasible for a smaller or less experienced shop. The input is important.

<comment><USER22> My guess is that the parent is getting downvoted because it's so dense with hero worship that it turns my stomach.</comment></comment></comment>


Review: Littlebits Korg Synth Kit, Synth building blocks for big kids (Video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2013/12/23/review-littlebits-korg-synth-kit/ <comment><USER2> [https://support.littlebits.cc/entries/22214903-Are- littleBit...](https://support.littlebits.cc/entries/22214903-Are-littleBits- circuit-designs-Open-Source-)

"To be clear, other intellectual property rights such as design elements like fonts, white soldermask with purple silkscreen, logos, as well as the modular connection system (including the connectors and the connector system) are reserved by littleBits Electronics, Inc., and we have a number of issued patents and pending patent applications related to our proprietary magnetic connectors and our system of electrical circuits."

Essentially, littleBits are not so open source after all; a corruption of product industrialization by depreciating the value of what it means to be open source, a trend emphasized by Makerbot Industries.</comment>


There is no shame in up-voting on Stack Exchange - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kentf/status/598853414307688448

<comment><AUTHOR> I realized that I commonly go to a page, get an answer, realized I am not signed in, don't take the time to sign in, get a great answer and then leave.

That's a dick move.

Let's just be kind and up-vote the good answers.</comment>


Wells Fargo Sees Slow Growth in Digital Users, but at Least It's Growing - <AUTHOR> http://bankinnovation.net/2017/07/wells-fargo-sees-slow-digital-growth-but-at-least-its-growing/ <comment><USER2> Given their recent history of phony-account fraud, perhaps "growth in users" is not in itself a useful metric for them.</comment>


Server-Sent Events - <AUTHOR> http://html5doctor.com/server-sent-events/

<comment><USER2> OT: Where has this word Polyfill appeared from? I first read it yesterday and here it is again.

<comment><USER3> It's been in use for a while. In home repair, polyfills are used to fill in gaps and level out uneven surfaces. The term was adopted by web developers to refer to code that implements standard features in browsers that don't support them yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The last section is really important. If you don't need the full duplex communication of WebSockets, Server-Sent Events are a much better choice. If you can get away with using AJAX to update the server from the client, do it.

</comment><comment><USER5> A fun side note about these: they're supported on the Wii's version of Opera. ;)

I wrote a very basic Node.js server to do this, which could in theory work well for 2-player games in the browser: <https://github.com/ryanmcgrath/wii- js/blob/master/server.js>

</comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a partial implementation (no event types or useful IDs) of the server- side SSE protocol for kicks using nodejs (an old version of node, but it still seems to work):

<http://github.com/shinetech/eventserver>

Basically you can post JSON messages via HTTP & they're streamed in real time to clients via the Server-Sent Events protocol.

This is a great, simple protocol with a dead-simple client-side API -- I can see it being really popular as browser support for SSE and CORS improves: <http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/>

</comment><comment><USER7> This is very interesting- I am developing a webapp that allows you to track other people's taxi journeys, and right now I'm AJAX polling every 30 seconds becuase I figured WebSockets would be too intensive on a phone (open connection = drained battery).

Does anyone know if this would also end up with an open connection the whole time?

<comment><USER8> I would imagine it is using stream sockets , so yes (unless it's really just doing polling in the background).

What we really need is some way of doing UDP via javascript, this would enable many things.

EDIT: Why would I want someone else able to track my taxi journey?

<comment><USER7> With regard to your edit: so that they know where you are, essentially. There's a social aspect ("when are you getting to the bar?") as well as a safety one (travelling late at night, someone will always know where you are).

There's also some interesting benefits from my POV- it's effectively returning live data on the average mph on every street in the city. Relies on getting a decent number of users before being useful of course, but still.

Gratuitous plug for the site with more info: <http://www.taxono.my/>

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't Google Latitude do this, already?

<comment><USER7> To an extent, yes. But my app also sends over details like where the person is going to, which AFAIK Latitude doesn't do.

The app also lets you search for destinations, gives you a time and fare estimate, split the total between friends, review your cab ride... while the tracking stuff is a central feature, it isn't the only one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> James Coglan's Faye project (<https://github.com/faye>) contains some nice implementations of Server-Sent Events for Ruby and Node.

</comment><comment><USER11> I just don't get how this is any better than web sockets, especially using a library like Socket.io.

I get the option of 1-way or 2-way communication built in. I don't have to worry about reconnects. It falls back all the way to IE5.5. It's usable in a number of languages and frameworks including node.js and Python.

What are the benefits of yet another framework?

<comment><USER12> First, you seem to be confusing WebSockets, which is a protocol and low-level DOM interface for dealing with that protocol with Socket.io, which is a software framework for client-to-server messaging that uses WebSockets as one possible transport. (And pretty much has to take over your server entirely in order to work.) It's like reading an article about Rack and saying, "I don't see how this is any better than Ruby on Rails."

Now that that's out of the way: Strictly speaking, WebSockets are "better" than SSE in that you can do everything you can do with SSE using WebSockets. However, the SSE protocol:

* Is plain HTTP, instead of adding on a separate protocol,

* Has an easy-to-generate text-based format,

* Does not require major upgrades to your server, and

* Can be emulated on non-conforming browsers using standard XHR's.

So when all you _need_ to do in realtime is send data from the server to the client (remember, you can still use XHR's to call back to your server), SSE is far easier to implement both on the client and on the server.</comment></comment>


We build a $20 LoRa Satellite Ground Station and we follow the FossaSat-1 launch - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0aM-PJzo8 <comment><USER2> Lora is super cool, I've tested it up to .25 miles with one inside my apartment blocked by trees and or worked great.

But the amount of data is very small without doing any sort of buffer.

It works great if your sending about three numbers max per transmission (think this sensors temp is 103).

When sending text you need to convert to binary or some encoding scheme and fill a buffer or your message will be cut off.

I didn't play around with Lora WAN which is supposed to handle lots of this logic.

<comment><USER3> Yeah unless you've got a ton of devices that actually fit the LoRa use case and you plan on leaving them all on all the time I've found good ol' raw radio mode to be much more useful.</comment></comment>