Make pull requests easier - <AUTHOR> http://www.indifferenceapp.com/?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=submit&utm_term=pull-request&utm_campaign=test

<comment><USER2> A bit too lean of an 'mvp' for me.

The pull-request box looks like a live-demo, so I dug up a URL only to find out it's not :/

A bit of a nit-pick, but if there's only 1 field, I don't need to be told it's required - the '* required' on the singular email field seems redundant. (I understand it's probably the framework you're using, but it just seems weird.)

You only screen shot doesn't show: does your side-by-side diffs support coloring? eg. [https://confluence.atlassian.com/download/attachments/298976...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/download/attachments/298976810/Crucible_2.2-Side- by-Side-Diff_Main-View-RAW-70.png)

<comment><USER3> It isn't an application, it is only a web page for an idea he had. The definition of vaporware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I manage a number of student projects at the University of Illinois. I can integrate Indifference into our current code review process if you need an early test group. We currently use Github pull requests. My email for the signup list is similar to my HN handle, jtfairbank.

Feature requests:

* A signoff list of people who've reviewed the pull request and feel its ready to accept. This'd be helpful as most of our work is independent / 'remote' (we're not all in the same room together).

* Works on most platforms, or is web based. Each student has their own personal setup that we need to accomodate.

* The ability for a Pull Request submitter to link to other resources, such as documentation, Trello cards, various Github features (code files and issues come to mind)... Basically, it'd be nice for the submitter to provide a short description of how their changes affect the software at a high level. I find most of this exists in our other documentation. Currently we just add a description with the links to the PR description on Github, but maybe you can improve on that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! that sounds awesome! Email sent your way!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for forcing email validation in your sign up page. I get a lot of spam because so few do.

What "desktop" is your target? Someone recently asked me if I knew a good side-by-side diff tool that worked with GitHub and wasn't written a decade ago. I only knew of a buggy plugin. This, superficially, seems to be what he was looking for. If your target is Apple, he'd likely be thrilled. If it's Linux, I'd be interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a mac and linux user those would be my first targets. Im planning on writing it using clojure and embedding webkit in it (as im a web guy first) ala light-table. So moving from one platform to another should be trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks good, the landing page could be a bit clearer - some more screenshots would be good. At the moment all the images just look like GitHub screenshots.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I'll work on some better screenshots.

Is there anything from the content that you dont understand, that I could make clearer?

Is this something that you would use?

<comment><USER7> You seem to have plenty of screenshots, but I don't find them to be particularly informative. After reading through the page and glancing at all of the images, here's what I take away: it's a tool that allows you to enter a pull request URL and display a side-by-side diff.

The side-by-side diff feature is buried at the bottom, and the whole page seems to imply that there are other features within somewhere, but I can't figure out what they would be (I would love to see screenshots of them!).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think what you're saying is the details about the side-by-side view should be further up the page and the idea's around context should be more fleshed out?

I'll also work on some better screen shots!

Thanks once again for taking the time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I've gotten from this is that you're shipping side-by-side diffs that are 'better', but it's unclear what it's better /than/. Inline diffs? Some other tool's side-by-side diffing?

I want to know more about "better navigation" and context.

I would love, love, love to talk with you about this. email@example.com Seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Email sent! Thanks!

For the other readers.

First up. I find inline diff's really hard to comprehend once they get past a few lines changed here and there. This might be just me, but anecdotally I've found other devs to also feel this.

The better context and navigation is all about seeing the change in the context of the code-base. Small code changes can have large effects. Indifference will allow you to navigate the whole code base rather than just the single change set +/\- a few lines. In this way you can get a better handle on what has changed and how it will effect the rest of the codebase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gitcritic does some of this right now as a webapp, including side-by-side diffs:

[http://gitcritic.com](http://gitcritic.com)

[https://github.com/danvk/better-pull- requests](https://github.com/danvk/better-pull-requests)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh awesome! thanks for the links!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reviewing pull requests in github with the inline diff is a pain. You also don't get enough context to do a correct review. This app is a way to fix that.

At this point I want to validate the idea. If you're interested in this please leave your email address. or a comment below. Any feedback would be great!

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this meant for projects that aren't using Github?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think at some point it could be. At the moment im trying to make it work for Github pull requests as thats the need I can see.

In the future working for something like bitbucket or arbitrary git repos I think would be a feature that could be added.</comment></comment>


Marine company tests roll-up solar panels on patrol in Afghanistan - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704810504576307563280615054.html <comment><USER2> It's great that the Marines recognize that besides the ecological advantage, which let's be frank, they probably don't care about at all, solar generators have practical benefits. Their use case is pretty similar to backpackers, mountaineers and marine applications, if I understand it correctly. Well, like backpackers that camp for extended periods in remote places.

</comment><comment><USER3> Related question: Do solar panels save more energy over their lifetime than they save yet? i.e. including manufacture.</comment>


Big Beer's 5-Point Plan to Crush the Craft Beer Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/money/4073371/anheuser-busch-sabmiller-craft-beer/ <comment><USER2> This is past silly. It makes absolutely no sense for "big beer" to try to "crush" craft beer.

First, it's not possible: it's too easy to start new breweries, and too easy to get local distribution to bars and the kinds of stores that already do a good job of stocking craft beer. The capital costs to start a new craft brewery are small. There are tens of new brewery starts in major metros every year (we're flooded with them in Chicago). So AB InBev takes out Goose Island. Who cares? For every Goose Island, there's a dozen Half Acres.

Second, it doesn't make economic sense. Macrobrews and tiny local craft brews are not substitutable products. Macrobrews are defined not by quality but by availability: they're produced in enough quantity and their logistics are managed competently enough to be reliably available in the places where people who buy macrobrews shop. The same is absolutely not the case for craft beer; even the best-run largest-scale craft breweries are often on allocation systems with retailers.

By the way, AB InBev's customers generally aren't trying to maximize IBUs, don't give a shit which hop varietals got used, and would probably assume a brett beer had somehow gone bad. Again: not substitutable products.

Meanwhile: on the off chance that a Three Floyds or Bruery "graduates" to real nationwide distribution, in 6-pack/case format, Big Beer will simply buy them. They can, in effect, use craft breweries as laboratory for product development: the products that succeed in the market get acquired, and AB InBev supplies its logistics and distribution to milk profits from the acquisition. It's a very old, very effective business model (see, for instance, Cisco).

Finally: I call BS on the idea that Big Beer somehow ruins acquired craft breweries. Goose Island is if anything doing a more consistent and competent job now than they were prior to the acquisition.

<comment><USER3> >Macrobews are defined not by quality but by availability.

Not so. Macrobrews are extremely consisten, a quality which makes availability a viable reason to drink it. Customers know exactly what they're getting every time they open a Bud Light.

Your points focus on how craft beers are flourishing now, without looking at the implications of the recent developments: mergers that take over distribution, conglomerates that have the power to lobby for laws that are in their favor.

<comment><USER4> Customers don't care what they are getting when they get a bud light, except that it is a cheap buzz.

<comment><USER5> They do care - otherwise they'd just buy 40s or plastic flasks of Popov.

Beer snobs just can't comprehend why anyone would prefer, say, Miller over Bud, or that it's even possible to differentiate between the two.

From our side of the fence, all craft beer enthusiasts seem to care about is disgustingly ever-higher levels of hops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a good and (EDIT: ethically) legitimate plan for the most part

#1. Create your own quasi-craft brands.

This seems reasonable. If the taste sucks, the brand won't do well. If it doesn't, using a different brand is legitimate.

#2. Snatch up craft brews that'll sell out.

Again, a fair strategy.

#3. Defend macro brews, bash craft snobs.

I'm not for attacking anyone, but certainly people have been attacking drinkers of macro brews for ages. In the circles I move in, Bud drinkers are openly stereotyped as ignorant and racist.

#4. Control distribution. #5. Merge and overwhelm the marketplace.

Vertical and horizontal integration for the sake of reducing competition is a bad thing, luckily we have laws to prevent this.

<comment><USER7> > #1. Create your own quasi-craft brands.

I would go as far as call it false advertising. Especially when 10 brands are created that actually contain the same product.

Even more, the mere fact that this merger is sought after shows that there is actually need to divide both companies.

<comment><USER6> _> I would go as far as call it false advertising. Especially when 10 brands are created that actually contain the same product. _

I disagree that branding the same product differently is false advertising. As long as the product lives up to the claims made in each case, I don't see what is false. I think you are trying to elevate what you think is important (being made by a small company) to a category that is given special treatment when it comes to advertising. It's like the equivalent of mandatory GMO labeling, but with GMO replaced by being made by a big company.

For legitimate reasons to have the same product with different brands, consider programming languages. If Haskell had a fancy web 2.0 website, some people might go there and think "this is probably a stable, production ready language with good documentation". Others might think "this language has probably made too many compromises with the corporate world, and won't be a principled and elegant language". If it was possible to market the language in both ways to both people, wouldn't that be reasonable? Namely, to let the corporate users know that it is production ready, and let the purists know that it is not corporate bloatware?

 _> Even more, the mere fact that this merger is sought after shows that there is actually need to divide both companies._

I don't understand this point, can you explain it?

<comment><USER7> * It's like the equivalent of mandatory GMO labeling, but with GMO replaced by being made by a big company.*

Exactly. You get the point. This should be used to reduce the impression of false diversity.

Edit:

Lets expand this example even further. Lets say that there is company X with one baby formula and company Y with another baby formula. Company X has created 9 different brands to sell its baby formula but company Y has only one.

For a customer of baby formulas it would create an impression that there is wide diversity of baby formulas when in fact there are only two.

<comment><USER8> What is wrong with false impression of diversity, and why is the manufacturer responsible for it? Do you think it discourages a consumer from creating more diversity?

<comment><USER7> > What is wrong with false impression of diversity,

You are asking what is wrong with lying. How should I answer to this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The main reason I drink craft beers almost exclusively is that I could never drink the more commercial stuff, way too fizzy for me, and there arent many macro black beers (and I've never found a commercial scotch ale)

Helping local business and the festival scene is a big plus too. (The festival's are where the major beer vendors really seem out of place, they are loud, abnoxious and they give bigger glasses, thus helping those who are only there to drink get drunk faster)

So I guess that make's me a beer snob, but whatever, I'm in Quebec, we won most of the prizes in last year's world beer festival (along with brazil, which is damn good), so I'm in the right place to be a beer snob.

<comment><USER10> Younger me hated beer. I thought it tasted awful but drank it as that was what kids did in the country. I gave up drinking after college because I just couldn't stand the taste of beer, the smell even made me nauseous. Fast forward to my late 30's, moved to Austin and on a whim one night tried a locally brewed stout. It was amazing. I realized I liked beer but just hated the mainstream stuff, what my father calls 'green beer'. So yeah, I guess now I am a beer snob. I look forward to pay day when I can visit the largest store in the area and become overwhelmed with the varieties available to me. I like saisons, farm ales, porters and stouts. Nothing produced by the larger breweries even comes close to a Tank 7.

<comment><USER9> I dont know how it is in other countries, but here in Quebec we basically have a few different kind of macro/micro beers: 1\. Big beer like molson, coors or imported stuff 2\. Quebec macros like Boreale that are similar to the big stuff in taste but less omnipresent 3\. Companies that make beers like micro but have more of a macro scale of distribution: Unibroue, alchimiste, st- ambroise 4\. Microbreweries whose beer can be bought in specialised stores, specialised restaurants and (recently!) supermarkets. 5\. Local microbreweries with little to no distribution

As I grew up I steadily shifted from # 1 to only drinking # 4 and # 5 (with the occasional # 3 or # 2, but only if there is nothing else). So I doubt that we will be seeing our favorite beers go away, the market if just too diversified!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good luck. I've seen so many craft beers popping up around here in the Northeast over the past couple of years. I've met so many people that would never touch a domestic. Personally, I'll have a craft beer, but I'm not a beer snob about it.

In Philly, there's been a surge of popup beer gardens over the past few years that usually serve craft beers. I'm not sure about other cities, but I do know craft beers are exploding here.

[http://www.visitphilly.com/articles/philadelphia/top-10-reas...](http://www.visitphilly.com/articles/philadelphia/top-10-reasons- philly-loves-pop-up-beer-gardens/)

<comment><USER12> Let's use the right terms: Domestics are brewed here, meaning must craft beers available in your country of origin are domestic. Technically Anheuser is a Belgian company... So I'd say bud is an import...

<comment><USER2> American Budweiser has never been brewed in Belgium, and didn't begin as Belgian company. I assume you're trying to be funny here; Bud is the archetypical domestic.

<comment><USER12> Yes, this is tongue in cheek. I never liked the domestic terminology, though. Craft beers are domestic. They're also owned by people in their country of origin. The joke about bud is that it's primarily owned by foreign corporations.

Country of origin tells you nothing about a beer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article is missing the most obvious way. Lobby for tighter health and safety inspections and documentation.

Compliance costs usually scale in a way that's favorable for large manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER14> A big part of the 'craft beer revolution' for me is supporting local businesses as many of my favorite brews are local to my sate or region. Also since macros have such a choke hold on distribution many of the best local crafts can only be had at taprooms or brew pubs which also plays nicely into 'supporting local' and they're fantastic social centers.

I don't think macros could ever really touch those aspects of the scene.

<comment><USER15> At least where I live, I've been noticing the craft-beer scene gravitating a bit more towards "beer bars", bigger places with a lot of beers on tap, anywhere from 20 to 100+ depending on the size of the place. I could imagine the quasi-craft beers from the big companies doing ok in that setting, depending in part on who runs the place and how they label their beer lists.

However I think what the big companies are more worried about is mass-market settings, like restaurants, "normal" bars, and six packs in the local liquor store / supermarket. Craft beer has been making some inroads there, vs. being restricted to only people willing to explicitly seek out craft beer. Those account for higher volume, and threaten the big companies' market share, so they'd like to develop some alternatives for those settings to counter it. I think the small-volume local brewer who's only found in one shop doesn'd really threaten them. But they're very worried about the amount of sales national players like Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, etc. are getting. Plus higher-volume regional companies like Goose Island (Chicago, bought by InBev), St. Arnold (Houston), Sweetwater (Atlanta), Brooklyn (NYC), Green Flash (San Diego), etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some risks to this plan, based on my own (admittedly anecdotal) experience moving in hipster circles.

#1. Create your own quasi-craft brands.

Definitely the worst. I actually don't mind getting an 8-pack of Coors from time to time for parties but I will not touch Blue Moon or Shock Top now because it always sparks off that awful "You know this is fake craft beer right?" conversation.

#2. Snatch up craft brews that'll sell out.

Not bad, especially if you can keep them mostly the same and avoid plastering your name anywhere on the bottle. Runs the same risks as #1 otherwise.

#3. Defend macro brews, bash craft snobs. Mostly neutral or high risk. First of all people who are into craft beer don't give a shit about Anheuser-Busch ads during the super bowl. Secondly craft beer has nothing to do with pumpkins.

#4. Control distribution.

This could actually work in the short term, but has high risk of antitrust action.

#5. Merge and overwhelm the marketplace.

I don't know enough about the market to say whether this would work – but I suspect they will blow a lot of money on advertising and not attract enough people.

\---

I would like to suggest #6 to these companies:

#6. Draw consumers into your beer

Make a documentary about how it is made. Say the stuff that goes into it ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser#The_beer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser#The_beer)). A Bud Light can be pretty refreshing during summer. Basically try and do something akin to what PBR did ([http://worksdesigngroup.com/pbr-brand- repositioning/](http://worksdesigngroup.com/pbr-brand-repositioning/)).

<comment><USER17> > "You know this is fake craft beer right?" conversation.

\- Does it tastes good?

\- Yes.

\- So it doesn't matter the origin.

Here, solved that problem for you.

<comment><USER18> I think the origin really does matter to some people. For example, why have farmers markets made such a strong return in the U.S.? Savvy consumers want to support local business and buy products that they know were made ethically and without nasty chemicals, additives, GMOs, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In my small town in South Carolina, we're just about to get our third new independent brewery in 3 years. The oldest of the three is already talking about moving to larger premises, and both those currently in business are canning their beer with sales already in hundreds of retailers across the region, in addition to selling beer on site.

All of them brew at least one light American pilsner to appeal to newcomers and also offer a decent food menu and regular special events. I don't think these kinds of places are going away any time soon. They offer an ambience and clientele that's distinct from a regular restaurant or bar, and I've found myself visiting them more frequently as they continually experiment and improve their beers.

</comment><comment><USER20> On the point of craft breweries selling out -- that will lead to more craft breweries popping up.

Having big exits makes it easier for new breweries to get investors.

Having Google, Facebook, and others buying tech startups doesn't kill the startup ecosystem, it's the fuel.

</comment><comment><USER21> "AB InBev and SABMiller spend a total of $500 billion annually on sports sponsorships" That can't possibly be right! I read in an earlier article that their revenue last year was "only" 26 billion or so.

<comment><USER22> I questioned that same thing. The claim is made in the linked "Marketplace report". Perhaps they meant to say $500 million? If so, what's three orders of magnitude difference between friends? Just a rounding error? Why are business reporters so utterly innumerate?

The most disappointing thing to me is that Time magazine goes back to 1923. Henry Luce would have never stood for such gross mis-reporting. But I guess there's no money any more to pay competent people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Aren't the majority of "craft beer" brands are actually owned by the big breweries these days?

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone seriously consider Blue Moon to be craft beer? Past silly is right.

<comment><USER3> Why wouldn't they? It has all the hallmarks of one. Most people don't research their beer origins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _5 points you didn 't know were planned to crush ..._</comment>


Hacking Language: A New Past Tense - <AUTHOR> http://www.penzba.co.uk/PastTense.html <comment><USER2> > I wonder if it will spread ...

Nope. The irregular forms are slowly disappearing, the least frequent first. I would give you a citation, but I am supposed to be cleaning out the basement, not surfing HN.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I personally have never used "swum", and I'd struggle to come up with an example where "swam" won't fit in just as perfectly.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I had swum to the island, but was too tired to swim back."

<comment><USER3> i see.. so "swum" is the passive form of "swim" then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have to bear in mind that many languages have no marking for tense whatever, and English could certainly develop in that direction. The only language (Mandarin) that possibly has more speakers than English has no marking for tense on any of its verbs.

</comment><comment><USER5> If I'm not mistaken, these verbs are called "strong verbs" and are a nice holdover from Old English. Stink, stank, stunk. Drink, drank, drunk. Sing, sang, sung. Etc.

<http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_strong_verb>

For people who love where words and such came from, I can't recommend highly enough the Teaching Company's "History of the English Language"

<http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=2250>

</comment><comment><USER6> This classic short story about language modification is always worth a few laughs. If you want a real language hack then read it:

Mayhem in ce Klasrum by by Dolton Edwards from Isaac Asimov's 'The Golden Years of Science Fiction'

[http://www.english-zone.com/index.php?page=1114&pid=81](http://www.english- zone.com/index.php?page=1114&pid=81)

</comment><comment><USER7> Past tense of swim is swam right?

<http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/swam.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know how many people do this (invent word forms), but I definitely do. Here's a sample:

 _freak out > froke out > froken out_

the plural of _house_ is obviously _hice_ , and _toothbrush_ becomes _teethbrush_.

Of course, I have to be careful when speaking in public so I don't end up sounding like Ned Flanders.

</comment><comment><USER9> Then thunk is also the past form of thank. What's the past tense form of "The weight thunk to the floor"? I think it will be harder to learn, even given the exceptions, if we remove the common stem from all verbs and their past participles.

Worth thinking about though.

<comment><USER10> Here's a list with a few suggestions:

<http://verben.texttheater.de/Englisch>

<comment><USER11> I like those, they feel good somehow. Must be the ancestral Germanic genes' influence. Nice & definite sounding, stronger.

edit: well, a lot of them...

<comment><USER10> There are from the Verb Empowerment Society (Gesellschaft zur Stärkung der Verben). It's a bad pun, since a `strong' verb is a irregular verb in German.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> more interesting is david bohm's idea of the 'rheomode'

"One could say that nouns do not really exist, only verbs exist. A noun is just a "slow" verb; that is, it refers to a process that is progressing so slowly so as to appear static."

<http://wik.inormous.net/index.php?title=Rheomode>

<comment><AUTHOR> What he suggests is done, but in a more general way, in the constructed language "lojban". There the fundamental concept is the predicate (loosely equivalent to verb) and "nouns" are extracted/abstracted places from the predicates.

Thus "mi tavla do" is "I speak to you", so "le tavla" is "the speaker" and "le se tavla" is "the listener". In this example, "mi" and "do" are the equivalent of pronouns.

<http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban+Introductory+Brochure>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's hard to see originality in this. Just google "who would've thunk".

<comment><USER14> Yes, but in your construction, you're using a popular pseudo-participle form of _to think_. The author of the article is suggesting that we use these weird ablaut/umlaut morphs in place of the preterite. For example, "I _thought_ " would then become "I _thunk_ ".

<comment><USER13> A few things to note: 1\. It's not at all my construction. That's precisely why it's hard to see originality in this. 2\. If you read his post carefully, you'll see that the author isn't aware of distinction between past simple and present perfect, let alone of ablaut: he confuses "swam" and "swum" and then proceeds to use the newly invented past tense form of "cutch" in present perfect. 3\. Ablaut would be along the lines of think-thank-thunk -- something the author is not suggesting. 4\. Think and catch already have the "weird umlaut morph". Changing it to the "swim-swam-swum" pattern is, like I said, nothing new.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would reply directly, but haven't been able to find your email, so a brief response here:

Originality is hard to pin down. I've never seen it suggested that this should be a new regular form, rather than an _ad hoc_ collection of joke forms. I've never before heard "lunk" and "cluck" used like this. Has anyone else? Is that original? I'm not a grammar expert, no doubt I've may have missed some. Besides, if I'm re-inventing, then perhaps it truly is an idea whose time has come (yes - joking)

I am aware of the differences between present perfect, simple past, past continuitive, past perfect, past pluperfect, _etc,_ but I was trying to avoid having this turn into an article on grammar. For one, although I have a working knowledge I'm not an expert, for another, that wasn't the point.

Good catch about "cutch" in the present perfect. I'll need to re-write an earlier part to make it clear that it's not really the "past tense", but the "word form usually used for the past tense" (avoiding technical grammatical terms).

I appreciate your observations - thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Your hack is broken: run -> ruun?</comment>


Why we get fat? No, really, why? - <AUTHOR> http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/why-we-get-fat-no-really-why/ <comment><USER2> I just finished reading Taubes's latest book, and I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend it. I'm putting the science to the test to see how lean I can really get.</comment>


The war of the whitespaces rages on among programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/article/2909268/the-war-of-the-whitespaces-rages-on-among-programmers.html <comment><USER2> Probably related: [http://www.emacswiki.org/pics/static/TabsSpacesBoth.png](http://www.emacswiki.org/pics/static/TabsSpacesBoth.png)</comment>


Ask YC: We have a common challenge; share strategies to overcome it? - <AUTHOR>

Stamina.  Or rather the fatigue that results from lack of it.  Ok, so while pursuing my startup effort, I've noticed a desire growing inside of me - a desire to locate some sort of establishment that caters to people like me who need meth-laced quadruple expressos.  I haven't found such a thing yet, Starbucks refuses to even consider the need seriously - let alone research the market viability (I can't be the only one, right? - and my doctor doesn't believe my claims at being depressed and needing anti-depresents to "perk things up a bit" ... in the meantime - anyone want to share stamina hacks?  I guess we can discuss workflow hacks to to figure out how to schedule things more efficiently so as to work more productively when starting a startup, but I'm talking about when you've woken up at 3:30am, and now it's 1am the next day, your brain shut off hours ago, and you don't want to eat for extra energy because you fear the blood necessary to digest the meal will hamper what little ability to think you have left as Adult Swim comes to an end.  What do you guys use as "emergency" stuff?  Meditation?  Yoga?  Ninja hand seals?  stretching?  Ice cold shower?  Cross-brain stimulation drills?  Go for a quick sprint outside naked?  Seriously any new ideas I haven't tried would help just from a novelty perspective.  Care to share? <comment><USER2> >and my doctor doesn't believe my claims at being depressed and needing anti- depresents to "perk things up a bit"

If you want a drug solution to your problem, time release amphetamine as prescribed for ADHD is your best bet. Also look into Modafinil -- it literally takes away the desire to sleep and feeling of tiredness without amphetamine- like stimulating effects. It's FDA approved for narcolepsy but feel free to ask your doctor for an off-label prescription. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil>

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny you forgot an obvious choice: sleep. Better than pills.

</comment><comment><USER4> old school option: jolt. It's funny how you mention the end of adult swim and I know what your talking about. For me it used to be when mtv started playing videos, you know you've stayed up to long.

Seriously though you need sleep. Things that should take 5 minutes start taking longer and in the long run your killing yourself.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe you could try what Leonardo da Vinci did, and sleep 15 minutes every 2 hours. I haven't tried this yet but it's on my list... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep>

<comment><USER2> [http://reddit.blogspot.com/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep- groggy-j...](http://reddit.blogspot.com/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep-groggy- journey-toward.html)</comment></comment>


First Object Teleported from Earth to Orbit - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608252/first-object-teleported-from-earth-to-orbit/ <comment><USER2> Neat. But "object" (in the colloquial sense of the term) is definitely something of a stretch, in this case.</comment>


Ask HN: Which other similar to HN communities are you a member of? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Similar is a mite ambiguous, but I guess you mean somewhat similar communities rather than Reddit-like interface.

Three I really care about: Advogato, Lambda the Ultimate and the new Tex Stack Exchange.

Stack Overflow isn't a community anymore, but I still go there a few times a week and see what's happened on the tags I care about. I've got a Linked In account: the forums there are weird; the German-centric Xing is better, but not hugely - the advantage of these is that they are easy to keep up with. I checkout Slashdot every month or so, and am not really sure why I bother.

I subscribe to a few mailing lists, but I spend much less time with them than I did six or seven years ago. They feel more a like an obligation that a community, to be honest. I'm a bit bothered about that, since mailing lists are much easier to archive than anything else: internet communities are becoming more transitory in so many ways.

</comment><comment><USER3> I sometimes use <http://forrst.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Used to haunt Wickedfire a lot. Not so much recently though. Not sure if AskMetafilter counts, but I've been there for years and love the community.

</comment><comment><USER5> NuclearPhynance, the phorum for sharp, rich, laconic quant bastards who drink too much. HN is like 4chan compared to it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reddit, and some mailing lists (altough Reddit serves me only for the laughts - the mailing lists are far more useful)</comment>


LinkedIn: You Are Fired. - <AUTHOR> http://om.co/2012/04/12/linkedin/

<comment><USER2> I think that blog post was a bit hasty. Sure, I can see how LinkedIn might have poor signal-to-noise for a well-connected venture capitalist type whose job consists largely of making connections. It doesn't work for HIM, and that's OK.

However, for many people it is an excellent way to keep in touch with colleagues. It lowers the difficulty threshold for maintaining vital professional contacts. For example, when I change jobs now, I don't have to think about manually digging up all my former colleagues' contact info and worry about pestering them with an awkward email about what I am doing. I just update my status, and voila, the news gets out and I hear from folks if there is anything interesting to them to say. LinkedIn is an awesome tool for job hunting and a nice place to log your resume bullet points.

That said, it really sucks at the open-ended social functions. Discussion groups are filled with incredibly stilted Q/A where everyone is fronting their best "professional" face. It is enough to give me a headache just reading it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe this is old news, but I really like Om's blog layout. Content is front and center with good typeface and size. Social buttons are easily found but desaturated so as to reduce distraction. Commenting isn't locked in to one auth system and encourages useful discussion. Does anyone know if this is a blog theme or is it custom made?

</comment><comment><USER4> Obviously this is supposed to be negative, but it contains one very positive thing about LinkedIn:

> I will give them full credit for making it much easier than say Facebook to > delete my account.

If it's true, then this is _important_ , the kind of thing that LinkedIn ought to be pointing out on their main page, IMHO.

<comment><USER5> Is it that important from a marketing pov? "Come to my restaurant, you can leave anytime". You can tell from Facebook's existence that people don't care that much about privacy.

<comment><USER4> Every restaurant allows people to leave. Pointing this out does not make any particular restaurant stand out. But it does make websites stand out.

Also, we're not talking about privacy here. The question is whether signing up for an account is a lifetime commitment. A FB account essentially _is_ a lifetime commitment; I think it would be good if people understood that. Apparently, a LinkedIn account isn't. That's certainly a plus in my book.

<comment><USER5> Is it? Try <http://facebook.com/help/delete_account> (after deactivating). You're only worried about the depth of commitment because your data is there, i.e., privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Many people fail, for some reason, to understand that LinkedIn is for business. I make a point of not adding anyone I haven't met in a work-related setting, including friends. Just think of it as a directory, not a social network.

</comment><comment><USER6> LinkedIn is like voicemail, more annoying than useful.

My question is, since everyone seems to agree with this assessment, how did they ever get all that IPO attention?

</comment><comment><USER7> I use it as link juice for my projects. But since I'm not a head hunter, nor do I enjoy being "hunted" then it is otherwise useless.</comment>


Scientific Community to Elsevier: Drop Dead - <AUTHOR> http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/864.html <comment><USER2> To be fair, authors publishing with Elsevier retain many rights, _including_ the right to publish post-review _personal_ version of his paper on his personal and institutional web-site for dissemination of scholarly work (non- commercial purposes).

<http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/rights>

So whoever is calling for boycott of Elseview, should also inform authors -- especially grad students who can't afford boycotting journals -- about these facts. Use your rights and make the knowledge free.

<comment><USER3> That's not a good thing, it's just a cumbersome pressure release-valve to try and stop real change happening.

The public version should be automatic, automated and centralised and available for commercial purposes too. Relying on busy academics to do web admin busywork is crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is going to be tough for grad students, post docs and non-tenured scientists to join the boycott if Elsevier publishes the top journals in their field. Getting a job is hard enough, and impact factor matters for getting a job.

What I would like to see is societies that have their journals published by Elsevier remove their endorsement of those journals and start new journals not published by Elsevier.

In my particular field I would love to see The Geochemical Society no longer endorse the Elsevier-published Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (arguably the premier geochemistry journal) and start a rebel open access, or at least reasonably priced journal.

If you are a member of a society that publishes a journal with Elsevier, contact your society's president as suggest they stop publishing with Elsevier.

<comment><USER5> That's happened in a few fields. Three CS examples I know of are, 1) the association endorsing the _Journal of Logic Programming_ (Elsevier) withdrew endorsement in 2000, and the editorial board resigned en masse to form _Theory and Practice of Logic Programming_ ; 2) the editorial board of _Machine Learning_ (Kluwer) resigned in 2001, moving to the newly created _Journal of Machine Learning Research_ ; and 3) the _Journal of Algorithms_ (Elsevier) board resigned in 2003 to form _Transactions on Algorithms_. Donald Knuth wrote a lengthy letter that spurred that last one (<http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf>).

I think there were a few others in that era that slip my mind. Not sure why the pace slowed down after that flurry of activity, though. Possibly effort has gone towards more institutional initiatives like PLoS, rather than the "editor revolt" style of initiative that was semi-popular in the early 2000s.

Physics and the social sciences (incl. law) seem to have partly sidestepped the access problem in practice by making centralized pre-print repositories (arXiv for physics, SSRN for social sciences) de-facto standard places to deposit preprints. Not sure why that hasn't developed in other fields, or what could be done to encourage it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has Elsevier made any response to all of these calls for boycott? Are they even aware of it?

And are the other publishers looking at their business models so they can become less bad than they are now?

<comment><USER7> I am tempted to say these boycotts are (as of yet) having no effect at all.

Having bought the idea up a couple of times, I believe the majority of academics (even in computing subjects) don't know they "should" be boycotting, and most have no intention of joining in when it is discussed with them.

I wonder if most of the noise you hear is from people attached to the 'free' journals, who obviously have an interest in getting people away from Elsevier.

<comment><USER8> Academics revolt by committee from experience. It takes a while.

<comment><USER9> Only after a review of peers, paid for by the journals too.

<comment><USER10> I think the exact point is that the journals _don't_ pay for peer review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really don't like Elsevier, but the alternatives do not really exist.

Most open Access aggregators are of dubious quality and don't provide an interface for peer-reviewing. Even worst, the harvesting standard (OAI) is implemented in so many different ways and no two sites/platform implement it in a consistent way. Scopus also extract references, citations, addresses, etc. which are necessary to compute influence and impact.

Microsoft Academic and Google Scholar are starting to look as an alternative, but I'm wouldn't be surprised if they licensed their data from Elsevier&Thomson.

Until these services are duplicated in the Open Access community, Elsevier will still be needed.</comment>


Executives are selling off their company's stock at a record pace - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/insider-stock-sales-by-company-executives-soar-to-a-record-pace/ <comment><USER2> Buybacks require additional cash, which comes either from reducing liquid assets e.g. cash in the bank, or new borrowing. Article doesn't tell us which of the two predominates right now.</comment>


Live Call with Seth Godin - Download - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfentrepreneur.com/free-live-call-with-marketing-guru-seth-godin-april-2008/

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised with how much I received from listening in on this conference call and wanted to share it. I appreciated the forward thinking Seth offers.. starting with: this is the time to jump on board the internet revolution... people that don't jump on board get stuck in between the last thing and the next thing.</comment>


Know When To Finish - <AUTHOR> http://fadeyev.net/2010/05/05/know-when-to-finish/

<comment><USER2> This is hard but important ... I spent most of April updating the users' interface on my platform and really had to draw a hard line just so I could finish it in time despite there being a _lot_ of stuff I wanted to do... I'd spend all of this month on the same, delayed update if I didn't stop.

The same thing happens with games I make, I have to recognize a deadline and a point in features that defines it as a complete game and _not_ spend an extra week that turns into weeks then months on anything outside of that.</comment>


New Relic Pricing for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newrelic.com/2013/11/14/new-relic-new-pricing-startups/

<comment><USER2> I find this a bit misleading. Their post mentions $25/month, but the email I received from New Relic asked me to sign up for a minimum of $199/month for 8 servers

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have to agree that the pricing is very misleading. How many startups have 8 servers? I would have though that 2-4 is more like the norm, in which case the price is more like $50 - $100 per server</comment></comment>


South African bank to replace 12m cards after employees stole master key - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-african-bank-to-replace-12m-cards-after-employees-stole-master-key/ <comment><USER2> This article about master keys, which also features the MasterCard [tm] logo, is written by the same journalist who called skeptics "detractors" in the git master affair.

<comment><USER3> "journalist" [https://www.zdnet.com/article/unsecured-mongodb-databases- ex...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/unsecured-mongodb-databases-expose- kremlins-backdoor-into-russian-businesses/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Main" key

<comment><USER5> I laughed

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Way back when I worked at a bank we stored the TMK for the ATM's in the clear in Cobol source ... needless to say after an audit finding from Visa we soon got a HSM.

</comment><comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I'm a South African living in the UK and yes, I know I'm generalising - excessively.

Jolly Sarf Africans! Light-fingered larcenists - can't leave them alone with anything these days! ;-)</comment>


Do you feel that children should be sheltered from unhappiness? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 42</comment>


OmniSocial: a Rails 3 Engine for Twitter and Facebook Logins - <AUTHOR> http://icelab.com.au/articles/welcome-to-the-omnisocial/ <comment><USER2> FTA: "If there's one thing I've learnt over the last three Rails Rumbles, it's that if you ask a user to create an account on your web application, then you may as well be asking them to leave."

Requiring users to sign in through a 3rd party site rather than offering them the chance to sign in directly provides the same, "you may leave," suggestion to a whole different class of users.

I know that without the capability to manage authentication with my own app as well as the hookup to the 3rd parties, it's a non-starter for me. I realize, of course, that other projects may not have this restriction. Very cool that you guys are putting this out there; I'm sure there are a ton of new Rails developers who will love this super simple integration.

</comment><comment><USER3> I will stick with OmniAuth as I want to use one of the existing auth libraries (devise/authlogic). I don't think integrating OmniAuth is difficult enough to warrant another gem.

With devise,you get so much more functionality and also allow you to offer a native login/password if you so desire.

<comment><USER4> Ugh, I just tried devise and tossed it out within an hour. Way too much automagic, way too difficult to use it in any way but their scaffold. Still looking for a clean way to do facebook/twitter stuff however, so I'll checkout omnisocial and omniauth.

<comment><USER5> There's no need to use a complex plugin to provide logins with Facebook/Twitter.

Use the oauth2 gem and write it by hand. My FacebookAuth controller is only 20 lines of code and it works perfectly.

I've set up fb/twitter logins in 4 different apps and have tried all the gems/plugins.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the tip :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was just checking out their other site, decafsucks.com. They have a pretty slick "scroll to the bottom to auto-load more content" feature like Slashdot.

What's cool is that everything (tabs, ajax paging) is done via the anchor in the URL, for example #list=highest&page=3.

Does anyone know of a jQuery or Rails plugin that automates this task? Seems like a fairly generalizable thing to implement once and just reuse.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do I find a math super-hero? - <AUTHOR>

My team is developing some advanced reports for determining the effectiveness of folks working in a call-center.
It has become clear that we simply don't have the background in mathematics to create the necessary formulas to get the data we need.
Where do you guys turn to when you need to bring in a start-term specialist in a field not directly related to development? <comment><USER2> I would go to your local university and find a graduate student in the field of expertise you need. These folks are usually looking for new, exciting ways to use their skills and get paid for it, while still working on their masters/phd

</comment><comment><USER3> Shoot me an email on what you're trying to do. I'll let you know if I can be of help.

<comment><USER4> If he can't help, shoot the email to me and I'll see if I can do something.</comment></comment>


Massive rogue planet with unexplained aurora glow discovered beyond solar system - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/rogue-planet-aurora-glow-discovered-space-brown-dwarf-solar-system-a8478141.html <comment><AUTHOR> Title edited to fit.</comment>


The man who proved Stephen Hawking wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10654762/The-man-who-proved-Stephen-Hawking-wrong.html <comment><USER2> Stephen Hawking wasn't "wrong", it was a theory. Theories aren't nessacarily what's actually going on, it's just a way of viewing a problem in a way that helps you predict outcomes. People who say things like "this theory is wrong" are the same typ of people who say "scientists say" or "science says". Susskind simply came up with a theory that is less wrong, and that will spark new conversations and one day someone will come up with a theory that's less wrong than his.

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as I know, Juan Maldacena's paper is what what finally convicted Stephen Hawking that he was wrong. Then "black hole complementarity" argument become good enough to explain back hole paradox. Then it came Joe Polchinski with his AMPS paper which proved that "complimentary black hole" is wrong.

Now we are in square one - and it could be Hawking is right.

(I have only basic physic knowledge so I would appreciate if somebody with more education can describe this).

<comment><USER4> What do you mean we are in square one ? Could you point to some article ? As much as I'm not a physicist I like reading about this :-). Thanks

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra How can matter fall into a black hole? Time will stop upon getting closer to the horizon so matter will virtually just sit there. After some time black hole will look more like a bubble, won't it?

I remember asking on stack exchange and I've got an answer that no, it doesn't actually fall in.

<comment><USER5> Time from that matter's perspective. From the outside observer's perspective, it zips right in.

Same way that if you travel near the speed of light your perception of time slows until you are no longer traveling that fast. But to an outside observer you are zipping right along.

<comment> guard-of-terra Nope, the other way around. From matter's perspective, its time ticks as ever. But for outside observer, it just halted there.

<comment><USER6> Nope, skj had it right and you've got it backwards. Otherwise we wouldn't perceive black holes to be black holes...

If we observed matter falling into a black hole to be "halting there", well, we'd see it halted there on the spherical surface of the event horizon instead of what we actually see, which is that matter and light get completely sucked in.

<comment> guard-of-terra "instead of what we actually see, which is that matter and light get completely sucked in"

We actually never see that

"Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it. At the same time, all processes on this object slow down, for a fixed outside observer, causing emitted light to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift. Eventually, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole)

<comment><USER5> This is completely consistent with my statement :)

Our time perception of the object remains the same, but the processes experienced by the object itself are much slower, relative to how we perceive them.

Specifically, if the object falling in is emitting blue light, and let's say that the frequency of blue light is one per second for the sake of doing some arithmetic, then that object keeps emitting 1/second and looks blue to itself. But in our frame of reference, those 1/second actually become .1/second (its time is moving slower then our time), and appears red.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could someone explain to me why matter falling into a black hole might imply that information would be annihilated?

It seems to me that the information is still present, though no longer accessible from outside the black hole. That doesn't seem at odds with the preservation of information in any way.

<comment><USER8> I am not a physicist.

The problem comes from Hawking radiation. Over time, the matter/energy absorbed by black holes does get released through Hawking radiation. However, this emission contains no information about the matter that originally went into the black hole (it is entirely dependent on the mass, angular momentum, and charge of the black hole).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Hawking made the stunning claim that material which falls into a black hole > disappears forever. If correct, it would mean that the fundamental laws of > the universe would have to be rewritten._

The 'hard' science physics seems to be one of the weakest sciences at all.

</comment><comment><USER10> Any non-paywalled source?

<comment><USER11> [https://archive.today/pcCwW](https://archive.today/pcCwW)</comment></comment>


Area 51 'declassified' in U-2 spy plane history - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23731759

<comment><USER2> In 1994 there was a court case where some workers who were poisoned working at Groom Lake sued the gov't. [1]

Apparently at one point a government lawyer, in using the state secrets privilege to deny examination of relevant witnesses referred to "The alleged facility, if it indeed exists", at which point the opposing council offered to load up his car and drive everyone to the damn base =).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51#Environmental_lawsuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51#Environmental_lawsuit)

</comment><comment><USER3> Stories like this always remind me that large groups of people can work on unknown projects without the public finding out.

'Project Oxcart' known as the A-12 was the first stealth plane built in Burbank, CA by thousands at Locheed and kept in secrecy - then later transported to A51/Groom Lake. It was the predecessor to the Blackbird.

<comment><USER4> Here are pictures of the A-12 being driven by cargo truck from LA to Groom lake in the early 60's. Quite a hoot if you are familiar with the freeway system out here.

[http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.h...](http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.html)

<comment><USER5> That's fascinating. Can anyone explain what is going on here: [http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12_v...](http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12_v2/image018.jpg)

<comment><USER6> The truck was crawling along while a guy was out in front probably just checking out the road or getting stuff out of the way. If you've ever seen a house or large sections of bridge being moved the same thing happens.

<comment><USER5> The weird thing is that it looks like he's running, and he doesn't show up in any of the other pics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of BT Tower in London, built in the 60s. Despite being quite a tall and recognisable structure that obviously exists, it was considered an official secret and didn't appear on any maps until the mid-90s.

</comment><comment><USER8> I drilled several of the water wells at Area 51 and TTR.

I guess I can talk about it now. :-)

<comment><USER9> Tell us about it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm reading a fun book at the moment about the true story of how the USAF had a squadron of MIGs for aggressor training there too...

<comment><USER11> Red Eagles? I'll second the "fun book" comment. I'd recommend it to anyone who has ever enjoyed a Tom Clancy novel.

<comment><USER12> It looks like there are two books with similar titles - which one are you reading?

Blind Man's Bluff is good, as another poster suggests.

Another fun one is "The theory that would not die," about the history of Bayes rule.

<comment><USER10> I'm reading the one by Steve Davies. Its not really written as a page turner but the content makes it so!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Excellent ... now show us "Area 50" ...

<comment><USER14> I'd be more interested in Area 52.

<comment><USER15> Tonopah Test Range: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_Test_Range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_Test_Range)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does it mean we are alone?

<comment><USER17> In our solar system? Yes, it's just 7 billion of us, some animals, and one green/blue rock.

In our galaxy? Maybe. There is definitely potential for there to be alien life, it's just a long way away. Then there is always the possibility that we are the first intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

In the universe? Odds are that there are millions of other intelligent civilizations. The speed of light and the amount of distance to cover is a big reason why they probably haven't visited us and we will probably never visit them.

<comment><USER18> In our solar system? We don't know.

In our galaxy? We don't know.

In the universe? We don't know.

<comment><USER19> Indeed. I don't see how we can even get a reasonable bound on the _exponent_ of P(alien life). That kind of uncertainty behaves counter-intuitively - multiplying it by the size of the universe leaves it essentially unchanged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not really much of a secret anymore, for a plane that has had parts in Cuban museums for the last 50 years.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Anderson#Wreckage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Anderson#Wreckage)

</comment><comment><USER21> So the Independence Day movie was lying? I'm so disappointed!

</comment><comment><USER22> You mean it WASNT aliens _faints in surprise_

<comment><USER23> That's just what they _want_ you to think.

<comment><USER24> That's what aliens want you to think.

<comment><USER25> It's never aliens.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Supreme Court Upholds Patent Office Power to Invalidate Bad Patents - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/supreme-court-upholds-patent-office-power-invalidate-bad-patents <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16913013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16913013)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am amused at the contrast between different headlines for this story.

Bloomberg: "Patent 'Death Squad' System Upheld by U.S. Supreme Court"

EFF: "Supreme Court Upholds Patent Office Power to Invalidate Bad Patents"

</comment><comment><USER4> Wait, what? Why would anyone challenge them on having that power? That's like someone challenging Congress's ability to change or undo a law. Was their primary argument in this case "NO TAKESIES BACKSIES!"?

<comment><USER5> There is a lot of Supreme Court precedent, going back to the 1800s, calling patents a "property right." Generally, administrative agencies (which is what the USPTO is) cannot take away property rights; only Article III courts can do so.

If the Social Security Administration (an executive agency) gives you $1,000 per month, it can probably decide to stop that monthly payment. But to get the money back, it probably has to sue you in an Article III court.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you show me how fast coding is in vim? - <AUTHOR> I have tried to learn vim, and I am on the fence about which editor to use. I have tried Atom, Eclipse, Emacs, etc. VSCode just came out and Facebook has its Nuclide editor on the shelf. People hold vim as a pinnacle of editing technology.
Can you show me with a short screencast why vim is superior? And, why it is worth spending the time to learn, not only mentally and visually, but also mechanically with my hands.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> You first need to learn the differences between these editors, and determine what you expect from an editor.

It's pointless to compare vim, atom, and eclipse in the same thought process because they're completely different tools for different tasks.

> ... as to why vim is superior

Vim is not superior categorically. If you expect your editor to autocomplete Java code for you and fill in imports and look up methods for you, and have extra features that aren't even connected to editing, Eclipse is tremendously better. But Eclipse is a different tool. It's a full IDE.

Atom is a gui-based editor.

Vim is a cli-based editor.

I've been seeing people left and right comparing editors as if there were some definitive lockdown about to happen that binds you to a single editor. Use whatever you like and what gets your job done. You can also use more than one for more than one task.

I use vim when I'm editing files via ssh remotely, Sublime when I'm editing local files, and VS Pro when I'm working with .NET at work, because these are, respectively, _my tools of choice for these tasks_.

 _None are "better" or "worse". They're just different._

<comment><USER2> Now, all that said, I do have a story about speed with Vim:

When I was in high school, I bragged to my dad about typing something like 110 words per minute. He said… that's nice; I can type 1100 words per minute. Incredulously, I asked him to show me. He fired up his vim setup, opened a few files, started a new one, and sure enough in under 60 seconds he had a ~1100 "word" Sybase stored procedure (or something) written.

Of course he didn't literally type all of it. Of course it was a loooot of copy pasta, and the whole thing was tongue-in-cheek. But it was a good example of what you can do with Vim _given the right scenario_.

<comment><USER3> With a ctrl-a, ctrl-c, ctrl-v loop you can "type" exponentially fast in any editor, I guess.

<comment><USER4> Vim has a lot of key commands to quickly working with blocks of text so it is a bit more nuanced than that.

For example, to copy 3 lines from the cursor position and paste them 5 lines earlier:

3Y :-5 p

(and there are faster ways, some people are wizards)

I also do relative numbering in my vim (I have the current line labelled as 0, the line above it -1, etc) so that I can move around relative to the cursor without having to count lines. You can also do absolute numbering but I find that tedious when you have large files.

<comment><USER3> I know, I've been using vim pretty exclusively for the last 15 years or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen a lot of comments saying this answer on stackoverflow opened their eyes to using Vim: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your- most...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most- productive-shortcut-with-vim#answer-1220118)

<comment><USER5> Also, from my own experience I can't really tell if I'm actually typing/coding faster faster since switching to Vim/Spacemacs, but I did notice a significant change in achieving and staying in a state of flow. Not having to touch the mouse or consider how a text transformation should be done (but just doing it mechanically) helps me stay in the zone. YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A ton of hyperbole, but an enjoyable read - [https://www.norfolkwinters.com/vim- creep/](https://www.norfolkwinters.com/vim-creep/)

Interviews of vim programmers - [http://howivim.com/](http://howivim.com/)

Gary Bernhardt's screencast on - [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts)

<comment><USER7> Good article, all the comments following are pretty great as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check out this video game: [http://vim-adventures.com/](http://vim- adventures.com/)

Play through the first few levels and it becomes apparent why people like vim; you can move around a text file incredibly quickly, a mouse is slow and dumb by comparison.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think Derek Wyatt's screencasts[1] are precisely what you're looking for. You won't be able to help but pick up a few things along the way.

1: [https://vimeo.com/user1690209](https://vimeo.com/user1690209)

</comment><comment><USER10> Somewhat related, I started out using Emacs and have since moved to using vim. I'm at the point where I feel semi-proficient in it, and I've started playing around with .vimrc, pathogen-based addons, as well as other stuff like ctags a bit, and based on my experience so far this extensibility and customization is what makes the text editor so powerful compared to other ones (although I can't really speak for Emacs since I didn't get as far with it).

That being said, I've recently started picking up an interest in lisp (currently slowly making my way through sicp), and I've seen indications that Emacs is somehow more suited to lisp development than vim. As a result, I've actually been considering switching back again, despite emacs pinky, although I'm still on the fence about this.

If anybody here has some knowledge about what Emacs offers in terms of lisp development that vim doesn't (or vice versa) and/or has some good references, I would be very interested to know.

<comment><USER11> Try Spacemacs out! [https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs](https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs)

The beauty of emacs is that it is extremely customizable. spacemacs features a full fledged vim emulation mode that does a great job of feeling like vim.

As far as lisp development goes, the reason for emacs being a "better" environment is that it is implemented in a flavour of lisp, so you see a lot of great packages (paredit/smartparens, SLIME, to name a few) built with lisp in mind. Plus you will be editing your config file in lisp.

<comment><USER12> Though vim (and neovim) has the same plugins these days. I've been using paredit and it works great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The bottleneck in programming isn't typing. It doesn't really matter what editor you use.

</comment><comment><USER14> Casey switched to a modal editor for the handmade hero livestream (because of RSI issues). It's not vim, but it's similar since it's modal. He's only just switched about a month ago, but he's already pretty quick, though not as fast as he was with emacs. You can compare old episodes to current ones to see someone editing with a vim-like editor and emacs one.

I've personally gone through phases of using vim, emacs, notepad++, Visual Studio, and (currently) SublimeText and xcode. My opinion is that the editor is never the "bottleneck" with programming speed, so just use whatever is the most comfortable for you. One nice thing about vi/vim is that some variant of it is installed almost everywhere so you're always likely to have a usable editor available if you learn it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would recommend Shortcut Foo ([https://www.shortcutfoo.com/app](https://www.shortcutfoo.com/app)) to people who want to learn vim. It offers shortcut training (pun-intended) to many other editors (Sublime, Eclipse, etc.) and languages too.

<comment><USER16> Where is the pun?

<comment><USER17> I think it's the fact that it's a training for shortcuts and the training in itself is a shortcut (i.e. short, concise etc.)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if the pun jury would agree that that's actually a pun.

<comment><USER17> Indeed. But fingers crossed until they reach a _Vi_ rdict. (I'll show myself out hehe)

<comment><USER2> I hope the _pun_ ishment isn't too harsh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

The tongue in cheek answer: My ability to code quickly is held back by my ability to create code structures in my mind, not type code into an editor.

I appreciate vim not because it's faster, but because I don't have to think about using a mouse, and I can just have a conversation with the editor.

"Correct inside these parenthesis" ci(

"Insert the text 'func Something() error {'"

"Delete three lines and paste them above the current line" 3ddP

"Goto the definition" gd

"Go back" C-o

"Write to disk and quit" :wq

</comment><comment><USER19> You don't have to choose one. I use vi a lot, but when I want to do something complicated I often switch to emacs.

It is easy for me, and not a lot of typing. I log on a server, and type vi program.py. Now I am in normal mode at the top of the file. If I want to go to line 80 I type 8-0-return. If I want to search for a list called dataList below that I type /dataList and return. If I want to go to the bottom of the file I type G. If I want to go back to the top of the file I type 1G. It is economic with how much typing you need to do. It loads up quickly. It also uses the same commands as ed in case you're on a dumb terminal, although that tends to be rare nowadays.

If I'm doing a lot of multi-window stuff, or cutting and pasting from the middle of a line to the middle of another line 3000 lines down or something complex I use Emacs. For example, emacs has a command 'keep-lines' where only lines matching a regex get kept (or flush-lines where all lines matching a regex get deleted). Vi can do more complex stuff but I usually just switch to emacs when things get complicated.

Speaking of speed - if you look at the old e-mails and Usenet posts and such from Bill Joy on the net, you may notice he did not capitalize any letters when he wrote. That saved him the time of having to hit the shift key.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you work with UNIX / Linux servers a lot, or really at all, it's a good idea to be comfortable with basic vi usage - vim being Vi IMproved, with some features that we've all become comfortable with.

You will find a version of vi on almost any UNIX-ish system you're likely to find running. It's an incredibly robust and battle-tested editor which can help you out of tight situations.

Nano isn't so bad and is fairly common now, but its' predecessor, Pico, was absolutely terrible for editing code. Pico was originally the editor bundled with the Pine e-mail client, and it had a nasty habit of chopping lines of text at 80 characters wide. I once used Pico to edit a hundreds-of-lines-long apache config, bungled the whole thing, and had to manually reconstruct it with vi.

At the time, I was a fairly new employee in my first tech job as support for a Linux distributor in the 90s and our build engineer fairly quickly informed me that it was time I learn vi.

Any system with vim installed on it - including a fresh Mac - will have vimtutor, which I highly recommend everyone spend a half hour with. When I taught Linux admin courses, I had everyone run through this at lunch on the first day to help them avoid the professional embarrassment I had. ;)

[Edit: and I second what everyone else says about it not necessarily being a supreme development experience. I use a Mac with, over the years, TextMate, Sublime, Light Table, and now Atom. Some people make a convincing argument that Emacs is a supreme dev environment, but I've never quite picked it up]

</comment><comment><USER21> Only people who can save & exit vim holds it as the pinnacle of editing technology. :) the rest of us can't save files in it

<comment><USER22> :wq <filenamegoeshere>

<comment><USER23> or :x

<comment><USER24> or ZZ

<comment><USER25> Or Ctrl+S, Ctrl+W in most GUI environments (gVim, neovim)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Vim user for ~10 years ... I find Vim more productive for writing prose than coding, since oftentimes the limiting factor when coding isn't pure typing/editing speed. And, as other posters have mentioned, good IDEs nowadays have a lot of integrated support for the entire software lifecycle and not just for pounding out code as fast as possible.

</comment><comment><USER27> In this topic: people worrying about how fast they can make mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't have time to make a screencast but, I don't see a huge difference between VIM/Emacs to be honest. Most devs seem to like Emacs more for the easy complexity I suppose.

For modern development I wouldn't compare vim (a text editor) to Eclipse (an IDE). I'd say learn vim if you think you might ever find yourself in a shell needing to do things. No Xwindows and maybe not even emacs. I personally use vim for everything I do but, that's because I've used it for 21 years now. The second reason is I develop by always taking the easiest path (kiss theory) and generally don't need an IDE for most things. The third reason is that I started developing carpel tunnel in my right hand using the mouse and decided to not use a mouse as much as possible.

<comment><USER28> Just about every IDE has a vim-mode plugin available. While they're not perfect, they give you much of the efficiency while not having to give up the trappings of an IDE.

I also have struggled with mouse-related RSI. Switching to trackballs helped a ton for me.

<comment><USER29> this. vsvim definitely improved my daytime life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Honestly, I switched because of RSI. Other editors require a lot of chording. Hell, just look up the term "emacs finger". Some might claim that's because of poor control key positioning, but repurposing capslock is frequently not an option and doesn't totally alleviate the problem.

Switching to Vim completely eliminated those issues for me.

As a happy bonus I gained access to a lot of Vim tricks... Normal mode is basically a weird programming language, which makes it enormously powerful, particularly for repetitive tasks. And Vim macros are magical as a consequence.

Which is why when using VS or IntelliJ I adopt Vim emulation plugin of some kind. None are perfect but most are sufficient to allow me to continue to use my Vim muscle memory in more integrated environments.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would suggest that Vim is about more than speed, it is about flow. Think about the difference between ctrl-c and navigating to the menu to copy with your mouse. One just feels more fluid and requires less thinking. Games use extensive keybindings for the same reason.

Vim in particular is a philosophy of keybindings. It has a syntax and a logic to it. For example `daw` will delete a word. To delete a sentence you would `das`. Guess what you would use to delete a paragraph? Once you "grock" vim logic you can perform more complex actions without much cognitive overhead and with your fingers on the home row. Writing in Vim gives me a feeling of mastery and fluidity with the machine I have not felt since my competitive gaming days.

<comment><USER2> > For example `daw` will delete a word. To delete a sentence you would `das`.

Huh. I use 'dw' and 'dl'. Why the extra key?

<comment><USER5> Using 'dw' deletes from the cursor until the end of the word.

Using 'daw' deletes the whole word "around" the cursor (hence 'a' command) - meaning you don't have to pay attention to the cursor position, it could be on the start/middle/end of the word and the result would be the same.

<comment><USER2> Ah. Now I look like I'm vim-dumb.

<comment><USER31> No worries. There's always more to learn. `dw` is a motion command as in "delete to the end of the word. `daw` is a text object command as in "delete a word." There is also a difference between `daw` and `diw`, which is delete inner word, and `daW` which is delete a WORD.

See [http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#object- mot...](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#object-motions)

and

[http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#word](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#word)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My main reason to why stuff gets done faster when I'm in vim is because I am in the terminal anyway. Compared to one virtual desktop with a browser if you're doing web, one with some editor, and one with a terminal to run some build tools and more, you'd have to jump around much more.

Another good reason to go with vim is that it will probably be around when other editors may become abandoned. Sure it's good with many editors to pick from, but most of us go for the latest shiny thing and it's always a learning curve even going between Sublime and Atom.

It's free, you can install it on anything. It's not the crazy commands that makes it fast really.

</comment><comment><USER33> Watch Gary Bernhardt at [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts) and judge for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER34> I use vim not because I think I can type faster in it, but because I have used so many editors in so many different platforms over my career, and I realized that I could settle for just one that I can trust will be around (and be very effective, and available on any platform I choose to use) for as long as I'm alive.

</comment><comment><USER35> > Can you show me how fast coding is in vim?

I would literally like to see how fast coding in vim is. Can anyone point me to a screen capture of editing in vim? I've always been skeptical how editing without a mouse could be fast.

Edit: I just noticed that he _is_ asking for a screencast. Why is everyone ignoring that request?

</comment><comment><USER36> Programming is about typing less, writing small and smart code that is hard to break and requires thinking. I never understood why fast editing in vim matters for good programming. You can pretty much do copy paste, replace or refactor using any other editors.

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone following this thread might be interested in watching a few episodes of Emacs Rocks! It's pretty entertaining, and humbling about my own use of any text editor.

[http://emacsrocks.com/](http://emacsrocks.com/)

</comment><comment><USER38> The advantage of Vim is not faster but more abstract way to manipulate text. It build a language of text operation in higher level, which make you faster. Image picture editor which has only concept pixel, but not sharp, mask, layer...

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't think it really matters which editor you use. Just pick one, and be proficient with it.

All of the editors you've mentioned are very good at what they do, some might be better in certain areas than others.

</comment><comment><USER40> I used to use vim for everything and about a year ago switched to using Sublime Text with a vim plugin. I get some nice IDE features with all the power tools that come with vim. Highly recommend.

<comment><USER41> Same! Love it

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you're still using QWERTY, fix that first before worrying about your text editor.

<comment><USER43> I use Dvorak if I'm typing English and it's a full sentence or more. But trying to use vim with Dvorak bindings just seems crazy to me. You wouldn't be able to use the home row arrow keys if you are in dvorak mode. There was some careful consideration with the hotkeys in vim and they were made under the QWERTY assumption.

<comment><USER42> Yes, they were, and that's a real problem with vi(m).</comment></comment></comment>


Programmer Creates An AI To (Not Quite) Beat NES Games (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/14/nes-robot/

<comment><USER2>
      Murphy ran a few other games through it, including Tetris, and found that the program would eventually just pause itself rather than continue playing and lose, a tactic shared by annoying, over-competitive cousins around the world since 1985.

It appears the only winning move is not to play.

</comment><comment><USER3> really, what isn't easy given those capabilities... ;)</comment>


Edge Chromium Release on January 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/11/04/edge-chromium-release-candidate-get-ready/#PfqhFj571ggdy3Hw.97 <comment><USER2> I have to commend Microsoft on the new Edge logo. It's different enough from the IE and old Edge logo that savvy users will notice the change, but similar enough that the users who "just click on the blue e to go to the internet" probably won't notice the change.

<comment><USER3> It looks like a fox tail. :)

<comment><USER4> Or a curling Armadillo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who read a lot of Slashdot in the 90's... what is the world coming to, when I'm rooting for Microsoft products because I _don 't_ want monopolies in browsers and operating systems?

<comment><USER6> Of course, you may get more bang for your rooting buck if you supported a browser that didn't use Blink as its rendering engine.

<comment><USER7> I hear that sentiment a lot on this site, but don't understand it.

Since Blink is available under a very permissive license, why does it matter?

It seems to me that the notion that it is important to have multiple implementations of a standard ( _and_ the notion that a formal standard is even necessary) derive from a time when those implementations had proprietary licenses.

<comment><USER8> Matters because if at least two engines are equally popular (in terms of market share) or close to that, then no one entity will be able to disregard or exert undue influence over the standardisation process of web technologies. They will be forced to work together and presumably if one entity tries to do something evil the other will resist and since they have roughly equal market share, the evil proposal will be dead in water. Diversity of implementations is important as a means of checks and balances.

<comment><USER7> I continue to fail to understand.

Is it not the case that if the popularity of Edge Chromium becomes close to that of Google Chrome, then your argument will apply just as well, i.e., if either Google or Microsoft tries to do something evil the other will resist?

Why is whether the 2 project descend from the same codebase the decisive factor? I would've thought that the decisive factor is whether the second project is willing to deploy developer (and managerial) resources to the same extent as Google is willing to, i.e., many hundreds of full-time developers, each earning over 100,000 usd per year (and sufficiently competent managers).

<comment><USER8> True. But there still remain subtle bugs in rendering engines that become 'features.' On the other hand if there are multiple popular engines (deep forks count too), those bugs will be exposed and there will be incentive to fix them and align towards a single standard behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google has shipped Manifest v3 in Chrome Canary, which severily limits how extensions are allowed to block and modify requests. What is Microsoft's plan regarding Manifest v3 in Edge Chromium, are they going to deprecate the blocking capabilities of the webRequest API?

<comment><USER10> Is it easier to submit extensions to the Microsoft store? Last time I looked it was very closed off to a selection of hand picked extensions. To be fair this was probably over a year ago.

<comment><USER9> There is no public service yet for submitting extensions: [https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/How-do- yo...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/How-do-you-submit-a- Microsoft-Edge-Insider-Addon-to-the/m-p/408452)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone familiar with embeddability of Chromium-based Edge? MS web engines have been able to be used in shared libraries in the past and I'm hoping a win32/xaml control will be available for use. Even better if they contrib'd back the ability to leverage chrome DLLs.

<comment><USER12> I believe this is what you're referring to: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/microsoft-edge/hosting/webv...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/hosting/webview2)

<comment><USER11> Exactly, thanks! I have been using CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) for a while now, but as my needs for cross-platform dwindle (and I highly doubt Edge Chromium has any non-Windows plans), I might consider using this instead.

<comment> Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 From the first paragraph:

> On January 15th, we expect to release the "Stable" channel, at which point > Microsoft Edge will be generally available to download on Windows and macOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great news for privacy. We can now use Edge when accessing Google services such as Gmail, and Chrome when accessing Microsoft services. That way we can prevent the browser from helping the services track you (such as by logging you into the Browser itself when logging into services such as gmail.)

<comment><USER14> Or we could just use Firefox, whose tracking protections have been enhanced a lot. Make it even better by adding a bunch of popular extensions (uBlock Origin, NoScript, Privacy Possum, Cookie Auto Delete, Multi Account Containers, Decentraleyes and a few others).

Another alternative for those who use Apple devices would be Safari, which is also strong on tracking protection. But the lack of good extensions on the latest Safari makes it a poorer proposition compared to Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since Microsoft owns Github, and since Github leads the development of Electron, and since Microsoft leads the development of one of the most important Electron apps (VS Code), does Microsoft have any plans for increasing the sharing of code and developers between Edge Chromium and Electron?

Alternatively, do they have any plans for eliminating VS Code's dependency on Electron?

<comment><USER15> Why don't we have shared electron runtimes?

1) Bundle electron release with app (bandwidth is cheap)

2) Find if that specific release is installed to your user directory.

3) If not copy

4) If yes, use it and don't copy it over.

5) Enforce semver for this of course.

<comment><USER7> Arch Linux tried to do something like that if this next web page is any indication although whether they succeeded or not I do not know:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/56686#issuecommen...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/56686#issuecomment-414668704)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I saw @maryjofoley refer to it as 'Chredge' the other day which gave me a chuckle

<comment><USER17> Edgium sounds better

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any word on a Linux release?

</comment><comment><USER19> Edge switching chromium has made me care even less about it.

<comment><USER20> I dislike both but maybe they can fork it and de-google it. MS is in a position to care about privacy if they want,at least to lure Chrome users where as Google will always be big-brother.

<comment><USER21> Chromium based Edge is de-googled. However it is Microsofted and Binged instead.

At least there is now choice which company gets to have all of your data.

<comment><USER22> Or you could not give either of them your data and use Firefox. I hear it's been around for a little while.

<comment><USER21> Mozilla's track record in that regard isn't stellar either though between episodes like the pocket integration and that forced iRobot marketing promo extension.

I think browsers have become so complicated that maintaining them is so expensive that you need to sell user data one way or another in order to cover the maintenance costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I called for this to happen over 5.5 years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7909383](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7909383)

I am thrilled that we're nearly there. I happily favor using apps from companies that don't base their primary existence on gathering and exploiting data about their users.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is Microsoft now contributing to Chromium development?

<comment><USER25> Yes, we are contributing to Chromium and have been for most of 2019.

<comment><USER26> Would you be able to raise the issue of adding an optional dedicated search bar to the new Edge, a la Firefox? The lack of container support is one thing, but using a dedicated search bar with DuckDuckGo bangs is something I just can't give up. It's also a good privacy point, not doing any prefetching.

I've submitted this feedback but I think it's extremely low priority (understandable), and likely outright dismissed as that "old fashioned, useless search bar".

To preemptively answer why I don't just use Firefox, I do, but Firefox on iOS is horrible and I'm fed up, it's a critical feature that the mobile partner works well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like the new logo a lot. But i very much dislike the fact that they seriously crippled the pdf and ebook functionality in the new browser. Especially since they also killed the old pdf Reader app and forced people to use the old Edge browser instead as their ebook and pdf reader.

<comment><USER8> Epub capability is going away from old Edge. In fact it may already be removed. It can still read PDFs, as can new Edge. Didn't try Epubs with the latter though. I just bear with the UI of Calibre's Ebook Reader... it is raw to say the least at this point, but gets the job done.</comment></comment>