Adobe broke SVG export in Illustrator CC 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://forums.adobe.com/message/7646269 <comment><USER2> "Sorry about not catching this before the release. We have a fix and are trying to get this out as soon as we can. Hopefully in the next 4-6 weeks."

Wasn't their whole argument for going the SaaS route is that there would be continuous, quick updates? Over a month to fix a completely broken export feature is absurd, especially when they are charging users monthly.

<comment><USER3> Of course, the real reason is to extract more revenue, reduce piracy, etc. At the very least Adobe offers the option to download an older version from CC.

But SaaS is a bleak future where we are completely at the mercy of such companies.

<comment><USER4> And once everyone is on CC, they have no business reason to keep spending money on improvements.

Historically Adobe hasn't had a lot of competition for much of this software. But they were kept "honest" by the boxed software model, and the fact that they wanted people to re-buy the same software every few years.

If they failed to offer compelling new features, the older Adobe software would just continue to be used indefinitely (and they'd lose income). Same with MS Office (it competes with itself).

Now, with CC, you aren't paying for new versions and instead just paying for "basic" access to their software. So if they just bug fix and don't provide any substantive improvements for ten years, you're still stuck paying them $10/month or whatever. Only actual competition could change this equation, and there isn't much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Things like this will just undermine the trust of regular users in open formats because "it doesn't work". And at this point it doesn't matter at all, who's to blame; a few years later the good ol' Adobe as we know it will sneak around the corner with a new proprietary format which is there to save the users from their horrible experience with this open crap.

<comment><USER6> Adobe just made snap.svg[1] last year. If they have a long-term plan to kill and supplant the format like you describe, then I guess somebody missed a memo.

[1] [http://snapsvg.io/](http://snapsvg.io/)

<comment><USER7> 2 years ago, and it's Dmitry Baranovsky's update to Raphäel.js rather than a big Adobe Project™ (which sacks off support for older browsers in favour of newer). And there's never been that much movement bar minor bugfixes for a long time. Not that there necessarily needs to be, it does what it does, but there doesn't seem to be any movement toward integrating closely with Adobe vector products (which would be useful) or seriously optimising (like, say, Greensock's really nice SVG animation stuff that's come out recently). Also IMO the two main competitors are better (SVG.js for simplicity & very nice plugins, Paper.js for complex stuff with amazing documentation). Note Paper.js is the successor to the Illustrator plugin Scriptographer, which was fantastic, but was killed by Adobe Illustrator updates - Adobe had something they could have used that worked really, really well, but didn't back it.

Snap is good, and useful, but it's not _that_ useful, it's just a tiny library, and a bit of a wasted opportunity IMO. With fairly crap documentation beyond the basics. I would love it if there was movement on this, a better SVG workflow from Illustrator -> Web would make my life a lot less frustrating, but v0v it's Adobe and they either move at the speed of a geriatric snail or they stomp all over tools I find useful

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recall SVG Export being broken long before Illustrator CC

<comment><USER9> Yeah I have had several problems working with .svg in illustrator, the biggest one being wacky arbatray resizing of the document bounds when I try to open and edit an .svg. I was forced to export off a master .ai file rather than re- edit native .svg, a pain in the arse!

The workaround I use is opening the .svg in a text editor and editing the properties manually, you can clear out a bunch of adobe auto generated garbage and get the file nice and small.

<comment><AUTHOR> Editing .svg in a text editor is the new Adobe Experience™.

<comment><USER9> Fire up dreamweaver/ glorified text editor, listen to your fan go nuts whilst your cpu chokes, the new Adobe Experience™

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Glad that Affinity Designer / Photo is coming into the fray to steal more Adobe share. Because it will make all the software better. If only it were cross platform, not just mac for now.

<comment><USER11> I am continually amazed by the guys at Serif. First, they are offering Designer at £29.99. Secondly, in spite of the trumpeted GPU preview updates in CC 2015, Affinity Designer just blows Illustrator away in rendering and moving around the document. It's really impressive and ends up being much more pleasant to work in.

<comment><USER12> Too bad it is Apple-only.

<comment><USER13> Not to take anything away from the Serif guys, they're doing a fantastic job, but most of the underlaying value of these software packages (Affinity Designer, Pixelmator, Sketch, iDraw, etc.) come from the strong frameworks in place on Apple's platforms (i.e. CoreGraphics, Quartz, Metal, etc.). Moving to another platform would mean to either find replacements or having to roll their own, which they probably wouldn't want to do. There is nothing bad about focus. I'd much rather have a platform-specific, focused tool that does a great job than having cross platform, half-assed set of barely decent tools like what Adobe does with their desktop apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I've always found intriguing about Adobe, is the absence of public betas for its main softwares. How do they manage to ship without large, real world usage ?

<comment><USER11> Especially since they now have a pretty straightforward beta seeding program available with Creative Cloud subscriptions. Pretty sure a public beta would have caught the SVG issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> NEVER switch completely to a x.0 Adobe CS/CC release.

ALWAYS wait for the x.0.1 and keep your prior versions handy.

The only problem with this update is Adobe forgot how bad they are at x.0 releases, defaulted to deleting prior versions, and made it cumbersome to just say no.</comment>


Cats Kill Billions of Animals a Year - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/26670-cats-kill-billions-animals.html <comment><USER2> Cats kill birds. No one is denying that. But are pet cats harming the bird population?

In the U.K. there is no scientific evidence to believe so. The birds that have suffered the worse population declines rarely interact with cats. Garden birds which you would expect pet cats to come into contact the most are the birds that are on the incline which would go counter to the argument that cats are killing them off.

The Royal Society for the Protection of birds [0] and the U.K. Government [1] do not lay the blame of decreasing bird populations on cats but more on humans changing how we farm food, remove hedgerow and other bird habitats [2].

Now is that the case world wide? No. In Australia feral cats are being blamed for damaging the native rodent population but that is feral cats, keeping your pet cat indoors won't do much (if anything at all) to affect that number), iirc Australia's government are not even calling to keep pet cats indoors. What they are doing though is culling the feral cat population. Which is just wildlife control at this point.

[0] [https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and- wildlife/advice/gardening-...](https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and- wildlife/advice/gardening-for-wildlife/animal-deterrents/cats-and-garden- birds/are-cats-causing-bird-declines/)

[1] [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/754432/UK_Wild_birds_1970-2017_FINAL__002_.pdf)

[2] [https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/how-you- ca...](https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/how-you-can-help- birds/where-have-all-the-birds-gone/is-the-number-of-birds-in-decline/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Glad this is getting more press.

</comment><comment><USER4> (2013)</comment>


Startups and the role of capital and investments - <AUTHOR> http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2008/07/18/startups-and-the-role-of-capital-and-investments <comment><USER2> I wonder about biotech: is the costlyness inherent in biotech, or has it been brought about by legislation? No doubt some biotech projects are complicated and take a lot of time, but perhaps not all of them? (There are also costly IT projects).

I think there have often been opportunities to start small, that is why the garage is so famous as a starting point. The garage founders where not software developers, I suppose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, there is legislation in terms of drug discovery: you can't just give people any old crap you concoct in a laboratory. But beyond that, even if you're not working on medical projects, lab equipment is expensive stuff.

<comment><USER2> I thought there are also laws in terms of what equipment is required, like a sealed off lab if you are dealing with bio agents?

I am still doubtful that equipment is in general the biggest cost factor. Isn't wages always the most important factor? In that sense, doing an IT startup is not so cheap either, at least counted in opportunity costs ("what could I earn as a consultant instead").

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, wages factor in a lot too. Probably the most important thing is that it takes a while to get something that you can sell to other people, so all the equipment and wages have to be paid for up front.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple, Acer, and...Arrington? - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/apple-acer-arrington/?hp

<comment><USER2> Technically a nice idea, but philosophically a terrible one. Because this is how _consumerism_ in a literal sense comes in to the Internet world: the device encourages you to consume rather than contribute - something really against the spirit and the essense of Internet.

<comment><USER3> I don't think so. I feel the tablet would be used in places where you couldn't contribute (very much) anyway: in the train, in bed before going to sleep, etc. I like the idea of being able to add a keyboard though. If the price is good, I don't see any reason not to buy one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I honestly am brimming with excitement about getting my hands on one of these.

If they're decent, I've got plans to buy at least 2 more, one going to my mother and grandmother to get them connected to the web with a cheap & simple device.

<comment><USER5> Ditto - these are going to be perfect for non-tech savvy family members

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kudos if the crunchpad takes off, I'll be buying a kindle, netbook, or iphone if I want a portable tech device.</comment>


Floss decentralized AP-based link aggregator: Prismo - <AUTHOR> https://prismo.news/ <comment><AUTHOR> The "AP" in the title stands for Activity-Pub. The source-code is here: [https://gitlab.com/mbajur/prismo/](https://gitlab.com/mbajur/prismo/)</comment>


The iPhone 6 launch event Bingo - <AUTHOR> http://applebingo.club/

<comment><USER2> I always love these. But, why won't it randomly generate the board on each load? As it stands, it is somewhat unlikely that we will be able to get Bingo...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

The idea is that you make your board and save the link, share with friends and then compare it to what actually happens on the event.</comment></comment>


How China Really Beat the Virus-Optically Detecting Asymptomatic Carriers - <AUTHOR> This is not verified but I am working on screening COVID19 asymptomatic patients and I suspect I know how this is being sorted so quickly.
We know now that 50-75% of infected do not have symptoms so we were confused how they managed to track asymptomatic cases.
The virus may infect the fine capillaries in the face regardless of fever, etc.
It is very easy to identify the corona "blush": 3 rings: one sharp spot on each cheek and a pale ring of light skin around the mouth.
FLIR, military optics, etc can be used to do this long range.
I have attached some color adjusted images of the corona "blush" to help understand: https://imgur.com/a/dXz52rR
Go on New York, Florida or Seattle Instagram/Twitter and review recent seflies, isnt it strange that 20%+ of selfies in highly infected states have the 3 rings? <comment><USER2> This sounds like the Will Smiths movie - I am Legend</comment>


Ask HN: Which self hosted cloud solution you use and why? - <AUTHOR> We are looking to use one of owncloud, nextcloud, or seafile. What are the pros and cons of each? Any opinion is welcome. <comment><USER2> Hi, so far owncloud and nextcloud are still pretty much the same after their fork, however nextcloud seems to pursue a more complete personal cloud solution, with lots of other addons/apps like an openstreetmap or email UI. I use owncloud on a daily basis through my Cloudron and it is pretty good, especially given the file-syncing from my phone (Android). I did use seafile as well some time ago, but I found the UI quite a bit confusing, less focused on what I needed, which was file-syncing.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you recommend a good free CRM? - <AUTHOR>

My company has been looking for a good CRM solution, preferably hosted and haven't been very happy with the ones that we've seen.<p>Does anybody know of a good one, free or low-cost, that we can start out with? <comment><USER2> I've been using <http://karmacrm.com> and I like it so far. A little minimal on functionality, but good for now (and for free). Not yet sure how I'll feel when they try to convert me to a paid account(which they've disclosed up front is on the way sometime soon).

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been building one : <http://crm.ifreetools.com> \- Currently in Alpha, but includes core modules.

You can also create a simple tool yourself, to match your requirements using <http://creator.ifreetools.com>

Applies for both CRM & Creator : \- Free (ad-supported). \- Works with Google Accounts or Google Apps user accounts. \- Hosted over Google App Engine, custom deployment available. \- Can be mapped to your sub-domain using Google Apps, for free.

</comment><comment><USER4> Did you try SugarCRM?</comment>


Legalize Drugs, Deal with the Downsides - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-08-21/legalize-drugs-deal-with-the-downsides <comment><USER2> I have fully supported legalization for a very long time, and probably include more in my 'legal drug' category. For me, the trade in is always that addiction help must be freely available and based on medicine. Age restrictions are a must, as are fairly tough laws on public intoxication.

It seems most countries experimenting have had good results. Portugal is especially interesting - they didn't exactly legalize everything, but have decriminalized everything (including things like heroin), made treatment free, and are flexible on the fines they do happen to give.

All this said, though, complete legalization of all forms of cannibus (possible strength restrictions) and some hallucinogens are a start. It is wonderfully freeing and nice to be able to sit in a coffee shop or bar and smoke in the same manner that others drink - and be able to walk out of the same place less obviously inebriated than the patrons drinking alcohol.</comment>


TipTheWeb — Building a Better Web, Together - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tiptheweb.org/post/4052890190/building-a-better-web-together <comment><USER2> Compared to others in this space.

Pros:

* Does not require publisher to embed code

* Allows pre-tipping

Cons:

* Requires active decision by user to tip (the fatal flaw of all such schemes)

It's unclear to me if the 'tipstream' has to be public or not. That was a big part of the Kachingle model.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've wanted to the decision to tip to be an active one, but low-barrier. Basically as close to bookmarking a link a possible, or like tweeting a link to share it. Automatic tipping would be difficult to balance things correctly. For example a funny YouTube video I may want to tip 25¢, but an open source project on GitHub I might want to tip $5.

All user accounts have Tip Streams that are a feed of the Tips that user has funded (you can make tips before you put money into your account). But, we have an option to make your account anonymous, removing all personal- identifiable information from your Tip Stream page.

<comment><USER3> Have you considered adding a way for content makers to require a small payment (via a Facebook Connect-esque popup)? It seems like you're halfway to micropayments.

<comment><AUTHOR> TipTheWeb will remain focused on being a service for voluntary support of web content and specifically _not_ a payment system.

<http://tiptheweb.org/answers/#tipping>

<comment><USER3> Ah, okay; I skimmed and missed the non-profit part.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Songs as a Service a 10 week creative challenge - <AUTHOR> http://songsasaservice.wordpress.com/ I'm after some help. I'm 3 weeks into a 10 week SAAS project. No not Software As A Service, Songs As A Service!
Every Sunday I post on the Songs as a Service Facebook page asking for suggestions for a song topic. Every Monday at 10pm (GMT) I start writing and recording a song based on the topic with the most likes. The song is then uploaded some time before the next Monday for your aural pleasure. Ever wanted a song written for you? then check out  my blog and start thinking about song topics for week 4. Thanks in advance for your help :) <comment><AUTHOR> Week 3's song now up on the blog</comment>


UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/uk_launches_open_data_site_puts_datagov_to_shame.php

<comment><USER2> Um, no.

Some of these "datasets" are links to web sites: <http://data.gov.uk/dataset/england-national-crime-mapping>

Some are applications based on UK data which are run by non-governmental organizations or individuals: <http://data.gov.uk/apps/post-box-finder-0>

It's unfortunate RWW chose to take a confrontational and disparaging tone about US open data efforts. The US provides a vast amount of open, public domain, datasets.

<comment><USER3> I wanted to look at some traffic-related dataset and the download link linked back to the homepage. The site is poorly put together as far as I can tell.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://data.gov.uk/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like some of the data sets are in PDF :-(

Is there any standard, to publish these data sets? If yes, why can't the governments, municipal corporations etc agree on publishing the data in that format? It would be much easier to build apps ...

<comment><USER4> A "Standard" to rule them all is probably a bad idea here, but I agree that PDF is really not appropriate for any data you'd like to process further.

The datasets can really vary in terms of characteristics, so while XML might make sense for one, CSV might be completely appropriate for another. And that's perfectly OK with me, so long as they document the fields and how to parse it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After we built StimulusWatch, we waited patiently for data.gov to arrive, and quite honestly it was shameful from day one. No other site is needed to shame data.gov. :-/

</comment><comment><USER5> We should be putting our foot down more often and flagging these linkbait articles. I did.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's based on Drupal.

Nice to see the UK being innovative. _sigh_

<comment><USER7> What's your point?

<comment><USER8> I believe Sir Berners-Lee's personal website is powered by Drupal and he has endorsed it in writing before this - so this is no suprise.

I am glad to see a government project capitalising on Open Source and owning the software they use rather than the usual UK debacle of Microsoft Consultancies and non-ownership of poorly customised and badly broken foriegn owned closed source code.

Finally an ounce of sanity.</comment></comment></comment>


Slack may regret its letter to Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13504932/slack-microsoft-teams-letter-wtf <comment><USER3> It's funny that Slack thinks they've perfectly balanced a unique and special snowflake on the tip of a unicorn's horn when what they've really done is added a pretty UI to IRC. It's a chat room. With channels. So, sorry to tell you guys, but it's not innovative, it's lucky. We had chat rooms back in 1995. Yes, that scrappy startup Microsoft will not have too much trouble implementing a chat room and they don't need luck to get users. How were the people at Slack not thinking "Holy shit, people are paying for this!" the entire time like it was a dream. I'm sure Slack will continue with much success now that they have their user base, so good for them, but to delude themselves into thinking no one can do it as good as they do is a bit naive.

<comment><USER4> I'm really weirded out that people can't see the value Slack added. Having your messages stored while you are offline is hugely valuable. If I have been out of signal range on a train, I want to be able to look at history on my phone once I'm back in range of a cell tower.

Beyond that, a well made UI for web, desktop and phone that is consistent is valuable. 'Adding a pretty UI' isn't a zero-effort or skill thing.

No, Slack isn't a world away from IRC or email - but it's enough better that people want to use it, that's good. I'm not sure where all the hate comes from.

<comment><USER5> Hate? Everyone i know loves slack. I love slack. I've used it for my last two companies for (~many) years now. That doesn't make it innovative though, imo.

I can't think of a single feature they've done that is innovative. Attaching a file to a message?. Searching history? These aren't new or special in any way shape or form.

What slack did far more than UI, was UX. Top to bottom, it's a very nice UX. It's why i love Slack.

There's no hate coming from me - i'm just a realist. Slack didn't do anything amazing. It just did things right. Which is unfortunate for all of us users, as it took so many years to do things right. Unfortunately for slack though, they showed what is a good UX.. how hard do you think it is to copy that UX? Not easy, sure, but the template is there. Spend some time copying Slack, and i think you can manage to make Slack.Clone.

<comment><USER4> It sounds a lot like all the people that bash StackOverflow - "It's just posts and a voting system, I could write that in a week!", ignoring all the complexity and design behind it, operating at scale and cultivating the environment.

If people need something to be 'amazing' not to put it down, and 'amazing' doesn't include doing the right things to be highly successful...

If no one else did it, was it really so obvious?

<comment><USER6> Microsoft has a well regarded developer network and Q&A system regarding Microsoft technologies, at least in my (limited to primarily Azure) experience.

Similarly, Microsoft has already operated a widely used integrated chat, profile, and community system at scale. Given their recent pushes, it wouldn't be entirely surprising for them to bring back similar platforms for business users integrated with LinkedIn.

That would eat a lot of Slack's potential big clients, because MS has a history of enterprise grade support on products like that, and Slack has scale issues for large orgs.

<comment><USER7> Does Slack even allow on-premise installs yet? That instantly disqualified them from the last 3 jobs I've had. (All of which had data protection issues that prevented them from using off-premises IM systems, mostly HIPAA regulations.) Microsoft's got that market already sewn-up, right out of the gate.

<comment><USER8> Correct me if I'm wrong, but Microsoft Team doesn't currently have a self- hosted option. I hope it's in the pipeline because my company can't use an offsite IM service. It would be nice if Microsoft added support and then Slack followed. Competition is good!

<comment><USER9> Mattermost is an open source, self-hosted Slack-alternative: [https://www.mattermost.org/what-slack-might-learn-from- its-o...](https://www.mattermost.org/what-slack-might-learn-from-its-open- source-alternative/)

<comment><USER10> There is also Matrix (matrix.org), an open standard for decentralized communications. Our goal is to let all apps talk to each other - <USER2> Slack, Mattermost, and Microsoft Teams!

Check it out using any Matrix-enabled app: [https://matrix.to/#/#matrix:matrix.org](https://matrix.to/#/#matrix:matrix.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow... So if I understand correctly :

1) They decided to mess with a company having $500B in-cash

2) Which decided to attack their low barrier-to-entry market

3) And took the unusual revealing step of building its own instead of buying

4) And is playing in its comfort zone (productivity tools, Office, API, cloud- scale integration points : azure, azure marketplace etc...)

5) While having a pool of 90M trustful paying customers and the ability to provide them the same offering for free in less than 1 second.

The worst they could do was to help Microsoft define this offering as a direct competition. But this is just what they did with this arrogant and high- schoolish "Welcome" letter.

What really has me roll my eyes here is the way they think that they can be frontal with a corporation like Microsoft playing in its comfort zone and having the dollars we know they have.

This will cost them a lot. You can't easily backtrack from that and even if they somehow manage to do it, by the time they get there, Teams will have already seized a good chunk of their user base.

<comment><USER12> "Making my eyes roll" sums my feelings on this perfectly.

Dear Slack,

We built the cloud service, web framework, programming language and operating system our Team app runs on as well as the IDE it was built with, the source control its stored in and the office apps it integrates with, oh and 2 of the browsers we tested it on. The chat part really wasn't that hard.

We'll probably be OK.

\- Microsoft

<comment><USER13> And the relational database

<comment><USER12> great catch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When Steve Jobs "Welcomed IBM" with a full page ad, it was fun. It fit the vibe of who he was and the slightly rebellious marketing campaigns Apple was running. Slack's "Welcome Microsoft" letter felt weird. It felt disconnected from the company and product many of us love and use every day. Might have been stronger to silently add a feature to Slack that lets you communicate with Microsoft Team's members.

<comment><USER15> Slack's letter appears to betray defensiveness and fear of competition, rather than a tongue-in-cheek attitude like Apple's ad did. I think that's why it seems weird.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't help that the snark from the CEO was awkward too:

[https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793969175807098881](https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793969175807098881)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger and IRC were all entrenched at different points in time.

To give a parallel, so were Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Mumble, Raidcall, Xfire or whatever have you (for gaming at least).

Chat rooms and VOIP solutions are commodities and have been for a decade or more. Sure, some companies do some more value-add than others in terms of service and support, but at the end of the day it's still a commodity and no amount of rationalization and wishful thinking will change that.

Which is why their mimicking of Apple ad seems condescending and arrogant. Personal PCs were at the top of the technological know-how in the early 80s. Glorified chat rooms haven't been new or high tech for 20 years (IRC is how old?). In fact the only innovation in recent years seems to be end-to-end encryption, which Microsoft seems to be on board with.

</comment><comment><USER18> Our entire company switched to Slack within basically a day. While that's a big selling point for Slack's ease of use, it also means it'd be easy to switch away to a competitor within a day too.

<comment><USER19> My team has built numerous chatops bots and automation around Slack, mostly because of their great API. In a way, we're building our own lock-in, as any replacement would have to provide the same level of API access, from in- channel announcements to channel scraping for parsing by other systems. And it would require retooling the bots too.

<comment><USER20> Respectfully, that sounds like an engineering failure on your part. There are enough similarities in the APIs among different chat systems that the business logic can be easily decoupled from the event loop; had you abstracted the interface, your system would be more easily portable to other providers.

<comment><USER21> Except... other than Slack, nobody has a sane API just yet (I work at sameroom.io).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My prior experience with some of the now leadership of Slack indicates that they don't have sufficient moral authority for this kind of commentary anyway.

<comment><USER23> I've been treated unethically by four relatively senior employees of Slack myself. It never occurred to me to complain until they started acting so holier than thou.

<comment><USER24> It's funny how achieving great success more as a result of luck than ingenuity seems to go hand-in-hand with arrogance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does Slack even understand that there are MANY enterprise companies that don't use Slack simply because it's NOT Microsoft?

Hubris is rarely a good quality.

<comment><USER7> More likely because it's not available on-premise. Check into how many use HipChat instead, because it is.

Either way, this is a HUGE market Slack hasn't even begun to touch. (Although I see they now have a "coming soon!" banner on their homepage.)

<comment> stable-point > More likely because it's not available on-premise. Check into how many use > HipChat instead, because it is.

Just one data-point, but: my employer went with HipChat because we needed an on-premise solution. (We were moving away from IRC because we needed persistent chat history for remote employees. Using IRC bouncers was considered too high of a barrier-to-entry, given we wanted non-technical employees to join the conversation too).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What a smug, sanctimonious piece of writing.

It's hard to imagine that anyone who read this came away with a positive perception of Slack.

</comment><comment><USER26> Between this and the debate around the new macbooks/surface-studio, Microsoft is having very good week in terms on gaining some mindshare and good-will from the technorati and the (traditionally) anti-microsoft press.

Slack is great. I'm part of many slack communities and until they move I'll stay (although they are all in the free-tier). While the many millions who are already part of the O365 subscription base (and who probably don't even know slack or why they need them) won't have reason to start a community on Slack I think Slack is safe in the short-run with those who don't pay the "MS-tax" or those who are already part of existing slack communities.

And while Slack is a great product (as the IRC on steroids that it is) it is easy to replicate and so MS now did.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Or maybe it will evaporate into the ether, like Yammer, which Microsoft > spent $1.2 billion on to seemingly no effect whatsoever.

Ah, Silicon Valley. Where growing slowly is the same as being already dead

<comment><USER28> Nah, that thing was a clunker its whole life. They spent the billion because Twitter was much more fearsome at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I dunno, I just want to stop hearing about it here on HN, this single letter has been posted a dozen times in the past day:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dear%20microsoft&sort=byPopula...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dear%20microsoft&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story)

<comment><USER30> Hey, if it takes a little away from the barrage of boring, half-reasoned opinions about the MacBook announcement, I'll take it.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=apple&sort=byPopularity&prefix...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=apple&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What a badly written letter. No aim, no structure, no class.

</comment><comment><USER32> Slack is the most overrated startup of the last couple years.

A native ui for IRC with some extra features.

Their valuation is laughable and is a prime example of the bubble forming in vc tech.

<comment><USER33> > with some extra features

That's what got them where they are right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've been using skype for text messaging pretty constantly for the last 3 years, and I'm not sure why people hate it so. it has groups, 1-1 chat and video. Searching history can be a bit of a pain, but everything else seems to be there. Sometimes I wonder what I'm missing.

<comment><USER35> I associate Skype with being slow and heavy for some reason. However it's possible that I picked this opinion up from other people and just started repeating it.

<comment><USER36> No, no...you are correct: skype (for business) is slow and heavy. At least it is for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The essential issue here is this - starting with the Fortune 500, how far down the business size stack do you have to go before this question stops being a laughing out loud no-brainer:

      "Shall we buy more-or-less the same chat application
      from Microsoft or Slack?"

<comment><USER38> Let's really talk about a no-brainer... How far down that stack do you have to go to before the Microsoft choice isn't included as part of some already- priced-and-paid package? _Free_ Microsoft or _paid_ Slack...

"Nobody was ever fired for choosing IBM."

<comment><USER37> At my Fortune 500 client Office communicator / lync/ Skype for whatever is per seat chargeable. But as it's 3 bucks no one even blinks at signing it off.

MS actually has done rather neatly out of that one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Surprised by the tone of this. It's Slack declaring cultural war to Microsoft. All values subverted, what is praise is actually negative admiration (envy basically), probably based on fear. Kind of gramscian stuff what they did. Very unexpected and unnecessary. Unless they wanted to do some noise because of marketing? I guess they got scared but doesn't sound like Slack needs that. Wonder why they bought this battle this soon.

</comment><comment><USER40> Microsoft can just copy everything that Slack does right, give it away for a fraction or for free and there's nothing that they can do about it.

<comment><USER41> If they give it away for free (as part of office365), is that not effectively anticompetitive behaviour?

<comment><USER42> Well, now that slack has so "genuinely" welcomed microsoft as a competitor, I don't think they can turn around and argue the opposite for the same offering.

<comment><USER15> Slack is going to look dumb if it ever sues Microsoft.

"But, your honor, Slack told the world they welcome competition from us in this infamous letter from November 2016!"

<comment><USER43> I get your point, but, if an anti-trust suit ever happened, it would be DoJ that sues MS, not Slack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I didn't see such a catastrophic marketing decision for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER45> Seems like the Slacklash I've been expecting has finally arrived.

</comment><comment><USER46> So does this mean that Microsoft is 'UnDead'?

Ref: Paul graham : Microsoft is Dead [http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html)

<comment><USER44> Looks like you didn't follow the news. Microsoft is the new Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Can someone link me to a hi-res image.. or do I have to buy the newspaper in order to read the ad?

<comment><USER48> [https://slackhq.com/dear- microsoft-8d20965d2849#.1o0pg14v2](https://slackhq.com/dear- microsoft-8d20965d2849#.1o0pg14v2)

<comment><USER47> thank you thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Tangentially related. I'm using rocket chat - it's open source (MIT) alternative to slack.

And i think it would be easier/safe for companies to adopt self hosted solution or use already trusted company like Microsoft.

Slack had great UX - but one cannot compete only with that because it could be copied. Maybe Slack have some comparative advantage that could not be copied.

</comment><comment><USER50> Let the IRC wars begin. :) Seriously, I am not sure what to think when a chat company is worth 1 billion. Sure it has nice UI but so does HipChat and a bunch of other tools. For me, Slack is just one of the many communication platforms I used ever since, starting with IRC, ICQ and other apps and protocols from the 90s. I am not particullary fond on Microsoft but they deliver. I cannot forget the initial uproar when they introduced their entering the gaming console industry with Xbox, and look at them now. Slack has to offer a bit more than just a nice UI for async messaging to be relevant in the corporate communication space in the next 5 years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging#History)

</comment><comment><USER51> > threaded conversations

How does an instant messaging app _not_ have threaded conversations?

</comment><comment><USER52> This is an opportunity to MS to reply in kind and demonstrate a sense of humour.

</comment><comment><USER53> Slack-like chat in an integrated offering isn't new. Zoho has offered this for some time: [https://www.zoho.com/chat/](https://www.zoho.com/chat/)

<comment><USER54> Yeah buddy, but Microsoft has more employees than Zoho's customers.

When practically every office employee on the planet is your customer, it is kind of different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Apples and oranges. The MS product is a paid version within a particular target/universe. That said, evidently, MS didn't study the never-rose and fell story of Google Wave. In short, collaboration needs people. Any people. All people. One outside within the team and a platform becomes irrelevant to the matter at hand.

In addition, the communication market is bigger than the market for soda. Genuine or otherwise Slack and the market will benefit from competition. There's still plenty of upside for Slack, Microsoft and perhaps one or two more.

</comment><comment><USER56> Why are we analyzing this as though it's supposed to be an honest statement from Slack (ie. arguing they're not an open platform or that Slack isn't actually as special and snowflakey as the ad makes them out to be)? It's pure marketing. Could argue it comes across too insincerely for positive impact, not sure if that will be true for the general audience reading it or not.

</comment><comment><USER57> Slack copied Yammer and HipChat... and now it's angry that Microsoft stole some of its unique features - such a hypocrisy!

</comment><comment><USER24> The letter just makes me feel like the people calling the shots over at Slack are immature and can't handle the realities of running a competitive business. It just comes off as a disguised advertisement and I doubt it really earned them any more customers.

</comment><comment><USER58> I think the intended audience of this ad is people who haven't heard of or use Slack but are interested in this new thing Microsoft is doing with the hope of poaching some users. It's not actually intended to convince Microsoft of anything, obviously.

</comment><comment><USER59> terrible judgment by the CEO to send this.

</comment><comment><USER60> Microsoft has lost my trust in them after what happened to me with Skype. I was one of the many victims who had their account hacked. The worst part was how their customer support handled the issue. They almost gave me an ulcer by trying to convince me that it was probably a virus on my computer causing the problem. Look at your own Skype forums people! Be transparent, own up to having problems, and fix it!

Communication is extremely important to me. That said, if all the employees in my company were only using 'Teams', 'Skype for business', 'Lync' or any other POS out of Microsoft then I'd be looking for a new job.

<comment><USER61> You seem like a real joy to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> > "All this is harder than it looks," Slack warns. And then the company straps > on its wax wings and flies into the sun.

That was a very nice turn of phrase.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can't believe _this_ has become a scandal. It's a bit tone-deaf. Okay. There are worse things.

</comment><comment><USER63> Welcome IBM. Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER64> Or Slack may just die?</comment>


JS IDE for iPad from makers of Visual Studio - <AUTHOR> http://blog.anui.com/post/59558770402/jasic-1-0-on-the-app-store-anui-proudly-announces

<comment><AUTHOR> Anui's Jasic jsut was released on the app store. It's a full fledged integrated developer environment for iPad. Build a full app on the iPad. The team behind this effort is impressive. Mohsen Agsen built Visual Studio and ran the C++ team at Microsoft.</comment>


Show HN: Major Upgrade: Docker 1.5.0 runs on ARM powered Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 - <AUTHOR>

Contrary to widespread believe Docker runs perfectly fine on ARM devices. To prove this we created a Get-Docker-Up-And-Running-On-Your-Pi-In-No-Time SD card image.
It is meant for the Raspberry Pi 1 & 2. Just flash our image to your SD card and enjoy instant Docker-awesomeness.
Find it here: http://blog.hypriot.com/heavily-armed-after-major-upgrade-raspberry-pi-with-docker-1-dot-5-0
The image includes:
- Linux Kernel 3.18.8 - Docker 1.5.0 - OverlayFS <comment><USER2> thank you!

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you very much for this guys! Works perfectly.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is meeting up? (December 2012) - <AUTHOR> Let's try to build a list of all Hacker News meet up groups and organize new groups for cities that don't have one yet.<p>Please post the name of your city and a link to your group. <comment><USER4> San Francisco

<http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Hacker-News-Meetup/>

The first meetup a couple of days ago was successful- thanks Dan for organizing it and Coderwall for hosting. Hope to see more of these.

Also: <https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn> <http://sfhn.eventbrite.com>

<comment><USER5> Photos of the event via Chute (YC W12): <http://slidechute.com/w/hnsfmeetup>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Austin, TX - new group - let's see if we can get together.

<http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-ATX/>

<comment><USER7> I'm sure Capital Factory can host this. Also, get in touch with Josh Baer--he writes the Austin StartupDigest every Sunday, and it goes out Monday morning. It lists all the tech-related events in Austin and it's what many people in Austin read to find events. If you're not on it, definitely subscribe as well: <http://austin.startupdigest.com/>

If you need help with intros for event space, etc., let me know. Contact info in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seattle

<http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Vancouver*

<http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-Vancouver>

* - New group! Let's see whether there are enough of us to start a regular meetup.

<comment><USER10> Signed up, also we use to have a lunch meetup (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=541044>). Going to post to that list as well about the new meetup group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> London

<http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Chicago

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/hn- chicag...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/hn-chicago)

</comment><comment><USER11> Great idea. Would love one in Boston/Cambridge, anybody else interested?

<comment><USER12> I'll be in Boston Dec 7th -> Jan 25th.

I'd be interested!

<comment><USER13> I'm in

<comment><USER11> Hey guys/gals, I set up a Boston HN meetup group: <http://www.meetup.com/hn- boston/>

Join if interested. Want to meet at a bar after work the week of Dec 10th?

<comment><USER14> Just joined. I'd be down for a meetup as long as it isn't 30* out. Can we do something downtown? Cambridge is great, but it's an hour each way for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sacramento"ish" here: <http://www.meetup.com/Nevada-County-Hackers/>

I'm the Meetup group's organizer, and our first real meetup is a hackathon this weekend: <http://www.nevadacityhackathon.com/>

Nelson gave a great demo of D3.js. We're a decent group of people to know if you're within 50 miles or so of Sac'to.

</comment><comment><USER16> New York City: <http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News/New-York-NY/>

Only a couple people, please join!

If you are looking to start a meetup in your own city please make it under the Meetup Everywhere for Hacker News, that way we get a nice directory - and it's free!

<http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News>

</comment><comment><USER17> Denmark - Aarhus or Copenhagen, who is in? :-)

<comment><USER18> Talk to @CopenhagenJS they are well connected in the meetup scene.

<comment><USER17> Noticed they were very active, but the "JS" part made me lose the interest :( Are there meetups more general, that one would think, taking the name into consideration?

<comment><USER18> It's a fair amount of overlap with other language communities as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hamilton NZ? There's nothing here now, but happy to try and organise something if there is anyone else interested?

</comment><comment><USER20> Toronto: <http://www.meetup.com/HNToronto/>

<comment><USER21> Good to hear there's a HN meetup in Toronto! Any idea why it's set up as a private group? All the other HN meetup groups I checked on this page are public.

<comment><USER20> I don't know, sorry (not my group)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On a related note, can someone advice on how to make most from these meetups. I created a thread for it. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4862067>

</comment><comment><USER23> DC - <http://meetup.hackernewsdc.org/>

It seems like it is literally always run when I'm out of town, but I've heard nothing but greatness abounds.

<comment><USER24> It sucks there's nothing scheduled. I'm in town until Tuesday, visiting from SF. It would have been nice to meet other HNers in DC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Detroit - Anybody have one setup / interested in setting one up?

</comment><comment><USER26> Are there any in NYC? If not, does anyone want to start one?

<comment><USER16> Here is the Hacker News Meetup Everywhere for NYC: <http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News/New-York-NY/>

It's rather empty but I'd like to get it going - please help: join and let's set a date and place!! I just got back from Seattle where the hacker news meetup is a big event - let's do the same in NYC!

<comment><USER26> Just joined the meetup group EDITED: Just checked out your site, and see that you were out in Seattle for an incubator, answered my own question ^ lol

<comment><USER16> Hi there - yes I was out in Seattle for two accelerators actually - <USER2> Accelerator for Kinect powered by TechStars ( <http://kinectaccelerator.com> ) and Fledge - a conscious company incubator ( <http://fledge.co> ).

The Seattle hacker news meetup - which I've gone to at least once - <USER3> twice - seemed massive --- like 200+ people show up... I'd say its kind of an anchor of the tech community out there - kind of like the NY Tech meetup here.

Healthcare tech --- I know there's been a fair amount of people show up to my Kinect meetup group with that interest --- we should actually do an event on the topic - perhaps you'd like to help organize something? It's at <http://meetup.com/volumetric> . Meetups are a great way to find people to work with. Hackathons are even better.

My email is on my hacker news profile - feel free to get in touch to chat more about Seattle or healthcare tech. :)

-Sean

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> HN folks in St. Louis, check out the StartLouis startup group. Our next meetup is this Tuesday!

<http://startlouis.com>

<comment><USER28> And for folks in mid-Missouri, check out <http://www.theloi.com/> and <https://comorichweb.posterous.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Bangalore: <http://groups.google.com/group/bangalore-hn-meetup>

</comment><comment><USER8> Los Angeles

<http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Hacker-News/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Cologne (Köln)

<http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-Cologne/>

</comment><comment><USER30> Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto (Kansai) in Japan : <http://hnkansai.org>

</comment><comment><USER31> STOCKHOLM anyone? Personally I suck at organizing but if there is some interest maybe I can. :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Any groups in Columbus, OH?

</comment><comment><USER33> Houston,TX needs one.

<comment><USER34> lets create it. email me: email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> San Diego

<http://sdhn.org/>

</comment><comment><USER36> Rails Girls Gurgaon, railsgirls.com/gurgaon

</comment><comment><USER37> Montreal - who's in?

<comment><USER38> I am in. Just saw it today...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Glasgow, anyone?

<comment><USER40> Check out <http://www.rookieoven.com/></comment></comment>


PHP Performance by Rasmus Lerdorf - <AUTHOR> http://ontwik.com/php/php-performance-by-rasmus-lerdorf/

<comment><USER2> The slides (<http://talks.php.net/show/dojo/1>) seem good as a quick overview of the talk. The take home messages generally being: make sure you know where your application is spending its time using strace, and to track superfluous overhead (such as configurable fallbacks that you can hardcode in a deployed application). Also: HipHop is not a magic bullet. Without heavily computational application code it gives only marginal improvements over PHP with APC, at least in these tests.

<comment><USER3> Yeah it's mostly the kind of micro optimization stuff that really isn't going to be to large a percentage of your time in a web app, assuming that you are probably waiting on queries. Then when it does really matter your probably at the scale where you want to ditch PHP for the specific stuff you are doing that is CPU bound. Kind of like Twitter is having to do with Rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He optimizes stuff he thinks is expensive and then runs the profiler to see what's expensive and then ends up saying "If you don't know what things cost, you are lost." Seems someone needs to take their own advice. Based on the slides, did not have the patience to wait 10 minutes for the vimeo video to load.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just about the same talk was discussed before:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1566546></comment>


Schools are safer than they were in the 90s - <AUTHOR> https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/schools-are-still-one-of-the-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/ <comment><USER2> Can someone say "Security Theater"?

In cases like these I like to take the Freakonomics formula for risk, that outrage factors more into observed risk than actual danger.

We're more worried about Terrorism than Heart Disease, even as we have far more control over the latter.

<comment><USER3> I like to ask my "ban the AR-15" friends how they feel about the TSA.

<comment><USER4> I agree that much of what the TSA does is security theater, but... at least we got that? It shows that we as a society cared enough to "put on a show" of protecting ourselves from terrorism.

I welcome more research on effective ways to reduce gun violence, but unfortunately ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_(1996)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_\(1996\)) ) researchers have been prevented from doing so.

The clear, most effective way to reduce gun violence is to reduce the number of guns. (cf. every other developed nation.) However, the current interpretation of the 2nd amendment seems to make that difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _it's unlikely that any of them will prevent mass school shootings_

 _"The thing to remember is that these are extremely rare events, and no matter what you can come up with to prevent it, the shooter will have a workaround," Fox said, adding that over the past 35 years, there have been only five cases in which someone ages 18 to 20 used an assault rifle in a mass shooting._

this seems weak. if shootings are rare events stopping one would make a considerable difference. just because assault rifles were rarely used in past 35 years in what way does that influence a future projection? What if we had a Vegas type event around a school? I don't really understand the thesis here

<comment><USER6> Also, how come the incidence of these types of shootings are so much lower in other parts of the world if there is no policy that will help prevent them?

<comment><USER7> Law is not the only variable and is not deterministic. Social environment and cultural values are of great influence.

The US media glorifies violence and yet censors the reality of it.

How many of those other countries with stricter gun control laws have been involved in as many violent conflicts across the globe as the US?

<comment><USER8> The UK has invaded everywhere and has a total ban on handguns after the school shooting incident.

(also, perhaps surprisingly to Americans, school trained me on guns at 14: [http://atc.wikia.com/wiki/L98A2_Cadet_GP_Rifle](http://atc.wikia.com/wiki/L98A2_Cadet_GP_Rifle) )

<comment><USER7> This discussion is framed around recent decades, not centuries. The US has been far more violent than the UK on the world stage in recent decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Since 1996, there have been 16 multiple victim shootings in schools, or incidents involving 4 or more victims and at least 2 deaths by firearms, excluding the assailant.

17.

Literally happening just as this was posted: [https://www.wxyz.com/news/police-responding-to-reports-of- sh...](https://www.wxyz.com/news/police-responding-to-reports-of-shots-fired- at-central-michigan-university)

Edit: Actually this may or may not meet the definition since their definition requires 4 or more casualties. Still.

<comment><USER10> IIRC there was a wave of school shootings in 1992-96, almost a dozen total; Columbine was the worst of them in terms of casualties, but in some ways just the culmination of a pattern. I don't know why you would start counting _after_ 1996.

<comment><USER11> New York was putting metal detectors into schools in the 1980's. They were for gangs, but I guess a school shooting is a school shooting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can only imagine the level-headed discussions this is going to spark.

</comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps they should do a case control study - places that had mass shootings vs places that didn't? I'm pretty sure there have been no mass shootings at gun shows or gun clubs, I wonder if there might be some relationship there worth exploring?

<comment><USER8> Interestingly the NRA national convention reduces gun injuries _everywhere else_ : [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/for- these...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/for-these-three- days-nra-reduces-gun-injuries-research-shows)

<comment><USER14> "In relative terms, the decline is small -- accounting for one fewer injury for every 300,000 Americans."

<comment><USER15> But there are 1,100 times as many Americans.

"The difference in his study amounts to a reduction of _several hundred_ injuries per convention per year"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shouldn't the comparison be made against school shootings world wide? Or at least be normalized for overall crime rate or something?

<comment><USER17> The numbers are so tiny that comparisons are pretty much irrelevant. Since 1996 there have been just 8 mass k-12 shootings (incidents involving 4 or more school deaths, excluding the assailant), in a nation of 330 million people.

That's so far into small numbers territory that any comparisons are guaranteed to be overwhelmed by noise.

<comment><USER8> > incidents involving 4 or more school deaths

That number seems suspicious; you'd get a very different answer if your criterion was "any gunshot wound at a school", for example. But that definition might be a better match for what people think of as a school shooting.

(e.g. Northern Ireland had a very large number of terrorist attacks where a warning was given allowing evacuation - would they not count as terrorist incidents even if nobody was killed? I suspect not)

<comment><USER18> Any gunshot would at a school probably includes a very different pattern of behavior. If someone wants to murder (or maim) a specific person, or small group of people, they may carry that out with a gun, because it's expedient, but might switch to a knife if guns aren't available. If someone wants to murder (or maim) a large number of people, guns or explosives are really the only practical means; mass knifings have happened, but are even more rare than mass shootings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have seen those studies pop up from time to time on HN with conclusions altering between "it's reachin worrying proportions", "there is an increase", "there is no increase", "they are so rare as to not worth considering".

From what I understand, the decision of what kinds of shootings are included has a large influence on the conclusion - e.g., the "there have been 18 shootings in 2018 so far" articles from a while ago used a comparatively low threshold for inclusion.

The threshold for this study seems to be "4 or more victims", which I think is similar to the threshold official publications used at the beginning of the Obama administration. I believe there were complaints that the threshold is unreasonably high which caused it to be adjusted - however, I don't have any sources for that ready, so if anyone knows more, please correct me.

In any case, it's important to look at the criteria if one wants to compare those studies.

<comment><USER20> It's not clear to me why this study would set those thresholds for the underlying data (4+ Victims & 2+ deaths), this seems to downplay the number of incidents. At the very least there should be some explanation of why this limit is in place, as it has a significant impact on the findings.

Closest thing I can find to an accurate data-set is here: [https://www.kaggle.com/ecodan/us-school-shootings- dataset/no...](https://www.kaggle.com/ecodan/us-school-shootings- dataset/notebook). Data seems to be a blend of a northwestern study and the wikipedia list of shootings.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely. Even if there is some research question by which this criterion would be useful, it doesn't lead the underlying conclusions that school shootings in general are a rare event, declining in frequency.

Interestingly, according to [1], the criterion used by the FBI to assess mass shooting used to be "at least 4 persons killed _or_ wounded" \- until it got changed to "at least 3 persons" in 2013. So the criterion the study uses is stricter than both the old _and_ the new way of counting the FBI uses.

Note also that, according to [2], even though the rate of mass shooting _at schools_ seems to be decreasing, the rate of mass shootings _in general_ is increasing.

See also [3] for more information about the different definitions and ways of counting.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting)

[2] [https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter- study-200...](https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter- study-2000-2013-1.pdf)

[3] [https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/anothe...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/another- school-shootingbut-whos-counting/553412/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Help, I cannot find the actual study (paper). It's referenced (in this article) as:

James Alan Fox and Emma E. Fridel, "The Three R's of School Shootings: Risk, Readiness, and Response," in H. Shapiro, ed., The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education: Forms, Factors, and Preventions

But from Wiley's listing of papers in this volume ([https://www.wiley.com/en- us/The+Wiley+Handbook+on+Violence+i...](https://www.wiley.com/en- us/The+Wiley+Handbook+on+Violence+in+Education-p-9781118966679)) the only article written by Fox and Fridel is called "The Menace of School Shootings in America: Panic and Overresponse".

Maybe it was renamed since?

</comment><comment><USER22> Why don't they have the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007?

This data seems to be missing what a lot of people would call "school shootings".

<comment><USER23> I think this is k-12 only data

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Based on a variety of comments here, I was curious about how many mass shootings there have been over the years. Mother Jones had a list that looked pretty good (well cited). I put it into a graph, which I think makes it a lot easier to understand.

Reasonable additions to this might be adding a line for type of weapon used.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mwNeZ_KHL_nLd85eOeI-...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mwNeZ_KHL_nLd85eOeI- ZATaiUFpkaZ3nTlw8ujZXtc/edit?usp=sharing)

</comment><comment><USER25> Compared to the US in the past schools are safer, but in terms of school killings compared to those in other nations, the US is still ridiculously high.

[https://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack- up-...](https://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack-up- against-36-other-countries-put-together/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Can we get the word 'american' inserted in the title. It's a very local problem.

</comment><comment><USER27> Personally not sure I care about a 90s baseline at all.

And most relevantly, the difference now is access to information anywhere/everywhere and in more detail/angle/opinion without a lot of latency.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is garbage.

A drop in the number of deaths might just demonstrate an improvement in emergency medical procedures.

</comment><comment> Tech-Noir Analysis of two decades in the UK, where in 1997 they banned video games and mental illness:

        1996: 16 children and their teacher shot dead
        1997-2018: 0 shot dead

<comment> ng-user How does a nation ban mental illness?

<comment><USER29> And I'm pretty sure the UK still has video games?

<comment> Tech-Noir Sorry, it was a reference to some people claiming the causes of gun sprees are video games or mental illness.

In fact in 1997 the UK simply banned handguns.

<comment> ng-user Thanks for the clarification, I also did not realize the sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The data they use in the study, don't match the data gathered by the community.

There is a clear upward-trend since the 60's.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER17> I looked through that list, and once you filter out the non-school deaths, it seem to line up with the article.

For example, Rancho Tehama Reserve, California is listed as six deaths, but that was a shooter who killed five adults at other locations, then fired at a locked down school, injuring one student, before killing himself. So zero students killed. There are quite a few like that in the list.</comment></comment>


Statistical Truth on Bias: Small Amounts Make a Big Difference - <AUTHOR> http://www.cafe.com/culture/old-biases-are-dictating-our-lives-without-us-realizing-it?u=4ba3a775-191f-4556-8d9d-177d34ce7b0a

<comment><USER2> The article is a little thin, but the Paragon of the Polygons on which it's based is quite lovely: [http://ncase.me/polygons/](http://ncase.me/polygons/)

I'd love to see a lot more about this. It's one thing to know subtle bias magnifies in groups. It's far more interesting to then see how that plays out in different circumstances.

EDIT: I just realized they have "further reading" at the bottom. Here's one relevant to most of us: [http://iangent.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-petrie- multiplier-wh...](http://iangent.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-petrie-multiplier- why-attack-on.html)</comment>


Firefox 4.0: Early Screenshots Released - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/firefox-40/ <comment><USER2> This is about the thousandth time I've seen this idiotic proclamation. There's a difference between screenshots and mockups. Screenshots are shots of what is actually on the screen (a.k.a. the program running). Mockups are created in Photoshop from a number of elements.

These are mockups, not screenshots.

<comment><USER3> And thank god they actually used something plain (like the google results) instead of the visually detracting CNN screenshots they used last time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there any kind of application, for which screenshots are less important than a browser?! Look, it displays google results just as every other browser AND it has tabs!

</comment><comment><USER5> _Tabs on bottom is the current norm in Firefox_

Am I the only one who likes my tabs on the bottom, meaning under the content, above the status bar?

Much less mouse travel when switching apps and then switching tabs.. (I'm trying to use the mouse less and rely just on the keyboard, but its tough)

<comment><USER6> Personally I like them down the right side. Makes better use of a widescreen monitor, since most pages are still vertical in nature. Also can see way more tabs at once. If you want to see what I mean:

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8045>

<comment><USER7> There's so much wasted space on the side of a widescreen. I've never understood why people want them for their computers, as opposed to tall screens. After all, we read across a short way, and downwards a long way.

<comment><USER6> Because our eyes are side-by-side. Have you ever rotated a pair of 24" widescreens vertically? They are taller than your vertical field of view.

Widescreens make sense for all sorts of things, especially video. Just because they don't make sense for reading lots of text doesn't mean the space is wasted. With a tiling window manager (<http://awesome.naquadah.org>), you just put two windows side-by-side anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Cough-Chrome_

But what matters is functionality and performance, hope they deliver. Looking forward.

<comment><USER9> looks more like a chrome + opera mashup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A higher percentage of screen (whether on laptops or separate monitors) are wide-screen so I think putting the tabs on top to increase the amount of space to view the page is the way to go.

Chrome and Safari work great with it.

</comment><comment><USER11> The "on-top" looks much better and includes a home button. But yeah does look a bit like Chrome. Having said that, Chrome was designed by people from Firefox right? So there would be similar influences.

<comment><USER12> I would miss the page 'title' -- my tabs are always too small to see more than the first letter or two. An optional title band _under_ the URL bar, adjacent to the page content itself, would more than make up for the loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something the pro/con list misses (and it's kind of a big point) is that distance to a UI element isn't the only thing that affects how easy it is to get to.

<http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html#fittsLaw>

Putting the tabs at the very top means that they're on the edge of the screen, which means that in one direction, they're (effectively) huge. Choosing a tabs-on-top design makes the tabs easier to get to, not harder.

</comment><comment><USER14> Give the option for both. If that confuses or scares users too much, have one as the default and the other as an add-on that users who really want it will have to download.

As of right now, ff users have to settle for the tabs-on-bottom style unless they want to settle for a combination of 5 add-ons, which - i'll assume - significantly increases memory usage.

</comment><comment><USER15> What's up with the style of the Google search button in the second mockup?

<comment><USER16> That whole mockup is badly done; the page shown in the browser there was almost certainly copied from a screengrab of a Mac browser without any thought for the fact that it was supposed to be a mockup of _Windows_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Aurgh. Mockups!

</comment><comment><USER18> Combo stop/refresh/go???

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

<comment><USER19> YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

The Stop Button, Reload Button, and Indeterminate Progress Spinner all represent exactly the same thing -- whether the page is loading shit. You only need one, with a lag between stop and reload to avoid accidental fail.

They also finally put the progress bar in the address bar, another Safari innovation.

I've used TinyMenu + StopReload + Fission, along with shoving the few UI elements I want into the "File" toolbar to get this UI in FF for years.

<comment><USER20> "Accidental fail" is the thing that would happen often. Two opposite actions, stop and reload, placed on one button. I'd rather give user two straightforward buttons, than one complex and _modal_.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Merging stop and the spinner makes sense, but merging with reload none at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> To me the first screen shot looks a whole lot like IE7/IE8, which I don't really like.

</comment><comment><USER22> They're probably ultra-cool, but unfortunately Firefox 3 cannot render that webpage on my dual-core machine running Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh man. That actually looks pretty neat. I've got some anal dislikes, but they've removed almost all of the things that were red flags for me.

I'm just hoping they nativized the Mac version; I'd love to have a fourth major browser for tinkering with stuff.</comment>


What are some useful tips for tuning programs running on the JVM? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-useful-tips-for-tuning-programs-running-on-the-JVM

<comment><AUTHOR> A complete list of JVM options is available online at <http://blogs.sun.com/watt/resource/jvm-options-list.html></comment>


Crinkle Crankle Wall - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinkle_crankle_wall <comment><USER2> While this type of wall mainly exists in England and the Netherlands, it is amusing how the English Wikipedia's main arguments are about saving bricks and possible military advantages, while the Dutch Wikipedia tell these walls are meant to protect fruit from weather conditions. The fruit would typically be planted at the south side. One of the ideas is that the bricks both protect against wind and keep giving some warmth after the sun has disappeared.

<comment><USER3> Does the shape of the wall affect either of these uses? Otherwise, wouldn't it be off-topic to start listing general facts about walls for agriculture?

<comment><USER4> Based on this comment, I think the idea is that if you plant trees within the bend of a wall, they are shielded and heated from more than 180 degrees.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21564553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21564553)

You only get this benefit for tree right along the wall, which is not much agricultural area. Seems like a strained justification.

<comment><USER5> Fruit trees were commonly grown against purpose built walls. For flat walls trees would be trained to keep their branches in a plane.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. You're talking about espalier?

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

I could only find a single picture of something like this on a curved wall.

[https://images.app.goo.gl/AXPFnXgE47K1vm5U7](https://images.app.goo.gl/AXPFnXgE47K1vm5U7)

If the tree is going to be pinned to the wall (as opposed to being free- standing and surrounded by the wall), I don't really understand how making it curved helps with absorbing heat or shielding from weather.

<comment><USER6> Slightly tangential, but having lived mostly in bare concrete jungles, there's something so aesthetically pleasing about green things growing on a backdrop of bricks or wood.

A soothing harmony of nature and artifice. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny-named type of wall? This reminds me of the ha-ha wall:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha)

<comment><USER8> I like this. My neighbor is a billionaire and I think I'll replace my fence with one of these so I can see his property better. It's very nice!

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't he just add a fence right at his property line if it bothered him at all?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The dutch wikipedia page mentions their use to protect fruit trees from the wind and add sun reflection. You run the wall east-west and place the fruit trees in southern bends of the wall.

</comment><comment><USER11> For those who wish to see it on Google Maps... [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,1.5174271,3a,75y,2...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,1.5174271,3a,75y,226.38h,90.3t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKqk3UNSD7KR94_zEzyV- VA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

</comment><comment><USER12> Compare to the "crinkle crankle" layer of corrugated fiberboard which has similar properties (higher rigidity per mass)

</comment><comment><USER13> I believe the oldest exterior wall of the St. Louis Zoo (on the north side, along where the 1904 World's Fair bird cage was relocated) was modeled after this style. I think it's more than one brick thick, though, so it probably wasn't done that way to save on brick, just to echo the style.

<comment><USER14> That was my first thought too. You can see it on google maps here: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-90.2886515,3a,75y,2...](https://email@example.com,-90.2886515,3a,75y,228.27h,89.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7FLKsn677ynqLqoWicfgFg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if in modern times, now that labor is so much more expensive than bricks, it would still be economical. Building a brick wall costs (here in Western Europe) around e40/m2 in labor, and e25 in material for a cheap brick. So building this crinkle crankle style would only have to add about 50% in building time. I think building this is much slower than that though - I don't even know how I'd go about it, other than with a laser level, which would be _really_ inconvenient (compared to using a string like is normally done). Then again, it would be _inconvenient_ and frustrating, but would it be _slow_ ?

<comment><USER16> You're likely right, it's probably not very economical nowadays. Especially given the wider range of materials than be used to build a wall or fence.

<comment><USER17> Aestethics still apply though and it looks nice.

Pet peeve: Why isn't anyone building brick houses anymore?

<comment><USER16> I actually know the answer to this, as I used to live with an architect. This information may apply more specifically to Canada than other places.

1\. It's not very good at insulating relative to other materials.

2\. It's more labor intensive than other materials.

<comment><USER18> I have always suspect brick is superior for sound insulation, perhaps not weather though?

<comment><USER19> Wood is better for weather as it is flexible to allow expanding and shrinking. When you have such a hard material, such as brick, in a climate that changes from extreme hot & cold the bricks will crack and break due to stress from expanding and shrinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me a bit of Andy Goldsworthy's "Storm King Wall" (one of his few permanent art works.) Not that he was doing it to save stones, or protect fruit trees. That shape is just a common part of his art:

[https://stormking.org/artist/andy- goldsworthy/](https://stormking.org/artist/andy-goldsworthy/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Eladio Dieste made some very interesting brick buildings using similar techniques in the 20th C: [https://www.archdaily.com/890362/the-intricate- undulating-br...](https://www.archdaily.com/890362/the-intricate-undulating- brickwork-at-eladio-diestes-cristo-obrero-church-in- uruguay/5aa07d9bf197ccb54d000060-the-intricate-undulating-brickwork-at-eladio- diestes-cristo-obrero-church-in-uruguay-photo)

[https://morphocode.com/eladio-dieste-reverence-to-the- laws-o...](https://morphocode.com/eladio-dieste-reverence-to-the-laws-of- matter/)

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

</comment><comment><USER22> If only crinkle-crankle software were equally justifiable...

<comment><USER23> If we take the meaning of a "crinkle crankle structure" to be something like an "economically self-supporting structure", then it's justifiable by definition. The question then becomes: What, in the realm of software engineering, fits this description?

Lisp, perhaps?

<comment><USER22> If crinkle-crankle walls protect fruit, then I suppose the analogous software might run on some Apple device that's unnecessarily expensive, technically lagging, and probably beautiful. Hard to justify economically, but still attractive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I grew up in Suffolk, where I knew of several examples, and I never realised that they were a particularly Suffolk-specific thing: according to the article, twice as many in the county as the rest of the UK. I would be interested to know why.

<comment><USER25> TFA mentions that Dutch engineers brought over to reclaim bits of Suffolk from the sea introduced the walls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> See also _Gaussian curvature_

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

</comment><comment><USER27> Split rail fences are sort of similar

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split- rail_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-rail_fence)

</comment><comment><USER28> In modern standards a straight wall is much easier to build because you can just measure once for each row and stretch a string to match the bricks against. A curved wall requires a level placed against every brick to make sure you are still going straight up. I expect older walls actually trusted the mason's skill without going through all that. The Wiki photo certainly looks true.

<comment><USER29> > In modern standards

Even in ancient times masons had pieces of strings and plumb-bobs to level vertically and horizontally.

The more likely constraint is that before the 20th century the farmer couldn't afford masons to lay orchard walls, but did it himself...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is one of these in Cambridge MA (or was until recently when someone crashed their SUV through it): [https://boston.cbslocal.com/2019/05/15/cambridge-mass-car- cr...](https://boston.cbslocal.com/2019/05/15/cambridge-mass-car-crash-brick- wall-brattle-street-fresh-pond-parkway/)

<comment><USER31> I had seen the results of that accident, but was amazed by the video at all the people saying that the area is a magnet for such accidents, and that the brick wall itself had been hit many times.

I mostly walk and bike in the city, but that whole neighborhood has wide, straight, clearly-marked roads. It's like you're out in the suburbs. If people have trouble there, how do they deal with some actually-confusing intersections, like Newton Corner, Inman square, or Columbia Road in Dorchester?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's cool, especially the economy of bricks.

But I don't think it'd work well where I'm from. We have straight property lines, so you'd either have to convince your neighbor to go along with it or put it all on your side (leaving areas of grass over the fence where you couldn't mow it.)

</comment><comment><USER33> My first thought was the irregular shape of the walls affects the way automobile noises echo off of it, potentially contrubuting to slightly quieter streets.

</comment><comment><USER34> This made me Google "crinkle crankle ha-ha" \- unfortunately I could not find any references to such a wall existing.

<comment><USER35> A ha-ha is (typically?) a retaining wall, so I wouldn't expect the mechanical advantages to apply in the same way. I imagine it would also complicate the excavation/infill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So is it the case that it brings the cost of the wall down from

2N (two brick depth for strength) to

sqrt(2)N (for a hypothetical 45 degree angle)

?

<comment><USER37> I don't think so. I don't think you need anywhere near a 45 degree angle, and making the wall double thick won't really solve the fall over problem in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Wouldn't it be easier to make with straight zig-zag sections than with wavy curves?

<comment><USER38> I don't think you'd get the protection from lateral forces on the straight sections. Just a little bit of curve transfers the cross force down the whole curve.

The gist is, if i push on a brick in the middle of a flat part, the force has to be resisted by the width of the single brick. but if i push on any part of the curve, that's got to lift the adjacent next level up bricks as well, which in turn have to lift the next level, and on and on.

It's been a long, long time since i studied static forces though.</comment></comment>


Show HN: All-new Codenvy – on-demand developer workspaces - <AUTHOR> https://codenvy.com/product/next-generation/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone. Founder of Codenvy. We have made the beta release of Codenvy 4. Codenvy is now based upon Eclipse Che, a next-generation Eclipse IDE and collaborative workspace server. Che defines a new kind of workspace that contains projects and runtimes powered by Docker. This allows workspaces to be portable, running in a variety of locations. This enables us to create a better agile workflow where workspaces are generated on-demand, within the tools developers use every day like Jira, Visual Studio Team Services, Jenkins, GitHub, and Bitbucket.</comment>


LA County Sues IBM's Weather Channel for User Location Tracking - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/la-county-sues-ibm-s-weather-channel-for-user-location-tracking <comment><AUTHOR> >"Unbeknownst to many users, the Weather Channel App has tracked users' detailed geolocation data for years," the complaint alleges, calling the Weather Channel's actions "unfair and fraudulent."

Is this the app that comes preinstalled on iPhones? The iPhone app gets its information from the Weather Channel [0]

[0]: [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207492](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT207492)</comment>


Twitter Bootstrap for Opa - <AUTHOR> http://bootstrap.opalang.org/

<comment><USER2> Does that page do a horrible flickering at the top header when you scroll down (or up) fast? It does for me in Safari (OSX Lion). Looks awful. Too bad.

<comment><USER3> Strange. I can't repeat it with Safari (under Snow Leopard though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> And Bootstrap 2.0 is coming soon!</comment>