Is China's taboo-busting biotech sector widening the ethical gap with the west? - <AUTHOR> https://next.ft.com/content/982798ec-94e9-11e5-b190-291e94b77c8f <comment><USER2> Subscription only. Flagged.

<comment><USER3> That's not a legit reason to flag a story.

When a paywall has a workaround, which ft.com's does (albeit at the annoying extreme of the spectrum), submissions from that site are allowed here. This is in the FAQ where, to judge by how frequently the question was asked, it belongs.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

<comment><USER2> Hmm... ok... I won't flag for that reason then... but I'm not going to sign up to ft.com just to read their articles, either...

<comment><USER3> Me neither. But if you come in via a Google search link it usually works, except that sometimes an annoying survey pops up. I doubt they'll keep the annoying survey for much longer than it takes them to figure out that all the answers are bogus.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Synchronize your slides with video, deliver engaging pitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.9slides.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the sample <http://9slides.com/Talks/MicrosoftFreeToolsforTeachers>

Suggestions appreciated.</comment>


Ask HN: What are folks using for identity management? - <AUTHOR> As I'm building prototypes or products for clients, I'm constantly concerned that the standard tools I'm using for auth (Devise for Rails, Passport for Node, etc) are just not enough over the long haul to keep user data secure.
Storing user data and handling most of the auth service seems risky as hell to me, but I don't see quite as many strong opinions from the dev crowd about identity management as I do people sniping about where to put spec files in their codebase.
I guess I'm openly curious: Are folks using services like Firebase, Auth0, Okta to manage their user persistence, authentication, and authorization? Or are they just rolling their own or subscribing to open source projects and crossing fingers?
Personally, the Auth0 docs are not hitting the mark regarding the delivery vs complexity. For instance, it's near to impossible for me to quickly get a ReactNative -> Auth0 -> API Server routine going, quickly. Okta seems easier, but I haven't dug in. Firebase seems easiest, but then I don't trust it because of the simplicity.
Fishing for opinions and experience on this subject... <comment><USER2> Arguably if you're just building prototypes then integration with a third party provider is going to be overkill. However over the long haul you're right about the benefits of a IAM provider. It's not only about data security but also the expanding feature set that will likely follow. Think roles, entitlements, user policies, MFA, consents and GDPR etc. Not to say you cant build this in but at some point you may consider how much time you're spending developing auth vs core product. I work for OneLogin so often spend time thinking about this and you're right that not enough devs seem to take the time to consider it.</comment>


American cities have bigger things to worry about than gentrification - <AUTHOR> http://grist.org/cities/american-cities-have-bigger-things-to-worry-about-than-gentrification/

<comment><USER2> Its an interesting article but HN focuses solely on the SV/NYC experience which is exactly the area that the article is NOT focusing on. So this isn't going to go over well, here.

I thought it interesting that the public policy suggestions in the article were all stick, no carrot. All boiling down to "Ruin the suburbs and they'll move back into the ruined cities, because given the choice of two dumps, they'll live in the closer dump". Just being realistic, that a carrot approach would be much more successful than a stick.</comment>


FindHotel Is Hiring a Senior Back End Engineer in Amsterdam - <AUTHOR> http://careers.findhotel.net/o/senior-backend-engineer <comment><USER2> HN is not a job board. Please see the FAQ w.r.t. job postings</comment>


Ash Trees Could Disappear - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/man-who-made-things-out-of-trees-ash-rob-penn/ <comment><USER2> I love ash trees. They are also a "bailout" tree up where people still burn wood in stoves for warmth, as they can pretty much be burnt the day they're cut, they're so dry. I spent at least one winter burning quite a bit of ash because I did not plan ahead.

That said, as a stoic, this line in the article causes me to chuckle a little to myself: "So, if we want the landscape to look the same in the future, we need to value our trees more."

As though valuing something provides a promise that the future will never change. I don't mean to be cruel, but this is the same sort of misunderstanding of the Earth and Universe as we know it that will only ever end in pain and suffering.

Do what you can to stop the emerald bore beetle. My town has managed to keep Dutch elm disease's progress very slow in our town, and now some of our trees are being used to grow disease resistant trees to replant elsewhere. If you are pragmatic and unemotional about things, you can help preserve the things you love for some time, but nothing lasts forever. We would all do well to remember that.

</comment><comment><USER3> The cool, beautiful canopy of my hometown street was destroyed by Dutch elm disease. In the woods behind my house, my grandfather planted a row of hemlock trees before I was born. Now his legacy is being destroyed by another invasive from Asia, the woolly adelgid. With the elm and hemlock gone, we have mostly sugar maples, white pine, and ash tree remaining. The maples ares sickened from air pollution and just last year I noticed our pines turning brown from needlecast. And now I hear the ash borer is coming.

Between the stress of pollution/climate change and allowing these invasive pests on our soil, the US government has totally failed us. Trees are majestic, vital to the ecosystem, and the lungs of our planet. Why are our policies so backwards that we can spend $5 Trillion on war based on lies of WMD? Yet we lack the millions necessary to improve border controls and research curing diseases that slipped through already.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately border control is not very effective, but hopefully it will be possible to use [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive) to eliminate pests same way as mosquitos

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like the ash tree too. I remember seeing a bow made of it, but I think the person told me it wasn't the best wood for a longbow; he said yew was.

I remember the hemlocks were in trouble in the late 90s during a gypsy moth breakout in the NE US. Neighbors were spending a fortune trying to protect their trees. I didn't have the money to put into it, and I was lucky.

I had about eight of them on my property, and I didn't do anything, and in the end, I only lost one. Two of the others looked beyond recovery, but I left them, and today they are good again. Some of my neighbors lose that number, or more and they had spent a couple of thousand of dollars over two years trying to protect them. I don't knock their efforts, since I am a tree lover.

Let's hope this invasive beetle meets some obstacle like the cold where it can get cold, or a domestic predator finds them tasty!

</comment><comment><USER6> What I've seen and (briefly) read from this article seem to agree - as soon as the Emerald Ash Borer appears in the UK, it's game over for us. We've (UK) been suffering from ash dieback in a very large way, and although we seem to have got it under containment via selective killing/leaving to rot of certain trees we're very aware that a large proportion of our remaining Ash's could go very quickly. I know of a few people that have worked with trying to work with different lichen species that favour Ash trees and transplant them onto others with varying success - the same was tried with species that favoured Elm trees before they died back. It just seems a shame that there's not too much we can see to do about it. (This all comes from a UG perspective, albiet one with extensive lichen experience and some experience of conserving some of the oldest woodland in the UK, so other opinions very much welcomed!!)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's likely this will all follow the same path as Dutch Elm Disease- when was the last time you saw a big old elm tree in front of a house?

Still, the solution may be the same: slowly begin to develop trees resistant to the thing killing it. Perhaps some GMO or crossbreeding with whatever genes allow Asian ash to survive the beetles.

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

<comment><USER8> Interesting, I've never seen one of these borer beetles. Ash trees are everywhere here in New England.

<comment><USER9> The beetle just crossed the Hudson River two years ago.

Look for little purple boxes hanging from trees off of the highway on forests. Those are monitoring traps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The ash borer is now considered "established" in the US which means that eradication efforts have stopped. They're onto the "Control" phase where they try to find the invaders natural control in its native country.

So essentially the Ash tree is in real trouble (we have a very large city ash behind my building..I'm hoping its isolation protects it, but I"m not supper hopeful)

[http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/disturbance/invasive_species/eab/co...](http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/disturbance/invasive_species/eab/control_management/biological_control/)

My brother works on the asian longhorn beetle eradication efforts. That beetle moves slowly so its (somewhat) easier to control. It likes maple trees.

[https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/resources/pests- diseases/as...](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/resources/pests- diseases/asian-longhorned-beetle/About-ALB)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm dealing with this here, it's so sad to watch. Entire huge stands of dead trees all around. I have a bunch of HUGE ash in the back yard that I'm hoping will survive after several hundred dollars of treatments. With Sudden Oak Death out west and this here in the east, it's worrying to see what's happening to some common trees.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's going to have a huge knock on effect on Irish Gaelic sports, Hurling is played with ash sticks....

[http://www.gaa.ie/hurling/news/video-ash-dieback-and-the- fin...](http://www.gaa.ie/hurling/news/video-ash-dieback-and-the-fine-art- hurley-making/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Many of Europe's broad leaf deciduous trees are at risk from imported pests and diseases. Dutch Elm disease (acutally asian) saw off most elms.

Most at risk seem to be ash, plane, larch, oak and horse chestnut.

</comment><comment><USER14> Quite interesting that Morgan cars are made out of ash frames.</comment>


Exam board contacts Jewish school over censored GCSEs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/11/jewish-school-censored-gcses-evolution

<comment><USER2> The ultra orthodox are causing all sorts of problems in Israel as well. Front line did a report on it. They're raising their kids on nothing but religion, keeping them away from school, math, science and encouraging them to bury their head in the Torah their whole lives. No skills, no college. They reproduce at a much higher rate than other Jewish groups in Israel and in a few decades 1/3rd of the population will be Ultra Orthodox. They'll end up bankrupting Israel because they use more tax dollars than they put in.

Another example of why religious extremism, no matter what the religion (yes even Buddhism) is a step backwards for a group of people.

No religion is immune, Jews, Christians, Muslims, no one is. I still remember the article I read in the New York Times about Ultra Orthodox Jews hiding other Jews who molest children (the Jewish version of the Catholic molestation scandal) because their religious laws prohibit Jews from turning in another Jew for a crime. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/nyregion/ultra-orthodox- je...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/nyregion/ultra-orthodox-jews-shun- their-own-for-reporting-child-sexual-abuse.html?pagewanted=all)

It's a sad thing to watch, history repeating itself over and over. Different groups of people, different religions all making the same mistake without learning from each other. I guess that's the one thing we all have in common. Stubbornness.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more. As a Jew, this sort of behavior makes me furious and embarrassed.</comment></comment>


Simple Thought Experiment Shows Why We Need Quantum Gravity - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/07/20/this-simple-thought-experiment-shows-why-we-need-quantum-gravity/ <comment><USER2> I think the simple thought experiment is:

Imagine the famous two slit experiment. In this version we will fire electrons at the slits, one at a time. Put a very accurate spring balance behind each slit and measure the gravitational attraction of the electron as it goes past.

The author then claims, "The description that General Relativity puts forth ... needs to be augmented to include an uncertain position that has a probability distribution to it."

Does that follow? Wouldn't, say, the Pilot Wave Theory avoid the need for GR to change?

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is my thought as well. It simply does not follow that the two alternatives are a probabilistic stress energy tensor or a violation of the uncertainty principle.

Since quantum mechanics describes electrons as a field and not as a particle with position and momentum, there is always the possibility that an extension to the field or a function of the field itself can generate a classical stress energy tensor.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but that doesn't solve the problem. That is just another way of rephrasing the problem. A stress-energy tensor is still dependent upon position and strictly speaking is not a thing in itself, but a mathematical description of an thing/effect - in this case a graviton field or equivalent which is associated with the higgs field of a particle in superposition. The result will always be described via a stress-energy tensor, but this is a description of a result, not a cause.

However this works out, we still have to deal with the "position problem" when it comes to describing the gravitational field of a particle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The description that General Relativity puts forth ... needs to be augmented > to include an uncertain position that has a probability distribution to it.

i am sorry but 'needs' is too strong here

quantisation(o) was established before, necessarily so, probability was introduced to explain the behaviour of electromagnetic phenomena

to claim that probability is necessary for quantisation seems to have it reversed

the current understanding is both unknown whether gravity is quantised but also whether probability is necessary to describe quantum behaviour

with current understanding the only thing one can say with certainty is that requiring probability is a result of the math used to best model quantum behaviour of electromagnetic phenomena, namely fourier analysis(i)

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

(i) [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/35746/is- there-a...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/35746/is-there-a- relation-between-quantum-theory-and-fourier-analysis)

</comment><comment><USER6> Sorry for asking this in here, but since the double slit experiment is mentioned, I have a question.

Is the wave formed by light a 2d wave, like waves on the surface of the water?

And if so, then if we turn the slits sideways, why does the interference pattern also turns sideways? it shouldn't turn sideways if light is a 2d wave.

My apologies for the offtopic question, but I couldn't find any answer about this anywhere.

<comment><USER7> Light acts like a 2D wave when it's linearly polarised. But it can also have circular polarisation - which rotates - or some mix of polarisations.

If you put a vertical polariser in front of one slit and a horizontal polariser in front of the other slit, the usual pattern of fringes disappears. So polarisation does matter for the experiment.

But I'd strongly suggest not thinking of light in wave and/or particle terms. In Quantum Field Theory everything is made of fields, which are more like carriers of probability which strongly hint at some weird non-local properties, than a nice smooth lake surface waiting for some ripples.

If you try to apply physical intuition to QM it soon stops making any sense at all. So IMO it's best not to start there.

<comment><USER6> If we can't make the analogy between the surface of water and light, then how come the double slit experiment shows us that the interference pattern is due to the wavy nature of light?

<comment><USER8> Because a wave is a more general phenomenon than what happens on the surface of water, and waves of all kind result in interference patterns. Also, waves in the ocean certainly aren't two dimensional either, the surface "wave" just a visible manifestation of a larger system.

But the polarisation of light demonstrates more quantum effects. Put two polarising filters in front of a light at 90 degrees to each other and no light gets through them both; yet add a third filter in between at 45 degrees angle to each, and now half of the light gets through all three filters! Adding extra filters can make them let more light through, not less...

[http://alienryderflex.com/polarizer/](http://alienryderflex.com/polarizer/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "General Relativity describes gravity perfectly everywhere we've ever looked. From the smallest-scale attractions we've ever measured in a laboratory to the expansion and curvature of space due to Earth, the Sun, black holes, galaxies, or the entire Universe, our observations and measurements have never deviated from what we've observed. "

So correct me if I'm wrong, but the rotation of galaxies completely defies even Newtonian principles, right?

So we invented concepts of Dark Matter / Dark Energy as a placeholder, crossing our fingers that we're right on that?

<comment><USER10> Not exactly.

Imagine a china mug full of water. You can see the mug and the water being held in by the mug.

Now imagine a glass of water. The purest most transparent glass ever, with an identical refraction index as the water. You can't see the glass. You just see the water being held together by something. You don't know the glass exists.

You 'invent' the glass to explain the behaviour of the water, seeing as you know the how the mug affects the water.

<comment><USER11> The glass is testable though and would quickly be found. Dark matter and dark energy are assumed to exist with no experimental observations occurring. Every experiment has so far failed to show the existence of said entities.

One possibility is that we do not have any way to find said entities with any means at our disposal. Another possibility is that they do not exist (just a figment of imagination) and that the theories requiring them are wrong. In that case, one should be looking for other theories that might be a more capable explanation.

The question here is to determine when or whether we should stop looking for these entities and maybe move onto another model/theory.

The basic assumption of all gravity based theories and models is that the universe is electrically neutral everywhere and that magnetic and electric fields have no possible influence at stellar, interstellar, galactic and intergalactic distances. Whether this assumption is true or not is difficult to gauge since we only have visual observations (at all sorts of frequencies) and cannot actually get out there to make the required measurements.

So we have to fall back to what we think is reasonable and work from there.

<comment><USER12> > The basic assumption of all gravity based theories and models is that the > universe is electrically neutral everywhere and that magnetic and electric > fields have no possible influence at stellar, interstellar, galactic and > intergalactic distances

This is _impressively_ inaccurate: plasmas (charged and magnetic fluids) are basically the entirety of stellar evolution and the main part of everything up to galaxy evolution, so we have pretty good limits on the magnetic fields out in the universe.

There is also direct measurements of magnetic fields integrated along the line of sight out to cosmological distances, and of course every spectra ever taken has measured the ionization level of the luminous gas.

<comment><USER11> I agree. Yet the models assume that gravity is the only influence for the motion of the galaxies, etc. We can see evidence of other phenomena but....

I have had this discussion with trained working physicists and the general reaction has been that these phenomena are completely insignificant in relation to stellar, interstellar, galactic and intergalactic motion. So where do we stand? If the orders of magnitude difference in strength between electric and magnetic fields and the strength of gravity is over 35. What kinds of effects do we expect with these kinds of differences? Especially when we are looking at plasmas and all sorts of ionisation.

I don't know, but it does lead to intriguing questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I try to picture the "smeared out" gravitational field of a single "smeared out" quantum particle my head hurts. Try to nail down its position by hitting it with a photon and you thereby increase its momentum and thus relative mass and gravitational field... plus all those gravitons have energies of their own and therefore associated graviton-mediated gravitational fields... it's a heroic mess.

<comment><USER14> > you thereby increase its momentum

You don't increase its momentum. You increase the uncertainty in the momentum. So if initially position was 5 +- 3 and momentum was 10 +- 2, then afterwards, you might know that position is 6 +- 1, and momentum is 10 +- 4.

The rest of your train of thought doesn't follow after this refutation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > You set up a photodetector around each slit, and measure when a particle > passes through it.

[...No interference happens...]

> This is weird!

No, it's not. You made that particle's wave function collide with the huge wave function of a photodetector, of course it's going mess up the wave of the particle itself.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Does the gravitational field always go primarily through one slit or the > other? And does the act of observing (or not observing) change the > gravitational field? And if so, how?

The Copenhagen interpretation is really throwing a wrench into our understanding of physics.</comment>


D3.js: Understanding the Force Layout - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sxywu/understanding-the-force-ef1237017d5

<comment><USER2> For understanding D3.js Force Layout parameters in really recommend playing with [http://dhs.stanford.edu/dh/networks/](http://dhs.stanford.edu/dh/networks/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know of any way to _quickly_ find a steady(ish) state for the force layout? I have a complicated system with around 500 nodes and way more directed connections and the performance of rendering that system on our modest computers is terrible.

A static graph with a sane layout is what I'm after - anyone know of an efficient way to calculate the x and y positions ahead of rendering?

Thanks Obi Wan, you're my only hope.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you need to re-generate the graph positions on every reload, the static force layout is helpful ([http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/1667139](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/1667139)). The code of interest is: force.start(); for (var i = n; i > 0; --i) force.tick(); force.stop(); Where n is the number of iterations you want it to go through. Depending on the complexity of your graph, you may or may not arrive at optimal layout (nodes may overlap), but does calculate and render quickly.

Another key is to update positions of nodes and links only at calculation _end_ , rather than at each _tick_. This means that user may have to wait a couple seconds before seeing the graph, but will save your browser from having to update the DOM at each tick (which could be thousands of times across thousands of elements).

But the best is still if you don't need to re-calculate the positions (no new nodes ever show up, and no nodes are ever deleted), going with what me_bx said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> can anyone mention, recommend, or link to other layout algorithms? (preferably in the less than 1000 node/edge arena, but really any!)

<comment><USER5> The Force-Atlas2 algorithm [1] has some benefits over the force layout implemented in d3.js, when you want to highlight the communities structure in the graph. A javascript implementation is found in the library sigma.js [2].

Other basic layouts are the circular and random ones [3].

Gephi [4] has a variety of graph algorithms, about 10.

[1] [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098679)

[2] [http://sigmajs.org/](http://sigmajs.org/)

[3] [http://www.lexmath.com/grafos/sigma/ejemplos/a_plugin_exampl...](http://www.lexmath.com/grafos/sigma/ejemplos/a_plugin_example.html)

[4] [http://gephi.org/](http://gephi.org/)

Edit: added gephi to the list.</comment></comment>


Getting Artificial Neural Networks Closer to Animal Brains - <AUTHOR> https://maraoz.com/2020/07/12/brains-vs-anns/ <comment><USER2> Article seemed to miss one critical aspect of biological neural networks of emergent and self organizing behavior from individual cells and up (eg. local and global collective behavior is emergent).

I am most familiar with NEAT methods, in my perspective even NEAT most advanced algorithms do not come no where near in modeling self-organizing processes similar to biological networks.

I have no idea where author of article come up with ~110 neuron module, because one cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex contains roughly 50,000 neurons, each of which establishes approximately 6,000 synapses with neighboring cells.</comment>


My children's book on technology raised 100k within 24 hours – here's how - <AUTHOR> http://lindaliukas.tumblr.com/post/77372344314/my-childrens-book-on-technology-raised-100k-within-24 <comment><USER2> I backed the project, and think it will make a great gift for my nephew. It's something he can grow into, where he can read the book part with his parents right now, and then start doing the problems as he gets older.

I think this project did well for a few key reasons:

1) STEM, STEM, STEM and code, code, code. The timing is right. Look at all the coverage this got in big mainstream media publications. Here is a project to help your child get into programming at a young age. 2) There is a need for introducing programming to children in an accessible way. There is some stuff on the market, but not that much, and this might be the first centered around a colorful children's book. I also think this is more approachable for parents too. A cold, clinical textbook would scare off many parents. 3) Linda is attractive, bubbly and non-American (on a heavily American site). This never hurts with crowdfunding. The fact that she is female in a heavy male-dominated space helps too. I can't fault her at all for this, and why not harness it?

I hope it turns out well and that this is just the beginning for Linda and her books. I'm excited to read it with my future child.

<comment><USER3> How about

4) Linda is a co-founder of Rails Girls.

? Free publicity always helps. I'm not sure how Rails Girls is popular in the US, but considering we have it in Slovenia, I'd say it's pretty successful.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I would agree that should be a fourth point. Another point along those lines is her work with Code Academy and all of her connections there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea and I backed it. Book for kids can be as simple as picture books. Parents and mentors are the one supposed to help them to learn the hard stuff.

But I also want to say that I have some feedback for the video. I just thought there was too much "smiles". I don't know how to put it: but it's strange and weird to see someone posting a video of her smiling like literally every few seconds, throwing things every minute or so. A bit formal will be great.

There was too many moving. Scenes were constantly changing while the speech was on-going. It was hard to concentrate, pay attention to the dialogue and the animation at the same time. The main point wasn't delivered/pitched to me right away. I wasn't too sure what exactly would go into the book and how parents/mentors can help guide the kids in general from the video. Essentially, an ad that changes scene every 1 second is going to hurt viewers.

Here is another project (which I backed too), I am not trying to promote it (but putting out here is guilty of promoting it). Check wongfuproduction movie fundraising video on Youtube. That was a lot easier to grasp.

Just my 3 cents. Good luck.

<comment><USER5> I suspect that the goal was to show the author's personality. The word that comes to mind is playful. This is a book for 5 to 7 year olds. You want it to be playful to capture children's attention and imagination. Judging from number of sexist comments around this was misinterpreted in number of wrong ways. Fortunately, as the campaign numbers proved there are many people who believe in the presented idea and in Linda being able to deliver a great book that will inspire kids to learn even more about the technology!

<comment><USER6> "The word that comes to mind is playful. This is a book for 5 to 7 year olds. You want it to be playful to capture children's attention and imagination."

To play Devils Advocate, the video was not intended for children. Unless even the kids in the Bay have their hands on fat stacks of cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Start a blog where you share progress on your project. This will hold you > accountable and let people know what you're working on.

For a long time I wrote off the idea of having a blog because it seemed vain. I don't usually have any great ideas that anyone else needs to know about, and my trials of learning new things are just the same as everyone else's. However, over the past few months I've realized that I was dead wrong. Watching a few good series of blogs like [1] and [2] has shown me that even if you don't have anything world shattering it is still great as a means to make learning more important. After all, you can't let down your readers, can you?

[1] [http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/09/26/hacker-school-day-4-c-unit- te...](http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/09/26/hacker-school-day-4-c-unit-testing/)

[2] [http://www.jeffknupp.com/](http://www.jeffknupp.com/)

<comment><USER8> How do you think the chronological, little-bit-at-a-time blog format compares to longer articles, or books?

I've found individual blog posts, linked to from sites like HN or found in web searches, to be greatly helpful, but often when I go to a blog like one of those that you shared here, and try to start reading it from the top, it feels disorganized; the content isn't presented in any ordering that necessarily makes good pedagogical sense.

<comment><USER9> When blogs first started getting popular, I thought, "Man, chronological organization is the dumbest possible structure. Somebody will soon come up with something better." And so I never started a blog. Now I just feel dumb for waiting.

The best solutions I've seen for this are a) organized post series (e.g., [1]) and posts that aggregate a bunch of things previously written (e.g. [2]). I'd like to see people take that further, so if people have other examples of interesting approaches, I'd love it if they could reply with them.

I will say that editorial work is hard. As I've experimented with writing a book, it's clear to me that whatever I think the plan is up front, it's going to change, and that refactoring the structure as I go is expensive. It's cheaper to do it in large batches. So I think most blogs will just always suck in this regard. I suspect the future is in collaboration, where the author and blog readers can collectively build and maintain the table of contents and intro material. That would mirror the writer/editor collaboration that goes into books.

[1] [http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes- the-u...](http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-us- health-care-system-so-expensive-introduction/) [2] This is only an ok-ish example, but it's the only one I could think of: [http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2014/02/04/how-to- get-p...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2014/02/04/how-to-get- published/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really inspiring! I had no idea that Linda co-founded Rails Girls, and for some reason I had formed the impression that she was an illustrator before becoming a programmer. I didn't know that she had learned to draw so that she could create the book.

This advice is golden, and it's pretty cool to see such joy, enthusiasm, and generosity rewarded.

<comment><USER10> Makes me think that maybe I could write the code equivalent of "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" using Java

<comment><USER11> The method call was coming from... _inside the method!_

<comment><USER12> _–Then who was call?_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure the only reason this is getting so much funding is because the majority of computer science folk are horny men who are glossing over the dreamhouse attire / makeup / presentation put on in the video. "Hi I'm little Ruby and I wear polka-dots and pink lipstick, let me be your fantasy" That said, I did fund it, because I'm a horny coder and Linda is very sexy.

<comment><USER11> I won't even try to convince you not to be such a terrible sexist monster, but I will politely request that you:

1) Keep that shit to yourself

2) Don't attribute your perverse motives to others

<comment><USER14> I personally know 3 other people who contributed for the exact same reason. Not friends, but people I know personally.

<comment><USER15> I would distance myself from people who are that misogynist.

<comment><USER14> How is that a misogynist view though? Men aren't allowed to see women as attractive in the USA?

<comment><USER11> There is a huge difference between finding someone attractive and reducing them to nothing more than a sex object. Funding this because you're horny is disrespectful to everyone.

<comment><USER16> Imagine for a second that Lebron James were to create a Kickstarter for a cookbook he wanted to make, which was funded to the tune of $100,000. Obviously, much of this money would come from people who didn't _really_ care about the superstar's take on the perfect omelette, but valued his athleticism enough that they wanted to support him in other endeavors. Is this reduction of James to nothing more than his basketball skills equally problematic? If not, what do you see as the difference that makes this latter example of objectification ok?

<comment><USER11> What a terrible analogy. It's not like Linda Liukas is a pin-up model trying to trade on her sexuality. She's an educator and illustrator who is trying to do something great.

Please, stop being so damn creepy and/or supporting people who are so damn creepy. This community doesn't have to be such a hostile place.

<comment><USER17> > It's not like Linda Liukas is a pin-up model trying to trade on her > sexuality.

So, I get what you're trying to say, but this is a tough one. Because, Linda _did_ play up as a flirtatious girly girl in the promo video. Seriously, just watch the video: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lindaliukas/hello- ruby](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lindaliukas/hello-ruby) \- and imagine if it was a man doing all of those things. Very strange, right? She's not behaving like a mature adult, she's got her shoes on the sofa... she's sitting in a clearly uncomfortable way... and I have to sit through a video in which I have to watch her fix her cute shoes? Why? Why not feature some _kids_ in a promo video doing kiddy things, if she was going for the kiddy vibe? The flirtatious vibe that she instead chose to force in that video was very unnecessary in my opinion. So, paradoxically, it's Linda that's reducing women to sexual objects if she feels she has to behave in that way in order to sell up some books.

<comment><USER11> If you think that is flirtatious and sexualized, you have some serious issues. That video is whimsical and a bit over-produced, but it evokes play, not foreplay.

Does someone need to be in a burqa and talk in a monotone to keep the creeps from being creepy? How narrow a range of expression do you want for women before you start to make their objectification their fault?

<comment><USER17> Thought experiment: you see a man, same age as Linda, doing all the things Linda is doing (squinting eyes, and then abruptly opening them and doing an affected laugh, fixing clothes, fixing cute socks, sitting on a sofa with legs bent and shoes sitting alongside, jumping up and down on the couch, etc.), what do you think of him?

If you're not picking up on the flirtatious undertones, if you have no problem with that kind of unprofessional presentation, it's not me who has some serious issues, it's you.

Also, I'd rather have my kids focus less on trying hard with clothes and looks and more on the more substantive things in life. The focus in that video simply should not have been on Linda and her awesome persona. But it was. I wish I didn't have to sit through Linda fixing her shoe-socks, but it was in the video, I watched it. It was peculiar.

<comment><USER18> Can't agree more. If people can't see what you're talking about, they're probably vulnerable to it. They're buying what that manipulative effort sells.

I totally find her gestures and the shots pretentious. I believe that's a part of her sales pitch but it didn't have to be, because the book idea is already good enough to sell.

<comment><USER15> Finding this video pretentious is one thing, but being upset at the video because you have converted a person into a sex object based on really sexist notions about play and child-like behaviors is a red flag. We have seem multiple commenter take that point of view on the video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Harold and the purple crayon is a great book that introduces programming concepts, but it doesn't beat you over the head with any computer lingo.

This book is a neat idea and the illustrations look cool, but here is one concern: Why name the main character Ruby? Good kids books are timeless and ruby the programming language is not, and it dates the book too. Why associate any programming language in particular with programming concepts like sequences or sets? That seems like a message from "learn to code" school. So does DRY to a lesser extent.

<comment><USER20> I'd never thought of Harold and the Purple Crayon as related to programming. How is that? In perhaps the broadest sense the crayon gives him the power and freedom to create in the same way software might, but that's a pretty big leap.

<comment><USER19> Okay, I hope this convinces you it's a leap instead of a pretty big leap:

He lives in a seemingly boring world, but it isn't boring after all. It may not even be a world after all. He invents solutions using the contrived rules i.e. using a purple crayon. Some of the solutions become problems. For example the dragon scares him and makes his hand shake, so he falls into the water, but he comes up thinking fast and makes a sailboat.

Both these lines remind me of computers or programming:

Nine identical pieces of pie that Harold likes best.

A forest with just one tree in it.

Also word play is important in programming and in HATPK.

Lots of things are more like programming than things obviously designated that way such as programming languages. In Hoare's communicating sequential processes he goes on and on about vending machines for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I backed this project and loved how the author presented per project. I was able to identify with her and, more surprisingly, my non-technical spouse and family were also able to identify with her. I am excited to see where the story of Ruby goes for both my young daughter and myself.

<comment><USER22> I was about to say...

It really helps your sales pitch for a whimsical and fun book when you are attractive and have a cute smile that seems full of joy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would really like to see a couple of starting pages from this book. I hope she has an idea about how to deliver this stuff to children: coding by itself is pointless for somebody who does not even comprehend the manifold of applications it can solve. Video games are fun, because they exploit the basic survival instinct within us. With programming, there is no low hanging fruit to reach for a child, as the mental link between writing code and receiving a reward is build by experience, which minors lack.

I find it hard to explain the fundraising which went way over the goal, without including gender into equation. Anyway – a pink-colored children's book about tech stuff, written by girls, sounds comforting in every way.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been watching this project since it was first posted on HN, getting giddy over the thought of it. I love the execution in how this book will teach kids about programming. I also love that the main character is a girl and that the whole book is cutesy.

I plan on using this both for my own enjoyment, and sharing it with a soon-to- be five year old boy who will be absolutely in love with the little animal/Android characters.

I'm toward the end of a rough patch financially, and usually pass up supporting projects on Kickstarter for this reason... But I couldn't resist, and ordered the double package.

Congratulations on the extreme success, Linda! I hope you find the process enjoyable enough to continue the series for years to come. I also hope the app or even a little indie game will be possible to create in the future (I realize it won't reach the $500k goal.)

As a final note - I just thought of the possibilities of this being implemented in a classroom!

<comment><USER11> _I just thought of the possibilities of this being implemented in a classroom!_

Years ago, I was a guest at my son's kindergarten's career day and I showed the kids how I could move around a cartoon mouse with Scratch. I'm not a great presenter or teacher, but the entire class, boys and girls, was completely engaged. They were tossing out suggestions and laughing and I'm convinced they "got" the basics. It was incredibly rewarding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It took me a while to work this out - but I think its a great and brave choice.

Yes, totally agree software is "literacy 2.0". And yes, of course, we need pre-school books on software. I had weird books teaching me BASIC without putting it into context - and context not ability has been where I have missed opportunities or regreted actions.

So I applaud Linda for her insights, hope her world view is one I want my daughter to take into the 21 C, and look forward to seeing my copy at the end of the year.

<comment><USER25> To be honest, I'd focus less on it being about learning how to code, and more about deductive problem solving skills and numeracy in general. If you have a pretty good foundation there, picking up a particular programming language isn't problematic. I think most people who stumble in basic programming have trouble because of a more fundamental deficiency than "I never learned to code in grade school".

<comment><USER26> Thank you for posting this – I was thinking the exact same thing. The real, huge win for kids is thinking about how to decompose a problem into easier, repeatable steps and that's of benefit in many fields even if you never write a line of code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think the children would prefer learning JavaScript: "No class? You're saying we never have to have class?? That's amazing!"

</comment><comment><USER28> Some relevant news - "Women Outnumber Men For The First Time In Berkeley's Intro To Computer Science Course" \- good to see this growth and interest.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/21/women-outnumber-men-for- the...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/21/women-outnumber-men-for-the-first- time-in-berkeleys-intro-to-computer-science-course/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice idea + hot founder => 100k raised in 24h

</comment><comment><USER30> This project was the subject of a lot of debate when it launched, and at that time, I was on the side of the author because I thought it seemed like a nifty project, though not a fit for what I'd give to my children.

Now that I see it turned into a write up like this, I can't help but wonder if those criticizing the project for its intentions were correct.

</comment><comment><USER31> The practical advice in this post is gold. Marketing to a select community is true for apps as well as Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think pretty much only No. 2 is sufficient and almost necessary these days. That is if you have a community already, you can sell your project/book even if it lacks much substance(this project certainly has some substance and is a good cause).

If you do not have the early adopters who will also help you spread the word to secondary adopters, you are SOL.

There have been countless posts on HN where the author has made some amazing sales on e-book, SaaS MVP, apps, other software, and so on.

In pretty much all those cases, they already had some sort of community/e-mail list to kickstart(ahem) the sales.

</comment><comment><USER33> I backed the project, I am excited to see what comes out of it.

I want to teach my kids (4,2) how to program, if this is a more accessible way, it's worth my money.

</comment><comment><USER34> Cool idea. My only gripe was after she said she was from Finland, she mentioned Scandinavian summers, when Finland isn't a Scandinavian country. Nordic, yes. Scandinavian, no.

Minor quibble for sure.

<comment><USER35> I'm a Finn and although I didn't truly grow up there, I've always considered Finland a Scandinavian country. You can be pedantic and say that because of geographical and linguistic reasons, it's not Scandinavian, but outside of those specific contexts, no one really cares.

<comment><USER34> I grew up thinking Finland was also Scandanavian, but I'm a dumb american, and so Geography isn't really my forte.

My girlfriend is Swedish-Finn and she was the one who insisted.

If you didn't grow up in Finland, have you at least been back to visit? Helsinki is such a great city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Am I really the only one who things that she is annoying and fake? I literally threw up when I tried to watch her playing Manic Pixie Dream Girl-role.

Ruby and Snow Leopard? Really? This book will be completely useless in 5 years when technologies change. She should have wrote about basic CS principles instead. But I guess most of the women just cannot think logically. And that's probably why there are so few women in tech...

<comment><USER37> People are going to pigpile on you b/c you are wrong about the longevity of the tech information and sarcastic remarks about women, etc.

I DO agree with the cringe-factor, though. I really didn't like watching her adjust her purple knit slippers, giggle and fluff her hair, etc.. It was like watching any other advertisement involving models which I don't like either and is one of the reasons I don't watch television.

I also didn't like her trying to increase the aura for her work by saying, "My country is also where Linux and IRC, etc." came from. There's probably a logical fallacy for that :)

Just like all bad art though, there is almost always information to be gained in the layer of meta-communication. Obviously, many people respond to this kind of stimulus. Perhaps it is because there isn't enough "cute" out there in the world already? It is my belief that cuteness and happy feelings should be more widely distributed, not just reserved for celebrities.

But even this morning on NPR (don't usually listen, was in a rush), I heard them announce the birthday of a celebrity.

We are in a celebrity culture that believes in foregoing our own happiness in exchange for concentrating wealth and happiness on certain other people. We are schizophrenic in that we pay money for impressions of the happiness that others experience. Is it made worse by the fact that we don't even care if celebrity's happiness is authentic or not, we still pay for the illusion.

<comment><USER38> > Perhaps it is because there isn't enough "cute" out there in the world > already?

Exactly the opposite. There's plenty of "cute" and _that 's_ also the reason why: people buy it.</comment></comment></comment>


Xorg can now run without privilege on OpenBSD - <AUTHOR> http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426 <comment><USER2> I want to like OpenBSD. I'm so happy about openssh and like the whole mindset, philosophy. Or so I thought.

Recently (like, weeks ago) I investigated the big three BSDs for a small mail server project. OpenBSD was the first thing I looked at, I was especially interested in opensmtpd. Looking for documentation I stumbled upon [1] (note: Same aggregator, same domain. I consider that 'The canonical source for OpenBSD').

So that article praises the features of opensmtpd and then shows how to implement a filter. With this:

/* block idiots */ if (! strcmp(p->domain, "0pointer.net")) { filter_api_reject(id, 530, "You're not welcome, go away !"); return; }

At that point I shook my head in disbelief, labeled the author as person I don't want to read from again and moved on to NetBSD (and FreeBSD, still not sure with which one I'll go). OpenBSD's obviously for more elite persons and ad hominem attacks in random samples are .. I don't know. Funny? Cool with the users/the project? The Right Way™?

That project has lots of attitude problems.

1: [http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20130130081741](http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20130130081741)

<comment><USER3> I've recently came across this: [http://bsd- geek.de/FreeBSD/NO_POETTERING.patch](http://bsd- geek.de/FreeBSD/NO_POETTERING.patch)

I don't know (and doubt) if it got merged into FreeBSD, but it shows that lots of people just hate him.

<comment><USER4> I don't really see any hatred there.

Software he has been significantly involved with has caused problems for a lot of people in the past. The recent strife and disagreement surrounding systemd surely hasn't helped the situation.

If somebody has had bad experiences with multiple software systems developed by a particular developer/project/organization, it's totally understandable why they'd want to avoid that developer's/project's/organization's software in the future. Nor is it unreasonable to want to protect oneself in such a manner. Furthermore, this can be the case without holding any sort of hateful emotions toward the developer/project/organization in question.

Do you have a better name for such a flag that may not involve his name directly? It does seem like a very descriptive name for what it does, even if some people may incorrectly interpret it as being "hateful" or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Choose OpenBSD for your Unix needs. OpenBSD -- the world's simplest and most secure Unix-like OS. Creator of the world's most used SSH implementation OpenSSH, the world's most elegant firewall PF, and the world's most elegant mail server OpenSMTPD. OpenBSD -- the cleanest kernel, the cleanest userland and the cleanest configuration syntax.

<comment><USER6> No Only 1 2 remote root holes in the default install.

<comment><USER7> Is this true?

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily.

Only two has been discovered, but how many there really is?

Actually, Theo is a mole working for the NSA and he's throughout the code that _looks_ clean, he has hidden loads of backdoors and weak crypto…

And because the coders and security consultants reading OpenBSD's source code spend so much time laughing at the jokes in the comments, that they just don't notice the hidden evil!

But Ssh! don't tell anyone the door is opened! :-D

<comment><USER9> It's funny you joke about that...

The alleged FBI backdoor in OpenBSD's IPSec implementation:

[http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- tech&m=129236621626462&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- tech&m=129236621626462&w=2)

<comment><USER10> It is from December 2010. In regards of the Snowden revelations have any of the backdoors been found since?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In 2006 one of my teachers, Mr Etiemble, told us about a paper he's participated in to illustrate that no matter how good the security models can be at each level of abstraction, it only needs one piece of code that uses a vertical design to make the overall layers of security models worthless…

[http://scholar.google.fr/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=...](http://scholar.google.fr/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=8zjlIJoAAAAJ&citation_for_view=8zjlIJoAAAAJ:UeHWp8X0CEIC)

N.B.: That article is really worth a read!

And then, as one could have expected at the time, TdR had a really strong reaction on the matter (can't find the e-mail for reference), saying that OpenBSD is anyway secure, except if you want to have "modern accelerated graphics" (or something less subjective, that's iirc)…

…and here we are eight years later, to finally have the OpenBSD guys show off they've done it. I don't know if that should bug me they needed 8 years to patch that bug that was not really one (as per Theo) or if I should be amazed by the work done to secure that incredible mess that is Xorg :-)

cheers and gg, guys!

</comment><comment><USER11> Great accomplishment! Congratulations to OpenBSD folks!

</comment><comment><USER12> Do they block access to advanced features of the video card?

Can't a video card DRM read any memory on the system?

<comment><USER13> I think you mean DMA, not DRM.

<comment><USER14> By DRM he probably meant: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager)

<comment><USER15> In the context "DRM" doesn't make a lot of sense, I do thing the OP means "DMA" here. DRM is an API, it doesn't "read" anything. DMA, however, does.

<comment><USER13> Either way, I learned about a new thing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't forget to donate:

[http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2014.html](http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2014.html)

Thanks! :)

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- misc&m=139321387226212&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- misc&m=139321387226212&w=2)

</comment><comment><USER18> FYI - the systemd project got a similar thing working on Linux a couple of weeks back. I think Wayland/Weston already leverages systemd to run without privileges.

Part of the whole discussion on why systemd was much more forward looking than anything else on Linux.

[1] [https://plus.google.com/+DavidHerrmann/posts/ggK1tStCvJH](https://plus.google.com/+DavidHerrmann/posts/ggK1tStCvJH)</comment>


Ask HN: Voting on comments broken ? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed that I can no longer upvote whenever the upvote button is there. It looks like the vote goes through, but after refreshing the page you see that the vote hasn't been counted but now the voting buttons do disappear.
Is this just me or is it a common thing ?
And if it is by design then why not simply remove the vote buttons ? <comment><USER2> I'm experimenting with changes to the code that decides which votes count.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the confirmation, at least I'm not going nuts.

Would it maybe be an idea to drop the buttons if you aren't going to count the votes anyway ? This feels a bit silly.

If it isn't clear which vote buttons work and which ones are just pacifiers then it might lead people to stop voting completely.

<comment><USER2> Votes still get registered, even if they don't effect the current score of the item. So it is not quite the same, functionally, as taking away the buttons. Plus if I took buttons away, users would lose the visual indication of what they'd voted on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok. But it feels inconsistent to see an integer vote count, that goes up when you vote, but after a page refresh those votes are all gone.

Maybe there is a way to at least show them to the user that voted ? That way that feeling would be gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just upvoted this post and it is working for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's on comments only as far as I can see. For example, I just upvoted you but your comment shows as '1 points' after I refresh the page.

<comment><USER4> I just upvoted both of you and it seemed to stick.

Karma-whore!! (j/k)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I'll upvote you and see if _that_ sticks.

yes, that one did work.

This is weird!

It looks like it is related to where you are in a thread relative to the things you comment on.

So if you haven't been active in a thread yet you can comment on anything, but once you are active your voting options are limited, but it doesn't show that by removing the buttons.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it seems once you're responded to someone, you can no longer vote them up and have it stick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks !

So that means it is a display bug rather than a voting bug.

Those particular 'up' arrows should simply not be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, it is the same for me too. I noticed this behavior one or two days ago, but I dismissed it thinking that maybe someone downvoted the user I just upvoted more or less at the same time.

<comment><USER5> Replying to you to test a theory.

<comment><USER6> Ok, I tried to upvote you once, it didn't stick on (a quick) reload but the arrow didn't go away. I tried to upvote and wait some 5, 10 seconds and it didn't stick and the arrow is gone!

<comment><USER5> I upvoted you, and it seems to stick. So you can upvote those below you, but not above?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That happened to me about two weeks ago on all browsers and on two machines. But a couple days later it was fine again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you even find out the cause ?

<comment><USER7> No, I thought I was "kicked out" for some reason and then it just started working again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It happens if you refresh too fast. It's been like that for ages. While a minor inconvenience, a good thing about it is if you catch yourself making a reactive vote or misclick, you still have a second to hit refresh to null your vote.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just tested it, waited for 10 second before refreshing the page, same result.

So that's not it.

Also, that wouldn't explain the vote button disappearing (after the refresh the vote button isn't there), which after all means that a vote has been registered.

<comment><USER9> are you using chrome? the latest build? It has been happening to me. Switched to firefox - works as mentioned by lionhearted

<comment><AUTHOR> Using firefox here.

Everything else seems to work ok, it's just the voting that is completely weird. What's even stranger is that it seems that I'm the only person currently experiencing this.

<comment><USER10> This has happened to me in the past, pg has had to fix it for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I got the same problem today , I thought it is part of the karma rating algorithm and I can't give points because I don't have a high karma , but I guess it wasn't like that all the time

</comment><comment><USER12> Also can't submit anything today: I get an error message that say: You are submitting to fast but I have no submits today.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome v83 enables JavaScript module support for SharedWorkers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tobiasuhlig/chrome-v83-enables-js-module-support-for-sharedworkers-starting-a-new-era-for-multi-browser-dbb20366bddf <comment><AUTHOR> Some ideas in general:

The article is about putting a framework & your Apps into a separate thread (calling this one App worker).

Now, with SharedWorkers being fully supported, we can connect multiple main threads to a shared App worker. This way Apps live within the same realm and can directly communicate. They even share the virtual dom, leading to really great possibilities (moving dom nodes from one App to another).

E.g. if you would like to create a multi screen trading App, there is a big potential to speed up things.

On mobile this could also get interesting: imagine a native App with multiple WebViews. Those could as well share code and communicate directly.

Even in case there is just one browser window, the default worker setup (non shared workers) can make an impact.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Published v1.2.5 on npm: [https://neomjs.github.io/pages/](https://neomjs.github.io/pages/)

SharedWorkers examples are online. Dev mode: Chrome v83+ Webpack Dist versions: Chrome & Firefox(!)

Enjoy!

A release announcement will follow soon.

In Chrome: open the example, then open chrome://inspect/#workers

inside another tab to see the SharedWorkers. The webpack based dist version supporting Firefox is really impressive.

In FF, open a new tab and open: about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox

</comment><comment><USER2> I recently came across a talk on YouTube from Chrome Dev Summit a couple of years ago that covered a very similar pattern to the one shown here that I would recommend checking out [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg60lf92EkM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg60lf92EkM) and I am honestly kind of surprised it isn't more popular.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not see this one yet, thanks for sharing! (Watching it now)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great news. Just waiting for es module support in service workers now!</comment>


Ask HN: Why do jr developer positions require so much? - <AUTHOR>

I thought the point of being in a JR developer position was to get a job with limited experience and continue to learn while working. I've been in a job search lately and checking out these Jr Developer positions, they require so much! Some require bachelors degrees, 3-5 years in web development, experience with quite a few languages. I can't tell if this is really what Jr Developer positions require or if these companies are trying to save some money by paying little for the same experience. <comment><USER2> My theory is that JR+lots of requirements means "We want talent but we don't want to pay for it. Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask..."

<comment><USER3> I am afraid that you are spot on. Knowing 5 stacks on 3 different languages is hardly newbie material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Junior and senior is related to responsibility and pay, not skill level. It is also worth noting that a job advert is a list of their "ideal" requirements, so if you don't meet them try applying anyway (or just claim you've been developing in your own time for "years").

<comment><USER5> A PHB's idea of junior is somebody who jumps up, salutes and does as he is told. And is content with getting paid peanuts. Gen Y need not apply.

<comment><USER6> I took my first two jobs at crap pay because I just wanted to learn somewhere. I'm Gen Y. Not sure if you were trying to start another bs "This generation is entitled rabble rabble" argument..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For me at least, it's because those without a few years of experience aren't going to be able to be productive enough to be worth their pay. In fact, even if money isn't an issue, they can add more workload to the senior members of the team in mentoring and bug-fixing time. This might be partially because web development changes so fast. It's unlikely that someone with a degree but no real-world experience is going to be productive without (optimistically) a few months of training.

Don't get me wrong, I'd gladly hire someone who has done her own side-projects that show initiative and ability to teach herself, even if she wasn't through school yet.

<comment><USER8> Plus there is some experience that you just can't get until you are part of bigger (i.e. "enterprise level") projects, and you've learned a lot of the "gotchas" that come along with that.

<comment><USER9> That's why, in part I'm spending some of my time in between job hunting working on contributing to an OS project, not because I'm going to be learning the latest django or javascript idiom so I can hit the ground running, or detailed algorithms for solving a complex problem, but because working with teams is a soft skill that takes time to develop. Also I use the project everyday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As developers, I think our collective definition of "junior" and "senior" is very different than in most professions.

In other industries (think electricians, welders, doctors, attorneys, etc) you'd still be very "junior" if you only had 3 years experience.

And my theory is that a lot of HR and Executive folks are trained to think that way; they just haven't bought into our way of seeing things...and they don't necessarily appreciate how quickly things change in this industry; and how quickly people can up their skill-set to senior levels.

<comment><USER11> With the exception of welders, the other trades you mention are all licensed professions. In the case of welders, serious work requires certification and gets inspected to reduce the chance that someone dies.

A runaway online shopping cart can't crush a child. It's more the case of lower standards in software.

<comment><USER5> But the same lax standards are used by the likes of Toyota when developing software for their ECUs - now that has resulted in crashes and fatalities, see: [http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s- killer...](http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer- firmware--Bad-design-and-its-consequences)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's why during college you need to work on some external projects (internship, open source, it doesn't matter, as long as you build "free" experience).

<comment><USER9> Which assumes that you majored in CS for your bachelor's degree. And could afford to go to college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Job posting "requirements" are almost always wishlists and you should treat them that way.</comment>


A request/demand to all gadget makers - <AUTHOR> If your gadget contains a mic or a camera, provide a hardware indicator (for example. A small led besides the camera or mic) to indicate that the corresponding recording device is active.<p>I want to request the tech crowd that we boycott all (new?) devices that does not comply with this simple requirement. <comment><USER2> If the indicator is programmable, it's no more accurate than anything else. Physical disconnection is the closest thing to certainty.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not programmable. That was what I meant "hardware indicator". Maybe I should have said "hard wired". If the device is active (even if there is nothing receiving the output), it should be indicated without exception.

<comment><USER2> The screen is hardware. It's wired to the camera. Both are independently addressable via software. Making a small screen consisting of only a single LED and moving it close to the camera doesn't change that...so long as the two are hardwired and one or both are programmable, there's no certainty.

Short of removing the camera from the device, physical disconnection is the next best thing. To put it another way, a camera can shoot at 1/2000 of a second. That's quick enough that a person will miss the blink of an LED even if it's activated 10 times as long as the shutter is open. So any indicator is going to have to programmed to show future and/or past events to conform to the human time frame...or as some might say is the case with all things photographic, it has to be programmed to tell a lie to be useful. It's just a matter of whose lies it tells.

<comment><USER3> > _Making a small screen consisting of only a single LED and moving it close > to the camera doesn 't change that...so long as the two are hardwired and > one or both are programmable, there's no certainty._

This doesn't make any sense. Do you not know what "hardwired" means?

Rig the light so that it is turned on any time the camera is transmitting to the CPU. This is a physical interface, not a software one. You can hack the camera software any way you like, but anything that receives an image from the camera will activate the light.

> _Short of removing the camera from the device, physical disconnection is the > next best thing. To put it another way, a camera can shoot at 1 /2000 of a > second. That's quick enough that a person will miss the blink of an LED even > if it's activated 10 times as long as the shutter is open._

So activate it longer than that. Why is this a problem? You can easily wire the light to activate for a minimum of one second (or more, if you like) any time the camera transmits even a single frame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That doesn't work, for microphones, provide a physical switch and for cameras, provide a physical cover.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice idea</comment>


Show HN: Block trackers system-wide on Linux/Windows, a Pi-hole "to go" alt - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/safing/portmaster/ <comment><USER2> Looks really great! Nice UI and features are working good. Would appreciate official support for Fedora with a .rpm package.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out and your kind words! If something comes up don't hesitate to create a bug report or feature request.

We are looking into other linux package managers we can support. We actually have an open issue for creating an `.rpm` package, see [https://github.com/safing/portmaster- packaging/issues/4](https://github.com/safing/portmaster-packaging/issues/4). We plan to address a couple things with our installers in fall and hopefully will then also ship an `.rpm` installer.

You can also show extra support for a platfrom by voting for it in the micro- survey when signing up for a Safing Account. ([https://account.safing.io/account/sign_up](https://account.safing.io/account/sign_up))</comment></comment>


Algorithm Portfolio [pdf] - daniel-cussen https://github.com/daniel-cussen/portfolio/blob/master/portfolio.pdf <comment> daniel-cussen This is a collection of algorithms I've designed over the years.

The last item in the portfolio is, at 9 nanoseconds and 18 bits, the smallest and fastest known virus: 19766. Gif: [https://github.com/daniel- cussen/portfolio/blob/master/19766...](https://github.com/daniel- cussen/portfolio/blob/master/19766.gif)</comment>


1Kb library to generate image placeholders on client side - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hustcc/placeholder.js <comment><USER2> The code is clearly stolen from Holder.js [1].

\---

[1]: [https://github.com/imsky/holder](https://github.com/imsky/holder)</comment>


Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School? - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589-1,00.html <comment><USER2> Say for a moment that there are lots of students like jrockway for whom this would work. Give 'em $100 and they go from B to A students.

So what? Why do we want more A students? Space in universities is a scarce resource and grades are a sucky predictor of success there already. Why make them suckier by increasing the number of people not intrinsically motivated by the subject?

It keeps more people in school? Doubtful, since once you move to cash you're competing with the work force. But even if it did, again, so what? Reluctant scholars aren't made into better people by an extra year of school. If anything they're worse since they're delaying engaging in something they might enjoy, whether it's welding or carpentry or just entering the adult world.

<comment><USER3> The difference is that in the article, the experiments were all done at failing schools. The cash wasn't to make B students into A students; it was merely to get kids to read at all, or to achieve a baseline score on a standardized test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't work very well here in the UK. Here kids are paid from 16 to 18 to stay in education (and attend) - it's silly for 3 reasons:

\- Everyone games the system to make money while avoiding school.

\- It's not awarding achievement but attendance

\- More importantly it helps expand the stigma to leaving school at 16

With that said... My Mum is a teacher and believe me: School is all about bribing kids to learn. Doing that with cash? I can't see how you could get it to work in a way that _stimulates learning_.

Just to blow my own trumpet for a moment, I have my own take on a solution to stimulating education:

[http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2010/04/an-educational- startupa...](http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2010/04/an-educational-startupapp- idea/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Should adults be bribed to do well at work?

Of course! So why not with kids in school?

Throughout high school and middle school, I was mostly a B student. If I got $100 a month to be an A student, I definitely would have been. A few hours more of studying and I would be able to buy myself stuff I wanted? Fuck yes.

<comment><USER6> Adults are paid x because they generate some revenue greater than x. That's why. Not to give the employer the warm fuzzies.

<comment><USER7> But you could argue that society (the "employer" here) will benefit a lot from having smart, well-trained workers who keep high-paying jobs in America and such. It also might allow them to roll back some of the budget increases that were meant to increase performance but failed.

So though they're not generating the revenue now, they might save some money now by being able to succeed in a cheaper-to-run school, and they'll generate lots of tax revenue later if America stays the economic powerhouse that it is instead of having a lot of those jobs move to Europe and China and India.

<comment><USER8> Straight A students != smart, educated workers. The majority of students coming out of 4 years of college, regardless of GPA, have little to no understanding of what actual productive work is without being told what to do (little executive function).

Kids should not be bribed to do school work. If you have to bribe by definition we are doing something wrong. What's needed here is a refactoring of incentives.

We should absolutely be paying kids, but they should be generating value. It's never too early to understand what generating value is, and everyone can create value (side note: profits are correlated to value now, but they are not causally related. We should work on that). Starting to work is a really important part of education, and shouldn't be thought of as what education is training you to do.

Edit: And I don't think it should be like this, but generally speaking if you get good grades you'll have a relatively easier time in life and higher paying jobs so in that regard kids already are being bribed to get good grades they are just too stupid to see it.

<comment><USER7> I agree that straight A students aren't necessarily smart, educated workers, but I do think that if you get the kids to learn more from school, you'll end up with more smart, educated workers than you would have.

And yes, it is true that getting straight A's, going to a good college, etc all make life easier and better for kids (in general). But it's hard to get people, especially kids, to see that long-range. In second grade, was getting into a good college a factor in how hard you tried whatsoever?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Summary:

"If you pay a kid to read books, their grades go up higher than if you actually pay a kid for grades, like we did in Chicago," Fryer says. "Isn't that cool?"

"Kids may respond better to rewards for specific actions because there is less risk of failure. They can control their attendance; they cannot necessarily control their test scores. The key, then, may be to teach kids to control more overall — to encourage them to act as if they can indeed control everything, and reward that effort above and beyond the actual outcome."

</comment><comment><USER10> It might work; it's a good experiment; but it's dangerous. I'd lean in favor of the Deci argument against "cheapening" the reward system for learning. The author seems to disagree. He closes with:

       I ask her about the psychologists' argument that she
       should work hard for the love of learning, not for
       short-term rewards. "Honestly?" she asks.
       "Yes, honestly," I say. She looks me dead in the eye.
       "We're kids. Let's be realistic."

I think that it is a bad closing. No matter how intelligent you are, there is something that challenges you that you find rewarding -- sports, math, BMX, etc. The problem with education -- pointed out by the iceland article from earlier this week that I can't find -- might be that children are not given appropriate challenges. Incremental advancement by grades seems ugly and woefully imprecise. Some students are learning far behind their levels; some, far ahead. the former students learn to hate learning; the latter are bored.

So again, good experiment, but cause for concern. I'd be more interested in experiments that educate kids by intellectual level, not years in the school system. (Although, admittedly, parents are the obstacle. "What?! Billy's not in the highest class?!")

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is, schools already use a reward system. What do you think a grade _is_? An A is like a gold star.

Yes, obviously if a kid is doing something for pleasure, you should continue to let them do it for pleasure. But if they aren't doing anything to begin with, no amount of waiting around for them to discover they'll like it will work. You need a stick or a carrot. And in schools, they have been using sticks and carrots from the very beginning. This was just a study on what is an effective carrot.

And rewards don't completely kill your intrinsic rewards. I loved reading as a kid, and I also participated in those summer reading programs. I got lots of prizes, and I still loved reading. The studies show that rewards do diminish intrinsic rewards, but to what extent? Maybe it's worth mildly damaging some children's intrinsic rewards in order to encourage kids without that motivation.

Remember, their studies found that the rewards showed the greatest improvement in some of the lowest performing students. The ones that are intrinsically motivated are probably already at the top, so public schools are less concerned about them.

<comment><USER11> _The thing is, schools already use a reward system. What do you think a grade is? An A is like a gold star._

Yes, but you have to care about the reward for it to make a difference. Those targeting competitive colleges and going for competitive scholarships will care very much about the grades, the rest will only care about pass or fail. At least that is the impression I got when I was going to high school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _So instead of giving kids gold stars, Deci says, we should teach them to derive intrinsic pleasure from the task itself._

Naturally, but that's a hard thing to do. I enjoyed calculus, I found "The Last of the Mohicans" incredibly boring. I am not sure I could have found any way to make "The last of the Mohicans" remotely interesting.

If you cannot create an intrinsic reward in the minds of the children, providing external rewards seems to make a great deal of sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've had this discussion many times with friends. We believe it all comes down to the personal investment in the child's education made by the parent(s). How much they care and most importantly, how much time they spend being involved with their child's learning. It's not about how much money the school district has, how rich the kid's parents are (good test: are the cars in the faculty parking cheaper than the ones the students drive), how much is spent on tutoring. It's up to the parents to emphasize (or de-emphasize) how important learning is.

</comment><comment><USER13> Definitely. Adam Smith's _The Wealth of Nations_ was an exploration of how society could be structured to incentivize moral behavior. Schools should be structured to incentivize education.

</comment><comment><USER14> From the article it sound like a pretty solid study, other than the phrasing:

"Grades are subjective. The more objective measure would come at the end of the year, when the students took their standardized tests"

Though from the sounds of results that's just poor wording more than an actual claim that standardized testing is a Good Thing.

I think the most important results can be summed up as:

rewards work best when coupled with things that students can control (in context, not as vacuous as it sounds) and rewards should follow the actions fairly quickly.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would say it depends on the bribe.

</comment><comment><USER16> According to the article, rarely.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article has too much story fluff.

tldr:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

The experiment: pay kids for performance and measure improvement in skills with a standardized test. Four payment schemes were chosen, to be implemented in four different cities. Schools within the city were randomly assigned to the control or experimental group.

In New York, 4th graders were paid $25 for good test scores, 7th graders $50. The article does not say how frequent the tests were, but the average student earned ~$180 over what looks like a school year. No effect on scores vs. the control group.

In Chicago, 9th graders were paid "$50 for each A, $35 for a B and $20 for a C, up to $2,000 a year," and half of their income went into an account redeemable at high school graduation. The kids got better grades compared to the control group, but their skills--as measured by standardized test--did not improve.

The article is vague about Washington. It says, "In Washington, middle schoolers would be paid for a portfolio of five different metrics, including attendance and good behavior. If they hit perfect marks in every category, they could make $100 every two weeks." The kids "did better on standardized reading tests."

In Dallas, second graders were paid $2 for every book they successfully read and answered a quiz about. The kids did significantly better in the standardized reading-comprehension test, and a year later--after the rewards stopped--their scores were _still_ higher compared to the control group.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

That's an awful lot of variables they changed from city to city. Off the top of my head, I see

      - Age of the students

      - Whether we're rewarding performance, grades, or improved behavior

      - Frequency of the reward

      - Delay between achievement and payment

      - How much direct control the student had over their performance

      - Level of initiative in student participation

It strikes me as unsurprising that the Dallas experiment was successful. The reward was for drilling the key skill (reading comprehension) opposed to an auxiliary like grades or behavior. The payment was immediate (kids are bad at delayed gratification), opposed to days or even years later. Students had good control over payoff for their efforts; reading a book and understanding it is concrete, while studying for a test when you don't know exactly what's on it is abstract. And the whole thing driven by initiative on the part of the _student_ , instead of an administratively mandated test schedule. Those choices all seem to me to be better than the alternatives.

I do think the immediate feedback for solving concrete problems is important. Kids are like puppies. They need feedback FAST for something they UNDERSTAND and can CONTROL, or the lesson is greatly diminished.

If I were to generalize the success, I would recommend a standing offer to pay students to drill skills directly by solving concrete problems, with payment to be made _immediately_ upon problem resolution. You could scale it down to a penny per trivial arithmetic sum, or up to $200 for solving any of a list of independent research or engineering challenges.

I also find the success in Washington particularly interesting. I'd speculate about kids learning to respect school or secondary effects from an improved learning environment, but . . . really I wish I could see their metrics.

<comment><USER18> I wish I had read your summary instead of the actual story. It really bothers me how they never just get to the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, as a kid I would do almost anything for money. The interesting thing was when my father offered me money for performance in sports, I often delivered when normally I couldn't.

When I was 8, I was offered $25 for each goal scored in my next hockey game. I got a hat-trick...that was the first and last time I got that offer and the only goals I scored that year.</comment>


8086tiny: a tiny PC emulator/virtual machine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adriancable/8086tiny <comment><USER2> The DNS server isn't responding for the "more info" link; here it is on the Wayback Machine. [http://web.archive.org/web/20151031061740/http://www.megalit...](http://web.archive.org/web/20151031061740/http://www.megalith.co.uk/8086tiny/)</comment>


New iOS Software Leaks Shape of Next iPhone and Face Unlock Feature - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/891855995172945924 <comment><AUTHOR> dang: if you'd like to change the link to this feel free [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/30/homepod-firmware- face-d...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/30/homepod-firmware-face- detection/)</comment>


Hewlett-Packard To Kill Windows 7 Tablet Project - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/29/hewlett-packard-to-kill-windows-7-tablet-project/ <comment><USER2> It looks like they really _ARE_ doubling down on WebOS. This is a very bold move, and frankly, I didn't think they had it in them. Very nice.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised the degree to which Apple is setting the pace in this new market. With all the resources available to these big players the combination of hardware and software is proving difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps this suggests that people were looking at HP's purchase of Palm in the wrong way.

HP are the biggest computer manufacturer in the world. While I'm sure entering the phone market is a bonus to them, if they think that the iPad is a serious threat to their laptop business, buying Palm in order to be able to speed up manufacture of an iPad competitor makes perfect sense.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not prepared to trust Techcrunch on this. Is this the same source that told them Last.fm gave listener data to major labels when the last U2 album leaked?

edit: is Techcrunch considered the Holy Bible around here? I'm a bit new.

<comment><USER6> TC is largely trustworthy. Everyone screws up sometimes (particularly in a high-stakes environment where some people give you bum leads just to watch you make a fool of yourself). One fuck-up out of hundreds of reports does not an unreliable source make.

In this case, I'd say the point is pretty believable. Although you should never trust anything you read on the internet 100%, I think this one is likely to be correct.

<comment><USER5> Right. The report just seems a bit off. A day after the acquisition, an unnamed source goes to Techcrunch before anyone else? Even if the source does exist, no guarantees they're not lying, deliberately misinforming, or misinformed themselves. (I wouldn't be surprised if HP was trying to light a bit of a fire under Microsoft, or really just gauge potential market reaction à la $999 iPad.)

I'm also somewhat peeved by the title of this submission of HN; no "Rumour:", no "Source:", no "Techcrunch:", just a statement of fact.

I haven't seen any non-TC confirmation of this story yet.

edit: saw a Business Insider piece which basically said "they might do it". No attribution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a very sensible decision. Ultimately, it will be very hard for anything running on x86 to compete with ARM at the moment in power/watt, which is probably the most important metric for these sorts of devices. Inte's working hard to change that, but they haven't managed it yet.

Furthermore, the constant cries for a Windows 7 slate are misguided. There are very few benefits to having windows any many disadvantages. While it's true Window's software will run on such a device, actually using it is a different matter. Just trying to scroll on the tiny scroll bar or tap a target a few pixels wide would be impossible with a capacitive screen and your finger, rendering most desktop applications useless.

If HP is refocusing on a WebOS-based ARM device, they have an actual chance at matching the iPad's usability and specs. I wish them well. WebOS is a wonderful operating system, and I'm glad it's finally getting a chance to flourish.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps 'cause there's no way an HP launcher tacked onto Windows 7 would make a convincing touch computer?

</comment><comment><USER9> Are Microsoft and HP just pursuing the usual route of annoncing products that they never intended to ship, to try to take some sting out of Apples iPad announcement?

I remember a lot of people talking about how great it would be to run W7 on the HP slate, or how innovative Microsofts courier will be.

<comment><USER10> I would think this is less to do with HP wanting to just announce "something" to steal iPad thunder, and more about them just having gained a incredible touch OS. To be blunt, while Win7 has made many strides towards being a better touch OS it is no where near where it needs to be yet for someone to use it without a mouse and keyboard. There is just too much heavy lifting left to do.

I see this less as "we where never intending to do this," and more "we have something infinitely better, in house, which is actually built from the ground up for touch controls. Let's just go with that."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> B,b,b,but they promised it would be: coming soon, be cheaper than an iPad^, do everything the iPad couldn't.

^at the time experts assumed iPad would be $999, they were caught off guard because HP announced it would be less than $1000.

So what happens to all the people that passed on the iPad because the HP Slate was coming soon? Are they going to get a Joojoo?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not convinced that they can crank out a webOS tablet before the second generation iPad arrives. At that time it will be too late.

While it seems reasonable not to ship a table with Windows 7 this may just as well have been a deathblow to the Slate altogether.

<comment><USER5> > At that time it will be too late.

The HTC Dream came out after iPhone 3G, and Android seems pretty alive on phones yet.

The slate market won't settle in a year.</comment></comment>