SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years - <AUTHOR> https://flaviocopes.com/blog-seo/ <comment><USER2> There are no specific stats in this article about what exactly we mean by SEO and traffic. What do you want to do with 1m visitors per month? Make money from them or sit back happy that people read your content? Run a business, or a blog? What is the end goal here, have a well read blog with no specific niche/topic? In that case SEO probably can be organic.

But if you are a business dependent on some google traffic for your business, and your competitors are optimising for keywords and building links, you are probably going to have a super hard time winning. It's not impossible, but you have to a magnificent job just concentrating on content to beat out your competition.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that the content of the blog is developer focused.

How would his techniques perform if he were writing about consumer goods such as quadcopters or coffee makers?

<comment><USER4> Not sure about consumer goods such as coffee makers but a lot of small businesses try blogging as an seo tactic and give up very quickly when they don't see instant results.

Aside from this, lack of focus and an unwillingness to give away free advice are another two common mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "If you write about your passion, you will never lose enthusiasm because you are creating a little corner of the internet that's yours, you made it, you made it beautiful, and now it's also available for everyone else, but even if no one shows up, it stands on its own."

One of the most inspirational statements I have seen in a while.

<comment><USER6> Very well put. This is the factor that separates good websites that feature writing with personality, from "content marketing" style articles.

The latter is why surfing the web feels like such a chore today. All the top ranking search results these days are from corporate websites who have no interest in providing useful information beyond the bare minimum they need to put out before trying to sell you something. They all write keyword-optimized articles of a certain length (like those recipe websites).

The titles of these posts reek of SEO thirst, and read like a giant pile of text that a bot threw together.

"Complete Beginner's Guide to Dropshipping in 2020"

"Ultimate Masterclass to Building Lean Muscle in 2020"

"A Curated List of Resources for Email Marketing in 2020"

Blech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I blog (for pleasure) and can confirm everything in this article.

The only posts of mine that continue to get hits are advice on C++ and Python coding, while my lovingly crafted hot takes on Star Wars and whatever book I read last week are generally ignored.

I don't care. You write what you want to write, I'll write what I want to write. The important thing is to write something.

</comment><comment><USER8> SEO trick number 6: get on Hacker News

<comment><USER9> Title is a bit 2 clickbait 4 me.

[edit] Oh, they declickbaited it on HN, removing the digits. That's nice.

<comment><USER10> Yup. I never waste time on summary blog posts, X things blablabla.

<comment><USER11> I agree, I never click on such clickbaits. Judging from the comments, it was (yet again) a good decision..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Most of the time you will see people talking about keywords, and keywords > tools.

> We like tools, so we start using them, spending days to get the maximum > value out of the free ones, spending a lot of time.

> Right? Wrong.

> I have a confession to make: I never used a keyword tool. I do not currently > use one, and I find that just thinking about it bores me.

I don't use keyword tools myself but I do think on-page/technical SEO is important. You're not going to rank well on Google with perfect on-page SEO + awful content but if you've got well written content then good on-page SEO can only help. On-page SEO helps Google understand the content better.

I have my own project/tool that checks technical SEO [1] where I've intentionally stayed away from adding any checks/recommendations that aren't backed up by something Google says. I avoid any advice that's based on trying to reverse engineer however Google search works today that could change tomorrow.

For example, I recommend every site is checked for broken links (it's easy to miss broken internal links as you make changes), badly named URLs, missing image ALT tags and duplicate pages+titles (this one is really ease to miss without a crawling tool). You can still rank well even if your site has these problems but SEO fixes like these can only help. Obviously you need to prioritise fixes against time you could spend writing more content but there's a lot of low hanging fruit with on-page SEO.

[1] Rules checked are here [https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/](https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/)

<comment><USER13> > duplicate content

On the same website or across the web (or a network) ?

edit: ah, from the page you linked

> Every page should provide unique content that doesn't appear elsewhere on > the site. Search engines will penalise or even completely hide pages that > are too similar as showing duplicate search results is unhelpful to users. > Duplicate pages can also reduce the search rank benefit of backlinks because > it's better to have backlinks to a single URL compared to backlinks spread > over a set of duplicate page URLs. Crawling duplicates will also use up the > resources search crawlers allocate to crawling your site which means > important pages might not be indexed. You can eliminate sets of duplicate > pages by consolidating them to a single URL using redirects or canonical > tags.

<comment><USER12> The guide from [https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/](https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/) is focused on technical/on-page SEO but Google makes some mentions of how it treats duplicate content across the web here:

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en)

> Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within > or across domains that either completely match other content or are > appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin. ...

> Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This > filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a "regular" and > "printer" version of each article, and neither of these is blocked with a > noindex meta tag, we'll choose one of them to list.

> In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be > shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll > also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites > involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the last couple months my mental-model of SEO has evolved. Traditionally SEO tends to be defined by things like kwyword density, proper heading tags, page load speed, etc. I don't dispute those, but the perspective is misguided.

Ultimately, someone comes to a search engine with a need. The search engine's top priority is to satisfy that need. That's the relationship that matters to the search engine. That's the customer. Supplying you visits is not what the search engine cares about. Your source site is a means. It's not the ends.

Your website page rank, and such are effectively irrelevant. The priority isn't you. It's the asker. They have the need. They need to be happiest.

Yes. Of course. There are things you can do help the search engine help others. The key to maximum effectiveness is to understand your role and your place in the process.

<comment><USER15> Hi, you are on the right track, I wrote a whole book around it. [https://gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker- news](https://gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker-news)

It never was about all that onpage stuff, it always was about the User <> Google <> Website triangle.

<comment><USER16> Parent is too circumspect to admit that the book is very, very well written, beautifully designed, and free to HN users. No relation to author, just followed link.

<comment><USER17> I've read it and it's a good book. However, I'd like to take the opportunity to point out to the author that there's an English error on the landing page linked above. It should be "Info" not "Infos" since it's not a countable noun.

<comment><USER15> thx, fixed it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This essentially comes down to quantity vs quality. Keyword research, link building etc. helps you optimize for your time. You can achieve the same traffic from fewer posts. Otherwise you have to keep churning out posts and make up for it in terms of long tail traffic.

</comment><comment><USER19> In other words, he's basically just saying that if you write enough good content, people will come, SEO be damned. That's certainly one approach to things sure, but I'd be hesitant to say it's one that'd work in most cases.

Doing what he says is fine and dandy if you've got little to no competition and are operating the site on a purely 'eh if anyone visits that's nice' basis, but it's likely a sure fire way to fail if other people are doing all the other stuff and writing content as good as yours.

Also, some stats would definitely be nice to see here. The number of Twitter and YouTube followers show a creator/site that's moderately popular and getting more so as time goes on, but they don't exactly suggest millions of visitors or tons of number 1 rankings or what not. So some stats would help clear things up there.

</comment><comment><USER20> One blog post per day? That's crazy. How do you come up with so much content?

Here I am, wanting to start a blog for months already but not having any ideas on what to write about. lol.

<comment><USER21> Good question; I went and took about what he wrote about this month and I thin I found the answer: he doesn't write about ground breaking ideas <i>every</i> day. Usually, just little tricks he knows or code snippets he's written that might be useful. Two days he just lists printable vs non printable ASCII characters.

So, posting regularly appears less about creating the perfect ideas to blog about and more about just posting something, even if its only an ASCII chart.

Try an ASCII chart; it might make a good initial blog post!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I found flaviocopes searching how to pass additional parameters to a partial in Hugo. Worked on me

</comment><comment><USER23> SEO is an effort made by people to get in front without really offering much. If they'd be oriented on quality more, maybe their success would come more.

<comment><USER24> Google has gotten very good at weeding out the hacks and tricks that black hat SEOs use (PBNs, spammy links, generated content, keyword stuffing etc.)

These days the most consistent way to get lots of traffic is to provide lots of value and help people.

Google can measure whether people bounce and keep clicking around for better answers to their queries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm actually surprised that many people read blogs still.

I used to spend a lot of time reading a long list of blogs I enjoyed, but I never really got over Google Reader being killed off.

I tried a number of other RSS readers and aggregators, but nothing ever felt as immersive as Google Reader and I lost touch.

The only time I end up on blogs now is a result of a link here, Redit or Twitter, or from an occasional organic search result.

<comment><USER26> I found NewsBlur quite ok. Have you tried it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> He doesn't show any statistics from his own blog to back his theories up.

I don't know, I don't think these are any valuable SEO lessons imo. The tl;dr of this post is "I find SEO optimization boring so I just write whatever I want and don't think about it".

There is nothing wrong with that statement except that it isn't a SEO lesson. Sure quality over quantity is a good SEO lesson. To provide stuff of value is good for SEO but that goes without saying.

SEO is about optimizing your content and the value you already bring. If you load the whole blog async for example, it won't be very good for SEO no matter how good or helpful the content it.

<comment><USER28> The article is also very survivorship-bias-y. His blog happened to do fine without him doing any SEO, but that doesn't mean all SEO is pointless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> 1M views per month is a lot. Hey Flavio are you monetizing it in any way?

<comment><USER30> He seems to be using CarbonAds.

<comment><USER29> Woops I had my ad blocker on...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> He missed the number one rule to get more views, which is to write about topics with a broad audience.

From my own experience, a good piece on docker or javascript and that will be tens of thousands of visitors instantly from reddit and HN.

Whereas a good piece on some obscure technology and that will be a handful of visitors per day, which is truly everybody in the world who cares about that thing.

<comment><USER19> This is a double edged sword. On the one hand, you're right, a more mainstream topic does have a larger potential audience, and if your topic is one few people care about, you're probably gonna get a lot less traffic compared to one with a broader audience.

At the same time however, the broader the audience, the harder it usually is compete and make a name for yourself in a niche. There are hundreds if not thousands of people and sites writing about JavaScript frameworks, Docker, etc, and your work will likely get a lot less attention than theirs will. So while the potential audience is there, the likelihood of you getting said audience is extremely low.

It's like on YouTube with popular games. Sure, a lot of people might watch videos about Minecraft or Fortnite or whatever the kids play nowadays, but there are also thousands of other people also making videos about them, and yours can easily get buried in the avalanche of results there. Hence unless you've already got a one in a million advantage (like real world fame), it's very hard to compete.

Focusing on something less popular can help you build a smaller but more focused audience, and you do pretty well off being 'that one guy' who covers said obscure topic. You can then maybe branch out and gradually use your popularity in said smaller field as the jumping off point for popularity in the larger one.

<comment><USER31> Blog articles are not competitive, the pie is simply bigger for everyone on the more popular subjects .

If you look at HN, you will see articles about javascript popping up almost every day. They all get tens of thousands of views, they're not competing for readership.

If you're considering a niche subject instead, the article would not get enough upvotes to reach the frontpage, and it wouldn't get any views at all. There might be hundreds of people aware of that topic (and thousands who would be curious enough to read if it were front page) but it doesn't have enough audience to reach a critical mass of upvotes, so it simply doesn't exist.

P.S. The Youtube comparison is misplaced IMO. Writing books (blog articles) is trivial in comparison to making Hollywood videos (Youtube).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This always puzzle me about SEO. Let's say you are writing an article that you want to cover in-depth. Which one is better for SEO (both options has the same content): A. Publish all in one long article B. Publish in a series of small articles

<comment><USER33> C. Publish in a series of small articles and give up after the second one, leaving it incomplete forever

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well, now I feel inspired to get back to writing in my blog. I shall.

</comment><comment><USER35> any idea about monthly unique visitors ...?? daily posting one of the best seo tricks, which i learned form Matt Cutts

</comment><comment><USER29> TLDR: content is king

</comment><comment><USER36> tldr; Don't try to fool google. It take genuine efforts with quality of your content to be on top of SEO.

<comment><USER37> Given the quality of the search results I've seen recently, I feel like Google has made the ranking almost random... it's only within the past few years that I've had a lot more of "I'm pretty sure there's more information on this out there, but Google isn't showing it ot me" experiences.

<comment><USER38> I've had that feeling too, but I wonder if it's because the good old Internet of enthusiasts enthusiastically posting about the things that enthuse them has given way to the faceless content farms to such an extent that even Google isn't able to filter the signal out from the noise. I.e., I wonder if it is not so much their fault for being less good than they used to be as it is their fault for not being so much _better_ than they used to be.

<comment><USER39> The end users have changed from enthusiasts who want detail to average people who want to get caught up on a subject quickly. It seems to be two fold and I think google have just given up trying to filter signal to noise and just promote conglomerates that it sees as authoritative.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'We can't keep producing records if you keep not paying for them' - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/we-cant-keep-producing-records-if-you-keep-not-paying-for-them-fight-like-apes-spell-out-musics-new-reality-35207558.html <comment><USER2> Swings and Roundabouts.

On the other side of the coin:

I'm an old-timer who remembers trying to get somewhere as a band back in the 1980s: Endless pub gigs, trying to get noticed. Endless posting cassette tapes out to music magazines, hoping to get a review. All the effort required, just to try and gain a small local following.

Nowadays, armed with little more than a smartphone or a laptop, you can have your music and videos made instantly available to a global audience, with practically zero cost involved.

I can't help but fall back on the time-honoured older generation put down: "Kids today. You don't know you're born!"

Final thought:

Isn't being in a band supposed to be about the creative urge, the love of music, anyway? If you're giving it up because you're not earning enough, then you're treating it as a commercial venture. In which case, the market has spoken and they obviously don't like your product enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> And yet records are being produced in greater quantities than ever, and usable recording quality in 2016 is trivially cheap.

Your problem is competition. [http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not- about-aesthe...](http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about- aesthetics-punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/)

(I fully concur that it sucks; the new world is great for culture, not so great for aesthetics and crappy for professional musicians. Unfortunately, the record industry is funded entirely from people's _discretionary_ income, and times are tough and attitudes are hard. So the first thing is to get the population feeling more economically secure and increase consumer confidence.)</comment>


Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio Frequency Cavity in Vacuum - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7kgKijo-p0ibm94VUY0TVktQlU/view <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883616](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883616)

Also, title is editorialized.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's odd how the first thing that pops up on google is a 2-month old reddit post with the exact same title as the paper, linking to some NASA community forum talking about a paper being published - but the title is not actually mentioned on the NASA forum.

Even better is how the subreddit in question is very active, lots of posts, plenty of comments and replies - except every one of them is by the same user..

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics_AWT/comments/4ztoqq/measure...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics_AWT/comments/4ztoqq/measurement_of_impulsive_thrust_from_a_closed/)

<comment><USER4> What is that guy doing? Perhaps some sort of SEO exploitation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A cube sat is planned to be tested in space with the EM drive: [http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a22678/em- dri...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a22678/em-drive-cannae- cubesat-reactionless/)

... and apparently the US and China are already testing a couple of them in space: [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/space-race-revealed-us-china- test-f...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/space-race-revealed-us-china-test- futuristic-emdrive-tiangong-2-mysterious-x-37b-plane-1590289)

</comment><comment><USER6> So this paper was paper was reported to have passed peer review, back in August[0].

On a tangental note, I've been seeing people toss around the world "leaked" when nothing of the sort is happening. Most egregiously when its a FOIA request.

[0] [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-nasa-eagleworks-paper- has-f...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-nasa-eagleworks-paper-has-finally- passed-peer-review-says-scientist-know-1578716)

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe this is the correct link for this paper the last time it showed up on Hacker News.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12396595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12396595)

Nothing new here I believe.</comment>


2020 Stock Market Crash - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_stock_market_crash <comment><USER2> To what extent should an encyclopedia be affected by real time events?

Coronavirus related edits have skyrocketed on Wikipedia on many articles.

Articles already keep getting longer and without trying to be inflammatory here's an example that came to mind [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender&type=revis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender&type=revision&diff=945461516&oldid=685332)

Secondly what was supposed to be an objective repository of knowledge suddenly is increasingly at the whim of the narrative in mainstream media. Ministry of truth and global herd mentality.

Just some thoughts. Wondering if someone is already studying these questions. Can anyone recommend?</comment>


Xkcd: Airfoil - So what's the right explanation? - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/803/ <comment><USER3> Well, actually the Bernouilli effect has its part, and so has the Coanda effect; however most of these explanation concentrate on an artificial setup, without taking in to account the actual angle that the wing makes with the air stream. When you learn to fly, you're first told that the angle of attack is the most important parameter to get lift. See the wikipedia page : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_attack>

The Bernouilli and Coanda effects, in most flight configurations are of relatively minor importance, except on some particular aircrafts.

<comment><USER4> Consider a steep angle of attack on takeoff. The lower side of the airfoil is more exposed to the onrush of air, and clearly this pushes the airfoil upwards. But the significance of the Coanda effect is that the air also wraps around the top of the airfoil, adhering to the surface, so that it too exits downward. If it didn't adhere to the surface (which happens in a stall) then you would lose all the downward force of that half of the airflow.

<comment><USER5> Downward force on a wing _reduces_ lift.

A laminar flow over a wing can maintain a lower pressure above the wing than a chaotic flow. The best simple way to think about this is pooring water from a 2 liter bottle. As you tip it over the pressure of the air inside the bottle decreases and new air is pushed into the bottle filling the partial vacume. However, if you tip it to far you get chaotic behavior and the average pressure increases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a private pilot and Cessna 182 owner I can say, with absolute authority, you're all wrong.

Planes don't fly because of the Bernouilli Effect, or the Coanda Effect, or angle attack, or any of these other technical explanations.

Planes fly because of money. As soon as you stop throwing money at them, they stop flying.

Ask any plane owner and I think they'll agree.

<comment><USER7> Student pilot here, this man speaks the truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "It's complicated" actually kind of describes it. From the NASA website: "The real details of how an object generates lift are very complex and do not lend themselves to simplification...To truly understand the details of the generation of lift, one has to have a good working knowledge of the Euler Equations." - <http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/bernnew.html>

That said, I like this handling of it: <http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#wing>

</comment><comment><USER9> I have seen many examples of this incorrect explanation in textbooks and posters. It boggles the mind how it has survived for so long. I actually shockingly saw the same incorrect explanation in one episode of NOVA (yes it has gone downhill).

The biggest problem with this diagram is that the air leaving the wing is horizontal, which is (a) wrong and (b) really screws up a kid's understanding of Newton's laws. If the diagram correctly showed the air being forced down by the wing, then a kid could figure out that the wing creates a downward force on the air and the air creates an equal and opposite upward force on the wing.

<comment><USER10> It seems to me it's you who got things wrong. Explanation about wing forcing air down is very VERY wrong.

<comment><USER9> How so? The wing has to exert a downward force on something if it wants to go up? If not air then what ?

<comment><USER10> the lift comes from pressure differential between "top" and "bottom" surface of the wing - that's the definition used by professionals in the field.

Here's why definition about deflection of the air is generally not accepted: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force)#Criticisms_of_defl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_\(force\)#Criticisms_of_deflection.2Fturning)

<comment><USER9> The link you provided does not support what you are saying. The link you provided actually agrees with me saying that the theory about air being deflected down is correct. It merely says that while correct, this explanation is not rigorous enough to do engineering. Which is totally right. But I was not trying to do any engineering, I was trying to provide a simple explanation about how a wing works and how that relates to Newton's third law of motion.

<comment><USER10> I'm glad that you found yourself vindicated and will refrain from interfering with your righteousness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Coanda effect. Here's Jef Raskin's essay explaining it: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070928072421/http://jef.raskinc...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070928072421/http://jef.raskincenter.org/published/coanda_effect.html)

<comment><USER9> This cannot be the Coanada effect because the airflow leaving the wing is completely horizontal. If the Coanada effect was present the air travelling over the top surface of the wing would leave the wing at a downwards angle and that would cause lift.

<comment><USER12> If you want to satisfactorily explain this to a school kid, it seems like the two most significant factors are a) the angle of attack during take-off - <USER2> packing the air under the wing while creating a vacuum above it and b) the curvature taking over the job of "vacuum creation" during steady flight.

A flat-wing plane with its wings slicing the air won't have any lift in steady flight. The only way for such a wing to get lift is to use some angle of attack.

The lift on a curved wing is enough to support its weight when flying fast, but too subtle to literally lift the plane way up starting from lower speeds as on the ground.

Does that about capture the essence of it?

Invoking the Coanda effect seems somewhat unnecessary. For example, if you have a wing fitted with zillions of tiny holes through which a small amount of air is being constantly ejected (to counteract the Coanda effect), it still seems (in my mind) possible for the wing to get lift using the angle of attack and curvature.

<comment><USER12> .. and that upside down flight needs flaps on the wings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just read the Wikipedia page on Lift: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force)>

<comment><USER14> From that page, I now know that the mistake shown in the xkcd comic is called the "Equal Transit-Time Fallacy". There is no requirement for an airflow, once separated, to speed over the top of the wing to match the airflow underneath. In fact the top-layer airflow moves faster than the bottom layer, and arrives at the trailing edge sooner.

<comment><USER15> ..and that's _precisely_ the revelation that made me realise that all of my previous physics teachers had been lying to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Fly With Me podcast had a great episode where they tried to get to the bottom of how a wing really generates lift.

<http://joepodcaster.libsyn.com/fly-with-me-episode-25>

The host is an airline pilot and he brought in a science podcaster to help him interview a professor of aeronautical engineering. Things went pretty smoothly until the professor started talking about in ring integrals and circular flows of air around the entire wing forcing the interviewers to give up and say "Look, it's really complicated." They put the whole unedited explanation at the end of the podcast for anyone crazy enough to listen to it. :)

The bottom line was that there are 3 things going on at the same time, Bernouilli, Newtonian action/reaction, and the Conada effect (I think, this is where he started talking about ring integrals and blowing everyone's minds). The problem is that even the experts can't say which of those is the principle reason for lift, and which ones are actually side effects from the "real reason." Fortunately the math doesn't care and works anyway, so they can still design and model airfoils very well.

<comment><USER16> Hilarious! This is the usual problem with rigorous physics/engineering: we don't understand it ourselves, and rather than being honest about it, we quote math at you. It's like doctors in 1700 falling back to Latin in order to hide their embarrassing ignorance from the public. In reality, "If you can't explain it to your grandmother, then you don't understand it yourself." (A. Einstein.)

Similarly, if you asked me some eletronics questions about a piece of complicated circuitry that I didn't understand, I could baffle you with BS. It's simple, I just pull out the equations from the SPICE component models. (As if owning the printout of the software can tell us anything about the behavior of the simulated circuit!!)

So, whenever you see an expert pull this crap, give them the above Einstein quote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, if you're willing to accept that a wing–as described–produces lift in it's 'natural' upward direction (see other replies for some links as this step is a bit complicated), then there's only one way a plane can fly upside down. That reason is that it can also create lift opposite that direction.

Wings are not static. Wings either use flaps or some mechanism that causes them to bend that alters how much lift they produce at a given speed, angle of attack, etc.. The thing is that the reference frame you choose is important.

If you have 0 lift, you're in free fall…a phenomenon that a lot of planes can do. If you can push whatever that distortion in wing shape (flaps or bending) a bit farther, then you can dive faster than freefall, that is producing lift in the downward direction.

Now, just turn the plane upside down and do the same thing.

The freakier thing is that helicopters can theoretically fly upside-down. Same thing: if they can drop faster than free fall, they can fly upside down. The catch is that it's a VERY unstable equilibrium that is a huge stress on basically all of the parts of the motor, steering mechanism, structure, etc..

Or, it's because your parents' are Santa Claus. That's really equivalent.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are microscopic pixies that hold onto the wing and beat their little wings really fast.

</comment><comment><USER19> Here is a good (and long) overview from the NASA with wind tunnel simulator Java applets: <http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/right2.html>

</comment><comment><USER20> Mary Shafer explained it best many years ago:

[http://groups.google.com/group/sci.aeronautics/browse_thread...](http://groups.google.com/group/sci.aeronautics/browse_thread/thread/7716ab8ce98106de/f9588208eadf6bb4)

It's lift demons.

</comment><comment> alan-crowe Isn't is basically the same deal as with a rocket, except that instead of the reaction mass being in a tank, the airplane takes the air in front of it and bats in downwards with the wing?

<comment><USER21> I think that's angle of attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Science Misconceptions in Textbooks and Popular culture

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771101>

</comment><comment><USER23> <http://www.terrycolon.com/1features/fly.html>

It's basically the same mechanism as helicopters

</comment><comment><USER24> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UlsArvbTeo>

</comment><comment><USER25> More than anything doesn't it come down to the forcing of air downward results in lift upwards?

<comment><USER26> I believe so yes - all the other details are just about stability and performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> a plane can fly just fine upside-down for the same reason you can steer downwards while right-side up.

<comment><USER12> .. while correct, the question is "what is that reason?"</comment></comment>


An all-electrical magnetic logic gate that harnesses chirality between domains - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00635-y <comment><USER2> New personal goal: Find a way to casually use the word 'chirality' in everyday conversation.</comment>


Show HN: ExBERT – A Visual Tool to Explore Representations in Transformer Models - <AUTHOR> http://exbert.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Note: I am one of the authors of this work. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or feedback!</comment>


Helping my students overcome command-line bullshittery - <AUTHOR> http://www.pgbovine.net/command-line-bullshittery.htm

<comment><USER2> _" I strive to remove incidental complexity for my students, so that they can focus on the intrinsic complexity of their research."_

A worthy goal. I think, though, that calling out the fact that it's command line serves to distract more than illuminate - at least the reader and possibly the author. There are doubtless unnecessary steps between idea and code. However, shoving those in a graphical wizard doesn't make it any better.

</comment><comment><USER3> >students don't know how to use man pages >fix the programs not the students

ok pal.</comment>


Ask HN: What kind of hobby should I take? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I've been doing some self reflection lately and realised that I didn't really have any hobbies besides programming and writing code (which is also my way to make a living). As a result of this I spend most of my time on the computer either writing code or scanning HN almost mechanically so I was wondering what you guys do to take a break from all the "nerdiness"
Cheers <comment><USER2> Definitely something to keep in shape. Weight lifting, cycling, swimming, football, martial arts, running or any physical activity or sports really.

Any of them (or any combination of those) would be a great hobby. It will help you become healthier and balance out health risks from your job which requires you to sit in front of a computer most of the day.

</comment><comment><USER3> Serious strength training (ie the starting strength routine)

\+ Scientifically proven to be good for your brain \+ Quantifiable progress every time you workout \+ Relatively low cost in terms of time and money

How is it that a middle aged person one can smoothly lift weights that 2 months prior would have been too heavy for them to lift even if their life depended on it?

It's not because they learned a neat trick or found some short cut. There can be nothing gained in knowledge or experience that can account for this. Muscle growth might be a factor but that takes a while.

The change that's occurred is at the level of the nervous system. In order for this to happen, chemicals and hormones were released to give new vitality to a system which was just going to rest and decay until death.

But here's the kicker, why would these changes stop at your motor neurons? Could it be that the rush of chemical activity doesn't just help change behavior of motor neurons, but also the neurons in your head?

Think about all the cognitive benefits associated with strength training exercise and you will see it's much more than a hobby to keep yourself busy.

Modern life is incredibly sedentary compared to what humans have evolved for and this problem is especially bad for programmers. Without pushing yourself physically, your mental fitness will decline too.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've taken up woodworking. Though I'm still remarkably terrible at it, it's nice to feel something material that I built. At first it was mentally exhausting but still rewarding, and as I'm getting more used to the various tools, the mental load is relaxing a bit. It does, however, require at least a little bit of space where one can handle producing a bit of sawdust.

</comment><comment><USER5> A lot of good suggestions. I personally do as much physical stuff as possible because as programmer I get no workout.

But recently I have picked up a new hobby that I would say is fitness for brain. It is listening to music with mindfulness. Not as a critic.

When listening music, I actively pay attention to each note and word. This usually lead me into trance sort of state. It might be ASMR, Frisson, or a meditative trance. The thing is after actively listening to music, I feel relaxed and energized. I know our community is big on meditation but I could never sit still long enough when meditating on breath. Listening to music may not be same but I feel like it gives me a lot of benefits that people claim about meditation.

Another thing is you can listen to music anywhere. I listen to music 1\. in backyard while drinking beer, 2\. in family room, while everyone is doing their thing, 3\. in plane, of course 4\. bathing in tub (without headphones though).

Lastly, the music I listen to is sort of chill like Lana Del Ray.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's still 'nerdiness' \- but I recommend learning about basic circuits and radio if you haven't already. SDR is cheap and fun, and so is soldering together radio transmitters, logic gates, fixing retro electronics, going as low level as you can.

Another complementary hobby to electronics is 3d printing+CAD skills. It changed my thinking process permanently. It can give you an 'anything is possible' mindset, it's a rush.

I've also been having a great time starting a container garden and growing exotic plants like this soviet melon [http://www.rareseeds.com/rich- sweetness-132-melon/](http://www.rareseeds.com/rich-sweetness-132-melon/)

<comment><USER7> I've been into SFF PCs and computing for a while and, being disappointed by a lot of small cases in the market, have taken to learning how to build my own case.

There is actually a lot of this going on in the niche, with some custom cases even progressing from one-offs to a limited production run so it can be a fun little business if you put the time into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suggest that you consider birdwatchng because you don't need any equipment to be a birder. Sure, binoculars help, but they aren't actually necessary. I had been birding without binos for about 5 years till my husband gaved me ATN binos ([https://www.atncorp.com/smart-hd- binocular](https://www.atncorp.com/smart-hd-binocular)) as gift for our 7 wedding anniversary.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a fellow programmer, I'd saying dancing is good physical without seeming like it, if you find the right place it can be really social and you mix with the non-nerds which is nice in breaking the geek-perspective (or back to reality). I've done ceroc/modern jive for years and found it to be friendlier than salsa (and with better music - not a salsa fan) and being a paired dance you mix with lots of people.

Otherwise bit of photography seems popular to combine some walky with your inner tech!

</comment><comment><USER10> If I were you I'd also consider learning a musical instrument, like guitar or piano, something you can get a good sound out of quickly. Violin is great, but it takes a good 3-6 months to stop sounding like garbage, which takes a lot of willpower to get through.

It's a pretty deep rabbit hole, that's as rewarding as the effort you put in. You can just play pop music covers and that's perfectly fine, or you can go full-tilt into theory and compose your own music.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> A lot of my hobbies are typically the opposite of that. Hobbies that I have to use my hands to create objects or things that get me outside and active.

</comment><comment><USER12> Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It's helped with my anxiety and I get so tired I sleep easily at night. Also, there are almost limitless amount of moves and positions to learn which is great for nerds. Also, we don't really get hit in the head like Muay thai so we don't' really have to worry about CTE head damage. It can be tough in the beginning but it's worth it.

<comment><USER13> BJJ is really cool, trying to get back as soon as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've found rock climbing to be a great hobby. It stimulates my mind (being able to figure out sequences and route reading), and is also very physical. It's a great balance, and a really great change of pace from sitting behind a desk. Plus, gyms are popping up everywhere these days.

</comment><comment><USER15> Climbing is a good one. It gets you out of the house, usually out of the city. It engages your mind just as much as your body, and sooner or later you get bored with the stuff nearby and leads you to travel for new climbs. There's also ice climbing in the winter.

<comment><USER16> Does this hobby depend on where you are located? I assume some people have better places to go than others, but I can't think of a single place near me to even try this (Ohio).

Also generally getting into this hobby alone seems hard.

<comment><USER14> See if there are any gyms near you! Also, the climbing community in general is very welcoming. I've met tons of really nice people by just hanging around the gym, and I'm not a particularly social person

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you are like me, who hates going to gym and doing monotonous weight lifting and other routines. Try any simple sport which needs not much preparations( hiking, swimming, gardening etc). I do swimming now.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm into geocaching. It is pretty damn nerdy still, but at least you are outdoors and you get lots of exercise. :) I like it because you earn points and there is a lot of stats to keep track of. Like a real life version of playing Skyrim. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> If you're only looking at mental hobbies (vs. going out and being active), I suggest learning a new natural language. It has countless benefits especially if you only speak one language at the time.

</comment><comment><USER20> hiking, going for walks, biking esp. to take a break during the work day.

Camping is a great weekend activity with friends and family.

Climbing as others have mentioned. Most metro areas have an indoor climbing gym where you can give it a go, meet people to go on outdoor climbs.

I spend lots of time in front of the screen programming too, even taking a walk a couple times per day helps you unplug and reflect on other things. Getting outside seems key for me.

More hobby related, I play guitar, enjoy building lego sets, getting out with family and friends.

Also looking forward to the NFL kicking off and fantasy football starting.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like to physically build/fix things and garden outside. Otherwise I like to make little synth things and circuit bend A/V stuff... I suppose you could do that outside :D

</comment><comment><USER22> Muay thai. Terrific shape. Never back down (from sparring). Nicer sparring compared to box,kickbox. Too many positives to write on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER23> Board games board games board games. Collect it play it design it make it wheeeeeeee!

</comment><comment><USER24> indoor soccer. i practice a lot to improve my skills and endurance. playing is a solid workout for 1 hr and you use a lot of quick muscle movements and need to think to plan plays on the fly. its a fast game.

</comment><comment><USER25> Mine are woodworking and exploring the sights, sounds and tastes of my city.

</comment><comment><USER26> Weightlifting is pretty fun

</comment><comment><USER27> Travel?</comment>


Show HN: GuruFoo.com – Vote on articles for developers and sysadmins - <AUTHOR> http://www.gurufoo.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! Submitter here. GuruFoo.com is a social news site focused on the developer, sysadmin, and general technology community. Our goal is to provide helpful, informative articles on a wide variety of software development and administration topics.

While we recognize there are lots of other social news sites -- Reddit, Hacker News, etc. -- we wanted to focus solely on topics that revolve around the technology community. You won't see articles on K-Means Clustering or Multithreaded Programming next to a link to cat videos. Tutorials, blog postings, and published articles on development, software engineering, emerging technology concepts, and the business of technology are all welcome!

This is our first foray into startup territory, and would love if you contributed to our site! GuruFoo.com is semi-curated, in that our staff is constantly adding new articles we've come across and found interesting. But, we can't do it all by ourselves. Create an account, publish your own links, and vote on links published by others! And -- most importantly -- give us ANY feedback you may have. We just went live, so we're anxious to hear anything and everything you may have to say about our site. Thanks again!</comment>


Apple at $1T: The Missing Theory - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/apple-at-1trillion-the-missing-theory-6f6e58db4786 <comment><USER2> _This is where we get into some intriguing comparisons. Microsoft's P /E is a solid 48 and Alphabet's hovers around 50…but Apple's is a meager 17. Caricaturing just a bit: "Apple still trades like a steel mill going out of business." In more sober words, investor actions say Microsoft's or Alphabet's future earnings per share are safer than Apple's, hence the premium they're willing to pay. With a P/E of 50, Apple's Market Cap would approach $3T…_

I am definitely a fan of Apple's products, but I don't see anything in the future that can make Apple's revenues grow at an above market rate.

I think Microsoft still has a lot of growth in Azure and could probably do more on professional services.

I'm also not bullish on Google. I can't see how relatively weak ad targeting has more growth opportunity than socials ability to target advertising better since users tell FB what thier interests are.

Amazon can still grow via both AWS and taking over larger chunks of retail.

<comment><USER3> > I don't see anything in the future that can make Apple's revenues grow at an > above market rate.

I think this comment illustrates why Apple's ratio is so low: because Apple's future growth depends on new products, and new product development is opaque.

Conversely, businesses like Azure and AWS (and Google Cloud presumably) are already well-understood and the growth story there is just straight scaling.

<comment><USER4> Not just new products, but creating entirely new product categories. Just having well-selling products (lie Apple tv, Apple Watch etc.) isn't enough to move the needle compared to the money faucet that is the iPhone. Apple is still growing nicely and the stock is priced like a mature, but still very healthy company, but it's going to be very difficult for Apple to achieve another "hit it out of the atmosphere" homerun that is necessary to outperform a 17 P/E ratio when you have a trillion dollar market cap already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Apple still trades like a steel mill going out of business."_

A P/E of 17 is appropriate for a healthy business.

From multpl.com 's historical record, ~1870-present:

S&P 500 PE Ratio Mean: 15.71 Median: 14.71

Back when AAPL was trading at a P/E of just above 10, I almost bought some, but hesitated because of its risk of exposure to the Chinese government's whims. I still have that concern.

It is incredible to see such a price swing with a market cap this large. 7/17ths of $1T is $412B!.

<comment><USER6> > _A P /E of 17 is appropriate for a healthy business_

I hate the P/E multiple. More robust is its inverse, the earnings yield. 17x is 5.9%; that's relatively high, in this market.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's right up there with miles per gallon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone who likes Apple is already over-exposed. There isn't mandate to buy more. For active players, pitching a fund with "I'll buy Apple for you" isn't compelling. Apple is thus cursed by its size both in allocation and attention. It's a scaling problem in our capital markets, with the only thing preventing a breakup being Apple's impeccable management.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's trading at low multiples for the simple reason that it's already the most valuable company in history and there are limits to how large a company can grow.

When you buy stock in companies with high multiples that's because you're dreaming that some day they'll be as large as apple.

<comment><USER3> I find the "just because it's big" argument uncompelling because Amazon has only a slightly smaller valuation on a _much_ higher multiple.

<comment><USER9> Amazon's objective is domination of all retail. Apple sells stuff with services.

Apple is a better business in every dimension, but the Wall St types love the promise of Amazon.

<comment><USER10> > Apple is a better business in every dimension

Depends on how you qualify 'better'. Amazon certainly has more room to expand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It doesn't look like Wall Street will change its mind on Apple drastically after all these years. Apple giving back to shareholders from its humongous cash pile could lift the stock price quite a bit, albeit only temporarily, if targets are increased. But there's a good safety net in that cash pile that could prove to be valuable during tough times.

</comment><comment><USER12> > This is where we get into some intriguing comparisons. Microsoft's P/E is a > solid 48 and Alphabet's hovers around 50…but Apple's is a meager 17.

There's a legitimate point there, clouded by the exaggeration. Apple is indeed fetching a lower multiple, because it has had very low growth for years. Microsoft knows all about that, just over five years ago their PE was around 12-13 - a reward for their years of slow growth and dimming prospects.

Investors are looking forward when they hand out multiples, not backwards. So let's look very slightly forward and ask: has much changed about Microsoft and Google's profitability, or are they likely to have 40-50 PE ratios two years from now as well?

Net income for Microsoft's most recent quarter was $8.9 billion. They've got some interesting things cooking in their business lines, producing that profit expansion. Who knows if they'll be able to annualize that rate near term, if they can it becomes a 23 PE ratio - and that's most certainly what investors are betting on, broadly speaking. Investors are not reacting to last year's profit, they're plotting the next year or few. Simply put, they like what they see.

How about Google? It's the same exact thing. Without the EU fine (investors are betting that's not an every quarter problem), they reported $11.75 per share in earnings for the most recent quarter. Annualized you're looking at a far more reasonable 26 PE ratio - and that's again exactly what investors are betting on going forward. Given a relatively small amount of time, 25% revenue growth plus their healthy margins, tends to deliver on the bottom line (even if fines or occasional big capex makes the quarter to quarter results messy).

Microsoft and Google are not cheap stocks, this market overall has produced elevated multiples for nearly everything (including Apple, which just two years ago was being given more like an 11 PE). They're also not nearly as crazy priced as the article suggests. Both companies are capable of hitting the $30b plus mark in annual earnings in the next year or two.

<comment><USER13> > This is where we get into some intriguing comparisons. Microsoft's P/E is a > solid 48 and Alphabet's hovers around 50…but Apple's is a meager 17.

>There's a legitimate point there, clouded by the exaggeration. Apple is indeed fetching a lower multiple, because it has had very low growth for years.

If you go back to 2009, Apple's PE was quite low and has stayed low ever since, despite Apple being in one of the largest revenue growth periods in it's history.

With net income going from 8.24 Billion Dollars in 2009 to 41.73 Billion Dollars in 2012, you would think a growth spike in a companies bottom line of that magnitude would result in a stock that trades at a pretty high PE ratio.

Oddly, it didn't, with Apple's PE ratio fluctuating in the teens and low 20's during that period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've wondered why Apple has been perpetually undervalued for many years and my theory is basically that the market has always viewed Apple against comps like Dell, HP, Nokia, Blackberry, etc. That is, a hardware company that is always at risk of being passed over by something that was cheaper (because hardware is allegedly a commodity).

Of course the reality is that Apple has a durable moat in being a platform company with differentiated products. I think what's changing now is that the growth of Services is basically forcing the market to realize this and the multiple is getting re-rated upward.

The book _The Outsiders_ profiled a number of CEOs and companies where good capital allocation enhanced total returns over time [1]. I'm pretty sure if it were revised there'd be a chapter about Tim Cook and Apple. Being able to buy back stock in size for 5 years now, without the market figuring Apple out, is kind of absurd. It might be the biggest transfer of wealth from sellers to shareholders of all time.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically- Ra...](https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Rational- Blueprint-ebook/dp/B009G1T74O)

</comment><comment><USER15> Humans are very bad with big numbers conceptually, especially when it is the first time to reach it with no historical precedence.

When iPhone first came out, many were even questioning if it will make Steve Jobs's goal of 1% market share, 10 Millon unit. I believe no one at the time forsee what sort of tectonic shift this is, not in real unit numbers, Steve knew it would change the world, but at what scale?

Since then the market had a hard time understanding Smartphone, Apps, and iPhone. How many more can it be sold? Remember after the first introduction of iPhone, Apple spent nearly the next 4 - 5 years, tuning their production and supply chain management. By iPhone 4s, they were close to 100M yearly iPhone sales, that is 10x more than their initial 1% target. And today Apple regularly hit the 200M+ unit every year.

Apple does not have a full range lineup for all price point to make volume. Apple are in the premium market, and having these kind of volume was unimaginable at the time, as it still is today. It wasn't until this year, that the 2017 iPhone Range ( iPhone 8 / 8 Plus / X ) made up of around 60% of Apple unit sold, in all previous cases, the latest iPhone range represent 70%+ of all unit.

It still remains hard to conceptually grasp the data today. 7.5B population on earth, ~5B Mobile Phone users, ~3.3B Smartphone users. There are together roughly 2.5B people in the age of 14 or below and 65 or above. Which means we have mostly reach the mobile market end curve. There remains 600M users in China without Internet access, 400M users without Smartphone or even Mobile phones.

How long does it take for the ~2B Mobile user to switch to Smartphone? Where does the market go from here. Most analyst would have thought lower end Android phone takes over for low end market growth, but it turns out Apple is still making growth in iPhone user base. Early 2016 Apple has roughly ~630M iPhone users, by 2017 it has reached 700M. And when you thought this big number couldn't grow any bigger, Apple may now be closing in to 800M iPhone users according to Tim Cook statement of double digit percentage iPhone user growth. With the 2.5B Smartphone users spilt between Google Android and Chinese Android.

Epic estimates that out of the ~2.5 billion android phones in the world 250 million can run Fortnite. As compared to all iPhone from 6s. This paints a picture the sort of difference in the premium market segment.

I am no historian, but I don't think there are anything in the history of mankind where one can have 90%+ of the market profits without monopolising the market, and doing so with less than 30% market shares.

Wall Street doesn't understand Apple, because there is nothing else in the history quite like it, and there isn't a model they could relate to, apart from any other commodity player like HP or Dell, or as some described, Steel Mills. When they don't understand how they could grow, how these number could get even bigger, the only way is to play safe.

Apple has been trading at Forward P/E of ~17 since 2009.

There are two kinds of people in the world, ones who don't understand Apple, and ones who think they understand Apple but they don't.</comment>


Amazon is working on displays that Apple and Samsung can't match - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/112444/amazon-is-working-on-displays-that-apple-and-samsung-cant-match/ <comment><USER2> The author theorizes that Amazon could combine the Paperwhite display technology with that of Liquivista to create a reflective full-color display, but acknowledges that it might take a decade, or never happen at all, and also there's no evidence to suggest they're currently working on it.

Kind of a fluffy piece, no?

<comment><USER3> Sometimes I wish there was a way to down vote fluff pieces like these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> tbh, I suspect the reason ebook readers have been declining in sales is because _they all suck_. I haven't yet seen one that supports even English and Japanese, much less math / standard comp-sci notation or a third language, or has reasonable typography support. Your average Android tablet does all that and _far_ more, and the prices and weights have been driving down to where they're competing.

Add to that that your average Android tablet has _far_ better support for formats, both open and closed (buy an Android, get B&N, Amazon, and almost every other ebook market. Buy a Kindle, get... Amazon), and you're left with the screen on one hand and _everything else_ on the other, and surprise surprise, the other sells better.

but this frustrates me largely because I really _really_ want a good e-ink reader, because I love reading on it and I love using it in sunlight and I love more than 12 hours of battery life. And nobody seems willing to hit even the "not a piece of shit" level, just "better than other ebook readers". where the heck did it go wrong?

\--- </rant>

this would be nice to see, but I don't really see any evidence that the tech is right around the corner, much less prepping for release. Lots of words for a hypothetical.

<comment><USER5> Your standards for a good e-reader are well outside the norm. Most people simply want something that's small, lightweight, convenient, and easy to read plain text on. The Kindle is all of those things, and cheap to boot. It's a shame that you can't find an e-reader that suits you, but for everyone I know (myself included) the Kindle has made reading much more accessible and practical (especially if you commute on public transport).

<comment><USER4> Maybe not so far outside the norm. I want something that can do what books do, better, without having to move them when I move.

That's it. I am _utterly_ convinced it's possible with only things available now. None are easy to use, none make it easier to share with friends, none make it easier to organize or find or buy. I can't find any reason for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The paperwhite is a nice display, and part of the benefit they claim is that the light guide combined with a matte screen reduces the amount of backlighting needed, thus improving battery life. That may be - but another big factor is the relatively anemic chip compared to phones / tablets / laptops.

All that aside, I really wish this kind of deliberately misleading comparison would die:

[http://g-ecx.images- amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/dp/2012/KC...](http://g-ecx.images- amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/dp/2012/KC/battery-compare._V389693466_.gif)

Why are laptops and tablets and smartphones measured in raw hours, while the paperwhite is measured in weeks, where one day is half an hour? And then why plot them on the same graph, indicating that they mean the same thing?

A graph that wasn't intentionally misleading would show the paperwhite with a bar about 2x the length of the smartphone's - in practice, it gets about 11 hours at full tilt, and about 28 (that's 56 days * .5 hours per day) when conserving power.

</comment><comment><USER7> pure, speculative BS. choice quote: "This means there is no way of knowing when, or even if, Amazon will unveil a reflective, full-color display of its own devising."

modern journalism, aka pulling shit out of your ass and selling it as insight.

</comment><comment><USER8> >Amazon is working on displays that Apple and Samsung can't match

How does that relate to the fact that Amazon actually bought the company that developed the new display technology (Liquavista) from Samsung? Something does not add up...

</comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting that the author blows off mirasol (a technology with working commercial products on the market) as if it's nothing, but spent the rest of the article talking about how great Amazon's hypothetical display is ... despite the fact that Amazon hasn't announced anything, much less demonstrated anything.</comment>


Quartzy Collects $4M To Help Scientists Manage Lab Inventory - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/07/02/quartzy-collects-4m-to-help-scientists-manage-lab-inventory/ <comment><USER2> HNers tend to talk about good companies solving real problems and this seems like a very real, important (albeit admittedly unsexy) problem to me. Kudos for trying to tackle this problem.

<comment><USER3> Love unsexy problems! Congrats to Jayant et al.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a really promising idea, and the execution is excellent. My only concern (as a scientist) would be whether people would continue to use it. Researchers aren't known for being organised at all, and the system of 'if what you're using is about to run out leave a sticky note on the lab manager's bench with the product #' seems to work.

In terms of freezer boxes, my lab used to have a web based system once upon a time ago but people would forget to update it after they took out the samples so we switched to a binder tied to the freezer, that worked a lot better with pages of grids.

I personally like this but I feel as though it might be one of those products that is attractive while its still new but people will become lazy and stop using it.

It's easy to forget to update something on the computer when you're busy doing long experiments.

Do you collect usage stats? It would be interesting to see how usage varies from a single research group over time and whether or not this decline happens.

Afterthought Edit: I can see how large groups ( > 25 grad students / post- docs) might be forced into using a computer based solution for scheduling and ordering as it's not feasible to use that much paper but is there really an advantage for small groups (3-8 members) which comprise the majority of research groups?

To me this is like using Sharepoint to manage documents for a group consisting of two people, a dropbox or email would be just as effective.

<comment><USER5> A few grad students and I started something quite some time ago out of MIT called OpenWetWare.Org that was meant to help organize things like this and included calenders, lab notebooks, stocks, lab webpages, simple sample tracking, et cetera using a wiki (when they were all the rage :-). When we had buy in from the whole lab it's awesome, but as you mention, over a couple of years, much of that initial enthusiasm faded. In looking at which worked, and which didn't, it really comes down to how much the PI of the lab cares about this stuff; if s/he uses, appreciates, and instills it into lab practice, some of those groups have continued to use it to this day with really in-depth information. In most others, it tends to fade because it is not a priority and is usually seen as a waste of time by the PI.

I'm about to start a lab (at UCLA), I'm trying to figure out how best to begin making such a culture... but it is an interesting problem that does need a solution.

<comment><USER4> Impressive! OpenWetWare is extremely useful, my supervisors old lab from when she was a post doc uses OpenWetWare to store all their protocols and calculations, it was very useful when she changed institutions for us to get a copy of those, you saved me a lot of time from having to email people for their protocols.

In my opinion lab environments aren't really like start ups in terms of culture, students have their own way of doing things and trying to force them to do things a particular way is detrimental to their performance and attitude. Since students are around for at least 6-7 years there is not really the issue of turnover and the necessity of keeping things uniform so that a replacement can pick up work right away. Whatever system you use a new student will still need several months to adjust and learn the basic skills necessary for research, during that time they can develop a system of their own so it's not really downtime. As a student I think trying to force such a culture is a mistake, you'll develop a reputation if you hardball it. Most PIs take the attitude of we don't care as long as the job gets done and things are labelled for safety sake. That seems to work quite well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, interesting. I have a lot of samples to organise and keep track of, so I started using a couchdb database to do so, but (simple though it is) it takes time I'd rather not spend. That said, it seems like a difficult problem to solve for the general case. So I'll keep an eye on this with interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have a lot of samples you might find our interactive freezer boxes useful: [http://support.quartzy.com/kb/inventory- module/interactive-f...](http://support.quartzy.com/kb/inventory- module/interactive-freezer-box-maps-on-quartzy)

[http://support.quartzy.com/kb/inventory-module/managing- loca...](http://support.quartzy.com/kb/inventory-module/managing-locations-on- quartzy)

<comment><USER6> This is actually really cool. I don't use freezer boxes at all, but a map system like that would work equally well for, say, keeping track of what's in TEM grid holders[1] which I do use.

This is what I meant when I said in my original comment that I think this problem is a difficult one, because so many different scientists are using so many different types of inventory. But I'm sure it's possible, and I wish you luck :)

[1] e.g. [http://scienceservices.eu/media/catalog/product/cache/1/imag...](http://scienceservices.eu/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/1600x/0d0c09f1c8bdb43b879ca3fe7208b7e2/g/7/g71137_0_dsc_0748_1.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> That link is super helpful! We started out with the most common layouts and are now adding more based on feedback. Thanks!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats Jayant! This is huge!

</comment><comment><USER8> I suggested this to my lab when I was at M.D. Anderson, and they were in the process of migrating when I moved last summer. I should check back to see if they stuck with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does the company offer a physical solution to the labs, like RFID tags or something? Or is it all software?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now it is all software but we are moving towards offering barcode scanners integrated with the inventory, RFID tags etc...

<comment><USER10> We use Quartzy at the moment but its just so clunky, especially ordering and facility scheduling. I [used to] work in a facility that almost exclusively provides user services (for 200-300 researchers and students) and scheduling of all our equipment is rather important. I've spoken with you guys in the past about this, and while you say there are plans to do things like weekly interactive calendars (instead of that silly printable one), programmatic addition or even an API (I've wound up scraping and using some of your private calls to build our own calendar app for quatzy)...it has yet to happen. I can only hope that you'll invest a good portion of this on the UX / software integration side. Also, your ordering catalog search sucks, a lot. It doesn't find 90+% of the Hampton products we try to order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats Jayant - excited!

</comment><comment><USER12> Congratulations Jayant and Adam!

</comment><comment><USER13> Great HN is turning into techcrunch</comment>


Netflix Prize Update: New Team in First Place (deadline tomorrow) - <AUTHOR> http://www.netflixprize.com//leaderboard?limit=50

<comment><USER2> The Ensemble is actually a meta-team of most of the teams that didn't participate in BPC, and I'm hearing that BPC had lately tried to get some other teams to join, so they were kinda expecting that (but I don't think they will be able to fire back). Bottom line, I think that the most massive open data set out there (next to a competition) has really helped the research to move on, but I don't see the point in 5 or 10 teams joining forces to improve the results for a tiny percentage and win the prize. On the other hand, maybe this is actually the right thing, for all these teams that have struggled for two years to be in the top-15 to receive the prize...

<comment><USER3> > I don't see the point in 5 or 10 teams joining forces to improve the results > for a tiny percentage and win the prize.

I think the point is who gets the million dollars. It makes sense that people would group up, probably into as few additional participants as it would take to ensure winning. If you and I were in the vicinity of being able to win independently and we knew we would lose otherwise, I think we have every incentive to team up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shouldn't a new result above 10 pct reset the clock with a new one month period ?

<comment><USER5> From the rules: <http://www.netflixprize.com/rules>

_When the RMSE of a submitted prediction set on the quiz subset improves beyond the qualifying RMSE an electronic announcement will inform all registered Participants that they have thirty (30) days to submit additional candidate prediction sets to be considered for judging. At the end of this period, qualifying submissions will be judged (see Judging below) in order of the largest improvement over the qualifying RMSE on the test subset._

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing's for sure: BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos is going to get shitfaced tonight.

<comment><USER7> Trying to hit the Ballmer Peak.

<comment><USER6> BK/PC submitted their last RMSE 2009-07-25 15:53:34, three hours before The Ensemble. If they can hit the Ballmer Peak or otherwise beat the Ensemble RMSE before tomorrow morning, it should be very interesting.

<comment><USER8> Aren't you only allowed to submit once every 24 hours or something?

<comment><USER9> Yes, you have to wait 24 hours from your last submission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone know why blending seems to work so well?

<comment><USER10> It seems like just a consequence of basic statistics (central limit theorem?). Any algorithm you create has some random bias. By blending, you take several algorithms with random bias and average them together, reducing the overall bias (assuming the algorithms converge toward the correct result).

<comment><USER11> That's as far from the central limit theorem as you can go..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, the second team will be gutted!

</comment><comment><USER13> If BPC didnt expect this to happen they deserve to lose. They should have expected a last minute submission and have one for themselves also.

<comment><USER9> Reducing the RMSE isn't quite that simple. Teams have been working for years to improve the algorithm by 10%. You can't just "boost it up" in order to win. It takes serious work. BPC is still working to improve their algorithm like everyone else but questioning whether they "expected this to happen" is ridiculous. None of the top teams "deserve to lose", they've all done great work and deserve a round of applause, regardless if they are the ultimate winner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there any rolling-extension each time a new top submission arrives -- like in some auctions -- or is the deadline firm at X days after the first +10% entry?

<comment><USER15> no. it's over tomorrow morning at ~11:30am PST... there are a few complications that could cause an extension, but they're not likely.</comment></comment>


Show HN: my new app Timebar has a clever UI (I think) - <AUTHOR> Howdy, gang; After almost two weeks of sitting in Apple's approval queue, my new app Timebar is finally available.
I think it has a pretty innovative UI feature, so I wanted to float it by Hacker News.
It's a timer app that turns your Mac's menu bar into a sort of virtual hourglass. Your menu bar starts out tinted blue (or whatever colour you pick) and it slowly drains from right-to-left until your time is up.
It works very well for situations where you want to keep track of time, but don't need to be super precise. The menu bar is easy to glance up at, and it doesn't take long to happen subconsciously.
Here are a few promo codes. I'd love to hear you you think. :)

  MYE99WJXFW4R
  936LKT4MF49W
  PLKYNNKH4ETN
 Your pal; — Mark
Web site: http://whimsicalifornia.com/timebar/ App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/timebar/id617829225?mt=12 Twitter: https://twitter.com/timebar <comment><USER2> Consider adding a screenshot of the menu bar acting like a progress bar to the website. It's the most interesting visual and it's missing.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I had to read the description on HN to actually understand what it does so this is a good suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another beautiful Mac App from you, Mark.

Look forward to using it.

-A dedicated Dragondrop user

<comment><AUTHOR> Aw, thanks — I appreciate the kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He's the link to the app store from OP:

<https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/timebar/id617829225?mt=12>

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty awesome.

Some suggestions:

      * Pause? (possibly autopause on screensaver/sleep/lock)
      * Re-label "Cancel" as "Stop". When I accidentally started a timer longer than I
        meant I overlooked it and quit/reopened the app instead (Maybe I subconsciously
        assumed cancel would just dismiss the window/popover?)
      * The slider is not a very rapid time entry method, if you expect to ever want
        different times. I'd suggest instead:
        * basic time parsing for rapid entry (e.g. '5m', '15m', '1.5h'). This would be
          more useful, to me, than being able to label the reminder.
        * or hotkeys for common lengths (e.g. ⌘1 for 5m, ⌘2 for 10m, ⌘3 for 15m when
          popover focused -- or user configurable alternative)
        * combined with a global focus hotkey (possibly assigned through an external
          handler), this would make starting a timer for a given length without taking
          hands off the keyboard possible... which seems worthwhile to me

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Overall, super cool.

 _Edit_ : Alfred workflows (which I saw you mentioned below) for common times would also do a pretty good job of what I was saying

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ideas. To run through 'em:

* Timebar actually compensates for sleep, so if you set an 8 hour timer at 12 PM, it will finish at 8 PM even if your computer was asleep for some of the time in between. * Definitely going to re-label this; there are a few little UI tweaks in the pipeline. Keep the suggestions coming; they're very welcome. * So, the very first drafts of this were built around the idea of a natural language text field for setting the time. I ended up abandoning it because a) I have no experience with NLP and b) since it's a menu bar app, your hand is already on your mouse/trackpad — not your keyboard. I think the Alfred workflows will go a long way towards letting power users work at warp speed. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Indeed the UI is quite nice; liked the snooze button too. Do you know if iOS supports anything similar? I know that it allows for app specific colours for the status bar, but perhaps this sort of control is impossible...because I'd like this on an iPad too :).

Off topic: Does DragonDrop (your/your company's other app) still under dev/support? It stopped working for me after Mountain Lion hit and I miss it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, definitely still under development and support! It supports Mountain Lion. Can you email me so we can troubleshoot it? email@example.com

First pass at support: do you have any other mouse-related software installed? Some Microsoft Intellimouse support software has been particularly troublesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is simple but awesome. I like this way better than my current pomodoro timer. I left a review.

I don't want to see the app all bloated up or anything, but an audible alarm would be nice, as would having a few saved timers (so I could start a pomodoro or a break with a single click).

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds are a great idea. I'll have a noodle on how I can add that without cluttering things up too much.

As for separate pre-defined timers, that's a pretty good idea, but I'm not entirely sure how to do that without making it quite a bit more complex. That being said, I do plan on adding AppleScript support and some Alfred workflows, so I think we can definitely get things cookin'. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very clever use of the menubar to show timer progress. Blends in nicely without any distraction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just bought it; great idea and execution! Some feedback:

\- Pause: say I set it to two hours and sometime later a client rings and we have a 30min conversation. A pause button would be very helpful.

\- Full screen mode on 10.7: the bar isn't narrower than on normal mode.

\- A way to set the default snooze length

Good job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. \- Snooze is a very good idea \- Eek. I will look into this. \- I definitely want to play with snooze length a bit more. At the very least, I plan on making snooze interval be MIN(time_interval, 5 minutes) — that is, if you had a 1 minute timer, you'll get a 1 minute snooze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I assume it should work fine with something like "30 seconds" or "1 minute", right? It's moving very slowly. About 2 inches in the past minute (set for 1 minute).

Oh another thing, I like that you offer a snooze when the timer runs out. I think that you probably left it silent because noises may seem to defeat the purpose. It wouldn't be terrible to allow the user to browse for an audio file, though.

I want the subtleness of the gradually emptying menubar, with maybe pulse.ogg to play at the end, or something. Just an idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eek; it sounds like you've hit a bug. Can you email me some more details? firstname.lastname@example.com. Sorry!

Oh, yes — an audible alarm is a great idea. I'll explore that for the first update. I hope to start hacking on 1.1 with my lady tomorrow night. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nicely done!

Super innovative. Maybe I'm retarded.. what are the promo codes for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, yes — Apple doesn't make this very obvious. Here's where you put the promo code: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/750911/Screenshots/f~aaa4t_5a2i.png>

<comment><USER12> Thankyou!

The app looked well and truly worth the $3 so I just bought it, but good to know for next time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Excellent! Thank you for making this. Visual timer's are so much more useful than numeric ones.

A suggestion: Could you add an option (if possible) to have the narrow line on the main menu bar like you have on the full screen instead of the full overlay. It would be lass distracting I think.

Also, I'm using it to get a feel for my full working day so (the current maximum of) 8 hours is bare minimum. Just thought you might be interested in that 'use case'.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've added your ideas to my feature requests list; thanks for the suggestions. :)

<comment><USER13> Thanks Mark. Still using it and look forward to the updates. Hope it pays for the wedding!

And Joss. Well spotted, but you failed to also spot my two other typos: lass should be less, and bare should be bear. I'll be more careful next time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very clever! Some feedback:

* Text can get truncated sometimes: [http://f.cl.ly/items/1G3L1F2D3P032T2F3m3E/Screen%20Shot%2020...](http://f.cl.ly/items/1G3L1F2D3P032T2F3m3E/Screen%20Shot%202013-04-02%20at%2011.40.04%20PM.png) * Is it possible to change the actual menu bar color? The overlay kind of makes it hard to make out the other items in the menu bar. Maybe an opacity setting would help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the bug report; will fix in 1.1.

You can change the overlay colour by clicking the blue rectangle next to the menu bar preview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a pretty neat idea and I can definitely appreciate the time you've put into it! The only reason I didn't pull the trigger to buy it is because I'm a heavy full screen user, so I hardly ever see my menu bar while working. I suppose I'm not your target user, but feedback nonetheless.

<comment><USER16> The app handles full screen mode (3rd of 4 screenshots on the app store).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes sir, the full screen support was actually the longest part of my development! :) I ended up open sourcing a little bit of code from Timebar — code to detect when the user is switching to/from a full screen app. <https://github.com/shinypb/FullScreenDetector>

<comment><USER15> Ah so it does. Nice! I'll be giving this another go around in the morning then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good idea! Two things:

\- Spotlight searches makes it flicker

\- Make it narrow for non-native (i.e. not only lion style) full screen aswell. It's awfully disturbing together with full screen iTerm, MacVim etc.

Other than that it's quite neat! I'd rather have it fill than empty though, maybe make that an option? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll see what I can do about the flicker; thanks.

I'm not sure I can detect whether another app is non-natively full screened, I'm afraid. I'll give it a poke, but to be honest, working with full screen stuff is a bit difficulty on OS X. The APIs aren't super comprehensive.

Filling up rather than emptying out is a fun idea; I'll add that to the ol' feature request list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Creative idea. Would you consider releasing it under the GPL in the future?

I bought it anyway, it's just that open-sourcing the app would allow other apps to (possibly) link time functions into it, which I think would be really, really neat.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cool.

A kind of similar app that I used when I used Mac: <http://www.grandtotal.biz/Alarms/>

One of the few things I miss on Linux and one of many I miss on Windows.

(Please let me know if you know about replacements.)

<comment><USER20> It's not as functional as these but couple of years ago I quickly coded a timer for Windows - <https://code.google.com/p/fst/> \- "Freakin' Simple Timer for Pomodoro Technique"

You quickly enter time such as "30m" and it'll ping you when time is up, you can optionally enter a reminder text as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great work! This will be my first attempt at a timer based approach to task management. I've been meaning to give it a try for a while and this UI was just too neat to not try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'd love to hear how it ends up working out. Drop me a line sometime — firstname.lastname@example.com or @shinypb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow....this is not what I expected, but it is surprisingly clever.

I accidentally bought it - and immediately thought....oh crap, I am going to regret it.

But...after seeing the clever use of the top menu, I don't.

Good job!

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't need this at the moment, but I think it is a very nice idea! At some point in the near future, I will probably find a use and buy it ;)

+1 for adding a screenshot on the website.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's something strange going on with your website...

I expected to scroll a bit to read more about the App and see more screenshots, but as you know that wasn't possible.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nicely unobtrusive. And the approach of showing progress rather than a pedantic number is a clever innovation - much more relevant for many uses.

Is there a way to pause it?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there's no way to pause it right now. I will add this to the feature request list. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Also checkout <http://breaktimeapp.com> if you like this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER27> A video would be useful. I skim read too much to actually get how the animation is supposed to look like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. I've been trying to think of a good way to do present it — you really need to see the full screen to get how subtle and delightful the effect can be. I am still iterating; thanks for the vote towards a video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Mark, The link to the developer website on itunes is misspelt.

Nice App BTW.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed! Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Oh wow! I loved DragonDrop FYI! This is great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Still mourning LidPop :(

</comment><comment><USER31> Only just realised what it actually does after looking at the screenshot closely.

Very clever indeed, you definitely need to get an animation of it in action or something on there because I visited the site earlier from your Reddit post and I thought it just put a little clock timer in the menu bar.

</comment><comment><USER32> The idea is novel, and I certainly commend you for being audacious with the UI. However, this is not worth the money for me. The app's functionality is not particularly distinct from any other timer app. The UI is nice, but I honestly don't see how it's worth what you're charging, at least for the way in which I use timing apps. Timers generally tend to be utilitarian and pretty trivial in their functionality. I'm perfectly content with a free timer, irrespective of the UI.

You might have a hard time attracting customers, especially in a market so overcrowded and with so little room for differentiation.</comment>


Google down in Huntsville AL - <AUTHOR>

Blogger, Gmail, Google all down for me.  Anyone else? <comment><USER2> It is here too in France.

</comment><comment><USER3> same here

<comment><AUTHOR> Where are you?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Back up.</comment>


Sarah, We Got Your Memo - <AUTHOR> http://graffitigeo.posterous.com/sarah-we-got-your-memo

<comment><USER2> I can think of 100 things a startup founder should be doing _before_ writing a public reply to something Sarah Lacey said.

<comment><USER3> You mean "before writing a blog post that garners them publicity"?

<comment><USER2> How much publicity and what kind? There's 3 comments on the post. Unless you're actually selling things to the hacker/TC crowd, does it have any value? Graffiti is a consumer app, is it not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even Google didn't become Google until they hit upon the whole adwords/adsense idea which wasn't even an original idea of theirs. In the early stages, world changing ideas are probably more found by intuition than logic.

<comment><USER5> World changing ideas in the early stages are more found by LUCK than logic or intuition, I mean, if something could be reasonably (logically or intuitively) known to be world-changing, it wouldn't be so unexpected or valuable when it happens. I doubt any of those founders, even intuitively, expected their ideas or companies to be world changing when they founded them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The reality is that the trailblazers tend to take it in the shins. Google just got search right. They were about the zillionth company to try. Facebook seems to have gotten social networking right, also at the zillionth variation on the theme. Nobody talks wistfully about becoming the next WebCrawler or Friendster.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really? I would certainly say Google and Dell were revolutionary. Now, they may not have been the first to do it, but they were early, and they were the best (at that time). Facebook and twitter, get a little bit of a "meh" from me, they more or less took an existing concept, spun it their way, and got lucky. Microsoft, paypal and Youtube (if the article is correct about the last two, I had never heard that before) apparently significantly altered what they started out doing. While not revolutionary, it certainly is a very impressive thing, to completely shift your focus as a business.

Now, my idea for a startup is really just a twinkle in my eye, and some big talk around the water cooler, but I can tell you this: I don't just want to make it into the next computer security company, I want to change the way computer security is run as a business. I've been working on it in my spare time for almost a year now, and am bordering on having a working model of stage one, which I know will be revolutionary, but won't shock anybody. That's what I look for when I see a new start-up, someone who isn't just trying to start a business, but someone who is trying to change the very rules that type of business runs by.

<comment><USER8> Dell & Google would not have seemed revolutionary to the writer of that "memo." Facebook and twitter have had a profound effect on the way people interact with each other. Microsoft & Paypal happened upon revolution or took the opportunity when they saw it, not in their first 6 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> heh, Yahoo did try to acquire Google early on actually. Trying to find exact link.

<comment><USER10> <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/yahoo.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can look at, or create, innovation all day long and not even see, recognize it.

<comment><USER12> Alternately, you can try with all your might to innovate and create brilliant new concepts all day long and fail miserably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meh. Who cares what Sarah Lacey says. I don't see _her_ changing the world.</comment>


C Ints are Finite Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.freebsdish.org/theraven/2013/08/17/c-ints-are-finite-numbers/

<comment><USER2> As someone who write C for a living, this _Generic macro scares me a little. It looks like C++ templates using C macros, and like everything with the C preprocessor it's a hack on top of a hack.

We all know the C macrolanguage has a ton of shortcomings. But adding all those weird, un-C-like behaviours just makes code harder to understand IMO. You don't expect templates in C code. I don't have anything against C++, but what's the point of C if it just becomes "like C++ but with macro hacks".

If the people responsible for the C standard feel the macrolanguage needs fixing, they have all my support. But let's actually fix the language or design a new one, not add quick hacks that change the semantics of the C code for, IMO, small gains.

<comment><USER3> <pedantic>_Generic is not a macro; it just is used a lot inside macros. You should see it as a switch on the type of its argument.

This also aren't templates; you still have to write all those variants for a function, and give them unique names.

More importantly, I think this is worth the hassle. Before this, you couldn't really do

       typedef double number_t;

and then easily call functions in the standard library such as sin, acos, or pow without having to worry about the actual type of that typedef. _Generic allows library developers to hide the ugliness of having different names for similar functions. That might have been possible using preprocessor metaprogramming, but it certainly wasn't simple.

<comment><USER2> A fair point, but I think your example demonstrates what I'm worried about: for each legitimate use of this construct there will be a billion of bogus/leaky implementations that we'll have to debug in a couple of years.

If I want to write "sin(a);" and let the compiler figure out which implementation of sin to use, I can already do that today. I use C++.

It's a bit late to turn C into a strong-ish typed language...

<comment><USER3> If you accept _" If I want to do X, I can already do that today. I use C++"_ as an argument, I don't think there is much to be done improving C. You may be able to add a header file here and there before C++ gets it, and you may be able to fix some dark corners of the language, but the big picture would be one of stagnation.

Stagnation in programming languages leads to death, so you would accept that C will eventually die, with C++ being its replacement/killer. That is not necessarily a bad thing, and one could argue that it already is happening (are there still self-hosting C compilers?), but I think it is something one should realize the moment one uses that argument.

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that programming languages exist because they attempt to solve an existing problem under a defined paradigm.

I'm not against borrowing features from other languages when they can be ported without affecting the paradigm, but when they do... does it mean the language will die without a specific set of features?

I believe it's the project manager's responsibility to evaluate whether the problems a project will solve can be solved with a specific language before taking the decision to use it.

A language will never be an "all-in-one solution" and forcing a language to solve a problem it was not designed to solve will lead to extra work in the best scenario, ex. String Manipulation in C.

My perception about C is that it was the best option available when it emerged, but newer languages emerged that managed to solve specific problems in a better way than C.

For me this doesn't mean that C is a "dying language", but the completely opposite, C has become a specialized language suitable for use cases where higher level languages mean "expensive overhead", but lower level languages mean "expensive complexity".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Odd choice of title, given that the post is about 'isinf(someInt)' being a compile error (as opposed to treating ints as finite and returning false).

<comment><USER6> Well I suppose it probably should be. `isinf(someInt)` makes no sense to call and is most likely a logical error. Moreover, it's not defined, so you could have (pseudocode)

        isinf(x)
          if (isint(x))
             return random() < 0.5
          else
             ...

I think the title makes sense, as it's about c ints being finite, and therefore nobody should be calling "isinf" with them. It was interesting that several codebases were.

<comment><USER7> Isn't this really an error in the spec though? Based on what the words mean, isinf and insnan logically should always return false when called with an int argument.

<comment><USER6> Only in the same way that it's an error that the spec doesn't define isinf for strings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought this would be about the dangers of not checking for integer overflow.

I struggled to come up with a method which, in C, safely converts a string to an integer type. I finally did it¹, but I've yet to see someone else use this method.

1) [http://stackoverflow.com/a/542833/54435](http://stackoverflow.com/a/542833/54435)

</comment><comment><USER9> I can imagine this happening in template code:

        template <typename T>
        bool isNumberInfinity(T number)
        {
            return isinf(number);
        }

        template <>
        bool isNumberInfinity(Number number)
        {
            return number == Number::INF;
        }

So instead of specializing ints, we rely on isinf working for ints, instead of doing the "correct" thing:

        template <>
        bool isNumberInfinity(int number)
        {
           return false;
        }

This is a very contrived since I'm using template functions, which are practically useless, but it holds for any data structure which holds a type that is meant to behave somewhat like a "number".

<comment><USER10> What do you mean by "template functions are practically useless"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone here provide an explanation for why some code that is supposed to be high quality and trusted is calling isnan(int)?

That seems to be the more pressing issue here, not the (long since done) inclusion of a new feature in C!

<comment><USER12> Usually, whenever there's something weird being done in C, it's because of macros or other forms of code generation.

However in the case of floating point vs integers, it's also likely that a literal is missing a decimal.

        1/4 != 1.0/4</comment></comment>