Meet the new Light Table - <AUTHOR> http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/11/05/meet-the-new-light-table/ <comment><USER4> It looks awesome but the new user experience was a little rough for me. Here's what I did:

1\. Click in the command bar. The autocomplete menu popped up.

2\. Click "new". The menu disappeared and the command bar loses focus.

3\. Click in the command bar again and type "new", hit enter (it's pretty common to be able to create new, unnamed files in editors). This message shows up in the upper right hand corner of the window:

        Uncaught Error: Doesn't support name: (file:///Users/sidney/.lighttable/js/bootstrap.js:10616)

4\. Click in the command bar again and type new, then hit space. Ah, OK, I'm supposed to pick a filename. Type one ("foo.clj") and hit return. A tab opens up with the file.

5\. Type some code. Nothing's happening on the right. Isn't that supposed to be the big thing about Light Table? (Also, the error message from the beginning is still hanging around. Huh.

6\. I go to the command bar again, find the `connect` command. "Connect to a project", sounds right. I type "connect" and hit return. "Connecting" shows up in the bottom right of the window for a few seconds, and then this message pops up over on the left:

        Could not find project.clj file at ""

7\. Okay. I run "connect" again with my filename. Similar message.

8\. I go back to the welcome page and notice the command+shift+enter command, ah, OK. I hit it and a dialog shows up.

9\. I don't have a project so I click "start a local client". The "connecting" message shows up for a few seconds, followed by "Connected to Light Table server". Awesome!

10\. …nothing's showing up on the right side of the window, the "connected…" message disappears. Huh. I type command+shift+enter again, and get the same "You're not connected" dialog as before.

11\. I relaunch and try again, same result. I'm stuck. I look at the screencast again and try the instarepl command. Everything works, nice!

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this, it's a wonderfully detailed explanation of what you went through - mind putting it into a bug report for me? We have a ton of user testing to do and this is the first breath of air this particularly set up has seen (it didn't even really exist two weeks ago!)

Some of these are things that just completely slipped my mind (e.g. clicking on the helpers), some are things that are just that the platform is so new it doesn't have any documentation, and some are just flat out busted assumptions on our part.

<comment><USER6> If someone goes to that much trouble to explain a bug, I generally expect the developer to file it. It is really a let down when someone has gone to that much trouble and is asked to do more work.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely... how difficult is it to copy and paste?

<comment><USER8> The problem is the developer might want to get feedback from the user (eg: some bugs can't be reproduced). If the developer just copy & paste into the bugtracker then he/she will have a hard time communicating with the user.

<comment><USER6> Then you should reply with the bug ID and a URL to the bug that you filed and then the reporter can add themselves if they feel like they want to keep track of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like a good concept, but I really cannot see how this would work for functions with side effects? What if I write `File.rm("something")` and press enter?

And how would this work with, say, Ruby on Rails development?

Can anyone throw some light?

<comment><USER5> As with all tools you have to consider if it's the right place to use it. Things like the instarepl aren't very valuable in highly side-effecting code, but being able to evaluate some block on command still is. You still have to test if that code that removes a file is doing what you think it is as you write it. That being said, you have full control over what does and doesn't end up eval'd - just don't press cmd-enter :)

<comment><USER10> _just don't press cmd-enter_

That seems like a dangerous approach. People could get in the habit of hitting cmd-enter, and accidentally run some destructive code.

Perhaps you could sandbox the execution environment so destructive operations are logged but not actually performed.

<comment><USER11> There are environments that have been behaving just this way for decades (emacs elisp buffers, Satimage Smile for AppleScript text windows) and no one complains or claims it's not well worth the risks. How is typing in any destructive code anywhere or command lines at the shell and just hitting enter different? If you don't know approximately what your functions are doing, you should never call them under any circumstances.

In practice, this has just not been a legitimate concern. Yes, you have to look both ways before you cross a busy street; people are pretty good at looking both ways.

<comment><USER12> > If you don't know approximately what your functions are doing, you should > never call them under any circumstances.

Then why would I use an editor that its main selling point is how easy it is to do that?

<comment><USER13> Well, if you really want to be on the safe side of that particular power vs. safety tradeoff, the repl code could run from (say) clojail. (<https://github.com/flatland/clojail>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really curious about the architecture and stack of lighttable. Please Chris if you could answer some questions it would be great.

How does it work internally?

What are the 'under the hood' differences between 0.2 and 0.1 and why?

Could you share some of those things learnt through all this time building this interactive platform?

How are you doing to get a cross platform desktop app with web tech? (I guess you still use cljs for it)

I'm really curious, and I wonder myself why nobody asks this kind of questions

<comment><USER15> I am also really curious about these points and would like to hear what Chris has to say about them.

<comment><USER5> These are all things I plan to talk about in my next blog post :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> why-el I love what Chris is doing, but I have yet to understand what Light Table does differently from say Emacs's own lisp evaluation mechanism.

<comment><USER16> My opinion is it's time for a UI-driven developer framework with the hackable spirit of Emacs. I hope LT goes in this direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Any idea when we can expect first traces of python support?

<comment><USER18> You might want to check out ipython notebook: [http://ipython.org/ipython- doc/dev/interactive/htmlnotebook....](http://ipython.org/ipython- doc/dev/interactive/htmlnotebook.html) and <http://ipython.org/videos.html>

It's a pretty awesome interactive Python environment.

<comment><USER17> I have IPython. I want Light Table as well :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Competition is good and benefits the consumer (us developers) greatly! While I cannot see how this would work and be useful for languages like Ruby/Python/PHP, maybe the Light Table creator does - and I'm excited to see what's coming.

I can't wait to try the finished product!

</comment><comment><USER20> Chrome alerted me that this file is not commonly downloaded and may be dangerous. Might want to look into why Chrome is flagging your Windows download as potentially hazardous.

<comment><USER21> It's probably just because the file consists of an unsigned executable inside a zip file, which has to be one of the most common ways that viruses are distributed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like the idea of Light Table but what is a deal breaker for me is that it feels like there is an ever so slight lag between pressing a key on my keyboard and the character appearing in the Light Table editing area.

I am very picky about the way typing feels in an editor, and if it feels slightly laggy or slow then that editor is not an option for me, even if it does have all sorts of other awesome features.

Does anyone else feel this or is it just a problem with the app on my MacBook?

<comment><USER5> I don't notice anything unless I have my machine doing some crazy stuff. That being said we haven't done any real performance tuning yet. Out of curiosity what macbook do you have? I run one of the 2011 airs.

<comment><USER22> I have an old 2009 white plastic MacBook, running Mountain Lion. This is definitely an underpowered setup given its age, but I generally feel that it is fast enough for the programs I use, including Sublime Text 2.

I've had the typing lag feeling with Coda 2 before, but that is to be expected because Coda is such a bloated piece of software with so many features, trying to run on my old MacBook. But I guess I expected Light Table to be a lighter piece of software like Sublime Text 2, so I was surprised to find that when typing in it I felt the same lag as I do when typing in Coda.

<comment><USER23> Well, it's HTML/JS. Doesn't mean you can't make it fast, but it's a slightly uphill battle, especially with large files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Perfect, now edit that T in the lettering to match the reversed L in the logo ;)

EDIT: name -> lettering

<comment><USER25> Like this? <http://d.pr/i/SJhg>

I thought the same as you until I mocked it up. Perhaps they tried it too and thought it looked a little too much like a seven: LIGHT 7ABLE

<comment><USER24> I see what you mean. I'm not sure if the current lettering is better or not than yours.

Surely it's easier to read, but the reversed L is a lot more iconic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> First of all, I love this project and await vim keybindings with bated breath. Light Table + Clojure make me feel like I'm programming in the future.

One issue in this new build, the stacktrace/error widget feels a bit awkward e.g. <http://i.imgur.com/RVYHU.png> Is this likely to become 'dockable' at some point?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm not happy with how that works yet. I ended up compromising on what it does now, because I couldn't seem to get CSS to cooperate with me on how I really wanted it to work. There will definitely be improvements to that bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think you need to be more direct with what Light Table does. I tried creating a C file and executing it, it prompts me to start a "local client" (whatever that is). Obviously I could be doing more to inform myself but skimming the first few paragraphs of this article didn't give me a better idea, neither did the software. The scrollbar is also very hard to click on. The minimize and maximize buttons look to have the same color on my screen. I'm assuming I have a cheap setup, but that's how it is in the real world (I hope I'm not adding snark here, but it really is). A tooltip on what they do would be nice as well. If you get this working with a language like C# or Golang, you'll probably get a customer with me because I like the general idea of working with functions instead of files. Maybe you can add powerful addon functionality if you don't plan to do this yourself.

<comment><USER28> I'm pretty sure the plan is to have support for all of the languages be addon- type things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How do I open files in a project after connecting to it?

Nothing seems to happen after I get the pop-up that the connection succeeded, and if I open the files manually I still get an error when I try to evaluate them (missing connection).

This is on Windows 8, I'll try from a mac later.

Btw, drag-and-dropping a file into the window breaks the program.

<comment><USER29> On 10.8.2 it works. Is there any shortcut for opening files by namespace names? Or of exploring the namespaces in a connected project?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I get the following error:

      $ ./LightTable: error while loading shared libraries: libsmime3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Instruction in how build/install LightTable on Linux? What the the dependencies or configuration directives?

<comment><USER31> Same problem here.

Edit: Arch x86_64

<comment><USER32> From what I'm getting:

        ./LightTable: error while loading shared libraries: libudev.so.0: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

It appears that the linux version is 32bit only. :-/

<comment><USER5> Here's a 64bit one: [http://temp2.kodowa.com.s3.amazonaws.com/playground/bins/Lig...](http://temp2.kodowa.com.s3.amazonaws.com/playground/bins/LightTableLinux64.tar.gz)

<comment><USER31> Awesome Chris - thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using the instarepl to learn clojure and I'm liking it a lot so far for that purpose. However I still can't grasp how to use the project features. I'd like to humbly suggest you do some hallway usability testing and work on the learnability of the UI.

</comment><comment><USER34> That's convenient. I was just looking up Light Table last night when seeking a decent IDE for my Chromebook.

I see that it's moved to a native app now, which makes it Chromebook- incompatible. Is there still a way to access the browser prototype that it started as?

</comment><comment><USER35> This project makes me happy. Can't wait for it to be extended to other languages.

</comment><comment><USER36> Looks good, one suggestion: the 3 circles in the top left corner need icons. It is non-obvious to me what they do, even after testing them out.

<comment><USER5> We'll likely do some more work to make it a bit more platform flavored - <USER2> are specifically a mac convention. From left to right:

Close - Minimize - <USER3>

The one on the far right is fullscreen.

<comment><USER37> Could you leave an option for using the native system windowing toolkit? I prefer programs to feel as native as possible.

Keep up the awesome work though! I'm using Sublime while the project shapes up but I'm still glad I helped fund on Kickstarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> How can I buy the shirt?

</comment><comment><USER39> vim keybinding support?

<comment><USER40> +1. To quote the article: " I realized the other day that the only time I actually open vim now is when I manage to hose my instance of Light Table. "

True vim users can't work without their muscle-memory, so there's gotta be a vim-mode for light table, right?

<comment><USER41> A such mode had been advertised. You can read on [http://www.chris- granger.com/2012/04/15/light-tables-numbers...](http://www.chris- granger.com/2012/04/15/light-tables-numbers/) that Chris is a vim user and they'll use CodeMirror to provides such keybindings.

My main concern is that being vim'ish isn't just about the keybindings, it's way more than that. For example, commands, like :map <leader>r :!bundle exec rake spec %<cr> or in Vjj to select two lines then :'<,'>Tabularize/=>/ to align the hashrockets on two selected lines.

Same goes for splitting panes, with C-w s and so on.

I'd kill for a "modern vim" and I'm really eager to see Light Table released. As Chris is a vim user, I have good hopes for LT's usability in a vim way. If it requires some changes in my vim habits and I can still control everything without too much chordings, I'll happily deal with it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Thank you Chris!

</comment><comment><USER43> Is a plugin API available yet? After using SublimeText 2, I want the fuzzy search, the ST2 "Goto Anything" search box, in every IDE I use.

</comment><comment><USER44> I liked the post "All ideas are old ideas." Looking forward to seeing how you've been inspired and what the result will be in Light Table.

Happy hacking.

</comment><comment><USER45> Wonderful, I'm using it to learn Clojure and work on 4clojure problems.

What I really miss for this purpose is having some kind of live doc feature.

</comment><comment><USER46> Please consider increasing the brightness of your text. It's dark grey on light grey background is very straining to read.

<comment><USER28> There are other themes, but they didn't get packaged in this release. The next release will have a bunch of new themes (and I think I've convinced Chris to add my own tomorrow-night theme from <https://www.refheap.coms> codemirror editor to it, woot) that you can set in the command bar with 'set theme sometheme'. Solarized dark is included, but the codemirror version of that is just as bad as the default theme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> On Windows 7, I'm getting:

 _CreateProcessW: The system cannot find the file specified._

after C-k instarepl -> Start a local client.

<comment><USER5> Did you by chance have the old one before? There may be some weird conflict with the directories. Try removing HOME/.lighttable and restarting.

<comment><USER47> Nope, I tried removing HOME/.lighttable with LT turned off, it got regenerated back upon restart and I'm getting the same error.

I'm behind a proxy; not sure if it makes a difference.

<comment><USER5> Ah, the proxy is probably it. Does your proxy bypass 127.0.0.1?

<comment><USER47> Quickly scanning the configuration, looks like it does. I've tried temporarily disabling the proxy in Control Panel, but no luck; I'm not sure this is the correct way to override proxy settings for Light Table, though. Where does it pick its proxy settings from?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My I dare asking where we can get those awesome tshirts?

</comment><comment><USER49> Its standalone, now I call it a real IDE... I am happy.

</comment><comment><USER50> Crashes on open for my Mac OS 10.7.2 Anyone else?

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity why aren't you at least on the latest 10.7? Which is 10.7.5

<comment><USER50> Laziness? But if that will get Light Table to work, then I can overcome it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is it writern in clojure or clojurescript?

</comment><comment><USER51> awesome!

</comment><comment><USER52> Could Light Table, from the start, think about a "server mode"? Eclipse can be run in server mode (even headless if you want) and you can then connect to Eclipse using, say, vim + eclim or emacs + emacs-eclim.

This would be great because I don't doubt there are going to be features from Light Table that I'm going to love and that I'm going to want.

But I also don't doubt that there's no way that the "text editor" part of Light Table will come anywhere close to what vim and/or Emacs do provide.</comment>


Thorium (not Uranium) the Future of Nuclear Power  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/960564--thorium-touted-as-the-answer-to-our-energy-needs

<comment><USER2> Every time I hear about Thorium I get a "Too good to be true" feeling but I don't know enough about the technology (and there aren't enough good sources about it) for me to make up my mind. This article cites that there are significant development costs for the first reactors and that few nuclear engineers are educated about them, but both of those are easily solvable problems for a smart team. What other negatives do Thorium reactors have?

<comment><USER3> Long story short, Th isn't actually fissable. It is fertile. You have to use something else (like U235/Pu/etc.) to create a stream of neutrons to turn Th into Pa which decays into U233 (iirc). which is then fissable. (and strangely enough, can be used to convert more Th...)

The problem is if the Pa absorbs another neutron, it no longer produces U233 and so it drops the yeild (and leads to other nasties, etc.).

This is, iirc. why the molten salt reactors are so appealing. You can run the reactor, continuously remove the Pa and let it decay into U233 which you then reintroduce into the reactor.

[http://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/documen...](http://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/document_IAEA.pdf) is an interesting link discussing the feasibility of various reactor designs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't your mining level have to be at least 230 before you can mine that?

<comment><USER5> lol minecraft and that, but a big part of the appeal of Thorium is that we have ridiculous amounts of it laying around already. It's a byproduct of other actinide mining, useless at present, and toxic enough that the safest thing to do is stockpile it.

Which the US has done, leaving us with enough to run reactors for decades / centuries at projected power loads.</comment></comment>


Multi-process Firefox, coming to an Internets near you - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.com/cjones/2009/06/21/multi-process-firefox-coming-to-an-internets-near-you/ <comment><USER2> tbh it's unbelievable that the html renderer and the UI were coupled in the first place.</comment>


Bell Canada To Track Web, TV, Surfing Habits For Ad Purposes - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/10/22/bell-track-customers-ads_n_4138197.html

<comment><USER2> No, oh god no. Bell doing it means Rogers and Telus are not far behind. Which means Shaw will jump in too. This should be opt-in rather than out-out. Well since majority of online websites are tracking users, so it was impending decision I guess, all in the name of relevant ads. I am surprised they were not doing so already.

The data trove will be massive, since bell (rogers and telus) controls TV, Mobile and cable. The data aggregation from these 3 mediums will be very accurate, if they decide that data from other business arms should merge. Scary, since literally among Robellus 90% of Canada will be getting tracked.</comment>


How to scale - get over the fact you are not in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://thebln.com/2010/11/david-soskin-on-how-to-scale-a-digital-business/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, they weren't in Silicon Valley ... but it took them _six years_ to find a good CTO. I have no idea how much of that was on the demand side (they weren't good at choosing them) or the supply side (not many available), but one has to wonder, there's _always_ a shortage of really good people.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/06/investors-back- techcity-...](http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/06/investors-back-techcity- concentration-of-startups-will-attract-capital/)</comment>


Practical Guide to Bare Metal C++ - <AUTHOR> https://arobenko.gitbooks.io/bare_metal_cpp/content/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see some concrete examples of where you don't want exceptions, rtti or dynamic memory.

Quite a few developers believe that if you don't have these features you aren't writing "real C++" but it's common practice in quite a few industries where size/performance is critical.

<comment><USER3> Maybe my experience is atypical but RTTI and exceptions are features of C++ that I never see used in real-world C++ almost regardless of the application. When I have seen them used, it is by people new to C++ that haven't fully figured out the common development idioms of the language yet.

<comment><USER4> I've never seen RTTI use in production code. Even with modern C++, RTTI almost always adds too much runtime overhead and negative performance impacts. Most importantly, it's usually a sign of bad design.

My experience with exceptions is different, though, and I see them used quite a bit. It depends a lot on the age of the code base and the group working on it. Old code is less likely to use them, and developers with a heavy C background, or a lot of pre-C++98 experience are less like to use them. Except for maybe some tiny embedded systems (like microcontrollers), the overhead of exceptions isn't that bad any more.

<comment><USER5> The strange thing about exceptions in C++ is that they make ubiquitous use of RAII a necessity, but at the same time they must not be thrown in destructors.

And then C++ exceptions don't come with a stack trace that makes quick and dirty exceptions based code so convenient in Java or C#.

I was never a principled opponent of exceptions, but I find myself removing them from more and more code the more thoroughly I think about all the possible error states of code that should really be robust.

<comment><USER6> I don't find it weird that exceptions shouldn't be thrown from destructors. I remember being surprised when I learned that rule, but the reasoning seems sound to me: what _can_ you do when the cleanup failed? Clean up harder?

<comment><USER5> The short answer is that action B may depend on whether or not action A was able to finish successfully, including any cleanup.

<comment><USER6> The official reason destructors are discouraged from throwing exceptions is that one reason destructors get called is that something already threw an exception, and there is currently no way to handle two exceptions in flight at once, so in that case the process gets killed.

It's also true that with more experience, we've figured out that cleanup code is special. When I throw an exception during normal processing, I want to abandon what I'm doing. But if I discover that one step of a destructor cannot be completed, I do _not_ want to abandon the rest of the cleanup. If I throw an exception in a destructor, I can't come back later to finish any remaining steps.

And, as I asked earlier, if I throw an exception because I can't close a file, what do I expect the exception handler to do? I guess it could try closing the file again, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that working. Perhaps the file is on a network share and the network's gone down. Perhaps closing the file will involve writing some cached data to disk, but the disk is full. In my experience, in this case your only real options are "ignore it, either because there's nothing you can do or because you're already dealing with an exception and you've simply discovered another symptom of the original problem" or "kill the program because there is no hope." You can log the fact that a step failed, but remember that it's possible for logging to fail, if the disk is full.

<comment><USER5> _> It's also true that with more experience, we've figured out that cleanup code is special._

In my experience the exact opposite is true. Error handling or "cleanup" code is in no way special. Errors are not exceptional and there is nothing we can say in general about what error handling code will or will not need to do.

Error handling code needs to be able to use the entire language and reuse all the regular code that is used elsewhere. A language should not have two modes, an error mode and a normal mode with completely different non-local semantics.

 _> And, as I asked earlier, if I throw an exception because I can't close a file, what do I expect the exception handler to do?_

That depends entirely on the context of the program you're writing. It might want to do things like writing a record to a database that marks the file as invalid/corrupt. It may need to notify some other system about the failed action. It might want to roll back a transaction or initiate a compensating transaction. It may want to abort some session and schedule it to restart at a later time.

There is simply nothing we can know in general about what a caller of an action that failed to complete cleanly may want to do as a result of that failure.

Using exceptions for error states that may require a complex response is just not a good idea and in C++ it's an even worse idea.

[Edit] But to be clear, my initial thought wasn't about exception handling but rather about ubiquitous use of RAII for all sorts of stuff that needs to get done at the end of a scope. Much of that has nothing to do with errors at all. Maybe if you think of these situations it will become clearer why I think that arbitrary limitations of code that runs in a destructor is problematic. C++ has no finally block. Destructors is all we have.

<comment><USER7> I don't agree with much in this post, but in particular "Destructors is all we have": destructors + lambdas + templates allow you to write ScopeGuard, which is a pure superset of finally blocks. Modern C++ has zero need for finally.

<comment><USER5> ScopeGuard relies on destructors, so it inherits the no exceptions in destructors issue.

<comment><USER7> Throwing from a destructor in ScopeGuard is equivalent to calling a function that can throw in a catch or finally block, which you can do in most (any?) languages with exceptions. This no exceptions in destructors "issue" is not a C++ issue. It's a fundamental issue in error propagation. What do you do when propagating error correctly, causes a new error? You can't propagate the first error, because you can't do it correctly. You can't propagate the second error, because that would mean dropping the first.

Classic example is logging an error on failure. This means calling a logging function in the catch block, and then letting the exception propagate. But what if the call to the logging function fails? In Java, coded naively you'd simply drop the original exception. Usually that's not what you want.

You can examine the issue with error codes, it's not any better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He's talking about real time code here and completely missing one of the main reasons why you have to use great care using C++, and even parts of the C libraries ... all those hidden mutexes in new/malloc and other parts of the standard libraries (stdio too)

I'm sure we all know what happens when your ISR quietly does a new while some other part of your code is holding one of the locks deep in malloc.

But far more important is avoiding priority inversions when a low priority thread is holding a lock in a library somewhere, they result in high priority threads missing real-time deadlines - the sort of heisenbugs that are pretty impossible to find .... and are best to avoid by design.

<comment><USER9> Well, if you're programming bare metal you shouldn't be using any library's allocation routines but your own. Because, remember the cardinal rule: no mutices in ISRs!

<comment><USER8> I was kind of pointing out that people know that mutexes in ISRs are a bad idea, but don't know as much about the other dragons that live in the same swamp ... they may also simply not be aware of what's inside their libraries (which ones use mutexes? 'man printf' doesn't warn me)

my point is that there are hidden mutexes in libraries that people often don't know about - his example of replacing new() with malloc() doesn't solve the problem, instead you need to be able to code your C++ without new, or at least the real-time bits of it (and that includes using stuff like strings and their libraries that do new() behind your back, or even printf which can run foul of the stdio hidden mutexes)

It's not just ISRs, priority inversion is a real problem that results in some of the hardest bugs to find (I once had to chase one that happened only once a month, resulting in satellite systems losing their provisioning)

<comment><USER10> > _I was kind of pointing out that people know that mutexes in ISRs are a bad > idea, but don 't know as much about the other dragons that live in the same > swamp_

Honestly, these "people" seem like mythical creatures to me; I've certainly never met one. If you're qualified to write an ISR in C++, you're qualified to understand which parts of C++ are valid to use in an ISR and which aren't.

This is a non-problem that does not appear in practice, even though it could _in theory_.

<comment><USER11> Somehow I can imagine that not being the case with offshored projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you go down to micro-controller levels, you often times are stuck with C++ 2003 and a vendor specific compiler, which means you will lack many of the niceties in the article.

I agree with him that removing the entire standard library is needed. Of course you then need to copy an implementation of printf from somewhere, and likely set it up to only work in your debug builds. Then you quickly figure out that the standard library has a lot of things you didn't even realize you depended on. Math functions typically pop up next, you'll likely end up using a vendor library (by which I mean ARM's), but if you are doing a bunch of math heavy work, and even more so if your chip has some limited FP capabilities (assuming it has an FPU at all), you may also find the need to re-implement some functions based on your performance needs.

Embedded is fun. :)

All that said, I would kill for access to proper lambdas.

<comment><USER13> > If you go down to micro-controller levels, you often times are stuck with > C++ 2003

This makes me feel so old. Back when I started, C on a micro-controller was a rare treat and most things were done in some obscure chip-specific assembler.

I had a play with an Arduino knockoff a few weeks ago, kids these days don't know how good they've got it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Risking being down voted, I doubt that c++ is the right language for bare metal development at all with its constraints like exceptions and RTTI. Rust seems to be the modern and safer version of C that is more appropriate for bare metal development.

<comment><USER11> For that Rust still needs to win the hearts of all those manufacturers selling hardware development kits.

Most of us just get to use the toys already in the package and aren't allowed to bring new ones to the party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Arduino development environment is really GCC C++ with a platform-specific library. All the compile-time C++ features work. Some features that need run- time support may not link.

</comment><comment><USER16> _The usage of single throw statement in the source code will result in more than 120KB of extra binary code in the final binary image. Just try it yourself with your compiler and see the difference in size of the produced binary images._

What?? 120KB? I have to try that out right away.

Edit: That turned out to be completely wrong. Simple program without throw: 71'218 bytes. With throw (one additional line that throws a plain integer): 71'814 bytes. GCC 4.8.1 on Windows. Would have been surprised if that was true.

Edit2: Okay, my bad, I should have linked statically. The statement sounded so absolute, but of course it is conditioned on the bare metal environment which is the subject of this article. Thanks for pointing out where I went wrong.

<comment><USER17> Using mingw-w64 (GCC 6.1.0):

      g++ -Os -static -s on `int main() { }' 17.408 bytes
      g++ -Os -static -s on `int main() { throw 42; }' 139.776 bytes

<comment><USER18> Now what if you use two exceptions? If there's no significant increase, then the whole point is moot.

<comment><USER19> Not really moot. I do C++ on embedded processors with as little as 32kB of program space. Using a single exception means your code will not fit. My general rule of thumb to use full-fledged C++ is a processor with at least 256kB of program space.

Here's a comment of mine from a previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11706840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11706840)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Template oriented programming is a tremendously useful technique for working with overhead-less abstractions for embedded software, but C++ makes it so hard. Most large users of template oriented development (automotive) use external code generators for what should ideally be supported by the language itself.</comment>


Beware the Online Collective: Individual Creativity Is Being Replaced by Dangerous Groupthink - <AUTHOR> http://edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06.2_index.html

<comment><USER2> There seems to be at least as much variety of opinion now as before the web, probably more.

<comment><USER3> I don't think he's claiming the variation in content has decreased, but warns that dependence on collective rating systems could decrease the variance of an individual's effective sample size.

I also don't think the author claims the web has introduced any social problems, just that it isn't solving them yet. Are these even problems with technical solutions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I understand Jaron's premise - sites like facebook reduce the human element by forcing its users to add information according to a predefined structure. Presumably these same users may have created more free form web sites (and he equates this to individual creativity), but I don't really agree that it leads to group-think.

Facebook or any other site is just a medium - whether or not it leads to group-think is more a function of the participants than any conformity in their online 'meeting place'.

</comment><comment><USER5> i bet he could roll a phat doobie.</comment>


The cryptocurrency market's reliance on Tether is a recipe for disaster - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/is-the-price-of-bitcoin-based-on-anything-at-all-8989790678e9 <comment><USER2> I fully support articles that give individual investors advice to stay away from tether (it is indeed a very shady product) but I fail to understand how this is a disaster for the crypto markets.

If tether fails, cryptocurrencies may drop to a lower price- That is not a "disaster", that is appropriate market behavior.

<comment><USER3> The issue is that many exchanges have dropped out of direct cryptocurrency/fiat trade -- if you have a FooBarCoin and you want to turn it into USD, for instance, you will most likely have to convert it to Tether before exchanging that for USD. A lot of trade between cryptocurrencies passes through Tether as well.

If something catastrophic were to happen to Tether, it would have a significant adverse effect on all cryptocurrency trade.

<comment><USER2> I am not aware of even a single example of a FooBarCoin that can't be traded either directly to either Bitcoin or Ether.

<comment><USER4> Those are not fiat

<comment><USER5> They're also not Tether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The reason that this doesn't scare me too much is that during the last crisis (when the price of USDT dipped significantly) the price on most exchange was unaffected, but Bitfinex and other USDT-based exchanges showed a significant discount on the price of USD (manifested as a premium in BTC prices). So the market is capable of assimilating information about the value of Bitfinex-held USD (and thus USDT) without it having a price impact on Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies).

</comment><comment><USER7> The idea that the cryptocurrency market relies on tether is absurd. Everything follows Bitcoin. Tether is an irrelevant scam.

<comment><USER8> A majority of the trading volume and, thus, the apparent market liquidity is in Tether. The problem with this is that Tether doesn't represent real liquidity since there's no way to redeem Tethers to actual USD. Tether currently represents a pool of USD that is trapped in the crypto market. This makes the crypto market seem much deeper and wider than it really is. The only Tether:USD market on Kraken doesn't have enough liquidity for a large entry/exit.

<comment><USER9> > A majority of the trading volume and, thus, the apparent market liquidity is > in Tether.

Well, the majority of trading volume on some exchanges, at least.

While coinbase-pro (formerly gdax) is relatively insulated, I can see that a lot of Southeast-Asian exchanges collapsing when the Tether bubble finally bursts... taking the BTC price down severely with it.

But with that being said: do you have any hard numbers for the amount of trading volume that's tied to Tether? I've been looking for those numbers to satisfy my curiousity. I suspect you're right that a large portion of the BTC market is USDT trades instead of USD trades... but I never found exact numbers on this subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-fried-egg it's a laundromat</comment>


Matt Mullenweg: Scripting is the new literacy - <AUTHOR> http://memeburn.com/2011/07/the-future-of-wordpress-qa-with-founder-matt-mullenweg/

<comment><USER2> And 95% of the linked article isn't about scripting. There's just a single paragraph buried in the middle. And the ability to program isn't the singular ultimate skill in the possible tool kit for success.

<comment><USER3> I agree. And he's talking -to- 'young programmers' and not everyone. Of course they need to be able to script.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it exciting that there are others who have also realized that programming skills are going to be as necessary to success today as reading and writing have been for the past few centuries.

I had the same epiphany last year and wrote about it along with what I thought it would lead to:

<http://www.yacoset.com/Home/the-future-of-it>

Yes, I'm boasting that "I thought of it first", but I have a feeling that maybe I haven't.

Because new necessary skills come along all the time. If you can't drive a car today, for example, you're severely disadvantaged. Or the ability to type more than 20 wpm, or coordinate your thumbs with what a character/cursor does on a screen, or comprehend cause-and-effect once you throw computers and the Internet into the mix.

In another couple of decades there'll be a new skill that everyone has to learn, or else resign to flipping burgers. I, for one, am looking forward to it _.

_ Not the burger flipping part, tho.

<comment><USER5> The most elegant proponent of this idea is Douglas Rushkoff, his latest book being "Program or Be Programmed."

<comment><USER6> Amazon link: [http://www.amazon.com/Program-Be-Programmed-Commands- Digital...](http://www.amazon.com/Program-Be-Programmed-Commands- Digital/dp/1935928155/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310293734&sr=8-1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does he mean 'scripting' is something different than 'programming'? I don't see the difference. And why doesn't he just call it programming then? Because that's what it is.

<comment><USER8> I feel like programming has more forethought into the design and architecture of the system. This is what developers are trained to do.

However, many of my peers at uni who are scientists, economists and linguists have picked up on domain-specific languages (MATLAB, R, etc) and are capable of writing one-off scripts to solve their problems. These people are "scripting".</comment></comment>


Digital Video Transmission using LimeSDR and GNU Radio - <AUTHOR> https://myriadrf.org/blog/digital-video-transmission-using-limesdr-gnu-radio/ <comment><USER2> Let's put this into perspective. We started with custom analog, RF, and then digital parts that were a pain to build. Then, reconfigurable logic came along to help prototype digital easily. FPGA's turned it into a revolution that keeps making waves with creative applications. I predicted and hoped we'd see clever engineers come up with FPGA's for analog and RF. Next, we had FPAA's to easily prototype analog functions. Sure enough, Lime Semiconductor followed with FPRF: field-programmable, RF tranceivers for software-defined networking. I figured they'd do all the usual stuff but waited for the surprise.

Now, this use of FPRF qualifies for that. I'd have never thought to put high- quality video on the ham bands. Just hearing about that gives me ideas now that I know it's feasible. It's really an amazing demo that shows the power that this tech puts into people's hands and how such enablers can create unforseen innovations. I might email it to Lime with a suggestion to showcase it as a case study.

This is outside my field where I can't directly build on it. Yet, I did collect a link for anyone interested in building on Lime's stuff. It's below. Any other really good ones people reply with I'll add to my collection to share on related threads.

Myriad RF [https://myriadrf.org/](https://myriadrf.org/)

<comment><USER3> > I'd have never thought to put high-quality video on the ham bands. Just > hearing about that gives me ideas now that I know it's feasible.

Dude, it's been feasible since the 1960's, and cheap since home video equipment became common in the 1970's. Old fashion NTSC signals are just simple AM modulators, dirt cheap and dirt simple to build. (OK, I admit that a VSB transmitter requires an interesting filter, but not out of the question, and more-or-less optional unless you are running high power.) Also, some hams have been doing NTSC over FM for quite a few years (SITN used to run over FM).

Modern digital video is also pretty much plug-and-play these days, although building a transmitter from scratch with a half dozen transistors isn't a thing.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, RF is out of my expertise a bit. I've been looking into non-digital hardware stuff for a few months to a year now. I figured I'd get some useful feedback.

Let's flip it in a different direction. What have _you_ found to be the most interesting and noteworthy applications of FPRF for a hobbyist and/or manufacturer? What examples should I pass along to people wanting to tinker with them or push the envelope?

<comment><USER3> Well, not quite FPRF, but people have been using rooted Androids to build RYO- Stingray-Detectors. I'd love to see this become ubiquitous. With a nice API and some Google map-fu you could crowd-source a real-time nationwide map of Stingrays in operation. Perhaps an FPRF board like this would simplify the RF side of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Direct link instead of aggregation: [https://myriadrf.org/blog/digital-video- transmission-using-l...](https://myriadrf.org/blog/digital-video-transmission- using-limesdr-gnu-radio/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks. Url changed to that from [http://www.rtl-sdr.com/broadcasting- dvb-s2-with-the-limesdr/](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/broadcasting-dvb-s2-with-the- limesdr/).

Submitters: HN prefers original sources. (Please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want another cool SDR, check out the RedPitaya [0]. It's not only an SDR, but it has support for 6 channels. It also comes with some stuff that lets it operate as a fully decked out 125 MHz scope and other stuff.

Really cool.

[0] - [http://redpitaya.com/](http://redpitaya.com/)

<comment><USER7> Just a correction... it's only 50 MHz bandwidth (the 125 number is the sample rate). Just as an oscilloscope that's not really that good of a value, but the RedPitaya looks like it does lots of other different things, which is pretty neat.</comment></comment>


What's going on in the WordPress economy? - <AUTHOR> http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/12/wordpress-economy-part-1/

<comment><USER2> Here's hoping that Part 2 talks about secondary effects, like WordPress users who have used the software to do stuff that matters.

<comment><AUTHOR> Part 2 is already up (just a long post split into two), but I agree, I think that would be an awesome basis for a separate article.

<comment><USER3> That's a good idea :)</comment></comment></comment>


The Looking Glass – Holographic Display - <AUTHOR> https://i.lookingglassfactory.com/ <comment><USER2> I've seen this thing in real life and it's astounding.

In the early versions, it was clear that the magic was happening by projecting slices onto the surface of multiple sheets of plexiglass.

In this production version, the glass is 100% transparent, and the slices of image appear to be a seamless 3D whole. Aside from the fact that it's not in open air, it's just like looking at a real hologram. As you move your head, you're seeing a different point of view, and the object looks like it is really inside that block of glass moving around.

I don't think I've seen any consumer gadget that seems so thoroughly from the future in the last 10 years.

<comment><USER3> > Aside from the fact that it's not in open air

I once put a lot of work into researching how to build an "open air" 3d hologram like they have in the movies and came to the conclusion that it is basically against the laws of physics. This is because its impossible to bend light beams in free space.

There are however a lot of cool tricks and hacks, 3d holograms are a really cool subject, this Looking Glass product looks fantastic I want one.

One of the biggest problems these kinds of holograms in a box have is, even though horizontal scrolling works fine, being able to look at it from the top and bottom does not. Here [1] is a video of a 3d hologram in a box based on a rotating mirror that has a head tracker for viewing from different vertical angles. It's really cool but the thing rotates so fast it's also extremely dangerous.

Another approach for open air 3d holograms is to create a series of small explosions that emit light by shooting dangerous high powered lasers into the air and using plasma emission. See [2]

Finally here is a cool video of some fan based holograms [3]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVS- npfVuY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVS-npfVuY)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjvq0SNczrI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjvq0SNczrI)

<comment><USER4> * against the laws of engineering.

There's no reason we couldn't come up with something creative once the technology was there. For instance, a magnetic field could keep matrix of tiny particles in the air that could be targeted with lasers that cause the particles to emit light.

There's already something along those lines, heating the air enough to form plasma:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkZcFWgr4Q](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkZcFWgr4Q)

Very primitive and limited but certainly a proof of concept.

Edit: ugh, this is what happens when you don't read a comment fully before replying.

<comment><USER5> > For instance, a magnetic field could keep matrix of tiny particles in the > air that could be targeted with lasers that cause the particles to emit > light.

irony: this is in fact "against the laws of physics"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw%27s_theorem)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I think what he means to say is ultra minituarized matrix of billions of high powered phased arrays all synchronized to keep billions of charged aerogel-type mm^2 "pixels" with a different angle of refraction as you rotate it and a different excitation at different ... just make it up as you go along, its decades away at best!

<comment><USER4> Sounds like you've thought about it though. If we can imagine it, perhaps it's possible. Could anyone have believed that we could control the color of millions of tiny dots on a thin flat surface 100 years ago?

My point is that to say that it's against the laws of physics is as ridiculous as my imaginations of what is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was a Kickstarter backer, and have been developing experiments on it nearly full-time since it arrived about a week before Christmas. It was, amusingly, the first time I've tracked a package minute-to-minute since we used to watch Santa's progress via NORAD on Christmas Eve.

The crazy thing is that the hype was justified: it is pure magic. There's lots of negative peanut gallery elsewhere in this thread; they are just wrong and totally missing the point of what this team and device have accomplished, which is delivering a genuinely novel experience out-of-the-box, for about $500, with both a reasonable selection of samples on launch day AND a proper Unity SDK with good examples. It's one of those rare crowdfunded projects that shipped exactly on time (!), the drivers work, and the support forum is full of helpful people who reply to questions in a timely manner.

My only regret is that I didn't spring for the opportunity to buy a 15" for $2000 when I had the chance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you get the leap with it too? If so, do you think that's worth the extra $100?

<comment><USER7> Coincidentally, I backed the Leap on Kickstarter back in 2011 or whenever it was, as well. They've updated the software but never [needed?] to release a v2 of their hardware.

My reply on this is: it's a mixed bag, and while several of their launch demos indeed make use of Leap, I was somewhat surprised by the degree to which there seems to be an undercurrent of disdain for it in the Looking Glass ecosystem, which is still small enough to be a first-name basis kind of affair. (eg it's a perfect time to get in on something verified awesome)

From my perspective as a Unity dev, getting the Leap integration working was the hardest part. In fact, if I'm honest, I gave up before succeeding.

Here's the double-edged sword: apparently, getting 1:1 mapping between the Leap and whatever you're building is tricky... but kids freaking love it. So, if you're looking to get young people excited or planning to build something that only makes sense with a Leap, then sure... go for it.

However, it's tiring to use for long periods and I find only half-good at continuously tracking fingers. Good news is that there's apparently SDK support coming for depth cameras which could go a long way towards replacing the need for the Leap in the ecosystem. It seems like the hard thing which Leap figured out was the identification of fingers and gesture tracking. There's lots of devices out there which can do cool depth or time-of-flight sensing, but you still have to process a stream and make sense of it in near- realtime. So for a $100 gadget that does a 70% good job of this without a lot of coding smarts required, Leap was ahead of its time.

Sorry, I know this was a bit all over the place and I sound like I'm waffling. Perhaps it comes down to a combination of "is $100 a big deal to you?" \+ "do you imagine building apps that rely on gesture control?" \+ "are you patient when it comes to iterative troubleshooting and integration in Unity?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that was very informative. I think I'll just get the display and get the leap separate if I find myself wanting. It's only $90 on it's own anyway. The extra $10 for the case and cleaning cloth is cool, but it's never going to leave my desk so I'm not worried about transport and I already have several microfiber cloths.

<comment><USER8> YAGNI is a great rule of thumb but I gotta say: I always make an exception for cases, and I've always been right about that thus far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The effect is really cool -- I've seen these in person.

It's like a really well-done, high-resolution take on those lenticular plastic 3D images. It does look truly volumetric as long as you're kind of roughly in front of it. But if you go too far off to the side the effect breaks down a bit.

Inexpensive 3D displays that don't require eye-tracking a la the Nintendo 3DS would be quite a nifty development.

<comment><USER10> I did my own version of the lenticular 3D this as hobby project. You need quite a high resolution (density) display. You also need to configure the output very accurately so that it corresponds to the final desired image for each eye. Because of how an LCD displays color you this is an even more complex translation.

However the advantage of eyetracked lenticular over "The looking glass" would be resolution. (there might be other FOV and effect distance advantages as well)

<comment><USER11> With lenticular arrays you don't even need eye tracking (in theory), since you can directly synthesize a geometric light field (that is, a bundle of rays around each point with different colors for every direction), but you'd probably need quite a few pixels per lens. If the lenses are <1mm diameter, and you need say >10x10 pixels per lens, that's at least 100ppcm, or >250ppi, preferably a lot more. Latest phones do seem to reach that level.

In the end the satisfaction level needs to be evaluated experimentally of course, I wonder how nice one would be with current technology (say, an iPad Pro display), did you build a prototype?

<comment><USER10> Yes I built a prototype. You can order lenticular sheets online. I have an iPad Pro but the distance between the LCD to the screen surface is too great to use normal lenicular sheets. A 4k small laptop screen would likely be enough for clean binocular separation however I only had a 1080p 10inch display. While this is difficult at the hobby level this already seems to be widely commercially available [http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php](http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php)

<comment><USER11> Interesting how they're marketing it: as a glasses-free 3D display instead of a holographic (lightfield or w/e) display. That's probably due to the chosen field of view and resolution tradeoff, where you can see only a narrow field of view and angular variation is small (so there are less artifacts, better image quality/"resolution") -- it's a quasi-binocular range field.

However, this seems like a poor strategy: most people already know 3D (binocular) displays and there's not much demand for it, I bet few people would be willing to pay significantly more for lower quality just to get rid of glasses (for those who even crave binocular content). Compare to the potential of having wide viewing angle holograms (even if a little fuzzy) in your living room.

Unrelated: Your blog posts are awesome and you should submit more often to HN ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this through the Voxatron [1] blog [2]. Looks like they support it now. I think a setup like that would really hype kids up to design and program.

[1] [https://lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php](https://lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php) [2] [https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32743](https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32743)

<comment><USER12> This was my first exposure to it as well, I follow the developer of Voxatron/Pico-8 on Twitter and they were posting videos of it in action a few months ago [1].

Voxatron got an update recently that is beginning to show a lot of promise, but it's still a bit incomplete to make anything more than neat visual scripts or basic drag-and-drop games. However, I would be very excited to see the platform develop further, and to try out a Looking Glass for myself (they're far too rich for my blood for the time being).

[1] [https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/1027606480030117890](https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/1027606480030117890)

<comment><USER13> _far too rich for my blood_

I thought $400 was surprisingly reasonable.

<comment><AUTHOR> $499 (let's say $500 to avoid the mental rounding down bias), +$100 if you want the Leap Motion, +$25 tax, + $50 shipping. My cart is at $673.92 USD. Having a hard time clicking "Checkout", but I'm not leaving the site yet :) Still seems reasonable in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This isn't actually "holographic" as such. Holography [1] specifically refers to creating a 3d effect by recording light diffraction and interference wavefronts. At this point though the term has become so corrupted that most people think that holography means any kind of 3d display without glasses - which is definitely not what holography is.

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

<comment><USER15> If everyone thinks that's what Holography means, then for most intents and purposes, that's pretty much what it means.

<comment><USER16> I can't say if it is a clever pun that you made up the meaning of the word "everyone" to exclude the author of the post you replied to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In case anybody is interested, this video recording of a demoscene production on one does a pretty good job of showing how it looks.

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78756](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78756)

I've seen one in real life and the left-right 3d is great, and in many cases it looks like there's a solid, low-res object floating inside the box. There's no up-down movement, but its surprisingly effective.

<comment><USER18> The website UI behind your URL is maddeningly hard to navigate if you're looking for the content. I wasn't even sure what this website was for, but it pointed me in the direction of understanding what the demoscene is [1].

If anyone wants the link to the content, it's here: [https://youtu.be/US7hzM0a21E](https://youtu.be/US7hzM0a21E)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of the video game way back in the 90's called "Time Traveler". This was in the expensive section of the arcade and cost around a dollar to play - a huge premium over the nickel machines.

My brothers and I finally decided to pooled our money together to play the machine - the gameplay was weak but the visuals were cool!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_\(video_game\))

<comment><USER20> If I remember correctly, the gameplay was similar to Dragon's Lair: Cool to watch, infuriating to play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's not holography, period. Let's call things by their names.

They do not build an interference pattern which models the light waves as the object was there.. though that kind of technology isn't that far away.

As someone who used to do holograms, I was quite excited to read the headlines - but once you read more into it - you see that it's just a trick, 'gimmick' even if it works well - it's not pure holography, so, please, don't use that name.

</comment><comment><USER22> their website seems down (maybe thanks to HN?) but there are videos of this you can check out on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=looking+glass+h...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=looking+glass+holographic+display)

<comment><USER23> working on this now, thanks HN :)

<comment><USER23> Aaaand we're back

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The only thing that was negatively conveyed in the video, is that it was apparent that the FOV on the device is narrow...

At one point, the camera shifted and you could see the image in the device fade out...

Also - it seems the viewing angle is fairly specific?

What would these look like mounted to a wall, perpendicular to the floor? Are they usable?

Whats the limiting factor on size?

<comment><USER25> It's 45 views across a total of 50 degrees, that's 25 degrees off-center left and right. And there's only a single vertical angle. What gets displayed in those views is 100% implementation-dependent. There's no standard for how "deep" the objects should look, and there's no standard for the vertical angle either. So whether it will look good on a wall is content-dependent. I suspect that most content being made specifically for the Looking Glass will have a downward viewing angle in mind, as would be natural for having the device on a desk in front of you.

<comment><USER26> One of the other commenters suggests that it is displaying onto several layers of glass inside the block; I didn't watch the video but I wonder if the surfaces that it is displaying on could be curved in addition to this within the block, so that the image has a wider field of view..

<comment><USER27> It is not displaying on layers in the block. I have a 15" LookingGlass. The depth appears continuous, not in discrete layers.

The field of view is, to me, very wide. I'm not trying to show it to an audience and it is more than enough to immerse me. It is also important to note that the field of view comes with parallax: you can really see around corners. It is not just a wide field of view on the same stereo pair.

<comment><USER28> It's NOT layers in the block?

What happens if you move your head up and down relative to it (vertical angles), does the object not get vertical parallax?

<comment><USER25> It's definitely not on layers. There's a weird perspective illusion vertically but it's not parallax and you can't "see around corners" vertically. It's a lenticular effect, horizontal only. Check out the Vimeo holographic channel: [https://vimeo.com/channels/thelookingglass](https://vimeo.com/channels/thelookingglass) Each video is a 5x9 matrix and each view is a different angle. If you're working with a 3D object and not a video it's the same deal - it has to be rendered from 45 different perspectives and these are sent to the device separately.

<comment><USER28> It's 5x9, but that's just how it's stored, right? The actual data comes from a linear array of 45 cameras, right? Or is it a curved array of 45 cameras along an arc?

<comment><USER25> Right, I think a linear array would work best since it matches where your eyes will be when you move left & right in front of the screen. [https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it- works/](https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/) It shows up on HDMI as 2560x1600 but I don't know how the physical panel is laid out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It looks really cool, but makes me want a real cube that you would be able to walk around and see every angle of your 3D model.

</comment><comment><USER30> Could you theoretically run a game like Trials from Ubisoft on something like this? From what I understand of the technology it would be like an ideal use case for it. Seems like an amazing experience at least in theory.

</comment><comment><USER31> How well does it work with Linux? I didn't see anything about it on the site. It'd be neat to hook up to my laptop, but if Linux isn't supported at all there'd be no point.

<comment><USER32> Mine should be arriving tomorrow or Monday, I'm intending to try and use it with Linux. From what I can tell, the display more-or-less presents as a normal 2d monitor which expects a tiled grid of views that differ in azimuth: have a look at [https://vimeo.com/lookingglassfactory](https://vimeo.com/lookingglassfactory)

<comment><USER32> Correction - the views are interleaved, and the details of that interleaving depend on the calibration of your individual Looking Glass.

[https://github.com/lonetech/LookingGlass](https://github.com/lonetech/LookingGlass) has a Python tool that grabs the calibration out of the looking glass, and an OpenGL shader that can be used with MPlayer to take the tiled videos from the vimeo link and display them on the LG.

It's a really cool effect in person - I'm totally glad I sprung for one!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is this pepper's ghost, or something different?

<comment><USER34> The display volume is made up of layers of refractive material, and the software generates 45 perspectives of the displayed model, which are refracted to the appropriate viewing angles. [1]

Their website terms it a, "...lightfield display with volumetric characteristics". [2]

[1] [https://youtu.be/sWevv3zotXY](https://youtu.be/sWevv3zotXY)

[2] [https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it- works/](https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Slightly funny that the makers of one of the most cutting edge display technologies in the world have an absolutely atrociously designed website.

<comment><USER36> How is it poorly designed? It looks like every other website, it sort of resembles theverge.com. Not a fan of the bold font, but otherwise it looks no different than any other major site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Amazingly looking.. but haven't we been there before? JooJoo tablet? Anyone remembers it? Then Apple came with iPad and JJ disappeared. What's the chances one of XX Apple future tech Skunkworks teams are NOT working on something similar with billions of dollars in R&D founds?</comment>


Quantum Suicide - <AUTHOR> http://science.howstuffworks.com/quantum-suicide.htm/printable

<comment><USER2> Does the Copenhagen Interpretation strike anyone else as eerily like lazy evaluation?

My other thought is that once you're doing 'thought experiments', you've become rather unmoored from science as I understand it: Observation, Hypothesis, Prediction, Experiment, and so forth. Hopefully, the 'thought experiments' will lead to something testable.

<comment><USER3> Thought experiments can reveal profound results beyond what current instruments are capable of measuring.

In 1935, Einstein and friends published a thought experiment that basically said "Well if all this quantum theory is true, then locality can't possibly be a principle." It turns out that locality isn't actually a principle of physics and now we have entanglement, Einstein's "spooky action at a distance."

<comment><USER2> To the extent that thought experiments suggest real experiments, they are indeed valuable. I disagree that they can 'reveal ... results', however. For instance, Einstein's thought experiment was designed to 'prove' that QM was wrong. Obviously, that result was incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> haha quantum physics may as well be chinese to me. the only explanation that has _ever_ made the least bit of sense is that cartoon with the old man super hero talking about light particles.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice movie plot for Jet Li perhaps, but they don't actually explain how to kill yourself in all universes. So, unless you're a cat or Solid Snake, you can get out of that box now.

</comment><comment><USER6> They have no clue what they are talking about. For example this:

 _This is the same case with quantum suicide. When the man pulls the trigger, there are two possible outcomes: the gun either fires or it doesn't. In this case, the man either lives or he dies. Each time the trigger is pulled, the universe splits to accommodate each possible outcome_

Universes do not split like that. That would mean many universes were being created from nothing every instant. What actually happens is there are _already_ infinitely many "universes" and they _become different_. And not one per outcome, but in proportion to the probability of outcomes.

<comment><USER7> >Universes do not split like that. That would mean many universes were being created from nothing every instant. What actually happens is there are already infinitely many "universes" and they become different. And not one per outcome, but in proportion to the probability of outcomes.

It's not the writers of the article who have no clue. It's quantum physicists themselves.

In the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, a conscious observer induces wave collapse (a random process). In this interpretation, there are no other worlds. In Wave Collapse/Many Worlds, a parallel universe is created in which wave collapse occured but gave a different outcome.

There are different interpretations of QM (e.g. bohmian mechanics or GRW/stochastic collapse) which don't have this problem. If you are interested in QM, I strongly suggest looking these theories up. But Copenhagen QM (the theory in most textbooks) does have this problem.

The reporter did an adequate job of explaining the consensus view. The problem is really that the consensus view can allow for nonsense such as what was described in the article.

<comment><USER6> _In Wave Collapse/Many Worlds, a parallel universe is created in which wave collapse occured but gave a different outcome._

That is incorrect. Many Worlds does not say universes are created all the time, it says they already exist and become differentiated.

BTW all the other interpretations are ridiculous attempts to avoid facing counter-intuitive facts. See, for example, David Deutsch's speech at the recent Everett conference [http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/misc/everett/Deutsch%20-%20Ap...](http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/misc/everett/Deutsch%20-%20Apart.wmv)

<comment><USER8> <i>That is incorrect. Many Worlds does not say universes are created all the time, it says they already exist and become differentiated.</i>

Actually there's no real consensus on that point, even among many-worlds theorists. Some folks suggest that universes "split", others suggest that they "become differentiated", and a third set of folks say that they do something which isn't really properly described by either of the above options. Deutsch has one of the more widely publicised many-worlds interpretations, but it's not the only one out there, and it's not necessarily the most widely accepted.

<comment><USER6> I don't really care what views are popular, (though MWI is popular among top experts to whom it matters), I care which views are true. So what matters to me is which proponents say things that _make sense_ and give good explanations and arguments. Deutsch does, including a powerful and concise argument in chapter 2 of his book. When someone gives a reasonable counter argument then I will reconsider, but that has not happened.

And, of course, Deutsch isn't the only example of the MWI side making more sense. Here is another source:

<http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm>

Edit: If you can give a non-ridiculous summary of any other interpretation, go ahead...

<comment><USER7> Some of the many worlds variants make sense. I prefer bohmian mechanics (I can reason about it better), but I have no objection to MW. Ultimately I don't care one way or the other: the predictions for MY universe are the same, whether or not it is unique or one amoung many.

However, the point I was making is that most physicists believe in wave collapse. The writer of the article was simply providing a reasonably good summary of QM with wave collapse. According to Q1 of your article, this is still a mainstream belief except amoung string theorists, apparently. I agree, it's almost certainly wrong. But that's not yet a mainstream position.

As for other non-ridiculous interpretations, just look at bohmian mechanics or GRW. Bohmian mechanics postulates that particles exist and are guided by the wave function. The testable physical predictions are identical to many worlds. GRW makes different physical predictions (possibly testable in the near future), but the theory makes sense as well.

<comment><USER6> There are two varieties of bohm interpretation:

one says that there are "hidden variables". what this means is all particles store information, from the start of existence, about all other particles they will ever have anything to do with. how they store this vast amount of information isn't explained. then, they act on the information. then somehow either this information is used by some physical process to follow the SE (Schrodinger Equation), or they don't bother with that and say the SE is sometimes false for some reason or other. notice all the parts where some explanation is left out. that makes it ridiculous to call this a reasonable alternative to MWI. MWI does flesh out details.

the other version -- the pilot wave theory -- says there are special particles that go along one groove of the wave function: our universe. this is a ridiculous attempt to make up some special status for our universe.

GRW is about the wave function randomly collapsing when there's enough information flow we might have to face the prospect of other universe-sized- things. why random? b/c that's better than saying "when we want it to so we can avoid MWI" and better than copenhagen's "when people are watching". how do they try to get away with this? well, mostly universes don't affect each other. so basically any time a universe isn't going to affect ours anymore, a "random" collapse occurs, and it disappears. this doesn't break things too too badly b/c ... it's a bit like saying anything so far away we can't see it, doesn't exist. frustrating to disprove. but still ridiculous.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I confronted a Flippa scammer and tips on how to avoid them - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,
Fabian from AltumCode here, first post .
I just wanted to share a quick story from which you could learn both as an author/creator of web products or as buyer from some marketplaces.
- I get notified from a customer of mine that someone on Flippa is selling multiple instances of multiple products of mine
- I check 4 of them (they were more than that) and all of them do not have the right to even run as they were not registered with valid licenses.
- I contact Flippa support, gave them all the initial details about this.
- Flippa support comes back with "proof of purchase", 4 invoices and 4 license keys that they got from the Seller.
- All the licenses are fake and invoices have been faked.
- I provide all the proof to Flippa support and after 3 days, I get back the response that they have enough evidence to go for a Permanent ban on the user.
- The seller has been doing this with multiple other products from other Authors and has sold over $20K doing this. He is now permanently banned and will be blocked from the platform completely.
Here is the full article if you're interested in more details: https://altumcode.com/blog/avoid-getting-scammed-when-purchasing-web-products/
Did you have any similar experience? <comment><USER2> Clicky: [https://altumcode.com/blog/avoid-getting-scammed-when- purcha...](https://altumcode.com/blog/avoid-getting-scammed-when-purchasing- web-products/)

It's weird that the scammer account has "100.0% positive feedback". How many reviews did he had, 1? [https://xkcd.com/1098/](https://xkcd.com/1098/)</comment>


Is Pages 5 a sign of Apple's rotting? - <AUTHOR> http://www.innerworldsfiction.com/2014/01/25/is-pages-5-a-sign-of-apples-rotting/

<comment><USER2> Pages? Eh. They've had much bigger failures in the software department.

Anyone remember iMovie '11 update (if memory serves me correctly) this was horrific regression and Apple allowed users to redownload and install iMovie '09.

Final Cut Pro X easily is Apple's biggest fiasco, and that dates back now nearly 3 years ago. Considering the two Comedy Central TV shows I've done contract work with went from Final Cut Pro 7 to Avid I'd argue was more tall- tell sign of Apple sluffing off professional users in favor of consumer/prosumer.

Other failures that come to mind are me.com, Final Cut Express and Shake in recentish history, all which rank higher than Pages. I like Pages

</comment><comment><USER3> No .. the sign that they are rotting is them banning bitcoin apps. So I can have a bank app but not a bitcoin app on my phone.</comment>


Show HN: Open Source Jobs – Find jobs that match your open source contributions - <AUTHOR> https://www.osjobs.net/ <comment><USER2> I like the idea. But unfortunately, it gave me matches with ~80% confidence with the tags not matching anything I ever touched (and not even know what that is).

And, when hitting enter, it just resets the github name instead of searching (little inconvenient).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Open Source Jobs(formerly Jobder) will recommend jobs for you depend on your open source contributions.

</comment><comment><USER3> didn't work for me at all. all stats were blank and it said my username wasn't valid the first couple of times..

</comment><comment><USER4> Now Server Error (500)</comment>


New Sharing Economy App on the Blockchain Live in Germany - <AUTHOR> https://fainin.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Fainin, the new airbnb for everything else that you own, is now live in Germany. Users can make money from things they own while being insured and protected against theft or damage. Since it went live in Germany a few weeks ago it has been on fire with people lending and borrowing their stuff.</comment>


Little Richard has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/09/little-richard-dies-aged-83-rock-n-roll-pioneer <comment><USER2> Little Richard was a true legend — there will never be another like him. I always can't help thinking of this hilariously bonkers piece by John Waters about interviewing him:

[https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/nov/28/john-waters- me...](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/nov/28/john-waters-met-little- richard)

"I was in this hotel and I had a Chrysler my mother had mortgaged her home to get me. I went into the studio anyway, and they had me singing like Ray Charles, BB King. They wanted me to sing the blues and that was not me. I got on the piano and started singing: 'Woooooo!' They said: 'Oh boy, where did you get that voice?' 'A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom!' and they said: 'That's a hit'… and the rest is history."

<comment><USER3> Bonkers indeed. An interesting point of comparison is this "interview" with Prince, written over the course of months by the writer tapped to write his memoirs [1]. It seems that Prince and Little Richard both had an extravagant overflowing creative instinct that just...dazzled people. As someone whose personality tacks way more toward clear and consistent structured logic, it's interesting to see.

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-book-of- pr...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-book-of-prince)

<comment><USER4> Having watched a few videos of tutti frutti I can smell that Prince loved Little Richard to bits.. there's an subtle yet uncanny similarity in stance and rawness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps my favorite Little Richard song is "Troubles of the World." It isn't your basic gospel, it has real passion and a kind of horror of the physical realm to it. The organ lurches around like a carousel horse as he sings of both wanting to escape the anguish of earthly life even as he looks forward to being reunited with his parents with all of the feel of revelation in a drunken moment. It was off of his second gospel album, a little break from the rock'n'roll, often attributed to some difficulties he had with a plane being a very sharp sign from God. It borders on the sacrilegious with the sound, but the hope to escape misery in his voice turns the sound into a repudiation of the world.

I'm not religious myself but I can feel what it must be like from the track, a sense that the man wanted to escape this swampy carnival with leering pitchmen even as you sense just how comfortable he is with the environment as a whole, how well he fits in. Salvation must have seemed as out of reach, like any brass ring, to a man lured by the money that came rolling in, flattered by the adulation, pampered by the lifestyle, and at ease with casual accommodation of his apparently voracious (and omnivorous) sexuality. Being a lot further to one side of the Kinsey scale than the other must have been another layer on the leaden robe, however gilt, as he struggled to heed the call.

He would of course go back to rock'n'roll. Like Willie Sutton said, that's where the money is. And it's hard to argue with a paycheck, even as unsteady as they are when they're royalties from the record business.

</comment><comment><USER6> Little Richard's induction of Otis Redding into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is one of the best inductions ever.

It's a mess, in a good way. It's unorganized. Richard talks more about himself, but it works and it's pure Rock and Roll. RIP. He was a pioneer.

Seriously, watch the first minute. It's beautiful. [https://youtu.be/YUvHBirr1PI](https://youtu.be/YUvHBirr1PI)

<comment><USER7> Another wonderful tiny slice of LR is when he's interviewed about Jimi Hendrix (search for "Little Richard on Jim Hendrix" on youtube - it's a very short video). I must have seen it 20 or 30 times as I was a Hendrix fan and it was on some VHS copy of a documentary on Hendrix I had at the time. In theory it's an incoherent mix of religiosity, homosexuality, flamboyance and almost narcissistic self-regard but for some reason on some level, it all seems to make perfect sense. I've just watched it again - having not seen it for 20+ years and I'm still smiling as I'm typing this.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHlRa- RPjWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHlRa-RPjWE)

"That time that he used to make my big toe shoot up into my boot!"

Wow.

His freaky look gave Jimmy Hendrix confidence.

<comment><USER6> Wow. I love both Jimi and LR and had never seen that! He was something else. Thanks for mentioning it derriz and for posting the link DonHopkins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "...he was fond of saying in later years that if Elvis was the king of rock 'n' roll, he was the queen"

Absolute legend. The world has lost a singular titan connecting multiple generations of flamboyant pop music excellence.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think I'm reaching that age where more and more celebrities I'm actually familiar with start to pass away.

I first heard Little Richard in the opening chopper sequence from the original Predator. What a great scene!

</comment><comment><USER11> RIP. The Architect of Rock'n'Roll. He laid down the perfect track for all the mothers out there keeping everything going this Mother's Day Weekend ;)

Little Richard - Thinkin' About My Mother (Take A)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13ZlB63K8Dw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13ZlB63K8Dw)

</comment><comment><USER12> I saw little Richard live in the mid 90s when I was a teenager and he is to this day one of the best live performances I've seen. He said at some point that he had an opportunity to invest in the Beatles in the late 50s but declined because he thought they were too closely copying him to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can get an idea of how scandalous Little Richard was if you look up the original lyrics to Tutti Frutti, "Loose Booty."

<comment><USER14> This is discussed in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Went to a music festival in Memphis (2006) on the water and while walking up to our car a limo was driving by. The window rolled down and there he appeared waving to us... make up to the max and all.

Fun memory as my friend sweetly and surprised said, "Oh, hi Little Richard." Most of us didn't notice him until her greeting.

</comment><comment><USER16> The BBC just posted an interview with him from 1972 on Facebook: [https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/2691775331059950/](https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/2691775331059950/)

</comment><comment><USER17> A lot of people who came up in the 80s as 90s (when he returned after his hiatus) saw him as a kooky famous for being famous musical celebrity, and had no idea the amazing reason why he was so beloved and sought after by the adults making movies and records.

</comment><comment><USER18> Prince Version 1 has passed on :(.

</comment><comment><USER19> Richard didn't do wild stuff all of the time. I was blown away when I found his soulful 'I Don't Know What You've Got' (1965, Don Covay song). Ay-yay.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMzX72GOOEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMzX72GOOEQ)

It's said that's Hendrix on guitar.

</comment><comment><USER20> Fans of Little Richard should look up Esquerita, who was a bit of a proto- Little-Richard :) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquerita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquerita)

<comment><USER21> He couldn't be "proto-" Little Richard since his "first solo studio recordings came (...) around 1958".

Little Richard was already doing pop in 1952, and had Tutti Frutti become a hit in 1955.

<comment><USER19> Studio recording dates don't tell you much.

"With a six-inch pompadour, brocaded shirts, rhinestone shades, and a rhythmic, belligerent style of piano playing, Esquerita was the original Little Richard, years before Mr. Penniman tutti-frutti'd his way to stardom. Working around the Dallas-New Orleans circuit in the early '50s...

[https://www.allmusic.com/artist/esquerita- mn0000198922/biogr...](https://www.allmusic.com/artist/esquerita- mn0000198922/biography)

Sample Esquerita; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUF81FcZHMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUF81FcZHMA)

<comment><USER22> Off-topic (sorry) - would you mind emailing email@example.com? I'd like to invite a repost of a previous submission (a la [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20repost%20invite&sort=byDate&type=comment))

<comment><USER19> 1\. I have two email addies- one I _Never_ post online, one throwaway I check once a month to keep it alive. 2\. Anything I post on HN is free (until the ads show up) 3\. _Love_ that Schulz quote. (What a sad story that is.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Watch velvet goldmine

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm struggling to figure out how this is news that a hacker would find interesting. I certainly don't.

Celebrity death news is banal. If there has never been a front page article about someone's lived actions, we should not have one upon their death.

<comment><USER21> > _I'm struggling to figure out how this is news that a hacker would find > interesting. I certainly don't._

I'm struggling to find how this type of comment is considered interesting. HN is a social voting site for startup guys and hacker types. If enough users upvote a story within some time frame (and nothing more involved happens with the moderation), it goes to the front page. Simple as that, and has been discussed at least a hundred times.

So whether someone can "figure" why hackers would find this news interesting or not, hackers did find it interesting and upvoted it.

And why not? Hackers are not one-dimensional computer geeks. They have curiosity, they care for music, they care for pop culture (not to mention movies, comics, etc), they care for games, they care for science, they care for a thousand things...

It's also not about the fact that some "celebrity died".

Little Richard for starters is hardly a current celebrity. Obvious as his figure is to oldsters, most 20- 30-somethings today would't even know about him, except in encyclopedical terms ("some old rock n' roll guy from the fifties?") - if that.

He is celebrated by those who know about him not because of some contemporary popularity, but for what he did 65-70 years ago. Which included significant contributions to pop culture, rock music, gay representation, and other things besides. Things hackers can, and apparently do, find interesting.

<comment><USER25> Kobe Bryant's death submission was flagged immediately from this site, so OP has a point. There's nothing more hostile or controversial on this site than who is allowed to have their obit stay on HN.

<comment><USER26> Is it hard to understand that people here apparently care much less about some athlete who plays a rather US-centric game of sportsball than they do about a Rock 'n Roll 'icon'?

Also, keep in mind that flagging a submission is often not meant as anything more than a downvote. Whether that's appropriate or not, that's what happens.

IIRC I didn't downvote Kobe's death post(s) myself, but that was purely because I was curious to read theories about what happened with the helicopter. That's how little I care about that guy. At the same time, I know very little about Litle John, uh, Richard, but I've just spent a good hour watching videos and reading articles, because I _do_ care about Rock 'n Roll! Your whining aside, this submission was well worth my upvote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> TIL Little Richard was alive yesterday

<comment><USER22> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We're trying for a bit better than internet default here.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The cultural garden is getting dryer and dryer. More room for new flowers I guess.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is allowed but Kobe's death wasn't allowed. Funny.

<comment><USER28> I don't know why this got flagged This was very upsetting when hn refused to acknowledged Kobe's passing</comment></comment>