Git is as revolutionary as Unix pipes (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=200801#31 <comment><USER2> This is off topic a bit, but it tells my story about building something on top of git.

Just several weeks before dropbox came out into light I have completed building a prototype of what came out to be a dropbox clone on top of git (in fact, I have had it working with mercurial and bazzar as well, I designed it to be platform independent) and thought I have in my bare hands a potential for a great startup (demos were working smoothly, auto syncing files between clients, web viewer, etc). It was a side project, which I used to work on late night and weekends, and I gained what I evaluate as great results with no much effort.

Yet, one morning, I was opening my browser, pointing, as usual, to HN and saw a post saying dropbox have raised this and that money from Sequoya Capital. I was eager to know what is this dropbox and what they do and was terribly shocked to find out they were actually doing the same shit I was in, but, for longer time, with more and smarter people and fundings.

Soon after, I dropped my project (BTW, it was named StoreAge), and yet could not use dropbox or hear anything about it for a very long time.

Today I am a happy dropbox user, and git user and waking up every morning wondering about what will be my next startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Git owes a ton of its success to github.com. Without this extremely well-designed, central repository for repositories, the uptake of Git would have been much slower, and faced much more resistance in the wild. Git is a great tool on its own, but having a centralized place for people to learn and use Git has been huge.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, one could also attribute github's success to git's success. I suppose it's most likely symbiotic: github contributed to git's success and vice versa.

<comment><USER5> That's undoubtedly true, but I wonder if the GitHub guys had picked up Mercurial instead if it would have grown as fast.

<comment><USER6> It git or it github?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are two kinds of articles about DVCSs: (1) git, hg, bzr are all better than whatever you're using now; (2) git is completely revolutionary, a whole new paradigm.

This is, of course, the latter sort. I'm wondering why hg, etc. are never called "a whole new paradigm". I've used all three. Clearly, hg & bzr are extremely similar, while git works a little differently (the staging area, the differing semantics of "add", etc.). But I don't see that git has significantly more awesomeness than the other two.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> The second type of article is usually written by converts from legacy VC systems (cvs/svn) who have never experienced a DVCS before. They attribute the obvious improvement in usability to Git, never venturing to try anything else; possibly due to the same fundamental lack of curiosity or self-improvement that leads to using CVS/SVN at all (post 2005).

What's more, the migration from a single-branch to multiple-branch model is so empowering that such users tend to view all of Git through rose-tinted glasses forever after. Compared to that experience, relatively minor usability improvements like Bazaar's "every working copy has its own tree" or Mercurial's queues seem insignificant and/or unimportant.

<comment><USER9> _... possibly due to the same fundamental lack of curiosity or self- improvement that leads to using CVS/SVN at all (post 2005)._

I (and my successful small business) still use SVN, and have done so since 2007. This choice has nothing to do with "fundamental lack of curiosity or self-improvement." It's a choice born of careful reasoning regarding the suitability of using DVCS in a centralized organization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, it's been two years and git still isn't making me sandwiches (unlike Unix pipes), so I think he's been proven wrong.

Honestly, I like git, and I like the 'local copy' model, but I feel people go a little overboard sometimes with their enthusiasm for git.

<comment><USER11> What he's going on about is that git is an efficient implementation of a purely functional data structure _on disk_. He's advocating using it as one if you ever need one. This is tangential to its role as a version control system.

<comment><USER12> Wow, you just put exactly what I was trying to say into a single simple sentence. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The vast majority of these comments seem to misunderstand the article as saying that Git is revolutionary for _managing code_.

That's wrong. The article is about using Git for _managing data_. The examples cited are using it as a backend for a distributed filesystem or a wiki. The OP is talking about Git as a revolutionary new kind of datastore and network protocol, not a revolutionary new kind of VCS.

</comment><comment><USER4> I say this as someone who absolutely loves git and thinks it's the best thing to happen to VCSes in a long time: no it isn't. This kind of advocacy is worse than useless: when people realize that git isn't a revolutionary concept that will change computing and is really "just" a VCS (albeit a very good one), there will be a big backlash.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm the author of the OP. The comments here make me think (again) that the article wasn't clear enough: admittedly, when I first wrote it, I was just discovering git, as some of the comments said. The difference between me and perhaps many recently-baptized git fanboys is that now, three years later, I still believe exactly what I wrote. I just now also know why it came across the wrong way.

Here's what I was trying to get across at the time: git creates a whole new set of _nouns_ and _verbs_ for computer science that almost none of us have experienced before. Yes, it steals a lot of concepts from programs like darcs and monotone, and there are other things that do the same things that git does from a VCS point of view - but my focus is on the nouns and verbs. git exposes the plumbing of these new concepts directly to you, which is both scary and intensely powerful.

git isn't the next Unix because it will replace Unix: git is the next Unix because its concepts represent the next mind-shifting change in computer science. I mean that git is the next Unix in the same way you could say "Unix is the next Lisp" or "Dynamic Languages are the next Static Languages." Not that the new thing replaces the old thing: they have totally different uses. But that's the point: the new thing's uses are _really new_. Stuff that was hard is now easy.

It's hard to imagine the world before Unix pipes (and the Unix sh in general) were invented, but I used it, and IT SUCKED. The whole Unix paradigm (yikes, now I've used that word) really changed the face of computing. Even if you don't use Unix, you got changed by Unix.

git's new nouns are blobs, trees, commits, and refs. The new verbs are push, pull, merge, tag, etc. You can apply these nouns and verbs to a _lot_ more than just source code version control.

The naysayers in this thread all sound like 1990's programmers who don't understand the value of higher-order functions or dynamic typing or macros. You can survive without those things, but some problems are just _so much easier_ with them than without them. git is like that. If you don't get it, you're living in the past.

One final clarification: my article was written to talk about git, but it's not about git's code or API or repo format at all. bup, the backup software I started writing about two years after that article, doesn't share any source code with git, but the amazing things it does are possible because it uses the new nouns and verbs popularized by git. When new distributed filesystems and databases and social networks and wikis and massively distributed collaborative text editors arrive, they will all be using these new nouns and verbs. If you don't care about that, then yeah, git isn't the next Unix for you. But if you want to build the next generation of networks in real life, then you'll either be taking advantage of the new nouns and verbs or you'll be painstakingly building the Windows of distributed systems.

<comment><USER14> > You can apply these nouns and verbs to a lot more than just source code > version control.

Do you have any examples of people (other than you) who have actually done this? It would make your argument much more convincing.

Also, the fact that other DVCS's have different, incompatible models underlying them suggests that Git's nouns and verbs are not nearly as universal as Unix pipes. If Git's nouns and verbs were universal, Git could subsume other DVCS's (ie. you could implement other DVCS's semantics on top of Git with performance as good or better than what they have already).

<comment><USER12> Many of the new "nosql" databases use a lot of similar concepts. But it's a new thing: I'm trying to see into the future here, not tell you what's already happened :)

As for different DVCSs, I think you're exactly backwards. Almost everyone commenting on these things seems to believe that git isn't special, it really does the same thing as every other DVCS, etc. And on a fundamental level this is true: it's very easy to convert from one DVCS to another, because fundamentally the models are so similar. git just exposes the model in a more obvious way. The _insides_ are the same, the _outsides_ are different.

<comment><USER15> The Mercurial guys even go out of their way to show how they are like git (<http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/GitConcepts>).

<comment><USER16> Out of their way? What do you mean? They also have a CvsConcepts page....

<comment><USER15> Bad choice of words.

But--try to find a sentence like "Mercurial and Git differ only in nomenclature and interface." in the CvsConcepts page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone experience with this setup: install your software in a git repository. That way you can say something like "version=1.23" on top of the control file (such as a sourcecode file for a scripting language) and the software system checks out that particular version which is on your hard drive. There are obvious drawbacks of the system as where to install the intermediate working directory, but there might be solutions for these problems.

That way updates may be much less hassle. If you have for example a python script on your server running doing important things, an update to python might break the script and could cause some trouble. But if you could say for example "uses python=x.y" and the system silently falls back to that version even if a newer version of pyhton is installed, the script is more likely to keep running even on upgrades.

<comment><USER11> <http://nixos.org/nix/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whoever this guy is, his blog has been one of my favorites for quite some time now.

</comment><comment><USER19> And for those that don't realize, the OP author also wrote up git subtree, which pretty much caused me to take git seriously and change from hg to it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Binaries work across pipes. With git, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER21> I remember reading this and being blown away by his enthusiasm.

What are some interesting non-SCM projects that use git? (Like wikis, etc)

<comment><USER22> github wikis come to mind.

<comment><USER23> I've been hacking at gollum (github's FOSS git-based wiki) for some time, and I might have some interesting uses for it in the education space that go well past a basic wiki.

<comment><USER24> I'am writing a gollum like wiki atm. Its not finished yet, but works already and is not far away from a (stable) release: <http://github.com/entropie/oy>

My problem was gollum worked not behind Apache/mod_proxy, so i was forced to write it on myself ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love git, and use it to backup my life. Very interesting to know that you will still be able to checkout what you do today many years later. CVS can do this as well, it is just not so attractive being much slower.

</comment><comment><USER26> I used to feel like this way about git. Then I got dropbox and became too lazy to use git for anything personal.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't remember if I've read this before, but I feel the same way.

The great thing about git is that it's easy to understand. Once you understand the concepts (and they're really (relatively) simple) and learn the vocabulary, it gives you tremendous power. At least, it makes you feel that you have power, hence it empowers you.

> Git is actually the missing link that has prevented me from building the > things I've wanted to build in the past.

Totally agree with this one.

<comment><USER27> I'm having a hard time understanding the second point. I have never felt that my VCS prevented me from doing ANYTHING, even when I was forced to use completely shit systems like Visual Source Safe 6.0.

Are you saying that you wanted to build systems that integrated very tightly with version control, or that the difficulties you experienced with older version control tools prevented you from being more adventurous in your coding?

<comment><USER22> It's not the presence of a bad VCS. It's the lack of a decent one.

Without git, it's really hard to take bold steps in redesigning the project, because one would be afraid it won't work, and then you'll lose all the progress you had so far.

Git solves this problem. Just start a new branch and work in it. If it works, great, merge mack to the master branch. If it fails, no big deal, discard this branch and go back to master.

Basically git encourages experimenting in a way no other system does.

<comment><USER28> _Just start a new branch and work in it. If it works, great, merge mack to the master branch. If it fails, no big deal, discard this branch and go back to master._

How does that not describe more traditional VCSes like cvs and subversion?

<comment><USER15> Merging used to be harder in them, and forking was a big deal.

<comment><USER29> Even moving directories was a pain in the ass in CVS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ReactOS 0.4.10 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.reactos.org/project-news/reactos-0410-released <comment><USER2> Every time I see ReactOS in the news I get reminded of sometime in 2004 the young me telling my PC-store supervisor how commercial Windows versions will be a thing of the past now that ReactOS is around the corner.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is anyone able to get this working with Parallels Desktop, especially v13?

The OS itself installs and is extremely fast to install and use, but it doesn't seem to recognize the Ethernet or Sound in Parallels Desktop this time around. I've tried changing the VM from "Other Windows" to "Windows XP" and installing Parallels Tools, but the installer hangs the VM at the 74% point.

EDIT 2: Apologies for my repeated edits & postings. To get networking in Parallels Desktop, you need to use the advanced settings to choose the Realtek driver emulation and then it is automatically detected, as outlined in this post: [https://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17056&p=13...](https://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17056&p=130494&hilit=Parallels+Desktop#p130494)

</comment><comment><USER4> An insanely cute project, I keep trying to build/install/play with almost every new release, with mixed success (e.g. the previous release wouldn't even install, in QEMU).

<comment><USER4> OK, posting this using D+ on ReactOS - looks good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just wish that ReactOS or Freedos would install successfully on my IBM desktop, which runs Win7 fine.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone here use ReactOS as a productive system? Is this even possible?

<comment><USER7> Well, it depends how you view it.

> Does anyone here use <s>ReactOS</s> WINE as a productive system?

Yes: a lot. More recently Valve started to ship Windows games on Linux and macOS based on it.

> Does anyone here use <s>ReactOS</s> Windows_hardware_drivers as a productive > system?

Historically, NDISWrapper was a thing. These days alternative OS have support for wireless chips on day 0 because Android exists. Not to the extent of being free software on day zero, but being designed for Linux and then "ported" to Windows.

Beside that a dedicated Windows VM work better if the device is USB/RS232/Ethernet.

> Does anyone here use <s>ReactOS</s>Windows_software_not_on_native_windows as > a productive system?

Either in the Cloud or with Virtual machine, sure. With applications moving to the Web, desktop applications is less and less a thing. The legacy will live on, but there is better alternatives to ReactOS to keep them running.

> Does anyone here use ReactOS as a productive system?

I don't think so. When it try it, stability isn't there. Plus if your hardware drivers are proprietary, good luck installing it on real modern hardware.

> Is ReactOS useful

I think it will eventually find its niche in the same way FreeDOS is/was hugely successful "commercially". Some hardware systems rarely change over the decades. Many still ship with floppy parallel cable as the main data storage bus. I have been a consultant for a while and can confirm OS/2, eComStatation, COBOL and obscure/ancient real-time OS are common in the industrial world. Eventually ReactOS will be good enough for those and it will make business sense to use it.

* It support Windows drivers

* Run barely modified win32 applications

* Don't take that much more resource than the original

* There is people to pay when you need a bug fixed

Just as FreeDOS is here is stay on DOS era industrial hardware, WinNT 4-5.1 era industrial hardware is also here to stay.

On the other hand, it's getting a bit late and it may miss it's window (pun intended) of opportunity and all hardware that could use it will die first _and_ all the spare parts the manufacturer has will also run out. In that case the hardware will move to QNX/VxWorks/Embedded_Linux/FreeDOS.

<comment><USER8> Re. the WINE part I found this link: [https://fossbytes.com/wine-based-proton- windows-games-on-lin...](https://fossbytes.com/wine-based-proton-windows- games-on-linux/)

This is useful to me, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone briefly tell me what is the main USP/focus of this OS?

<comment><USER10> Windows compatibility.

It reuses a lot of WINE's core, and so on. The intent is a FOSS OS which can run Windows drivers and applications.</comment></comment>


For California Housing Advocates, It's 'Literally the YIMBY-Est Year' - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/california-nimby-yimby-affordable-housing-prop-13/577336 <comment><USER2>
      Repealing Article 34 would lift a roadblock to affordable housing construction all over the state.

The only tricky part is finding developers willing to invest in and construct projects at a loss.</comment>


Show HN: A new way to manage your inbox - <AUTHOR> https://lightermail.com/blog/2013/02/12/lightermail-is-going-public/

<comment><USER2> This seems like a great tool I have been waiting for a while. As I understand, it is rather an IMAP _client_ , but will you store my emails on your servers as well? Or do you only connect to the GMail email storage?

Also, do you keep GMail's messages intact? Or are you authorized to update filters, apply labels and make a mess of my greatly organized emails?

Another question comes to mind: how about mobile? I read more than half of my emails on my phone or tablet. Is lightermail able to handle this as well? I haven't seen an app in the Google Playstore and there is no mention on your site. How do you think you will handle mobile access? (I see the sms text on a phone with a link to a lighermail.com page)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions! I'll address them one at a time. We _DO NOT_ store any of your emails on our servers. We scan only the from header when an email arrives and keep a reference to the message's unique ID if it should be acted upon. We also don't mess with your filters/labels. We strip the inbox label for deferred messages so they don't show up until you're ready for them, but all other labels are left intact. As for mobile, we built the site to be completely usable on smartphones. Mobile apps are in the cards, but we're still very young and have tried to make the mobile web experience first rate.

Thanks for asking. Feel free to contact me any time (gordon AT lightermail DOT com) with questions or suggestions!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, been on HN for a while, but Lightermail is my (our) first attempt at a startup. Looking forward to any and all feeback from my fellow HNers and answering whatever questions you may have!

For those interested in the tech stack, the application's built with Backbone.js, Python, Redis, and Postgres. We use both tornado and gevent on the backend (with tornado being my personal favourite) and we're using Jekyll for the blog. If you want to get a little deeper just ask!

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a little trouble understanding whether you are actually a web-based pop/imap client or whether I would get a @lightermail.com address. (I assume the former, as it says " Gmail Support with more to come..." but I think you should explain that better)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like we need to work on the messaging. We're not an email client. We're a tool you use _with_ your email client to help control the flow of email.

<comment><USER3> Ok but how so? I see screenshots which seem to come from a web page.

I think you need to explain that before I would be willing (would I be using gmail) to register with your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, as I mentioned above we're a web based service. Set your preferences through the site then just use your regular client as per usual and reap the benefits.

<comment><USER3> Still don't quite get it. You will manipulate my inbox and I can control the way you do it through the web interface?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty much, yes.

<comment><USER4> I feel it's dirty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea. I like the features. It looks nice. But I won't give you my Gmail credentials.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

We don't ask for your Gmail credentials though. We connect via OAuth. You can revoke our access at any time from your Google account without waiting for us.

<comment><USER4> Are you Open Source? How can I be sure? However, I'm sure some people are so much busy and worried by their mails that your tool will be helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like it might be a great tool.

However, it _seems_ like it might be a bit complex. This seeming complexity is accentuated because of the "lighter" expectation created by the name.

Why is it called "lightermail"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh sorry, didn't see the last part of your comment! It's called Lightermail because once you start using it your inbox and email flow get a whole lot lighter :)

<comment><USER5> How will your email flow get lighter? :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, this is why I need to work on our message.

Lightermail allows you control when and from whom you receive email (from the global level to individual TLDs to specific senders). The who and when are highly configurable. You can also combine your unimportant email into summaries to reduce the actual quantity of email that lands in your inbox.

There's more of course, but that's the gist.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Negotiating with Friends/Family/Fools for the first round. - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
We're about to close a 70K EUR Round with friends (in packages of 10-20K), which we plan to use to test our marketing assumptions, and launching the first city, for a finished product.
Bigger cash seems to be available only with strings attached (e.g. 100k now, 1.5MM later for 40%), and there are few good Angels in Europe.
It's not just hard to pitch, it's much harder to find someone to pitch to.
Our current self-valuation, which we think is very reasonable, even when accounting for interest and risk, is 1.5MM.
How would you guys go for arriving at a valuation with friends?
We're prepared to give them a significant discount, but we'd like to avoid haggling.
Do share your experiences! <comment><USER2> What about convertible debt? If you plan on raising more money, this can be good for your early investors, because it's protects them from dilution.

<comment><USER3> We did a convertible debt round and it was great. No need to haggle over a valuation, and the legal documents are much much shorter, so you can save considerably in those pesky legal fees. I highly recommend this approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, will look into this.

what kind of discount is usual at this stage? 20%?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Giving them a discount devalues their investment and reduces the odds of success.

Why do you want to do that to friends?

</comment><comment><USER5> There are fewer angels in Europe. Doesn't mean that there are none. I presume enki you are from Germany?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're in Austria, and we sent out quite a good number of business plans to people. We had about 15 meetings in January. Most of them have never dealt with teams like ours (4 hacker/designers with business experience), nor internet based business.

We even got some offers, but not at conditions acceptable to us. (Sell your soul for 100K and we might give you more cash later)

If you know anyone else we should send it too, please do tell! We're quite open about sharing the business plan. Just mail us at email@example.com.

We think we have a good head start. We're more worried with funding than with copycats right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Also, your friends said no to your 1.5MM valuation?

<comment><AUTHOR> nope, but they look at the percentage and 1% for 15.000 feels little.

people aren't used to equity here, so we have a hard time finding people understanding the numbers.

even those that understand, don't like the feel of owning less than 10%.

convertible debt sounds like an option - will have to see if we can find a lawyer that has even heard of it ;)</comment></comment>


A Guide to TensorFlow (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> https://cobaltai.in/a-guide-to-tensorflow-part-1/ <comment><USER2> Sorry for being a little off-topic, but...

The article is beautifully formatted and rendered, including the graphs. Anyone know of an easy way to get those results?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually used Photoshop to make those graphs, it allows me to give a more consistent feel. As far as the formatting is concerned, I used Ghost as a CMS and I have modified the default Casper theme to meet my needs.</comment></comment>


Netflix urged to slow streaming to prevent breaking the internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/19/netflix-urged-to-slow-streaming-to-prevent-breaking-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> dup [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22626491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22626491)

<comment><USER3> Comments moved thither. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review My App (Simple Group Chat) - <AUTHOR>

Hi. If it's not too much trouble, I'd like some feedback on a super simple AJAX chat app that I coded up in my spare time.  It's called Yakeze.
I'm aware of the excellent Mibbit, but I was shooting for something even more simple. I also have what I think is a unique feature that puts people into the same room based on the HTTP referrer.  That is, if you follow this link, you'll all end up in the same chatroom:
http://www.yakeze.com/chat/
Here are some other useful "tricks": http://www.yakeze.com/help/
Like I said, it's very simple by design, but please be honest with any criticism or ideas you may have.  And feel free to use it too!
Thanks!
P.S. If anyone is interested, the back-end is powered by Google App Engine (Python). <comment><AUTHOR> Hmm - apparently links in the summary aren't automatically created. Here's the referrer link example again:

<http://www.yakeze.com/chat/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Doesn't work for me in chrome. Although, I'm running the alpha for linux so that might have something to do with it. Has anybody tried it with chrome on windows?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bummer - not working for me in Chromium (OSX) any more either. Which is odd since I did about half the development with it. I'll get that fixed soon...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> clicky link: <http://www.yakeze.com/chat/>

> puts people into the same room based on the HTTP referrer

That's a cool feature! Unique as you say.

It's a teeeeny bit slow for me but it could be this machine (it wont play youtube vids w/o locking up anything else)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. There is currently a 3 second update on the chat window. I'm interested to see how well App Engine scales on lots of little requests. I'll report back on that later...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good news - App Engine scales to support ones of users.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk quietly tinkers with education - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/first-space-then-auto-now-elon-musk-quietly-tinkers-with-education/?amp=1 <comment><USER2> Make a human programming language, you put a VR on a human and a reward/punishment system wired into the brain, you teach the human via the VR.</comment>


Show HN: Concept search engine based on most popular HN submissions - <AUTHOR> Thesis: Sites that do well on hacker news will tend to be sites with high quality content.
Tools: Hacker News Big Query, python, Google CSE
Steps:
1. Using HN Big Query, get all unique domains with more than 3 stories with more than 50 points (query link [1]). Sort by percentage of such stories to total number of stories.
By doing that, at the top you will get sites like blog.geoffralston.com that have 3 out of 3 submitted stories get more than 50 points (100% !). Or lucumr.pocoo.org had 46 out of 124 total stories reach 50+ points! Talking about good writing.
We cut the list at 2,500 sites , where the popular to submitted ratio is still at enviable 12%.
2. Add to this list all sites that had exactly one submission and that only submission ever from that domain had 300+ points on HN. I call them unexplored one hit wonders and thesis is that there are probably other gems on the domain just not ssubmitted yet. [2]
3. Now we have about 3,000 sites total. We will use Google CSE engine which allows up to 2,000 sites through annotations [3]. We have to clean the data now.
- Check if the domain still resolves. Sadly about 400 these high quality sites do not anymore.
- Check for redirects
For example this site is no longer on its old address:
https://david.weebly.com ... 302 Found (0.153)
   http://www.david.blog/ ... 200 OK (0.0676)
- Check for all other sorts of weird errors
This took most of the day :) I used modified version of [4]
4. Manually clean the list from news sites that made it on (nytimes, usatoday...)
5. If you want to check if your site is on the list, check [5]. If you are on the list congrats!
5. Finally, here is the end result:
https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=014479775183020491825:c2lrlzrogb5
Search cream of the crop of HN submitted sites!
Let me know if you find this useful! <comment><AUTHOR> Have to post links here due to 2000 char limit.

[0] [https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=014479775183020491825:c2lrlzro...](https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=014479775183020491825:c2lrlzrogb5)

[1] [https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?sq=217608811855:37...](https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?sq=217608811855:3757189d77aa488ca48bddc1ec921afd)

[2] [https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?sq=217608811855:67...](https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?sq=217608811855:672d9baea3854a6e8ce8b678c288cbfe)

[3] [https://developers.google.com/custom- search/docs/annotations](https://developers.google.com/custom- search/docs/annotations)

[4] [https://github.com/amgedr/webchk](https://github.com/amgedr/webchk)

[5] [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ON26TVBUHH4FZuvH8YFQ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ON26TVBUHH4FZuvH8YFQOgB0IQ3XeZEzE6KE_dm4A14/edit?usp=sharing)</comment>


NeuFlow: A Dataflow Processor for Vision - <AUTHOR> http://www.clement.farabet.net/research.html#neuflow <comment><USER2> The block diagram they showed looks pretty sweet for DSP too.

One question: Why are there separate symbols for integration and summation? Whenever I implement integration in DSP circuitry, it's just a rolling sum (since these circuits are obviously operating on discrete signals).

<comment><USER3> I believe that represents the sigmoid function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think NeuFlow is being actively developed anymore as most of the team is now working on the 'nn_X' co-processor out of Purdue and the startup teradeep. Clement Farabet (of Madbits/Twitter fame) and Yann LeCun are listed as consultant on the teradeep website (www.teradeep.com).</comment>


The Arc Challenge Explained - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/arc-challenge-explained.html

<comment><USER2> A nice explanation for someone who has not looked into Arc (me).

[0-9a-zA-Z]{10} is what, 840 quadrillion combinations? Just out of curiosity, what happens if we get a 'fnid' collision?

I expect to be serving a few hundred trillion pages in a couple of years time :-p.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article mentions that the fnid could be stored in a cookie. While this is true it definitely would not be desired, as doing so would make it impossible to browse the site with multiple windows,each on different pages.

<comment><USER4> And it wouldn't work if there were more than one form or link on a page. Or if the user clicked the back-button.</comment></comment>


Best Wifi Mesh Network Kits - <AUTHOR> http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-mesh-networking-kits <comment><USER2> I'd recommend Ubiquiti's UniFi. I installed three total units (one as base, two satellites). The setup spans 15,000sqft across two stories and split building (connected by breezeway). We get full speed on every corner and crevice. It has a great management interface. The cost was only 199. Well worth it.

<comment><USER3> What models did you deploy? UniFi UAP-AC-PRO? Don't you also need to buy a power over ethernet switch to use UniFi?

<comment><USER4> The unifi ac pro's work awesome, consumer routers are kind of mickey mouse after these are deployed. Mounted them in a ceiling like a smoke alarm connected via ethernet, on the other end is an included poe injector unit or just use can use a switched hub with poe ports like ubiquiti edgerouter. The only thing I don't like is the management tool requiring java for the browser but it's pretty simple to figure out. Overall it's cheaper than these other mesh products.

If you need a router functionality, get there edgerouter but I'll tell you this, it's super powerful but not something easy to figure unless you have a deeper understanding of network protocols. Great stuff.

<comment><USER5> > The only thing I don't like is the management tool requiring java for the > browser but it's pretty simple to figure out.

You don't need Java to work in the browser. The management tool runs on a Tomcat webserver. That requires Java. I don't know if you need to install Java to get that working, or if Java is included in the tool itself. But you don't need the Java plugin in your browser for the tool to work. To test this, disable or remove the plugin and see if the management tool keeps working!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No mention or review of Google WiFi [1]? Anybody try it?

[https://store.google.com/product/google_wifi](https://store.google.com/product/google_wifi)

<comment><USER6> Google Wi-Fi seems to be using 802.11s "mesh networking" protocol, but I think that's still mainly targeted at in-home/in-building mesh networking. The mesh networking era we'll all expecting could be enabled by the upcoming 802.11ah, which works in the 900Mhz spectrum, and should offer higher ranges.

Although I think the target is only 2x of 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi N right now, which seems a little disappointing to me. I was expecting something along of 1KM range (I don't think Wi-Fi N actually reaches 500m in the real world).

It may be because the Wi-Fi Alliance is trying to make this an "IoT"-enabling technology as well, rather than allow us to connect to each other's smartphones and notebooks at good speeds and longer ranges.

Anandtech says there's quite a big push for 802.11ah from Wi-Fi silicon vendors.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/9915/wifi-halow-longrange- lowp...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9915/wifi-halow-longrange-lowpower- wifi-for-internetofthings-devices)

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8253/thread-group-moots-new- ip...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8253/thread-group-moots-new-ip-wireless- networking-protocol-for-iot)

<comment><USER7> This article is about _in-home_ mesh Wi-Fi, not long-range outdoor meshes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have the UniFi system. 3 story house. One AP each level centered. One AP in the external office (building attached to external garage). I use one UniFi PoE switch in the house and one in the office (2xCat6A between them). FreeNAS mini attached via 2x1G (4x4TB disc, 2x128G SSD as L2ARC & ZIL). UniFi CloudKey and UniFi Security Gateway. I am an engineer ;)

For my less technical friends I highly recommend them Eero system.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised there's no system that features integrated Homeplug[1], so base stations pass data to each other over your power lines. This seems like an obvious solution.

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

<comment><USER10> I've gathered from previous discussions of these devices that homeplug performance is not always good. I've never tested it though.

<comment><USER11> A former employer tested out a number of residential Ethernet over power devices.

The results were mixed - they either work really well, or really badly. It seems that the home's wiring and appliances have an overwhelming effect on their efficacy. So, the recommendation is try before you buy if at all possible.

<comment><USER12> We have a multi-story townhome and tried powerline. When it worked it was very good; "when", unfortunately, was not nearly as often as we needed it to be.

We recently just got a Netgear Orbi and are pretty well satisfied. Turns out the base router/AP is better overall than the other single unit devices we've been using until now and the satellite does seem to make a significant difference in the far top floor room which had problems with both WiFi & Powerline. Lucky for that, too.... our next step was to run cable in the walls.

<comment><USER13> I've had an Orbi for some time now. What sold me was that it doesn't actually create a mesh network. Instead, it sets up a 1.7 gigabit wireless backhaul connection completely separate from the frequencies used by the client devices you connect. This avoids all of the interference (noisy clients disrupting the access points) and latency (hopping from one access point to another) pitfalls you often encounter when using a traditional mesh network or wireless extender.

The Orbi is basically the wireless equivalent of running wires through the walls.

<comment><USER14> Well it's still a mesh in the sense that the wireless APs are connected to each other wirelessly.

You can have a mesh network without wireless clients at all if you wanted. For example, you can connect two locations together via a mesh of access points by each end plugging into the ethernet port of an AP, then the mesh provides multi-task redundancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a DIY solution that can do this? With all features in DD-WRT or OpenWRT, I would have thought the community would have already solved this problem for cheap.

<comment><USER9> The "DIY" solution is mentioned in the article. Buy a bunch of standard WAPs (the Ubiquiti UniFi range is popular) and wire them together with ethernet.

<comment><USER16> The Ubiquiti APs (e.g., the AC-PRO) can uplink to each other wirelessly, but only through one hop.

<comment><USER17> Also, you're giving up half your antenna-seconds for that. I tried it and was not happy—the hardwired performance is generally great, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Every other kit we tested relies on a smartphone app and cloud services for > configuration, which means if your Internet goes down, your home > network—partially or even entirely—goes down with it.

I am getting so tired of this. Why are engineers working for companies that build stuff like this? This is consumer hostile.

<comment><USER19> Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but what would most users need to be able to use the network for if the internet is down?

The only use case I can think of is transferring files around? Do you think that's so common amongst most users?

<comment><USER20> Watching a movie or listening to music stored on your NAS. Turning your "smart" light off and on. Using your remote (since even those are cloud connected now).

You know, everyday stuff, for which modern IoT equivalents somehow need internet connectivity to work.

<comment><USER21> But the app is required for configuration, not for actually using your wifi, right? Perhaps I'm wrong.. The overlap for needing to configure your network and the internet connection being down is probably very small, although not non-existant.

<comment><USER22> > The overlap for needing to configure your network and the internet > connection being down is probably very small, although not non-existant.

It seems to me like "troubleshooting why the internet connection is down" is probably a capability you would want to have, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.open-mesh.com/products.html/](http://www.open- mesh.com/products.html/) are also good

<comment><USER24> Was about to share this as well. They are 802.3af PoE compatible now too. Not terribly expensive compared to those listed in the article, especially when installing 70+ in a hotel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Have anyone tried building a Mesh using ESP8266 and custom hardware for signal enhancement?

I am working on a similar project and is interested to know if anyone have had success with hardware addons like external antenna to build a reliable solution?

The chip capabilities are enough to run any low level to moderate load applications like monitoring, actuating and streaming. It is the hardware that I am doubtful about.

<comment><USER26> With only 96KB of data RAM, I don't see how the ESP8266 could be suitable for store-and-forward relaying of aggregated WiFi frames in a moderately busy channel environment where the device isn't guaranteed the immediate opportunity to retransmit what was just received. I don't think RF power would matter, because the computational resources just don't seem sufficient for the mesh to support more than one omnidirectional data stream passing through each node.

<comment><USER27> Yeah. I believe Espressif may be considering 802.11s mesh support for the newer and better-specced ESP32, but I expect that's probably going to be intended for low-bandwidth applications if it happen.

<comment><USER28> indeed, ESP8266 & ESP32 would work well for Mesh IoT applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I had tried once building something like this mesh - a router with several wifi range extenders sold separately. In my case it was a setup in the apartment with lots of metal in concrete panels, so wireless reception is awful (50-100% signal loss after a single wall). Well it didn't work at all - REs started and worked ok and I did see high WiFi signal, but throughput was horrible - very low speed and regular pauses when no traffic at all was passing through REs. Settings, RE positioning, channels or bands didn't matter.

In the end I just used wired network with access points, more expensive but at least it works. I suggest that all these mesh kits should be bought only when return option is available because they may not work in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER30> > It's the only mesh kit we tested that is fully configurable and usable > without an Internet connection, and it's also the only one that provides the > full, deep feature set that technical users expect from a high-end router, > including plenty of Ethernet ports on both units.

I'm amazed... "and usable" implies some of these kits will go down if you lose your internet connection. Not just that they won't be configurable?

</comment><comment><USER31> Built a wisp-mesh product a few years ago for a client, in the past mesh-wifi was really just for enterprise and city-wide projects, and never got widely deployed anywhere. Surprisingly it is getting into homes these days, assuming the covering area is large.

For me I'm using AP + a few extenders these days and they worked just fine and are much cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER32> AirTies Air 4920. Google Wifi does much of the same, but the original is better (and 3x3 as opposed to Google's 2x2). Small access points that don't take up much space, very good client steering and band steering so you're always hooked up to the best AP without thinking about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm connected to a non-HD Amplifi right now over 802.11ac. Dunno what they're smoking over there.

Says so right on the product page: [https://store.amplifi.com/amplifi/amplifi-119.html](https://store.amplifi.com/amplifi/amplifi-119.html)

<comment><USER34> The non-HD _base station_ does ac; the mesh extension points do not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Most wifi hardware supports being both AP and client at the same time. This way, I've extended my wifi signal for just 20 bucks (Bought a netgear ex2700 and flashed openwrt. I made it join my existing wifi and create an AP with a distinct SSID on the same interface and channel)

</comment><comment><USER36> In terms of ease of setup, I don't think any of these can beat Eero. And in spite of Netgear marketing dollars behind, Orbi, I hope EERO maintains the lead in this space, as they were the first one to push for mesh networking in consumer Wifi space.

<comment><USER37> Note that out of the box, Airport does two step wireless network extension, super easily.

It supports "extend your network" as hub spoke leaf model, with both wired-to- wireless bases (hubs) and wireless-to-wireless extenders / relays (spokes), and devices (leaves) will connect to strongest spokes or hubs as you roam.

You can have multiple wired-to-wired and wired-to-wireless bases on the same network each with its own wireless-to-wireless extenders or relays. This has worked and been solid (no reboots needed) for years.

Use the full size tower for hubs and airport expresses for spokes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wireless routers can't really do gigabit speeds? That doesn't sound right.

Also he says a separate high bandwidth signal coordinates the units, would that limit range? Why not a lower bandwidth signal?

<comment><USER39> Geez, complain much? It's a miracle it works at all.

<comment><USER40> It doesn't. At least not for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> do these things handle moving from one zone to another while something like facetime is running? this has always been an issue i haven't been able to solve.

</comment><comment><USER42> What about [http://plumewifi.com](http://plumewifi.com). Anyone have this?

<comment><USER43> "For our first round of testing mesh networking kits, our sole criterion was simple: Does it exist? In the future we may need to rule out mesh networking kits by speed, specs, or price, but for this go-round we tested all of the consumer mesh networking kits that were available at the time (not announced, not in crowdfunding, not preproduction). That group included the Eero, Luma, and Netgear Orbi offerings, as well as both the HD and standard versions of the AmpliFi kit. Google Wi-Fi, Amped Ally, and Plume will have to wait for next time."

<comment><USER37> Note that out of the box, Airport does two step wireless network extension: wired-to-wireless base and wireless-to-wireless extenders / relays. You can have multiple wired-to-wired and wired-to-wireless bases on the same network each with its own wireless-to-wireless extenders or relays. This has worked and been solid (no reboots needed) for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Does Wirecutter ever feature a non affiliate product? If not, they are not to be trusted.

<comment><USER45> I think the affiliate model is far better than having ads everywhere on the site. The incentives are far clearer this way. By consistently making good recommendations, they will build a loyal audience, driving further affiliate sales.

Their product is their reputation for good reviews. Destroying that is clearly against their interests.

<comment><USER46> > By consistently making good recommendations, they will build a loyal > audience, driving further affiliate sales.

I mean, that's exactly how bias works. In fact, this is exactly what amazon is cracking down on right now, incentivized reviews.

If your revenue model is based on ads, you grow revenue by growing readership which is grown by writing quality content. However if you're revenue model is based on affiliate income, you increase revenue by selling more stuff.

<comment><USER47> > In fact, this is exactly what amazon is cracking down on right now, > incentivized reviews.

Well... not exactly...

They're cracking down on incentivized reviews on amazon.com product pages. Those onsite reviews being a far stretch away from offsite recommendation blog posts that feature affiliate links, which aren't included in any of their product rating/review metrics.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bind frequently used text snippets to short terms, type them quickly - <AUTHOR> http://shivensinha.me/snippet?ref=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Snippet, a chrome extension, helps you type faster by binding your frequently typed phrases to short terms. iOS style text replacement, for the cross- platform Chrome. Be a power user with some serious flair! And for free.

Or, use it to quickly note down something you stumble upon while browsing. Snippet comes with a handy search feature and is super easy to modify.</comment>


Show HN: TrustComet- Powerful tool for getting 15% more conversion rate - <AUTHOR> https://trustcomet.com/ <comment><USER2> Amazing idea.. Love to integrate on our website

<comment><AUTHOR> Off course we are giving 18 Days free trial also</comment></comment>


Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/mkesper/173f0884f50e13c37a37

<comment><USER3> Ran into something similar before on Windows with the permission system - <USER2> name of the 'everyone' group is not fixed, and varies by locale. Unfortunately not all windows commands accept SIDs, and you'll need to know the localized name for the 'everyone' group to call them. Windows's troubled languagepack journey and backwards compatibility shackles do mean that design decisions on basic file-handling commands that were reasonable in 1995 look pretty dumb now.

PowerShell _is_ making this better, but of course when you 'shell out' from PSH to a legacy command you're stuck with its crappy commandline parsing which is designed to be backwards compatible with batch files written 20 years ago. The powershell way to do this (assuming 'set-owner' isn't built in to PSH) is probably to end-run round takeown.exe and work with the shell win32 APIs directly (or google for a cmdlet someone else has written that does that for you).

</comment><comment><USER4> In my language, there isn't No, there is only "YES" and "MAYBE".

<comment><USER5> Mind pointing out which one? [http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/yesnomaybe.htm](http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/yesnomaybe.htm)

<comment><USER6> Could be Japanese, depending on the situation.

[http://www.japanese-language.aiyori.org/article6.html](http://www.japanese- language.aiyori.org/article6.html)

<comment><USER7> The account has a history. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6225716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6225716) and other comments from that account are consistent, and suggest a language other than Japanese. And bradbeattie's own link points to a table which shows that languages other than Japanese also have no direct translation for 'yes'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was thinking that this would just be about parsing command output, or searching for error messages online (i.e. copy and paste an error message into Google) but this is beyond stupid.

</comment><comment><USER9> This problem also applies to MediaWiki. They decided to internationalize pretty much everything, too. Not only functions are translated; the functionality of some URL parts also depends on the language - and you'll get a lot of duplicates when more languages are enabled.

<comment><USER10> Care to expand on that? The API is not i18ned (apart from the content, obviously), the only thing vaguely similar to what you wrote which I can see are the names of the special pages. But even though they are translated into the wiki content language, on input, every wiki accepts the English version as well. Also, the canonical identifier is present in the page for scripts to use. Or, what problems do you have?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't /f, /R, and /D also need i18n'd in this scenario?

<comment><USER12> takeown.exe, which takes ownership of a file in some circumstances, will give a Y/N prompt when the contents of a directory cannot be listed. The parameters "/D Y" will default the answer to yes.

The script in the link is considering what the prompt might ask for, not what the parameters of the program are. If the full thing was internationalized, the script might as well have language specific versions as well, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> just export LANG=C... oh, right, microsoft...

<comment><USER14> In PowerShell you do the following:

New-PSSessionOption -Culture=de-DE

Might be worthwhile looking up the PowerShell reference before making comments like that...

<comment><USER15> Sure, but how long is this solution available and in how many years do you think it will be deprecated? Getting a bit offtopic though.

<comment><USER16> Since at least 2.0: [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/hh849703%28v=wps...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/hh849703%28v=wps.620%29.aspx)

It was probably even in 1.0 but MSDN doesn't contain documentation for old software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Two semi-related random facts:

\- keyboard shortcuts in Windows also sometimes differ depending on locale (for instance, in Spanish version of Notepad shortcut for "save" is CTRL-G, from "guardar", instead of CTRL-S like "save")

\- output of some command-line utilities is inconsistent between versions of Windows (XP, 7 etc): sometimes it delimits stuff by tabs, sometimes by whitespaces etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> That is horrible code, there is not just _de-de_ but also _de-at_ and _de-ch_ and _fr-fuck-it-I-will-not-look-it-up_ etc. And the program should treat all equally. ( I would suggest equally badly.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That was exactly my point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, interpreting a wide variety of character arrays as corresponding boolean values, is a bad idea?

</comment><comment><USER20> And soon also properly gendered

<comment><USER21> Guys, I'm pretty sure he's talking about gender-inflected languages and not making a sexist statement. Step away from the down-arrow and move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> No, it's not a bad idea, and these 4 lines of bash script contain no solid reasoning, argument, or business logic as to why helping the other 80% of the world's population is a very bad idea.

Doing internationalization without support libraries is a very bad idea, as this sample code helps illustrate.

<comment><USER23> I'm pretty sure that's not bash.

In any case, the script makes a cogent and concise argument. That argument is that command line options are not just a human interface, but also a machine interface, and localization of machine interfaces leads to pain and catastrophe.

You certainly don't have to agree with that argument, but it's there.

<comment><USER22> Sure, any naive implementation will lead to pain and catastrophe. But I don't buy that this is a cogent and concise argument to NOT do it.

<comment><USER23> What does the non-naive implementation look like? You say "support libraries" but what sort of support do they provide for the machine-interface scenario? How do they avoid problems such as forgetting to put a switch through the libraries and ending up with code that only works in some localizations?

<comment><USER14> The non-naive version sets the PowerShell culture/Bash locale before it runs anything.

<comment><USER23> That works, but it also means that non-English speakers have to learn everything twice.

<comment><USER14> Not sure I see the point you are attempting to make.

<comment><USER23> The great thing about shell scripting is that you use the same commands for interactive use and scripting. If interactive use is localized but scripting is not then that no longer applies.

<comment><USER14> You add the locale to your script and the problem goes away. You still haven't explained how that's a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FreeBSD Renames "Master Boot Record" to "Main Boot Record" - <AUTHOR> https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-head/2020-June/137316.html <comment><USER2> Seems like a straightforward change, in my experience everybody uses the initials "MBR" anyway. It shouldn't really introduce a lot of confusion.

I wish we could discuss these changes rationally on this website, but I predict that this thread is going to turn into an embarrassing flamewar in about 3 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER3> So as far as I understand Hans (the author) is FreeBSD maintainer and he made the change in the source code. Community isn't happy about it (based on the email thread).

Is there any person who can actually revert the change ignoring Hans? How does it work in FreeBSD?

I'm quite unhappy with such changes. There are terms I used to and I never thought about those terms in any way bad meaning. Are people who rename Master to Main latent racist? Why, by reading "Master", they think about slavery?

It would be much better if we vote for such changes. Maybe give voice only to people who potentially may be offended by such words. Hans doesn't look as a person who can be offended by word Master though...

Very sad tendency is happening.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some replies later:

>Please revert. Another part if the guidance was that industry standard terms should be used until the industry renames them. This makes FreeBSD unique for no good reason.

Good point!

[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters- ha...](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters- handbook/dads-use-posix-standards.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember reading a few amusing stories about a certain category of the public offended by the FreeBSD logo, as far back as the late 90s at least. Here's one of them: [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- chat/2011-Novemb...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- chat/2011-November/006652.html)

Now we're the puritans, demanding not to be offended.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is absolute craziness, especially when far more offensive terms are used throughout (the devil logo, demons, gimp, git, execute, terminal, disabled).

"The gimp executable" is far far more off-sounding then "master boot record."

<comment><USER7> [https://glimpse-editor.org/](https://glimpse-editor.org/)

<comment><USER4> On the other hand it's also a good example why Linux will be never a thing on desktop. So many resources divided between developers instead of working together and focusing on one thing. But that's also the case with the millions of different desktop environments and package managers and such etc. Sometimes less is more

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this in response to BLM? I also heard a couple of years ago people were trying to rename slave harddrives to something else too (maybe "secondary"?).

<comment><USER9> Very likely in response to awareness of systemic racism in our culture.

Frankly, if it makes this field and career path more welcoming to people I am absolutely fine with it.

<comment><USER10> Agreed.

<comment><USER9> Given the downvotes I'm getting I think this industry is a lot more racist than I thought.

<comment><USER11> No, it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with introducing politics, racism, and your personal social commentary into a field or topic area in which that has no relevance, and in which everyone is getting along just fine.

It's looking at hard drives and calling everyone who has used terminology you think might offend someone racist through passive voice.

Paint with broad strokes, and you should not be surprised to get blowback. Walk in and start calling everyone around you closet racists without any real justification other than word choice, and to be frank, you should be thankful you don't get a worse response than you do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How many boot records are there?

<comment><USER13> One for each partition, plus one more at the beginning of the disk: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_boot_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_boot_record)

For instance, if you have a disk with Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux partitions, each partition has its own boot sector that loads its own boot loader, and the MBR loads one of those. (Generally it's a tiny piece of code that could come from any of the OSes that looks at which partition is marked bootable, loads the boot sector for that partition, and execs it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How far do you want to take this? Device Drivers? Documentation? Books? Computer Science Literature?, Research Papers?

I am still waiting for someone to tell Mr Linus Torvalds or Mr Greg Kroah- Hartman to make the logical case to rename all 'offensive' words and terminology in the Linux Kernel. The same also goes for OpenBSD, if anyone else has the courage to do so in their mailing lists.

Even after we create breaking changes to software using those terms, those that are 'offended' might as well not bother reading old computer science books or research papers and force the authors to release another edition.

<comment><USER15> What about the "mastering" (audio), master degree programs, martial arts masters, JEDI masters. Jedi Main Yoda?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://thenewstack.io/words-matter-finally-tech-looks-at- re...](https://thenewstack.io/words-matter-finally-tech-looks-at-removing- exclusionary-language/)

<comment><USER17> Stopped at "Scrum Master". The idea of SM being expert and not a regular team member or even rotating, is just misguided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is going to be fun for students all over the world trying to use older materials with newer software. I can imagine the confusion.

</comment><comment><USER19> Haven't change handbook yet. [https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch- handb...](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch- handbook/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> I am about to finish my OMSCS studies. I suppose I should apologize for being a Master of Science.

</comment><comment><USER21> This will be reverted.

<comment><USER3> It is reverted now. Thanks to everyone who participated in the revert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The two initial letters are the same.

We cannot attain Justice while still using the same language, and indeed, alphabet.

But as long as this is a technical forum, have we reconsidered numbers? Haven't 0 and 1 and the rest of mathematical thinking been dominated by men?

</comment><comment><USER23> As a christian with a knee injury, I'm deeply offended by their devil logo and gimp program name. As this seems to be a clear violation of their code of conduct, I will officially raise this issue to their code of conduct committee. Let's see how they respond.

<comment><USER13> Several years ago they moved from a cartoony demon logo to a more abstract red-sphere-with-two-cones logo precisely to avoid the overtones of the old image. As a fellow Christian, I figured I'd give you the heads up so that you're not lying.

I do agree with you about the name "gimp" and I hope you raise it - it should also be changed.

<comment><USER23> It does not change the fact that freebsd is under systemic daemon-ism. It's time for a change.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple now third-largest PC seller in U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20019514-260.html?tag=topStories3 <comment><USER2> How many are there (PC manufacturers/sellers) in the US?

Can some non-US person comment on how Packard Bell is still selling PCs in your country?</comment>


Ask HN: Solutions to stop the pop under plague? - <AUTHOR>

I seems that for now the spammers are winning.
What could work to kill this annoyance?<p>Am I mistaken in assuming that browser makers don't know how to fight the  new pop under window advertising technique? How about window dependencies graph, where if you switch tab context to a different URI and have not gave focus to the related window that was opened from the main window - Kill it without questions, and also refuse to save the cookies it gave you, Otherwise if user has visited the pop under page apply normal browser behavior? <comment><USER2> Better Popup Blocker

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nmpeeekfhbmikbdhlp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nmpeeekfhbmikbdhlpjbfmnpgcbeggic)

It can block legitimate actions but they've recently added a list of blocked popups on that page so you can manually allow them.

I really don't know why browser vendors can't just fix it themselves but stuff like this might make it upstream eventually.</comment>


Renouncing citizenship to avoid taxes may mean Savarin can never enter US again - brown9-2 http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/05/buh-bye_2.php

<comment><AUTHOR> The article quotes law/procedure that indicates that he would be 'excludable'. I didn't see where it gave evidence that he would be excluded, such as precedent? All aliens are supposed to be treated as a possible immigrant and must provide reason/evidence to prove otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER2> This may come as a shock, but some people manage to lead perfectly fulfilling lives without ever visiting the US.

About the only inconvenience I can imagine would be the inability to change flights (or refuel his jet) in Miami, but I'm sure he'll manage.

<comment><USER3> Not being allowed to visit your hometown or college buddies might also be rather inconvenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems people are very sensitive about someone renouncing his citizenship, as if it's a big crime that's being committed here.

The guy has decided to go live in another country, for reasons none but his own, so why should he hold on to his US citizenship? Oh, I see, it's a US citizenship, given to you by the grace of God himself. You don't just throwaway a precious gift like that. Now do you?

To me it seems there is quite some spite about this with various overly patriotic people out there.

<comment><USER3> I think it's really more about the taxes. The US is (almost?) unique among countries for laying claim to the income of citizens who are living and working abroad, and the government has an established record of being pretty nasty about it. This law wouldn't be the first time I've heard of the US government taking a "if you don't give us money we won't let you visit your family" attitude towards its expats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good thing he's not avoiding taxation then. I'm not sure where that idea started, actually. When he leaves, he will have to pay an "exit tax" that's just as if he'd sold all his stock. The standard 15% capital gains tax would come to about half a Billion dollars! So he's actually going to be paying a lot of taxes when he leaves.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but then he won't have to pay additional capital gains tax on the stock if it happens to skyrocket in the years following his renunciation of citizenship. You only pay tax on the profit you make on stock investments, so any profit he stands to make in the years following his renunciation will be tax free.

<comment><USER5> Any profit he stands to make in the years following will be _taxed according to the laws of his new residence_.

<comment><USER7> As itsmequinn said, tax free.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax#Singapore>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, I'm sure the US will close the doors to a billionaire... just out of spite.

<comment><USER9> Is it "out of spite" when the government fines someone for speeding?

<comment><USER10> It's not "out of spite", but it's because they are _breaking the law_. What Saverin is doing is completely legal, and it would be petty on US's part to not even give him a US tourist visa.

<comment><USER9> > but it's because they are breaking the law.

No, it's because fining them is a deterrent to other would-be speeders. What Saverin is doing is not _completely_ legal. It's _technically_ legal. And the reason for that technicality is that the US can't really impose criminal penalties against non-citizens. But that doesn't mean they can't create a deterrent by denying those non-citizens visas in the future.

I would argue that it is quite worthwhile for the US to send the message that there are consequences for coming into our country, taking advantage of our corporate ecosystem to become immensely wealthy, and then skipping out before tax day (which is an exaggeration, I know, but you get the point). I don't see anything remotely petty about that.

<comment><USER11> Your statement that the US cannot impose criminal penalties against non- citizens is very wrong. There are a bunch of non-citizens in the USA who are arrested and penalized if they commit a crime. there are countless extraditions that happen for foreigners who commit crimes against US interests while being outside of this country. and of course there is Guantanamo.

No one is unreachable from the US, American citizen or not.

And what Saverin did is _legal_. You cannot have something be partially legal, or technically legal but somehow still illegal; it's the same with being pregnant. You either are, or are not. There is no middle ground.

And if we were smart, we would grant Saverin a visa right away. Anyone in the USA would prefer that money is invested in the USA than anywhere else. Or do we not want outside investment? "We don't want your money, go create jobs somewhere else!"

<comment><USER9> The law provides for a deterrent penalty to be used against people who renounce their citizenship to avoid taxation. Whether or not that makes it "illegal" is a matter of semantics and completely irrelevant to whether or not the law should be enforced.

And yes, there is some revenue lost by not letting a billionaire into the country, but that has to be weighed against the consequences of letting people skip out to avoid taxation.

<comment><USER10> I think you're making an assumption here that when they forgo citizenship they get all the good stuff (money) and they don't have to deal with the bad stuff (taxes). Saverin won't be able to make an investment in the US easily. He also won't be able to own or buy properties/businesses. If he truly wanted to earn more, he would pay up the taxes in order to take advantage of the privileges of being in a country like the USA. I'm not from here, and you guys have it great. If I were in Saverin's position, I would choose to stay because I would still want to contribute to the economy. But I also see the argument for wanting to take time off in other countries. I think its incredibly unfair for a ex-citizen to be denied a visa just because he chose to forgo its privileges and taxes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Macbook refresh gets official with 10-hour battery - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/18/macbook-refresh-gets-official/

<comment><USER2> I'm just still sore about having to wait another 8 or 9 months to get a MacBook WITH A 13" SCREEN that has a CPU from this century.

2.4GHz Core 2 Duo in their latest offerings.... while all the competition is flashing around i3s and i5s.

Steve Jobs reply: We figured people care more about game performance and battery life.

Well, since when is "gaming" what people get Macs for!? I'd rather you sped-up my Photoshopping and my Compiling than my playing of ports of games from the early 90s.

<comment><USER3> Personally I'm actually happy about their decision (got one of the new 13"ers), battery life is more valuable to me than CPU performance.

Ideally they'd offer choice (as unlikely as that is for apple) between 10h batter time and i5 CPU.

<comment><USER2> I was really hoping to upgrade my now 3-generations ago Unibody 13"er because it's just too damn slow. Back then, I opted to pay the extra bucks and get the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo for the "premium" model - it's so sad that that same CPU is _still_ in the new models (albiet as the "base" and a 2.6GHz as the "premium").

I understand their conundrum though, it's not their fault.

The 13" design simply doesn't have room for a standalone graphics card, so they need to use an integrated video card. Due to licensing battles between nVidia and Intel (you'd think they'd give it a break in the face of the joint AMD-ATI competition), there are no Core iX motherboards manufactured with an nVidia chipset at the moment. So it's either dump the iX or dump nVidia, and they (sensibly) picked to remain with the nVidia platform.

Makes you really hate the stupid politics power plays done that prevent users from paying for and getting the best.

<comment><USER4> Instead of upgrading the notebook, you may want to consider switching to a solid-state drive. In terms of real-world performance boost, an SSD simply can't be beat. It's like upgrading to 60 or 120GB of RAM for <$300.

I am not convinced that most MacBook users are CPU constrained. SSD FTW!

<comment><USER5> He's not the typical MacBook user; he's worried about speeding up compiling.

I recently switched out to a fast SSD and I can say this with certainty - compiling was and continues to be CPU constrained, at least for the code I spend the most time compiling.

<comment><USER2> Thanks - that's exactly my issue. I have compiling which takes up most of the CPU, but the amalgamation of all the other software each taking up to 10% in the background is what kills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The battery life sales point is an interesting differentiator. By my quick survey it looks like most laptops get about 4-5 hours of battery life now a days.

The non-user-replaceable battery seems to be a gamble that hasn't hurt them in the market.

<comment><USER7> Some ultra low voltage processor models get around 10hrs of battery life as well. The Asus UL series get really good battery life, at least under Windows.

I have a UL80vt running Ubuntu 9.10 and get around 5hrs on that with the screen at full brightness (b/c brightness control only works with reboot). It also uses the nvidia dedicated graphics afaik (it has hot-switchable dual graphics under windows).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just started using a 2.4ghz 13-inch mbp for work. My personal machine is a mid-2007 white macbook (2.16ghz, 4GB RAM). I do like the Aluminum case, but the machine really isn't noticeably faster than the old one. Not that the old one is slow by any means. I think I've decided to hold off one more generation (bought myself a magic mouse and wireless keyboard to get rid of some of the gadget craving).

For the guy who said he needs something faster to run lots of apps, none of those apps need to run in the background, so you shouldn't be CPU limited. Maybe you just need more than 4GB of RAM. I think your machine can fit 6GB...</comment>


Ask HN: What does Alan Kay mean with his definition of OOP? - <AUTHOR> I was just wondering if we could have a discussion on what Alan Kay means by his definition of OOP? Could this help us in writing better object-oriented code?<p>http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented <comment><USER2> My understanding of Kay's OOP model is that it's akin to each object running as a separate process. Each process can only see its own memory, but RPC enables objects to "message" each other.

This message passing is more like Objective C's messaging than RPC, in the sense that any message can go to any object. But there's no guarantee the receiver will know what to do with that message.

In this model, objects are isolated from each other. If they're isolated, their code can be run in parallel without explicit thread safety. And objects can replace each other at runtime as long as they respond to the same messages. Well, technically even if they don't.</comment>


74% of Twitter users have 10 tweets or less  - <AUTHOR> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100310/twitters-wallflowers-get-a-little-less-timid-but-its-still-a-service-for-watchers-not-talkers/

<comment><USER2> I just can't get bullish about Twitter for the long haul with mainstream adoption. I know I might get flamed for this, but I'm trying to give some observations:

* Tech inclined, but non-industry friends just don't see the value of Twitter. The word pointless is used almost every time.

* Those that try it leave very fast. That's where the 10 tweets per person seems to be about right.

* The engagement just isn't there. I know someone mentioned the whole 90/10 ratio, but that's different here. Imagine if only 74% of Facebook users posted something or updated their profile. That's really really bad.

* I asked a room filled with 30 college seniors who come from good backgrounds / fairly smart / business students etc if they used Twitter. One person tried it and one person uses it for their job, not personally.

I'm not saying Twitter is horrible or Twitter is going to die. I just don't see it being the huge monstrosity of a multi multi billion dollar company a lot of people expect it to be. That's okay. I'd rather see it stick around for those that do value it, rather than die because it tried to become something it just can't be.

<comment><USER3> The only compelling case for Twitter I've found so far are announcements from local merchants/organizations.

I follow some restaurants in my city, and it is useful for keeping tabs on specials and other happenings around me, but it's almost entirely useless for personal communication - Facebook does it better with more existing adoption.

<comment><USER4> "The only compelling case for Twitter I've found so far are announcements from local merchants/organizations."

Where "announcements" == advertisements. Yes, that's the apparent and generally agreed (long-term) usefulness of Twitter.

<comment><USER5> It might be advertising, but it's advertising where:

1) I opt-in, and can opt-out

2) I pick exactly who I want to get advertising from

3) The "advertiser" can get feedback on how many people are following them, how many new, how many lost, and potentially adjust.

Personally, I'm pretty happy that I can follow my favorite restaurants and they tell me what today's specials are, or I can follow my neighborhood bar and they tell me when they change a keg. If that's the future of advertising, I'm happy to have it.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure early TV viewers found benefit in advertisements, too. At least some did, no doubt. The Ad industry itself wants consumers to regard their works as "information".

They've found a new vehicle in Twitter -- a tap into a new generation of consumers. They've done it well, for their consumers are actually defensive of their advertisements by virtue of the fact that the Ad is served up via new technology. (i.e. Because it's personal it's more legit? welcome?)

They've surely found the sweet spot of technology and their consumers. Genius.

<comment><USER5> You've completely ignored my points. I don't care that the ads are served by a new technology. I care that I have complete control over who I am receiving communications from and when I view those communications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article

"Is it a communications utility a la Facebook or is it a media company?"

IMHO It's neither. It's an asynchronous ecosystem that connect people based on affinity rather than friendship.

<comment><USER7> Bingo,

Facebook is about friends (and casual games). Twitter is about strangers. Who you might want as friends or at least have some common interest even if only temporarily such as both you looking for SXSW after parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you look at the Y scale of their graph, It should be clear that the middle mass of tweeters are spammers. The lowest hashmark on their scale is 200,000 tweets.

[http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2010/03/twittering- dis...](http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2010/03/twittering- distribution.png)

200,000 tweets would be roughly 5 tweets every hour since Twitter was created. There is a mass of such spammers in the 1,000 followers range because 1,000 seems to be the order of magnitude that accounts can get to by semi-automated following and unfollowing.

</comment><comment><USER9> 26% producer/74% consumer is more than the 10%/90% I expected. Not everyone has something interesting to say and that's all right. I don't really want more people tweeting what they have for lunch.

<comment><USER10> 26% aren't necessarily producing though it could be under 10% and the others just tried it for a day or a week and saw no use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You'll see the same kind of ratio for almost any forum or website that people sign up for. I've been on a number of forums on which the median number of posts is one, and they're pretty lively, so this statistic doesn't mean much to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not to mention ~ 1000 following, when I can't even follow tweats from ~ 25 people.

</comment><comment> anon-e-moose Most people just use Facebook to do what they might with a Twitter account. I would say comments, likes, and above all it being built into something that they already have is what gets people to actually use it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Twitter is a newsletter reader.

That's how I use it, I don't have anything to say(and would most likely use my blog if I had to post something) but I'm following artists/companies to keep up with their news.

</comment><comment><USER14> The main reason I signed up for Twitter was to grab my name before anyone else could, in case Twitter really takes off and becomes crucial for day-to-day life. For personal branding, in other words.

I would guess that I've sent less than 5 tweets since I've been on there. That hasn't kept a bunch of people from following me, although I don't know 90% of my followers and the other 10% are mostly ex-girlfriends and people I knew in high school.

</comment><comment><USER15> And how much of that 74% even uses Twitter at all? I can't believe they completely ignore that aspect of it since it renders the statistic completely meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER16> This isn't surprising - what percentage of Wikipedia users actually contribute to Wikipedia? Probably less than 10%. What percentage of users actually comment on Hacker News? Probably not very high (I don't know, though).

You don't need all your users to be active to have a useful or viable product.

Facebook is an edge case - they have a huge percentage of active users.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have heard this so many times from my non-tech friends:

"Your friend just took a crap & tweeted about it? Power to you"

"The popularity of twitter is testament to the stupidity of the human race"

I personally never tweet. I only follow popular people to hear what they say, news sites, local businesses, etc. I don't really know why anyone follows me.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm 19 and from New Zealand. I've never heard anyone my age rave about twitter. There doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to use it when we already have facebook. It is hard to understand why you would want to follow random strangers.

<comment><USER19> Few years ago, my cousins in India would tell me the same thing about facebook: _hey we have orkut why would we need something else?_

Fast-forward now, and they are all gung-ho over facebook. Not sure if Twitter is on the same trajectory but your line of argument("we already have x, why need y?") is very weak going by history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Pareto principle should apply to Twitter, as it does to many other things.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle>

</comment><comment><USER21> I bet less than 10% twitter users tweet at least once a day.

</comment><comment><USER22> The problem with Twitter is that they ALWAYS LOG YOU OUT.

ALL THE DAMN TIME!

What the HELL Twitter? I'd tweet a LOT more often if I didn't have to keep freaking logging in. GEEZ.

<comment><USER23> Check the "remember me" checkbox when logging in. Otherwise, yeah, your session cookie is deleted when you close the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Fewer

</comment><comment><USER25> oops, i first read this as "have 10 feet or less" ... yeah, probably even more than 74% :)</comment>


Approval for Hotel Covered in Plants - <AUTHOR> https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/01/29/approval-for-hotel-covered-in-plants/ <comment><USER2> Also see The ParkRoyal on Pickering in Singapore. [https://wp.architecture.com.au/international/award-for- comme...](https://wp.architecture.com.au/international/award-for-commercial- architecture-parkroyal-on-pickering-singapore-by-woha/)

Today the plants along the edge have grown and hang off the balconies, and I think it looks even better: [https://www.businessinsider.sg/parkroyal-on- pickering-just-g...](https://www.businessinsider.sg/parkroyal-on-pickering- just-got-crowned-the-worlds-best-green-hotel-heres-the-other-singaporean- brands-travellers-loved-in-2018/)

The climate in singapore is probably more conducive to lush foliage than London.

<comment><USER3> A stylistically different example is One Central Park in Sydney [1], which appears to still be going strong. Although I don't know what the maintenance for it is like.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Central_Park#Vertical_hang...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Central_Park#Vertical_hanging_gardens)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> The developer claims the wall – made up of a mix of plants – will generate seven tonnes of oxygen in a year and extract nine tonnes of C02 annually among other benefits_

So the plants in the wall get bigger and heavier each year? Presumably there's a limit, structurally as well as visually. I'm no expert, but I believe 9 tonnes of CO2 means an extra 2.5 tonnes of carbon every year.

<comment><USER5> The wall is close to 200m long and 40m tall. If it were made of 4000 cubic meters of concrete, it might weigh 10,000 tons, and the whole building might weigh 4 times that amount. 2.5 tons is a rounding error!

Unfortunately, the chemistry and energy use to make a cubic meter of concrete releases about a third of a ton of CO2. So this building, implemented in concrete, would extract 9 tons of CO2 annually and take more than 1,000 tons of CO2 to pour.

Edit: I now see that the images (especially [1]) describe a more expensive steel-and-glass building. It will probably still include lots of concrete, but 2.5 tons across the whole building is not a big concern. (Not to mention they'll likely have to do some gardening occasionally).

[1]: [https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/wp- content/uploads/2019/10/...](https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/wp- content/uploads/2019/10/citiscape-house-05.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind that the 2.5 tonnes is carbon only, the mass of additional plant matter is likely more than double that given the water content and other elements. Additionally, it's not evenly distributed over the building, but cantilevered out.

That said, I agree with you that it's likely to be trimmed for aesthetic reasons well before it becomes a structural issue; which is why the annual carbon offset claimed is misleading - it assumes the biomass increases annually without intervention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I bet this will look awesome when it's finished... And then 5 years later, it will be half dead, and it'll be removed.

Really it's just a way to win approval for a building that otherwise would have been denied as being too ugly.

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me a lot of PARKROYAL on Pickering[0], a very cool-looking hotel in Singapore. It's probably much easier to pull off this look in a tropical rainforest climate, though.

[0] [https://www.archdaily.com/363164/parkroyal-on-pickering- woha...](https://www.archdaily.com/363164/parkroyal-on-pickering-woha-2)

<comment><USER8> London is basically a temperate rain forest.

<comment><USER9> For majority of the year, you're not wrong. Assuming you can have a forest of concrete.

[EDIT ADD] Yes London does have some parks, though you could look at those as Oxygen watering holes in relation to the local environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-i-l Great idea, but I hope they have provisioned for a lot of expensive care and maintenance to keep the living walls alive, otherwise they'll end up with a dead living wall like the one in Paradise Park in London[0].

[0] [https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/home/paradise-park- livin...](https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/home/paradise-park-living-wall- scrapped/8602801.article) or [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/the-living-wall- of-islington...](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/the-living-wall-of-islington- is-dead-6763418.html)

<comment><USER10> This isn't a small government run building where finding the right talent and money to fix a failed pump system is a big deal.

But it is at a much larger scale, even far more than the Singapore example others posted. So they better not cheap out on the watering and maintenance tech/budget.

<comment> m-i-l Yes, I'd imagine a hotel in central London would also have more incentive to keep it going. Maybe in the past 10 years the technology and/or understanding has improved too.

There's a much smaller scale one on a private residence that I pass most days that the owner (or new owner) has given up on though. There's something very sad about it, like it symbolises lofty dreams for a greener future that have withered and died.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like the idea here but man I hope the system is well thought out / proven. Maintaining plants can be a bit of a chore as it is when they're vertical on the ground in the earth.

This seems like it would be pretty complex to get just right and repairs and etc would be a lot of work.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Fully open to the public

Probably end up like the top floor of the walkie talkie. It's free to visit, but you need to book a ticket for a specific time well in advance (if you're visiting London it's a better visit than the Shard though, in all honesty).

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm enamored by the aesthetics of it but it really leaves me quite curious as to the practical considerations of doing it or what might prevent it from being done more often.

<comment><USER14> Do you have houseplants?

Keeping plants alive requires labour and water. Labour is expensive. Water needs to be kept carefully contained, unless you want it to destroy your building.

<comment><USER15> It's easy if you select the right houseplants. Most of my houseplants don't require a lot of water. I have a sunroom with cactuses that I give occasional drinks in the winter, and then every 2-3 weeks in the summer I drag the hose in and soak the pot. Doesn't take much time at all.

IMO, they will probably choose the plants carefully and set up an automatic watering system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One small thing it seems people forget...

Plants can rip concrete apart like nothing.

So how are they going to ensure the plants themselves do not compromise the integrity of the building structure after some point and time?

Having done restoration work on old abandoned warehouses, I doubt they thought this cunning plan through all the way. Roots like to find a crack filled with any kind of moisture, and then keep digging.

</comment><comment><USER17> First thought I had - how effective it can be cooling the street down.

Reminds the water walls they use to cool air down.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know if there are any plans for more buildings to be done like this? This looks like a really great way forward!

<comment><USER19> It probably would be much more efficient if the guests would simply refrain from travelling to London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> OP is about a hotel that has planters on its walls so that exterior walls are covered in plants. People approve of this hotel. It is not that ratings on a website are overwhelmed by fake raters established in positions where they can spoof the system.</comment>


Watching the sun set from the surface of Mars - <AUTHOR> http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140302.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I came across this picture a couple of years back, and just viewed it again. Imagine. This is actually the sun setting, seen from another planet.</comment>