What photos of Facebook's new headquarters say about work - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/30/what-these-photos-of-facebooks-new-headquarters-say-about-the-future-of-work/ <comment><USER2> Yikes. The push to eliminate any sense of personal space is, I think, reflective of the new dynamic between employers and employees - don't set down any roots, you may not be here long enough to matter. Don't expect me to commit to the company, I may not be here long enough to care. Ideologically and aesthetically, my reaction to this space was that it feels like a reduction of the workforce to interchangeable factory laborers.

The aesthetic feels messy, undirected, and haphazard. I'm sure that someone thinks it means "creative", but I think I'd probably just feel like I'm in a warehouse somewhere.

<comment><USER3> That's a personal opinion and I fully respect it. But I would like to share mine too, which is pretty opposite to yours. I worked for 3 companies as a dev in about 6 years of experience, I always left because I wanted to move to something "more", not because I didn't care or didn't feel included. In all 3 I had a seemingly open space and I really like it if I have space to breath.

I don't think it's about not caring or mattering, actually, the open space environment originated to fight that feeling of being nobody, alone in your cubicle. What open space is trying to achieve is showing that everyone is, at least theoretically, on the same level.

Ultimately, I like it, but I don't think it's perfect and it will probably change. The thing to remember is that this whole big companies are a relatively new thing and nobody has the perfect formula yet, people/companies are experimenting and doing an effort to improve working conditions. I think that matters and I look forward to the future. We are iterating and as long as we don't start to regress I can do nothing but be happy.

<comment><USER2> Oh, it's absolutely a personal opinion. Everyone will react differently, and I truly hope that the folks that work there feel that it benefits and fuels them.

I totally get the idea behind open workspaces, and while there are positives to them - they definitely do encourage collaboration and more frequent interaction - I'm massively less productive in them. My issue isn't so much the lack of walls, but the complete abolition of any sense of ownership of a space. Not having a space that feels like _my_ space makes it more difficult for me to get "into the zone", just because I'm less comfortable. Drive-by conversations can utterly murder a good half-hour debugging session. The temptation to get distracted by all the things going on around me noticeably cuts into my motivation and ability to buckle down and tear into the really hard problems.

I realize that this is just my personal reaction to spaces like this, and I'm certainly not authoritative on it, but I have absolutely observed that I'm far happier and more productive in a space that I can both feel a sense of ownership of and use strategically to limit interruptions and distractions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting watching the juxtaposed trends of increased remote work and... this, in the tech sector. Clearly there is a trend away from "traditional" offices, but it appears to be moving in two fundamentally opposite directions at the same time.

Of course, both share one significant feature: cost savings compared to a more traditional office environment. I guess another similarity could be increased equality, although again, achieved in opposite manners: in one case, everyone gets to choose their own work environment, and in the other, everyone has an identical work environment. (Right down to a lack of personal effects in this case.) Still, the proponents of both approaches appear to believe they offer many other advantages. I wonder whether we'll see one or the other ultimately dominate.

Personally speaking, as the owner of a small, all-remote company, I vastly prefer the remote approach for my own quality of life. (Although I've certainly known people who prefer to go to an office every day.) As far as work output though, both remote work and open offices have advantages and disadvantages. Personally I can't stand the distractions being crammed in a room with a bunch of other developers, but at least being in the same building undoubtedly makes collaboration easier (not that it's impossible remotely). The company culture can definitely do a lot to make that sort of environment more pleasant too. (Things like avoiding noise pollution, and knowing when not to interrupt.) For me, even if I knew I could make more money by relocating everyone to an office, it wouldn't be worth it, but obviously that math would change a bit at Facebook scale.

<comment><USER5> For startups, it's not just about the cost, it's about flexibility. It's easier to have a decent open-plan low density and 3x the people in it overall, or particularly, to 10x a certain department while 1.1xing the other departments temporarily, into a crowded shitty open plan, than it is to have a bunch of 1-2 person sized offices and somehow put 30 into a single office while keeping the others at 1-2.

That's the _only_ reason I can excuse open plan in sv tech at all; otherwise it seems to be a clear failure vs. well-executed offices. It's better than the hierarchical allocation of offices/corner offices/etc. to managers, but that isn't the optimal way to deploy offices.

We can do better, even at 0-50 person startups, than either.

<comment><USER4> That's a great point. It's possible for everyone to have offices without having the silly office pecking order politics. Many open plans reserve the prime areas for shared spaces, and there's obviously no reason an office space couldn't (or shouldn't) do that too. In fact, that jogs a faint memory of another post on HN some months back of an office like that; all the actual offices were on the interior, and the window spaces were all hallways, meeting rooms, and break areas. Can anyone remember what that was?

<comment><USER6> >It's possible for everyone to have offices without having the silly office pecking order politics.

IIRC this is Microsoft right?

<comment><USER7> I interviewed once up at the Borg, and as far as I remember almost everyone had tiny private offices. They were little more than closets. I'm sure some people had bigger/better offices than others, but there was a decent baseline.

I've worked in both private offices and big open floorplans like this. Prefer the former. However my favorite work environment was a smaller company where we all had two-person shared offices (most with no windows), and large coworking spaces where one could camp in the sunlight and be more social.

The two-person offices kept people from feeling totally isolated and encouraged some level of watercooler conversation, plus gave everyone a sense of privacy and control over their immediate environment. I thought it was the best of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Visited an IBM office in San Francisco, near market street iirc, back in 2006 on a study trip, cubicles everywhere and a promise of a bigger cubicle, a cubicle with view of a window or maybe even a corner office if you had X years at the company. It all seemed pretty ridiculous to everyone in my class.

But this seems equally ridiculous, worked 4 places before starting my own company, and open office spaces were a thing in all of them. They ranged from absolutely horrible to fantastic. Good noise canceling headphones can cancel out most sounds, but there's no "cure" for visual disturbances, which for me (and a good part of my former colleagues), are almost as bad for my concentration as sounds. So in the worst open office spaces, there was always a "race" to get the best spots, whenever anyone moved places. By good spots I mean spots away from the main walking paths and a place where no one walks behind you and there's no visual stimuli other than maybe a window to gaze out of when wrestling with some weird bug in your mind.

Of course you can go in a meeting room when you want absolute isolation, but working on code it is awesome having two big monitors as well as peace and quiet, both audio and visual (or maybe I just have the attention span of a goldfish).

The best designed open office space I've worked in was the Spotify office in Stockholm, Sweden, squad areas closed on three sides, open on the fourth and with a little sofa corner and mini meeting room in each: [http://tech.eu/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/2014-05-07-11.19.2...](http://tech.eu/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/2014-05-07-11.19.29.jpg)

<comment><USER9> The FB office makes me feel anxious just looking at it (the noise and the distractions) whereas that Spotify office looks calming and a place where I could concentrate and get some real work done (just look at the white wall with the patterned lines!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Zuck may not technically have an office, but if it's anything like the other places I've worked where "the CEO sits right out in the open with everyone else!", then he probably has a conference room reserved for his use 24/7.

And this actually makes sense. A lot of what he would talk about would be insider information. You don't _want_ to hear that as an employee.

<comment><USER11> And I'll bet you can't sit in Zuck's desk or area. How many FB employees are allowed to listen in on his conversations?

<comment><USER12> If it's non-confidential it doesn't matter, if it's confidential it wont be discussed in an open setting.

Why would FB employees want to listen in on Zuck's conversations? They all have better things to do with their time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice mid-50s factory floor ambience there. I'm half-expecting a whistle to blow and a new shift to come and sit down at the production line.

</comment><comment><USER14> My reaction on seeing that first pic is that it looks kind of horrible !

<comment><USER15> I only quickly glanced at it and thought it was a sweatshop in Bangladesh; I then had to look again because that didn't seem to match the headline of the article or what I'd remembered clicking on from HN. I think it's possibly the ceiling (what is that?) or the things suspended from it that creates this impression (and it's probably an unflattering photograph), but honestly it looks like a perfect nightmare to me.

<comment><USER15> That said, I think those are all Herman Miller chairs, so I guess that's something.

<comment><USER16> I'm sitting on one right now (not a FB one), while knowing full well how expensive they are - what I can never understand is /why/ they are so expensive - I can't say its noticeably more comfortable than any other office chair I've used.

<comment><USER5> They're adjustable (so aerons can be at least ok for ~everyone), and durable, and pieces can be replaced. It's like commercial kitchens vs. home chef -- more expensive, but flexible, and meeting a lot of standards/requirements which make sense in commercial settings but not in one-off settings.

There's probably a $100-200 chair of some design which works better for each individual than the $1000 aeron; it's just a _different_ $100-200 chair for each person. And it probably will not last 7 years in daily hard use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I admit that it is probably an age bias but this has always seemed nutty to me. Bill Gates has stated that one of the best things that he ever did for Microsoft's productivity was to give all his programmers offices.

Sure you can use headphones but I am most productive in absolute quiet. I can just imagine having headphones on with a low level of annoying white noise and I am deep into a difficult problem and then someone taps me on the shoulder.

I'd leap up pulling the laptop with me until my headphones jerked off. Somebody would ask me do you know where they put the coffee? I'd answer that I don't drink it and then spend another hour getting back to where I was before only to have someone else tap me on the shoulder, arrrgghhh.

I am willing to bet that the best programmers Facebook has got are hunched in the stairwell or a janitors closet getting work done.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Before, people would close their door and you'd feel this real barrier to > talking to them

Completely correct. I fail to understand how this is a bad thing, though. It sounds a like a good reason for doors to exist. It is well known that even short interruptions break flow and thus decrease productivity.

<comment><USER2> This barrier is even less of an imposition now that we have intra-office IM as the norm. If someone is in their office with the door closed, drop them an IM that they can read and act on when they're finished with what they're doing.

Maybe it matters less for non-programmers, but even a brief unexpected distraction can undo multiple minutes of mental effort for me. When I need to focus, the headphones go on, the door gets closed, and I intentionally erect barriers to interaction because it's important that I not be distracted. That closed door is a feature, not a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Rich Geldreich [http://richg42.blogspot.com/2015/01/open-office-spaces- and-c...](http://richg42.blogspot.com/2015/01/open-office-spaces-and-cabal- rooms-suck.html)

"1\. North Korea-like atmosphere of self-censorship: ... even simple conversations with other coworkers can be difficult, because all conversations are broadcasted into the room and you've got to be careful not to step on the toes of 10-20 other people at all times. Good luck with that."

<comment><USER20> That sounds a lot like the _user_ experience of Facebook, for users who have incompatible groups of family and friends. You know your college friends would appreciate that Bernie Sanders quote, but if you share it on Facebook then your Ted-Nugent-wannabe uncle might flip out. The similarity is surely not coincidental. It's a variant of Conway's law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm always surprised to see the awful spaces these companies come up with in SV, having been to both FB and Goog's london offices, which are both very nice.

<comment><USER22> It's not the companies coming up with the spaces. It's the architects who want to make a name for themselves and earn their astronomical paychecks.

<comment><USER23> Frank Gehry definitely doesn't have to make a name for himself. I'm surprised by how unattractive this is. Though, come to think of it, I can't picture the interior of any Frank Gehry buildings while I can see lots of exteriors.

<comment><USER24> Maybe this is all a colossal puton by Gehry: he hates offices so he makes them crappy. Except companies aren't that smart and end up worshipping the design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is quite interesting to see how Facebook and other corporations are re branding open-office, which in practice looks like a factory of workers. Somehow, the idea is to convince people that it promotes openness and productivity. Someone in the article says it is easy for her to schedule meetings on the fly, which also means it is easy for her to access the employees. However, not sure if I would like to be so accessible when I want to zone in, and work on a project.

</comment><comment><USER26> _Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg 's desk is exactly like all the others._

Really? I bet it isn't. I bet his desk isn't used for sustained state of flow concentration on intricate abstract mechanisms.

What's that saying about the law being equal by equally forbidding the the poor _and_ the rich from sleeping under bridges and stealing apples?

The open plan office helps CEO _and_ workers be approachable, interruptable, and able to hold many impromptu meetings.

</comment><comment><USER27> How do people get anything done on single screen setups like this?

<comment><USER28> If you include their laptops then they're all double screen really

<comment><USER29> no not really.

my laptop screen is dramatically smaller than my normal screen and the dpi differ as well. so screen + laptop <> 2 x screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't like working with my back to the room. To feel fully well while working, I need some kind of wall behind me. I can't picture me working in this... thing.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well this looks like a great breeding ground for the next big plague. If one person gets sick, it'll spread around the entire company?

Also looks strangely reminiscent of the industrial revolution. [http://3219a2.medialib.glogster.com/jayytyler97/media/c6/c60...](http://3219a2.medialib.glogster.com/jayytyler97/media/c6/c60a6385a82a08b468d8f7b893391c36955e8e28/lotsofworkers.jpg)

<comment><USER12> Facebook has an unlimited sick leave policy. If people are contagious they can work from home, if they are too sick to work from home they can rest until they are better.

I agree that the design is not ideal but I think the company culture tries to mitigate some of the negative aspects by being so flexible with various policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The article is so enthusiastic, but it makes me sad. Work is where people spend the majority of their time. This environment is bound to be stressful and unhealthy.

As for closed doors: just leave them open, problem solved. Or, these days, just send a message via some chat application to your colleague and walk over once they invite you via chat.

</comment><comment><USER33> If it's not only software, where would the hardware people sit, or even embedded programmers with their dev. kits?

I understand the idea of allowing people to sit everywhere. I don't understand why they don't come up with a technological solution to get your desk setup of the previous day.

</comment><comment><USER34> The last office that writer mentions is the actual office of Mark, he is the only one with an office.

Facebook offices have very interesting stuff, the roof garden has an amazing view of the bay, trees from different parts of California and wonderful artwork from local artists that you can see all around the office.

I saw before this type of setup in Tesla, were the only way to know which is Elon's desk, is by someone telling you. But also not long time ago he used to sit in the plant floor where the only items in his desk where the best car of the year award and his wallet.

This type of setup in my opinion foster productivity, people realize that the only thing that they have to be doing is work. And the founder lead by example.

<comment><USER35> Unless the type of work you do requires concentration, and you are easily distracted by external stimuli.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Looks kind of horrible.

But before we all emulate facebook, has anybody figured out how effective they are? I don't know how much "innovation" goes on there or how much actual work they get done. Somehow it feels like you could get by with one tenth of that population. Or maybe I just don't understand all the great features and innovations they must be adding to facebook every day (with thousands of coders etc.). Haven't noticed much change in facebook during the couple of years I have been using it. Maybe they all spend their time "monetizing" me...

</comment><comment><USER37> "The design reflects Facebook's emphasis on openness and transparency"

Right...

</comment><comment><USER38> I have a friend and ex colleague that work there and they enjoy it - I have setup an open plan working space and I work somewhere now where a lot of people work from home.

I think having a space which you want to come into and work is incredibly valuable - catering to the variety of ideals is very very hard - nice to see people making the effort!

</comment><comment><USER39> This is just a sly way of turning knowledge workers into factory workers. We all work in sweatshops now. It's just another way to increase profits by minimizing real estate costs. "Oh, it's not a sweatshop. It's the collaborative workplace of the future." Fuck you.

</comment><comment><USER40> I know this is HN but could we (maybe for 2016?) quit confusing Silicon Valley with the rest of the world. There is nothing in TFA or Facebook's new headquarters (or Google, or Apple) that says anything about real work being taken place anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if they're "allowed" to browse their personal Facebook profiles?

</comment><comment><USER42> c. 1890

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/Sweatshop-189...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/Sweatshop-1890.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER43> any one knows what are those cables hanging from the ceiling?

<comment><USER12> Mostly networking and regular power. There is no power/network running through the cement floor, it's all dropped down from overhead.</comment></comment>


Samsung Unveils 15.6-Inch Ultra-HD OLED Display for Laptops - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/13896/samsung-unveils-15-6-inch-ultra-hd-oled-display-for-laptops <comment><USER2> If this is still AMOLED, which I assume it will be, then I wouldn't buy one unless I intend to buy a new laptop every two years. LG's Top Emission WOLED is still 2 years out and I am not convinced that has solved burn in effect on TV with lots of moving pictures, let alone on PC where almost 80%+ of what we do every day has static screen.

It just seems the OLED burn in problem will never really be solved, only delayed.

May be WOLED will one day become good enough, the Joint research from Google and LG shows WOLED was capable of much higher PPI than what we have today, but the brightness just aren't good enough for Phones and Laptop usage. So WOLED will still needs to increase PPI, Increase brightness, reduce power, all while trying to delay burn in. I don't see that happening in 3 years time.

MicroLED is still at least another 5+ years before happening on phones or laptop. LCD, or QLED LCD is the best we have got at the moment in terms of longitivtiy.

<comment><USER3> How bad is it?

I ask because I'm interested in a tv and the prices are starting to enter the realm of sanity (IMHO).

I have a 2010 Plasma, and people said that would suffer from burn-in. The only issue I ever had with it is when I left a game or menu up for several hours, and a shadow image would be left. The smudges went away pretty fast when something else got displayed, and all is well 9 years on.

So ... does anyone know how bad the OLED problem is? Is it a bit overblown like the concerns about SSD writing shortening their useful lives? Or is this really something to be concerned about, and the industry is trying to brush it under the carpet?

<comment><USER4> I watched this burn in test a few weeks ago. It looks like a great test.

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

<comment><USER5> These guys are doing god's work. Their website was an impeccable resource when I was buying my first new TV in a decade about a year ago. Absolutely unparalleled quality of reviews for different TV models in the market. Makes the job of cutting through all the marketing B.S. and finding the TV model you really need a whole lot easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 600 cd/m2 might be just enough for outdoor work. Current MBPs say they are 500. I can only work on it with bright IDE theme.

My iPhone pushes up to 725 and it's useable with sunglasses at the beach.

Discontinued Lenovos OLEDs had pissy 330 cd/m2...

<comment><USER7> What you want is a laptop with a matte screen. Not a "glossy treated for reflection/matte like", which is what you find on most expensive laptops like those from Apple, but actually matte.

It's kind of hard to find because it doesn't sell well because the colors are very much toned down on it, but you can have the sun right behind your screen and it won't matter. I still have one from ~2012 (from the french store LDLC, which are rebranded custome made Clevo) that I gave my GF, and for work purpose and always being at top visibility the screen destroys anything else I've used since.

I'm genuinely weirded out that as far as I know there is no major work brand like XPS or MBP offering true matte screen as options anymore ...

PS: if you haven't seen one before, it's truly no reflection/competition with the sun at all, and it's truly washed out colors.

EDIT: I would at least like to know why I'm downvoted ? A true matte screen is vastly better when facing sunlight, which is what I'm answering to

<comment><USER6> What about when it's in a shadow or overcast day?

<comment><USER7> It looks just fine and plenty bright, although it is clearly far worse looking than your regular glossy screen (since that's their perfect conditions). So in that scenario I would prefer a glossy screen because the colors are better BUT I would have no problem with a fully matte one.

And then in a fully dark room, I would again say the matte it superior to glossy because it's brightness feels much less abrasive to the eyes (but my eyes tend to be sensitive to light, I'm the kind of person who needs to change his screen luminosity depending on condition, so for people who don't care about that it would be glossy being better due to the colors I guess)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Considering my old phones get burn-in after a year or two, that windows has far more static elements than Android, and that I don't replace my laptop every year, oled would be a horrible choice for me.

<comment><USER9> > that windows has far more static elements than Android

Android has a status bar at the top that's displayed over most applications. And applications on Android are far more likely to be maximized, which makes the common design elements and widgets more likely to be in the same place.

To the best of my knowledge and research, though, the current generation of OLED screens and controllers manage to avoid image retention.

<comment><USER10> IIRC, many rely on pixel shifting every time the screen sleeps. Not sure if the same strategy would work on laptops

<comment><USER11> It shouldn't be that noticeable if scaling is turned on. Could be a pretty good strategy for laptops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the only OLED laptops I'm aware of, the Lenovo X1 Yoga Gen 2, has consistent, widespread problems with flicker. It seems that every display needs replacement every year or so due to flicker at either high or low brightness. I'm on my second panel, and it's already failing at brightness above 50%. I'm hoping Samsung figured this out by now.

<comment><USER13> I have an Alienware 13 r3 (QHD OLED Touch display) and so far I've had absolutely no issues. The screen is just amazing. I've had the computer for over 1 year and the screen is as good as the first day. This is a gaming laptop, so I've tried lots of games and I haven't seen any type of flickering.

<comment><USER14> I'm really annoyed with my 13r3s OLED screen - the red pixels are much faster to illuminate from zero to little compared to the blue - which themselves are faster than the green pixels. this leads to a reddish/magenta smear on the leading edge when something gray moves on black background.

same stuff that guy over there is complaining about: [http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-13r3-oled-...](http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-13r3-oled- ghosting-blur-lag-and-driver-issues.803114/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Must be a nightmare when installing a new Linux distro in text mode and having bird seeds as characters.

<comment><USER16> Does such resolution even make sense on 15.6" screen? You won't see any pixel difference with a lower resolution most likely (unless you look at the screen from a very close range).

<comment><USER17> I owe a Dell XPS 13 with 4k display running Linux. Fonts are clearly much more sharper (maybe even feel darker) and pleasant to read than 1080p or even 2k . Although, I see you point. For most practical purposes it does not make difference I think, but I really love 4k when I'm programming. These days I'm not programming much, hence switched to 1080p as little experiment (and got fed up with sloppy GNOME performance), and I would say I don't notice much for general tasks.

<comment><USER18> There are two generations of the Dell XPS 13, at first they had a 3200x1800 display, they switched to 3840x2160 last year.

In my opinion 3200x1800 at 13.3" is more than enough already (I own one) but I guess marketing wanted more.

<comment><USER19> Are they in the range where the UX size can be doubled without being too large?

<comment><USER17> Yes. 2x worked perfect for me at 4k, and its the default for hidpi settings I think. When I switched to 1080p I had to manually increase font sizes (not overall scaling) because the default size wasnt sharp/readable enough. Its pretty cool 4k now works so well out-of-box on Linux. It was nightmare in 2015.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My bet is that Apple's first ARM machine will be a MacBook with a display like this in a jet black case, 12-core "X-series" chip, Face ID.

Defaults to dark mode to help skirt any burn-in issues.

Announce it at WWDC and even at $2500+ devs will go nuts for it.

<comment><USER21> I want 120+Hz display and I will gladly give them whatever they will ask for it

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The only downside is that they won't let you uninstall Facebook from it.

All jokes aside the specs for this thing look great. 15.6" and 4k. I want to see this in production laptops ASAP.

<comment><USER23> And two mail clients, a good one and the Samsung one

And two calendars, a good one and the Samsung one

And two browsers, a good one and the Samsung one

And two text editots, a good one and the Samsung one

And a camera application, a good one and the Samsung one

Why do they bother?

<comment><USER24> As far as I've read, because they wish they didn't have to depend on gapps. To the extent you wish Android were a little freer of Google, you should support that idea.

<comment><USER23> So they make worse quality apps yet still include gapps. That's a brilliant plan.

How about they stick to quality hardware and let the pros deal with software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> nice. I just bought a System76 Linux laptop with a 4K display (and a 1070 GPU) and having a 4K display is really nice. I almost didn't upgrade to the 4K display and I am glad I did.

I think large TVs are great for supporting group-watch events but for personal viewing something really hires and nearby is better, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER26> Ugh, 16:9.

When will laptops stop coming with 16:9 monitors? Do people really buy laptops to watch movies, or productivity?

<comment><USER27> Most consumer laptops are probably used quite often for watching movies, but this shouldn't be an issue. My laptop has a 3:2 screen and I don't even notice the black bars when watching a video. An OLED display would be even better for this as the bars are as really black.

<comment><USER26> I mean, how many movies can you watch in any given day? I would think 80% of the time is spent browsing the web.

My screen is 3:2, too, and it's many times better. Apple's laptops (sorry, forget exact ratio) are acceptable, too, it's just that 16:9 doesn't make any sense to me and I have no idea why more companies aren't providing alternatives. I guess it's a non-problem and I'm the only one who sees it this way.

<comment><USER28> > I mean, how many movies can you watch in any given day? I would think 80% of > the time is spent browsing the web.

I know a few people who mostly use their laptops to watch movies / netflix. The rest of the day, they're not using the laptop at all. (there is some web browsing of course, but not much).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I thought oled panels couldn't be used for laptops because of burn-in. the article says they don't know if this laptop is any better, which is the only question that matters

<comment><USER30> Guess we'll see in a year or so. My OLED phone had burn in after a year and I can see the Android status bar when I watch full screen videos.

<comment><USER31> Is your phone from Samsung? Is it new?

<comment><USER30> It's a Moto Z2 Play. Previous one was a Moto Z. Both show burn in after a year of use.

<comment><USER31> From what I know, the higher end phones don't suffer from burn-in. Your phone is quite cheap and they do have to skimp on something. It's generally a good idea to get a midranger with an LCD instead of OLED, for that reason. You lose some image quality but you avoid these issues.

<comment><USER30> Moto Z cost north of 700 €. I would not call that cheap.

<comment><USER31> Well, considering how much an iPhone XS costs, the definition of "cheap" for a smartphone has migrated North the past few years :)))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why do all these oled displays have to be 4k nowadays? I was shopping TVs recently and found exactly one 2k (1920px) oled screen for about 700 euros when looking across three countries, which was slightly above budget but I was considering it. If there had been more than just this one choice, just to have some OSes and features to choose between, I might have gone for it. But 4k oled costs thousands at no added benefit, so now we have a crappy (girlfriend- selected) 4k backlit lcd that you actually notice turning on backlight selectively on parts of the screen that have non-black pixels.

It's not as if I can see individual pixels from across the room. Same with a laptop (I don't see my pixels on a 16" 2k screen), a computer display (I don't see pixels on a 23" 2k screen), and a phone (I don't see pixels on a 5.5" 720px screen). I'm pretty sure that if you can see individual pixels at those sizes, you're sitting too close.

On my phone I really just want my 720p oled display back: there, too, I have a crappy 2k lcd now because oled is too expensive at the resolutions they make them nowadays. And I was hoping to see oled laptops soon, but it looks like we first have to get every single application to be rewritten to support more- pixels-than-you-can-actually-see zooming modes, then bring down the price of these panels, and then I can buy one.

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure about the TV across the room, but I certainly see the pixels on a 2k 23" monitor. I'm using two now and every second I'm itching to get back to my Macbook's Retina display. Everything else about these monitors is fine... except pixel density.

In Windows this is better (for me) because I personally like the subpixel rendering there - it's aligned to pixel boundaries more often and looks clearer to my eyes.

<comment><USER34> I've got a 27" 5K iMac. At work, we've these 21.5" 1080p displays. I just can't use them, the text just looks so ridiculously blurry. Once you've seen HiDPI rendering, you can't go back.

I'm doubting GP has ever worked with HiDPI content for an extended period of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The problem is that 15.6" is physically too small to leverage that much of a resolution real estate with human eye comfort.

I do high definition photography (think gigapixel panoramas) and editing anything like that on 3840x2160 laptop (high end laptop) is a suffering.

I always looking forward to get back to my 32" monitor.

<comment><USER36> The main point here is to gain improved resolution on text where it's quite noticeable going from 140 PPI to 280 PPI - many developers will appreciate it.

It should be fine for the kind of work you're doing though, are you using tools that don't support DPI scaling?

<comment><USER35> I leveraged scaling and kind of played with different options of it.

For developers working with proportional code - unless you have super sharp eyes to scale your Sublime Editor to sub-1mm characters - i don't see it making much difference.

I physically feel comfortable with a text character of a certain minimal size. Beyond 4k it really doesn't matter how many pixels or colors are used to render the font or image on 15" screen. Making it too tiny or super-true- color-ish doesn't make much difference on a laptop screen that typically only used for "temporary" on-the-road work.

<comment><USER36> It's about being able to use more pixels to render things like curves and serifs in fonts mainly - things that subpixel hinting attempted to address on lower DPI displays can now be done much better and without the blur tradeoff by using more pixels. At the very same size, fonts look noticeably better because more pixels can go into those tiny rounded edges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wish laptop companies would focus on battery life more. I would love a laptop that lasted 4 days on a full charge.

<comment><USER38> Where's the problem with charging your device overnight? As long as it gets you through the day I think it's fine.

<comment><USER37> It gets old, if I could I would wire up my desktop to charge all my devices wirelessly but that would probably fry my nutsack or worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Strange question: say I want to buy this display for a hobbyist project, what's the best way to do this?

<comment><USER18> You may be able to find some at panelook.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> That does look slim. Wonder if we will start seeing screen notches on laptops as well

</comment><comment><USER41> anyone tried a screen from an imac ([https://support.apple.com/kb/SP760?locale=en_US](https://support.apple.com/kb/SP760?locale=en_US)) or any apple computer?

Even my 5years old imac is better than this new samsung screen.

I have a Win/PC as well (for gaming) and I'm using the Samsung CHG70 ([https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/gaming/32-- chg...](https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/gaming/32--chg70-gaming- monitor-with-quantum-dot-lc32hg70qqnxza/#specs)).

It cannot even be compared with the screen from imac. It's blurry, with wrong colours and low quality.

Even now, I don't know how no other company can replicate Apple's screens.

<comment><USER42> Have you looked at this new Samsung screen in person, or what makes you say that?

How about the HDR screen from the X16G?

<comment><USER41> I haven't but I've tested a lot of Samsung screens and I own one of their latest good ones which is the CHG70 (32').

It sucks so much you can't even compare it with the Retina iMac (5k) screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The display looks amazing, however the computer itself looks horribly ugly.

</comment><comment><USER44> Maybe make LCD laptop screens decent first?

Hard to buy an affordable laptop with decent screen, bascially all crap with garbage gamut, literally hurt eyes.

It's a shame laptop makers are willing to add those useless entry level discrete GPUs yet are too stingy to spend 20 to 30 bucks more on the display.

<comment><USER11> But the addition of 'dedicated GPU' is what drives sales, unfortunately. I don't think nVidia's x20/x30 GPUs for mobile improves anything. Anybody that actually needs power would opt for x50 or higher, and anything less would be served by integrated graphics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Give me micro LED or give me death

</comment><comment><USER46> The pixel density is too low for 2019. If would be good 11-13 incher but 15 will be too pixelated.

<comment><USER47> On my desktop I have a 27" 4k monitor (3840×2160) and I'm a bit intrigued on how this resolution is not enough for a 15.6" monitor, what do I miss here?

<comment> toper-centage Number queens. Same people that have such advanced vision they can see the difference between 100 and 120 fps. After a certain point, even more if you're at a safe distance from the screen, more pixels don't make different to the naked eye. But you'll never convince number queens.

<comment><USER46> Why so bitter? There is no need to call people names because they have better eyesight than yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> After all these years, the perfect resolution (for me) is still 1920x1080 - whether it's 13", 15" or 17" ...

<comment><USER49> 4k with 2x scaling is much sharper and easier on the eyes.

<comment><USER48> I'm finding the exact opposite, but this could be due to me being okay with seeing actual pixels, and might be even missing them. I've started on Apple ][ clone with 40x20 console resolution (80x20 with PR#3), and later Hercules monochrome one for my PC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Serious question: what is the point of such high pixel density? I assume you can not tell any difference between 2k and 4k from the distance a laptop is supposed to be used. Is it purely a marketing hype? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> > I assume you can not tell any difference between 2k and 4k from the distance > a laptop is supposed to be used

My 2013 13" macbook pro retina has a resolution of 2560x1600. I absolutely can tell the difference compared to 'Full' HD, just in crispness of image, beautiful font rendering etc.

So a 4K screen at 15.6" doesn't seem outrageous to me.

<comment><USER51> Also, OLED displays have fewer subpixels as far as I know. I think LCD usually have Red/Green/Blue for every pixel, OLEDs don't. So on an OLED display, you need a higher resolution to make it look as sharp as an LCD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I prefer laptops to be thin, light and something that I can carry around in my hands. 15.6 inch is too big for a portable laptop and starts to approach desktop replacement territory. Rather get a 14 inch Laptop and plug it into a 4k monitor when you need the larger display area.

And since this is OLED, does that mean that the windows start button and Apple's system menu would get burned into the screen :-/

<comment><USER53> I hope that some manufacturers (hello HP!) will use that slim bezel 15,6" screen in a 14" body format without those hideous number pads I have to buy and never use. The laptop in the article looks perfect, just add three physical buttons around the touchpad as in HPs ZBooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Gorgeous display unfortunately married to sub-par industrial design.

The colors are all off. Black display hinges break the silver line of the chassis. Two black buttons on the left do the same. Big black touchbar type thing coupled with white keyboard keys. Small trackpad that's not color matched to the chassis. Also, 'SAMSUNG DISPLAY' branding trashes the beautiful edge-to-edge display.

Only ID conceit I understand is the rubber pads at the edges, since presumably there's no room to add them to the edge to edge display.

Aside from the display, it looks like a bad MacBook knockoff. Samsung can do better, they have on some of their phones.

<comment><USER55> > _Black display hinges break the silver line of the chassis. Two black > buttons on the left do the same. Big black touchbar type thing coupled with > white keyboard keys. Small trackpad that 's not color matched to the > chassis. Also, 'SAMSUNG DISPLAY' branding trashes the beautiful edge-to-edge > display... Aside from the display, it looks like a bad MacBook knockoff. > Samsung can do better, they have on some of their phones._

This is about the display. The laptop it's attached to is probably just a proof of concept demo platform for the display.

<comment><USER54> Good point. I just looked at Samsung's lineup [1] and it seems they're mostly plasticy machines aimed at the low and mid end of the market. I thought they had some high-end parts like Dell. Guess they don't have the platform to adequately show off the screen quality, so they just cobbled something together.

[1] [https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows- laptops/](https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows-laptops/)

<comment><USER56> The platform is dell, lenovo, hp, etc...

Samsung is a big supplier of electronic parts.

<comment><USER54> Samsung is both a creator of consumer electronics (TVs, dishwashers, smartphones, notebooks, etc) and a supplier to other consumer electronics companies. They're massive. Hence my bringing up their notebooks, as I was initially confused that they'd be introducing this in their own lineup.

When you have unique access to technology, one strategic opportunity is to use that to move up the value chain from being a supplier to being a retail brand and create a differentiated product, winning market share. Samsung right now pretty much has a lock on non-TV OLED production, but is choosing not to go the path of using those in their own computer brand, and instead are selling to other computer makers. It's an option they have but have chosen not to pursue... so thats interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building the Midwest: Money. Liquidity. Talent? - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-midwest-money-liquidity-talent-nick-cromydas?trk=v-feed&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_detail_base%3BZPZMszK1jbY0l7i2MLH%2FWQ%3D%3D <comment><USER2> The big question is how do you bring in additional and quality talent with less funds? Especially, when you are competing with the attractiveness and money of the coasts?

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure. I think cost of living is a big differentiator. As for weather, let people work remote from the West Coast in the winter ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great article! Talent is definitely a big challenge in building out startups here in Chicago.</comment>


Using Bayesian Methods to Clean Up Human Labels - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dominodatalab.com/using-bayesian-methods-to-clean-up-human-labels/ <comment><USER2> Lots of upvotes, but not a lot of comments here. This kind of fits my intuition of "sure, but what's new here". Did I miss something?</comment>


What is Microsoft's 'Polaris' project? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-microsofts-polaris-project/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty amazing that all these years down the track Microsoft is still rewriting Windows.</comment>


Breaking into Product Management – A Guide - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sshubhi/breaking-into-product-management-a-guide-c6fa3bc59449 <comment><USER2> "You don't need to create beautiful designs, however wireframing is an essential skill that helps PMs communicate their ideas visually." Nope. No. Don't do this PMs!

<comment><USER3> Could you bit expand on that? Why using wireframes is a bad idea?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have to wait for part 2, which has not yet been published, before the title question answered.</comment>


These young SF professionals choose to live in RVs - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/These-young-SF-professionals-choose-to-live-in-RVs-4778625.php <comment><USER2> I've been living in a motorhome for nearly five years now. Mostly travelling full-time. I parked for a total of about 3 months in the Palo Alto and Mountain View areas on a couple of occasions...just on the street. I have solar power, and propane for cooking and running the fridge, and big water tanks, so I can go weeks without hooking up. Mine is quite a bit larger than Tynan's at 34.5', but I think my next rig may be smaller. There's definitely value in being able to drive/park anywhere, and my current rig does not have that quality.

I started out in Mountain View; was paying $2145/month to rent a house. The motorhome lifestyle isn't significantly cheaper, when travelling a lot, but it has a lot of other advantages. At least, for me, the advantages outweigh the negatives.

<comment><USER3> What's the gas mileage when traveling on a highway?

Do you know of any others who did this in other countries?

<comment><USER4> I get about 10mpg with mine(30' with an E450 chassis).

Not so much young people but Australia has "Grey Nomads" who tend to be retired people that spend their time travelling around the country living in their RVs full time.

<comment><USER2> The oldtimers in RVs are called Snow Birds here in the US. They are the predominant group living fulltime in RVs here. I've met a lot of retirees in my travels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Obligatory link to Tynan's excellent blog: [http://tynan.com/?sort=rank](http://tynan.com/?sort=rank)

<comment><USER6> And here's a couple of post he's made about his RV:

[http://tynan.com/rv2012](http://tynan.com/rv2012) (2012 Walkthrough)

[http://tynan.com/living-in-a-small-rv-introduction](http://tynan.com/living- in-a-small-rv-introduction)

His book about his RV-lifestyle:

Tynan Smith - How To Live In Luxury on the Side of the Road in an RV

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006XLK2LW](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006XLK2LW)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone recongnize the Famous Pickup Artist? [http://tynan.com/how-i- became-a-famous-pickup-artist-part-1](http://tynan.com/how-i-became-a-famous- pickup-artist-part-1) Note that he garnered this reputation prior to living in an RV.

<comment><USER8> I was wondering if that was him. Certainly reading about him over the years. I'm not surprised he's living in an RV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You read the whole article (while ignoring the fact that you have to follow a link to get to the second page) and then the last sentence is that he's not really living in his car anymore. What's the point of this article?

<comment><USER10> _What 's the point of this article?_

A fairly safe sentence: This article cost less to write than it will make in ad revenue.

Another fairly safe sentence: What is the point of any arbitrary article you find in a newspaper?

The dangerous sentence follows that one.

<comment><USER11> Ooh, ooh, does it also start with "what is the point . . . "?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article mentions that it's illegal. Is that enforced? How would they know you're living in the RV? Do you have to move the RV every day because of parking rules?

I'm wondering why nobody does this in NYC (at least, that I know of.)

<comment><USER13> NYC can get really cold in the winter. RVs are not really well insulated; they're designed to be used in the summer; few people go camping in the winter. It would be expensive to heat at best, or you'd have to add a lot of insulation.

<comment><USER14> Most traditional RVs or even conversion vans like the rialto have more or less uninsulated plumbing which will be destroyed the moment it goes below freezing unless you winterize which is a huge pain, or have the plumbing removed or convert a van yourself and simply never install A minimal van conversion probably consists of little more than blackout curtains and a sleeping bag... If you're willing not to have plumbing, you could probably buy a conversion van without working plumbing fairly cheap. Much as houses with destroyed plumbing tend to go pretty cheap.

As a homeowner with occasional $400 heating bills in the frozen north I disagree with expensive to heat. RVs, especially conversion vans, are small vehicles. My parent's RV furnace literally physically could not burn $400 of propane in its furnace per month if it ran 24x7, which of course it doesn't.

This is a solved problem in the frozen north because of two hobbies probably not very popular amongst the most urban SF residents... deer hunting and snowmobiling. RVs get quite a bit of use indeed for those activities (I don't personally do either, but I do enjoy snow shoeing and there's nothing better than a RV at the end of the trail). Its much colder than NYC where the locals use RVs, its really no big deal.

Another interesting point is if rent costs $3000/mo in Manhattan, you need to calculate how much propane you can burn to meet $3000/mo... I think you'll rapidly determine you could live inside an operating (small) rocket engine for $100 of propane per night.

The primary insulation problem is sound insulation not so much heat insulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like reading about RV-living and micro-apartments in a similar way as I liked reading Into the Wild. There's lots to like, but I'd never actually do it. I just don't think I could get comfortable with the sacrifice of comfort and safety (even if it is only a perceived reduction in comfort and safety). And plus my wife would divorce me.

<comment><USER14> Try a live aboard sailboat rather than the land-bound cousins. Some women find a dude owning a boat is an aphrodisiac. Most male boat owners have the inaccurate belief that percentage is 100% (its probably only about 50%). Source: I sailed a lot as a teen (although not a live aboard).

The funniest part of the whole situation, that I've observed, is the women see this guy spending like a drunken sailor on the boat, assuming that means 1) he's wealthy, I mean obviously he owns a 29.9999 foot yacht 2) he can spend money on me the same way as he spends on the boat. And usually it does not work out that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just FYI: rents are similar in NYC, though I doubt people would use an RV here since: (1) parking is limited (2) parking is expensive (3) hard to find parking which also provides power and gas.

Question though: how do people living in RVs shower? Monthly membership at a gym? (Asking because a friend suggested that was likely the case.)

<comment><USER17> Most RVs over 20-foot or so have showers with hot and cold water. A lot of campgrounds for RVs also have showers along with laundry facilities. Gym memberships are common, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm doing this in Austin currently. Inspired by Tynan, I got a Rialta as well and have been using it as an exercise in minimalism. So far, it's worked out very well, even in the extreme heat.

</comment><comment><USER19> That's what I like about the mind of an entrepreneur- the ability & desire to innovate.

San Francisco has through the roof high rent? Well, why not innovate & live in an RV? An innovative way to overcome the problem of containing personal costs. Also, this is a way to actually own something that can open up some very cool travel possibilities as well.

<comment><USER20> I get the feeling if you're going to "innovate" RV living, you'll do it in North Dakota and not SF. Lot of people with a lot of money now and a housing market that hasn't caught up.

<comment><USER21> Too cold in ND for RV living in the winter; no insulation.

<comment><USER20> uhm, well, they have been doing it for a couple of winters now

<comment><USER21> Sure, it can be done. People do a lot of crazy things. But it's not sustainable.

<comment><USER20> The other thing is that they build RVs with insulation that can handle the winter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are there RV parks in SF that are on within a reasonable walk/bike of a main public transportation line?

I may have the option of moving to SF for work in the next 6 months and am trying to get a feel for what options are available.

Since the general consensus is that housing is ludicrously expensive I was tentatively thinking about RV or boat as a more frugal option.

<comment><USER23> There are no RV parks in SF. There are hardly any parking lots- most of those are quite small so a RV couldn't stay there. At best, you could find a parking space for a few hundred dollars a month.

<comment><USER14> He specifically lives in an ancient VW Rialto. Its a conversion van. From the outside it looks like a van, because it is one. Anywhere you can park a "normal" van you can park a Rialto. You've probably parked nearby one, or a modern sibling, in a grocery store or something without even knowing it.

You can't get away with that using a full size class A, or even a little pop- up trailer.

Real RVers know the real problem of RVs for road trips or urban live aboard is finding a dump station downtown. I suppose you can always use the local mega corp parking lot. Antics like that are what leads to attempts to ban RVs, of course.

<comment><USER13> Randy Quaid in _Christmas Vacation_ .... "shitter was full!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Average rent for a 1-BR is $2990/month in Castro? Come on.

<comment><USER25> No one lives in a 1 bed. I share a 6 bed in castro and it's way more affordable per person.

<comment><USER26> Then what's with all the 1BR's up for rent?

<comment><USER27> Supply and demand</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Inflowlive – Convert more leads and customers with clever forms - <AUTHOR> http://www.inflowliveapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Really interested in this one, signed up for beta and so far has been easy to use and does exactly what it says.

<comment><USER3> Nice to see you onboard Dan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this tool looks good, do you have a demo?

<comment><USER3> yes of course you can sign up for beta on the site [http://www.inflowliveapp.com](http://www.inflowliveapp.com) and you will have access in under 24 hours :) Thanks for checking it out.</comment></comment>


Open Source Greed - <AUTHOR> http://xana.scru.org/xana2/parabola/opensourcegreed/

<comment><USER2> There were two small dogs. One red and one blue. One day the red dog found a bone and the blue dog was jealous. The blue dog appealed to the queen and the queen said "spongebob rutabaga" and there was never again a red dog or blue dog.

Now you are all as enlightened as I was after reading this story.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone provide some context here? With 16 votes at the moment it seems there are some folks who recognize "project r and project b." However after scanning some of the other pages on the site I wonder if this prose means much to anyone other than the author.

<comment><USER4> I doubt the op was trying to point fingers (or blame). Easier to generalize and leave at that.

<comment><USER3> Generalize what? A made up story? Has something similar happened to two projects in the past?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It could be greed. It could be both projects were useless. It could be something else came along that was better. It could be really anything. Not enough information to draw a conclusion.</comment>


Quebec teen discovers ancient Mayan ruins by studying the stars - <AUTHOR> https://uk.news.yahoo.com/quebec-teen-discovers-ancient-mayan-ruins-by-170620746.html <comment><USER2> I noticed a while back playing with google earth that if you take the ruler tool and trace a ray from the Nazca lines that quite a few of them intersect with known ruins...some quite some distance away. I am not sure if it has any "real" meaning...but it was an interesting thing to play with. For all I know it is irrelevant due to the errors on the google earth stuff or the curve of the earth...but it was still fun to play with. Some of the intersections were all the way up in Mexico...some as close as the coast.

</comment><comment><USER3> peter theil needs to meet this kid.

formal schooling is the worst thing in the world for curious and thoughtful minds like this.

still, it's amazing that such a 'discovery' can be made so quickly by sattelite confirmation. the age old human mind combined with modern sensor tools is capable of 'discoveries'. simply not possible in the past.

consider in the past, it owuld have taken years to put together expedition funding and organize explorers to get to the suspected location of the alleged city.

now, you just get the right person on the phone at the right research department , and existing searchable maps of the location are already at your disposal, if they (high resolution lidar?) aren't already accessible through public google earth maps.

this is amazing. we are making discoveries at light speed because massive quantities of diverse information are available to 15 year olds, and the capacity for verifying suspicions is there because of our capacity for creating searcheable organized data.

this truly is the structure of scientific revolution. so many things coming together to make a new paradigm of discovery possible. it is THESE kinds of stories really give me passion for science making the world better.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/forgotten-m...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/forgotten- mayan-city-discovered-in-central-america-by-15-year-old-a7021291.html) another source

</comment><comment><USER4> Snopes doesn't think so: [http://www.snopes.com/canadian-teen-satellite- maps](http://www.snopes.com/canadian-teen-satellite-maps)

</comment><comment><USER5> Can someone hook this kid up with a blog or a school or something?

</comment><comment><USER6> Great find. But sort of lowers my opinion of Maya culture. Having city locations decided by star constellations ? Sounds like this is on the insane side even for theocracies.

<comment><USER7> Why is it insane?

I don't know for what purpose they'd build something like that, but I reckon that's the kind of stuff about anything which is most easily lost. Stuff from millenia ago can easily look like "cow tools". They were mostly agricultural civilizations though, and attached importance to astronomy to some degree because it allowed them to make calendars and plan ahead of time.

I don't think it's nothing out of ordinary that they've built stuff to align with the sky.

<comment><USER6> Well it obviously means that priests dictated where cities were to be built.

<comment><USER8> What if the stars were a version of GPS? You could find your way around from city to city. Ships did it, why not pedestrians?

<comment><USER2> Some of the areas...such as Coba...had roads made from white rock so they could travel easily at night too...so it all seems to make more sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Slaask.com – A simple customer chat tool for Slack - <AUTHOR> https://slaask.com <comment><USER2> The negativity in the background video is NOT good (ironic that I use a negative sentence to say that).

Other than that, it looks nice. What about if multiple customers write in at the same time though? Do they all speak into the Slack channel that you create? That seems like it would be confusing, having all customer discussion mixed together in one huge channel.</comment>


The "Linen Book of Zagreb": The Longest Etruscan Text - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Linteus <comment><USER2> My favorite science story about the Etruscan language is using statistics of dice to clarify the words for numbers.

Dice were popular in ancient Mediterranean cultures. The older number arrangement put usually 1 opposite 2; 3 opposite 4; 5 opposite 6. At some point it shifted to the more modern 1-6; 2-5; 3-4 arrangement.

Usually dice used dots or "pips" as today, but an example was found numbered with Etruscan words. Arguing from statistics of how dice were numbered, they convincingly identified the pairs of numbers. This resolves an ambiguity from other literary sources about the Etruscan words for 4 and 6.

[1] [http://www.academia.edu/download/44616033/GAMBLING_WITH_ETRU...](http://www.academia.edu/download/44616033/GAMBLING_WITH_ETRUSCAN_DICE_A_TALE_OF_NU20160411-9102-1hk178p.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Link is broken.

<comment><USER4> [http://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.joule.2018.11.021](http://sci- hub.tw/10.1016/j.joule.2018.11.021)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recall that the Ptolemaic Kingdom was created out of the break-up of the Alexander the Great's empire. The Wikipedia article gives 320BC to 30BC. Its leaders were Macedonian Greeks. The Greeks had trading cities along the Italian Peninsula as far back as the 600 BC era, in part to trade with the Etruscans. It's not that difficult to conceive of this cloth(250BC,) being included in some trade shipment that ended up in Alexandria and then carried up the Nile to Thebes.

</comment><comment><USER6> If only we have a Rosetta Stone of Etruscan and Minoan. Pre-Indo-European central Mediterranean will perhaps remain obscure for us forever...

Still, the fact that an Egyptian got buried in a recycled religious treatise of another people across the sea is quite interesting. Especially post-250BC is quite deep in Ptolemaic rule in Egypt and Roman conquest of Etruria.

<comment><USER7> (1) Even according to Wikipedia: "The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, which was syncopated to Rasna or Raśna(...)"

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

(2) Again, even according to Wikipedia: "Rascians (Latin: Rasciani, Natio Rasciana; Serbian: Рашани / Rašani) was a common exonym for Serbs during the late medieval and the early modern period. It was used most frequently in the Kingdom of Hungary, and also in the Habsburg Monarchy. The term was derived from the Latinized name for the central Serbian region of Raška (Latin: Rascia; Serbian Cyrillic: Рашка). In medieval and early modern Western sources, exonym Rascia was often used as a designation for Serbian lands in general, and consequently the term Rasciani became one of the most common designations for Serbs.(...)"

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

(3) During WWII, Svetislav Bilbija was a secretary to an episkop of the Serbian Orthodox Church (equivalent to a bishop in RCC) in Italy where he has cracked the code of Etruscan because he had noticed the similarity of Etruscan letters and modern serbian cyrillic.

Ofcouse, connecting a culture that is precursor to the Roman culture (to which the modern West sees itself as a successor) with some (now) small peoples from the Balkans, peoples that have been put on a shame pole for the last 30 years, the Serbs - that is a big no, no. Which is why you'll find people who smear the work of Bilbija. But, some have a different opinion. For example, people at the Rand Corporation (yes, that US military contractor), or at least those on their mailing list:

"In a brillant piece of work rivalling that of Michael Ventris, Bilbija has deciphered the Etruscan Mummy Book."

[http://ixoloxi.com/voynich/etruscan.txt](http://ixoloxi.com/voynich/etruscan.txt)

They refer to this book (which has a direct connection to The Mummy of Zagreb):

[https://books.google.ba/books/about/The_Mummy_of_Zagreb_and_...](https://books.google.ba/books/about/The_Mummy_of_Zagreb_and_Other_Etruscan_L.html?id=947InAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y)

<comment><USER8> Look mate, as a fellow Slav from Slovenia I can assure you all our common ancestors stumbled here way too late to have anything to do with Etruscans.

And then there are also excellent arguments made in other comments.

<comment><USER9> You are right, but just to nitpick, linguistic ancestors don't always overlap with genetic ancestors. It could well be that your linguistic ones stumbled there late, whereas your genetic ones lived there for thousands and thousands of years longer. A handful of people can convince many to change language, genetic change is much slower. This is one reason why people in the region are genetically relatively similar, whether they speak slavic, germanic, finno- ugric, or latin languages.

For all these reasons, if etruscans once lived where you live now, it would actually be rather surprising if you had no connection whatsoever to them.

<comment><USER10> > if etruscans once lived where you live now

There is no evidence that Etruscans ever lived where the OP does now. All evidence we have about Etruscans points to a people living in the Mediterranean region, not further north in the Balkans. Note that although the article here is about a linen book in Zagreb, the Zagreb Museum was only the final resting place of an artifact created elsewhere; it does not mean that Etruscans had anything to do with the Balkans.

<comment><USER9> I see, you are right, but I was answering to a more general point made by OP, that if those who speak your language arrived late, you could still have a connection with those who lived there before.

<comment><USER11> Culture and genetics are not necessarily related. Unless they still happen to speak Etruscan, sharing a little DNA with ancient Etruscans doesn't make them "Etruscan".

<comment><USER12> Toponyms often survive after a new language fully replaces the language of a people.

BTW Serbia is not really "north" in the Balkans. But still, it's pretty far away: on the opposite side of the Adriatic see and of the entire Italian peninsula (etruria is on the tyrrhenian coast)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Etruscan art is much livelier and more graceful than Roman art. Well worth a quick search, or much better, a museum visit.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think AIs will be good at deciphering things like this. They can wear a text like this as a pair of glasses and wander a virtual Earth, read other texts, time travel, and wait millions of man-years for a single affordance.

The same work an amateur anthropologist does, but with more patience and better scrapbooking skills, basically.

Although by the time AIs exist that can do this, amateur anthropologists will have much better digital tools as well.</comment>


De-anonymizing Apple UDIDs with OpenFeint - <AUTHOR> http://corte.si/posts/security/openfeint-udid-deanonymization/index.html

<comment><USER4> I would imagine there are plenty of ways to get a unique ID for a phone, by fingerprinting the system or saving a cookie, so Apple providing an ID in the API is not really an issue. These are the issues:

1\. OpenFeint needs to lock down their DB

2\. Phones are great for spying on people

</comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr version: it shouldn't be possible to pull out somebody's account information based solely on the UDID.

It's simply wrong to authenticate people based solely on UDID anyways - <USER2> if the same user have one iPhone 3GS, one iPhone 4, and an iPad 2? In that case you'd need another authentication mechanism to make sure the three devices belong to the same user. The UDID is good only for telling the devices apart. So if you gave me Jane's iPad's UDID, I shouldn't really do anything unless I've made sure you're Jane in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Or what if I sold my device to someone else. Does that mean they can login as me with my old phone and udid?

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's what happened to me. I sold my iPhone 3G to my friend ( obviously, I had wiped it before handing it over to him).

Now, I had Fruit Ninja installed, and I had signed up for openFient.. and approved the facebook connect.

Imagine my surprise when a day later - my friend installed Fruit Ninja - <USER3> not only did it log me in, it also published to my facebook wall as me. Ended up revoking permissions - something which I should have done, but forgot to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell It wouldn't surprise me if something similar were happening on Android. To minimise issues like this, I use DroidWall on my rooted G1 to prevent apps connecting to servers on the net if I don't think they have a good reason to.

<comment><USER8> FTA, keep in mind that issue is not whether there are unique identifiers of any sort on phones. Any of the IMEI, SIM, or UUID (or equivalent) on a phone can uniquely identify you. This is a fact of life.

However, the real issue is whether your phone can share such information _without your explicit permission_. This is _not possible on the Android_.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2322234/how-to-find- seria...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2322234/how-to-find-serial- number-of-android-device)

You need to have android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE permissions in order to get the unique identifier, hence users, before installing an application, will be able to determine whether their particular application is capable of doing so.

<comment><USER9> FFS, that's what "Read phone state" means? I've been installing apps that request that as I thought it meant it let them not interrupt my calls, or closer nicer when a call comes in, or something along those lines. It seemed a bit odd, but I had no idea it exposed yet another unique ID.

Android needs a system-wide setting that simply returns a null ID (or app+hardware specific ID, so it's useless for tracking) to all apps, regardless of specific app permissions.

<comment><USER10> In the Android Market it says:

\----- SNIP </comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-

Phone calls

read phone state and identity

Allows the application to access the phone features of the device. An application with this permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the like.

\----- SNIP </comment><comment>-

But those should be two separate permissions. One for checking if the user is on a call and a different one for reading the UDID, IMSI or IMEI.

</comment><comment><USER11> "not permitted to publicly link a UDID to a user account"? Really? But that's exactly what Plus+ is doing:

Register in Plus+ game 1, then open Plus+ game 2 and it promptly recognizes your account.

Appalling.

<comment><USER12> The Apple document reads "publicly associate", which I read as "don't show the UDID under a user profile".

But it _also_ says "Never store user information based solely on the UDID. Always use a combination of UDID and application-specific user ID."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Notice that the pattern becomes problematic when you include facebook in the picture, because that's where people give away their real data. I don't think it's an issue with UDIDs - they are an essential component with minimal privacy implications in itself. The problem is mostly with facebook's weak privacy tactics. There is no privacy setting that can hide your fb uid, and indeed, facebook has been very lax about giving it away to just about anyone.</comment>


Apple WWDC 2017 live video - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2017/?xyz <comment><USER2> Any recommendations for following along on live text?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here you go (no idea about the quality of the live comments though):

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/live-from-apples- wwdc-2017...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/live-from-apples- wwdc-2017-keynote/)</comment></comment>


Why the idea of alien life now seems inevitable and possibly imminent - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/why-the-idea-of-alien-life-now-seems-inevitable-and-possibly-imminent-115643 <comment><USER2> The author seems to be unaware of the Fermi Paradox and also the current view of quantum physics as it relates to the possibility of a multidimensional universe. It's quite possible, even likely, that our observations of "material reality" are neither material nor reality. To posit that aliens must exist because animals live in harsh conditions on Earth is scientifically unsupportable.

<comment><USER3> The first part is unrelated and comes off as a straw man argument. As for your second point, the article said alien life, not aliens. The Panspermia theory is widely accepted in the scientific community. The organic compounds that are the building blocks for living organisms or living organisms themselves were most likely introduced to our planet via comets. These chemical compounds are common in our universe and the universe is unfathomably massive. But if we're going with you're first point then aliens would have to exist in one or more of the infinite multiverses. Besides the observation of our "material reality" doesn't negate the possibility of other observers or that a conscious observer is necessary for something to exist. The universe existed before humans could observe it so it's existence or anything else in it is not dependent on our observation of it.

<comment><USER2> I'll stick with my two points. The OP claims that because animals exist in unusal places on Earth that there should be aliens who will visit us. The Fermi Paradox attempts to address why they might not. The possibility of a multidimensional universe addresses why _nothing_ we experience on Earth is necessarily related to any kind of "physical reality," and that includes the existence of said strange animals and/or aliens.

<comment><USER4> "The OP claims that because animals exist in unusal places on Earth that there should be aliens who will visit us."

Show a quote from the article where he states this.

<comment><USER2> I concede that was my misinterpretation. On closer inspection, the OP didn't suggest anything other than "finding" life, not have it visit us. Thanks for pointing that out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Protesters outside White House demand 'Pizzagate' investigation - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2017/03/25/protesters-outside-white-house-demand-pizzagate-investigation/ <comment><USER2> > Their three children, ages 9, 5 and 2, each wore shirts saying "I Am Not > Pizza #pizzagate."

Reality consistently outpacing the Onion..</comment>


Do you have any advice for a company that targets schools? - <AUTHOR> I plan to launch an educational website that will target college classrooms. It is an interactive platform where students can submit works, like Moodle, but for very specific areas of study. What is the best business model in this case? How do payments work? I guess it's not exactly like a B2B or B2C company. Any personal experience? Thank you <comment><USER2> From an old patio11 post: [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterprise_sales)

> _As someone who sold to teachers for six years let me strongly suggest > pounding your own hand with a hammer prior to selling to school districts. > It is less painful and approximately as lucrative._

HN discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6255431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6255431) (227 points | Aug 22, 2013 | 56 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8800727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8800727) (295 points | Dec 26, 2014 | 62 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14527620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14527620) (111 points | June 10, 2017 | 24 comments)

<comment><USER3> That's a perfect way to put it. Teachers, students, general school staff don't really have money. Admins don't and won't give you time to pitch.

I worked in an edtech product for years (as an employee) and met a lot of edtech salespeople. It was quite shocking to see how little money these sales people did. Which let me understand that if salespeople ain't making money, nobody else ain't either (in a general sense).

Oh and let me tell you about how labor intensive it was to deal with them. They all wanted pilots. Each pilot required their student population data to be loader. None of the data platforms followed a specific standard. I talked to Clever (YC) and Google classroom engineerscat different trade shows and they confirmed how difficult it was. Ended up doing my own system to import data into...

Anyway, save yourself the grief. Build it if you must, but be very pragmatic. It takes a lot if money and influence to break into this market and sometimes thats not even enough. I know because the founder of the company I used to work with was both very very very rich and very very very connected. Product is currently a zombie (though the company continues with it forward).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's very hard to get paid by colleges. It's a kind of enterprise sales, with the usual problem that the decision makers have little contact with the end- users of the software. So having better software doesn't help you make sales. The industry gets dominated by companies that are great at sales and not very good at making software.

If your software is so jaw-droppingly awesome that professors will pay out of their own pocket, you can make some money that way. But not a huge amount of money.

You may be better off making the website free, and making money some other way. Charging employers to show job postings can make money, if the students are in high demand.

</comment><comment><USER5> Answering 'what is the best business model in this case' is impossible without knowing:

\- what problem you're aiming to solve

\- who cares about having that problem solved (e.g. because they can make more money and/or save a lot of money)

If you haven't already, I suggest you go and talk to the people you expect to pay for your software. They will be able to tell you the answers to some of your existing questions.

You should also talk with the people who will use your software.

If you're unsure how to talk with customers and users, buy the excellent book 'Talking to Humans'.</comment>


A Job Search Tool for Data Scientists in NYC - <AUTHOR> https://jcp1016.shinyapps.io/indeedoor/

<comment><USER2> This is cool! I'm wondering how did you pull the data from glassdoor btw such as company rating and reviews? I don't think they have an API and they have some pretty rough anti scraping protections.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems most of the jobs are clustered around lower Manhattan - not because that's where the jobs are, but because that is where the location "New York City" geocodes to.</comment>


Googlers, get a privacy screen for your laptops - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/12/holiday-psa-googlers-get-a-privacy-screen-for-your-laptops.ars

<comment><USER2> The legacy of pen-and-ink classification schemes comes with some flaws. In the military, if it's that important to be stamped, you shouldn't be reading it in a public square at all. But the "confidential" stamp is what made it seem juicy. Without that stamp, the journalist wouldn't have been interested.

But, like most classified documents, I think this also bears out just how much we over-secretize. I like Assange's view on this: we seem to use secrets to maintain our own positions within certain networks more than we use them for anything like "the greater good".

<comment><USER3> The standards community is like this too. Just consider how many W3C working groups are secret, for example. You wouldn't believe how much push-back I get when I ask for everything to be public.

(The W3C even has a second level of secrecy known as "team", which even W3C members who pay $60,000+ every year don't get access to.)

<comment><USER4> I don't know the reasons that the W3C state, but I can see _a_ reason for making some amount of the process behind closed doors: the 802.11 'pre-n' debacle. Vendors taking incomplete standards and running with them before they are mature enough to use. Of course there is also the opposite danger: vendors implementing their own 'standards' because the standards body is taking too long behind closed doors.

<comment><USER3> The implementors _are_ the working group. Standards organisations don't make up standards without the implementors. :-) (At least, not successfully. Some do try.)

Secret working groups aren't secret from the participants, so it wouldn't make any difference to the case you describe. Indeed, the 802.11 working group _does_ work in secret, yet still had the "debacle" you mention. (The IEEE as a whole is not a very open standards organisation.)

Also, hardware standards are a bit more difficult, but in software, you really want to have experimental implementations long before standardisation. Otherwise, you end up with technologies that really don't work so well in practice. But that's separate from the issue of secrecy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was briefly a tech journalist, my boss showed me a great trick: Go to the lobby of the hotel during a conference and just _listen_. It's amazing how many people forget that others can hear everything they say into their bluetooth headset.

<comment><USER6> Forget the lobby, head to the bar. You get a lot more uncensored information and opinions after a few drinks.

<comment><USER5> Very true. Even better are open-bar parties.

Here's my absolute favorite trick, though: Blow past the PR people, sales people, and models who typically staff tradeshow booths and find the lone engineer. Ask questions like, "What's your favorite cool feature that _didn't_ make it into this release?" or "If you had 6 more months to work on it, what would you have done?"

Even engineers/product managers with some public relations training can't resist talking about that thing they spent months working on, but didn't make it into the final release.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.funnysalescartoons.com/photo/dilbert-sales- engine...](http://www.funnysalescartoons.com/photo/dilbert-sales-engineer- tells?context=latest)

<comment><USER8> Yea, I know. It is the PR 2.0 age, trying to control the message is just obsolete and fundamentally flawed nowadays. Believe me, this is not the only problem it causes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everywhere I go, I see people who look at confidential information on laptops that are facing a crowdfull of eyeballs. Better yet, many of them get up and leave for a smoke or a piss without locking their screen, leaving not only the juicy bits there for all to read but corporate hardware unattended and ripe for the picking. I also hear people divulge way too much information in public (usually while talking on a phone) such as routing numbers, credit card details and the like. People need more than a privacy screen. It's as if situational awareness is some kind of lost art.

<comment><USER10> How often is it exploited? Are preventative measures, which necessarily get in your way at some times to some degree, worth it given that probability?

<comment><USER9> [http://www.google.com/search?q=stolen+laptop&tbs=nws:1](http://www.google.com/search?q=stolen+laptop&tbs=nws:1)

<comment><USER11> We're talking about information being stolen via evesdropping or looking over shoulders, not by physically stealing the media the information is in. Linking to the google news results for "stolen laptop" is therefor irrelevant.

<comment><USER9> "leaving not only the juicy bits there for all to read but corporate hardware unattended and ripe for the picking." was indeed one of the threats I mentioned, and it happens all the time. It's relevant to at least part of the discussion. "Shoulder Surfing" is very low-tech. How often it's exploited for personal gain is anyone's guess. Is it really that hard to hit Windows-L when you have to step away for a moment? To lower your voice (or better yet, find a better time or place) before yelling your account numbers into that mobile phone of yours despite the fact that you're in a quiet coffee shop? To take one of the many open seats where your back is to a wall before you spent hours upon hours poring through corporate IP on that massive 18" laptop screen? Sure,it's a trade-off sometimes. It's not always quiet and the good "privacy friendly" seating isn't always available, and sometimes you forget to lock your screen but I see stuff that boggles my mind almost daily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I friend of mine at Google UK was issued with a privacy screen for his standard issue laptop and told on day one that he MUST use it whenever in a public space.

It was quite good. Sitting next to him in the pub I could see about 5% of his screen.

<comment><USER13> I bet there is a decent-sized market with untapped demand for laptops / "tablets" (<http://paulgraham.com/tablets.html>) with a built-in privacy screen mechanism. The hardware itself could be the screen, either by making the screen part of the case itself, or through the display which would enable people to read only from certain angles.

<comment><USER14> The "privacy screen" is a physical polarization filter - basically a fabric you put on your screen however you like.

I don't know of any electrical/mechanical process that could shift the state of fabric to block light at most angles.

If you buy a crappy laptop from a couple of years ago, you won't even have to buy a filter to render your screen unreadable from an angle that isn't perpendicular to the screen. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Something like this privacy blanket, perhaps? For looking at "classified documents"?

[http://4.media.todaysbigthing.cvcdn.com/99/79/8626236317aa13...](http://4.media.todaysbigthing.cvcdn.com/99/79/8626236317aa13c4121a51b540613608.jpg)

<comment><USER16> I could see some laptops overheating with that, besides it looking ridiculous and making your activity even more suspicious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is so weird being in the commercial world now where people basically don't seem to care about things like this. I never do anything on airplanes or in cafes except read books, watch movies, etc., or other public-source material. Even personal/social email seems too personal to have on a screen in a shared environment. Open plan offices shared with people outside my company are just as bad, but at least then it is sometimes possible to hide in a corner or telephone closet. I've often ended up going outside to sit in my car to make phone calls.

</comment><comment><USER18> When I was there it was standard practice to use a privacy screen when at conferences or travelling, and they were delivered to your desk for free if you asked.

Some people just don't use common sense though.

</comment><comment><USER19> "The Googler (I'll just use the masculine pronoun for convenience's sake) was sitting with his seat back up, while his neighbor's seat was leaned all the way back. This left a huge gap in between the seats, so that merely by looking straight ahead and turning my eyes slightly to one side I could see almost all of his laptop screen."

The author of this article is obviously lying, because if his seat was up and his neighbor's was back there would be no way to see his screen from behind. The author obviously didn't think this through well enough.

<comment><USER20> It might work if the writer was one row back and two seats to the side of the Googler, and the person in front of the writer had their seat back up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What about a software program that adds some type of filter layer on screen that can only be seen through special glasses that you purchase?

<comment><USER4> Whatever happened to the idea of making the glasses the display?

<comment><USER20> You can get them. They aren't especially pleasant to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Next thing you know people will stop forgetting confidential documents in the printer.

<comment><USER14> They don't even have to do that; if the scanner has any sort of data storage, you can just check that out once in a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, journalists are pretty much like smug spies. It is disconcerting that I have to be constantly distrustful of people around me just in case they are interested in digging around into any of the organizations I belong to.

<comment><USER24> Not really -- either the information should be revealed to the public (in which case you don't have to be distrustful of them) or it shouldn't (in which case you should prevent them from learning).</comment></comment>


The Vine Nerds - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/mf-fruition-sciences-winemakers/all/

<comment><USER2> I don't think this title garners enough attention for the article. The 'Vine Nerds' are uprooting an industry by taking a low-cost hardware startup and applying analytics tools from the web, arguably along the lines of pg's hardware commentary. I have seen many more upvotes for ideas with much less traction. Great read.

<comment><USER3> Agriculture seems extremely slow to adopt analysis, is it a massive opportunity? It seems the only way to break in is with your own land though, since the incumbent group doesn't have interest. I assume there is a strong desire not to drive the price down goods down even further because for most farmer it becomes impossible to operate.</comment></comment>


Bots with Programming Challenges / Recruiting - <AUTHOR> https://codefights.com/bots_room/companies <comment><AUTHOR> Bots programmed by devs at major companies, with challenges based on what those companies are working on. Intended as a recruiting tool, with option on victory to submit your information to the applicable company.

<comment><USER2> a) your site is horribly slow (even thought it was down for a minute)

b) you should show at least some example what's actually going on. I have absolutely no idea what "fight bots" means, and I'm not going to sign up just to find out.

I assume it's sort of CTF-like, if yes look at [https://www.starfighters.io/](https://www.starfighters.io/) and [https://www.stockfighter.io/](https://www.stockfighter.io/) for what useful info looks like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not my site, just something I stumbled across that looked interesting.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ok to summer intern for a company with no intention of going full time? - <AUTHOR>

Pretty straight forward question. My situation: graduating and I'd like to work full time at a pretty stable job at a big(ish) company. However, I don't want to start immediately (Aug-Sept timeframe) and would love to potentially intern at a startup and just get a feel and understanding for the startup culture and life.<p>On a related note, any potential YC Summer 2015 companies/other startups looking for interns? :) <comment><USER2> Accepting an internship puts you under no obligation to take a full-time job with the company. By offering you an internship, they're making a clear statement that they're not making a long-term commitment to you, so you shouldn't think you need to make a long-term commitment to them. If they really wanted you to commit to a long-term position, they should be offering you a real entry-level job (at a real salary), not an internship.

In any case, there's no guarantee that you'd even be offered a job by this company at the end of your internship, so you should be looking for permanent jobs elsewhere anyway.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the alternative HN front-ends with better discussion features? - <AUTHOR> I have to admit I mostly come to HN in order to take part in discussions. Are there any sites that would let me use my HN credentials in order to let me post through them, providing a better front-end experience (i.e., sensible mobile) as well as some basic discussion features (e.g. "subscribe to this discussion")?<p>If there's none, I imagine I could start writing one. <comment><USER2> Maybe an extension to bystand and/or other NNTP clients might be helpful. That way, I can get the comments to be sorted in chronological order. (A protocol extension to bystand is simply a program that communicates with stdin/stdout using the NNTP protocol. I don't know if any other software than bystand supports this.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I simply use this, but it may be too minimalist.

[https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker- news](https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news)

<comment><USER2> Would you add a mode to always sort by date/time rather than by scoring? Unfortunately sometimes there is "more", and you cannot write a reply on pages other than the first one, and you have to look through all of the "more" to find the one you want, and the way it does sorting is problematic for that because I would want it to sort by the date/time instead

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think one could use HN's credentials outside HN. There isn't a Oauth2 API or equivalent as far as I know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, but if you use HN password on this one site only, it wouldn't hurt that much to share it with another website to manage the discussions for you. That was my reasoning. What do you think?

<comment><USER4> In general sharing passwords to a third party website is a red flag. HN may blacklist your servers for security. In general social networks like Facebook, Twitter, reddit, Github, LinkedIn,etc use Oauth2 for better security.

But you may have more chance if you build an open-source desktop app, using electron if you want to use web technologies.</comment></comment></comment>


My name is Jason Cornwell & I think I know better than 80% of Gmail users... - <AUTHOR> http://mind.sh/are/news/no-one-likes-the-new-gmail-compose/

<comment><USER2> He doesn't like the new gmail compose.

I do: it lets me find the parts of e-mails I need to reference when writing an e-mail.</comment>


Code School releases free in-browser jQuery course - <AUTHOR> http://jqueryair.com/

<comment><USER2> I bought this a few months ago, and it was very well done. The videos were informative, and the overwhelming majority of the exercises were useful and clearly written. Almost all the bugs have been worked out by now. The interactive console is is a fantastic way to learn with immediate feedback, and this implementation is better than any of the others I have seen.

I will say though, that after basically paying to beta test it, it does pinch a bit to see that it's free now. Oh well. I really hope these guys succeed, because they are doing great stuff.

<comment><USER3> I'll ditto this. I loved JQuery AIR, but people who bought this (like me) probably should get vouchers for the advanced course.

Regardless this is a ridiculously polished product with awesome interactive quizes and great videos. Worth every penny, more so now that it's free :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stoked to try it out! Thanks for making it free Gregg.

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome, I will start this tonight!

</comment><comment><USER6> Yae!</comment>