A Beginner's Guide to Chart.js - <AUTHOR> https://www.stanleyulili.com/javascript/beginner-guide-to-chartjs/ <comment><USER2> Chart.js still uses the HTML Canvas element, so charts generated with it look blurred when printed or zoomed in.

Nowadays I prefer Apexcharts.js, which renders to SVG.

[https://github.com/apexcharts/apexcharts.js](https://github.com/apexcharts/apexcharts.js) (MIT License)

<comment><USER3> i'm working on a micro timeseries plotter that easily handles 150k+ datapoints. it uses canvas but accounts properly for display pixel density, so is as sharp as SVG.

here is how it performs vs Chart.js:

[https://github.com/leeoniya/uPlot#performance](https://github.com/leeoniya/uPlot#performance)

i will add Apex charts to the bench list in a day or so

i think the only practical way to get acceptable perf with SVG is to simplify the paths via something like [https://mourner.github.io/simplify- js/](https://mourner.github.io/simplify-js/)

<comment><USER4> If you change the `scales.xAxes[0].ticks.source config option to `'auto'` you can drop ~1s off the render the time. It's still not great, but it is an improvement. I'll take a look through the profile I generated and see if there are any obvious improvements in Chart.js.

Thanks for creating this :)

<comment><USER3> sweet, i'll add this.

is this mentioned anywhere in the docs? seems non-obvious.

<comment><USER4> The option is documented at [https://www.chartjs.org/docs/latest/axes/cartesian/time.html...](https://www.chartjs.org/docs/latest/axes/cartesian/time.html#ticks- source) but the performance implications aren't. I'll work on adding something there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now that we have Javascript modules, is all this trickery on top of a library like this one still needed?

This is how the Chart.js code begins:

        (function (global, factory) {
        typeof exports === 'object' && typeof module !==
        'undefined' ? module.exports = factory() :
        typeof define === 'function' && define.amd ?
        define(factory) :
        (global.Chart = factory());
        }(this, (function () { 'use strict';
        ... now comes all the code ...

I have no idea how to read this, what this means and how to invoke a construct like this.

<comment><USER6> > is all this trickery on top of a library like this one still needed?

If the library is imported in the way that the article recommends in step two, it's not actually loaded as an ES6 module. This code checks to see if we're currently acting as a module and accordingly makes sure that the library is available as a global object. See this link for some examples: [https://devhints.io/umdjs](https://devhints.io/umdjs)

> I have no idea how to read this ...

I tried to add some comments [0] which will hopefully help!

[0] [https://gist.github.com/tjwds/8883b20d5981518bad66497f0466ac...](https://gist.github.com/tjwds/8883b20d5981518bad66497f0466acb5)

<comment><USER5> Nowadays, I either include javascript as a module or as a module dependency. I am still not sure if these will work with the given code:

As a module:

        <script type="module" src="Chart.js"></script>

As a module dependency:

        import * as chart from 'Chart.js';

<comment><USER7> Yes, this is the point of that code. It's boilerplate to ensure the module loads in different environments.

<comment><USER8> UMD does _not_ support standard JS module imports. The UMD code won't detect `exports` or `define` and will write to globals instead of producing any exports.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what you mean. Obviously UMD cannot support native es6 modules since they're syntactical invalid for non-es6 applications.

<comment><USER8> The GP wants to import into JS modules, and you said:

> Yes, this is the point of that code. It's boilerplate to ensure the module > loads in different environments.

but the UDM header does not allow the module to load in JS modules. So I'm not quite sure what you meant actually. The header does nothing for standard modules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I work on a data viz product and we've always struggled with a myriad of charting libraries. IMO Chart.js is one of the best tools for charting that has quickly surpassed existing libraries in aesthetics, ease of use, robust community, etc. Big thanks to the Chart.js team for their work!

I wound up building an open-source web service for rendering Chart.js to images for embedding in static contexts without JS support such as email and chat: [https://github.com/typpo/quickchart](https://github.com/typpo/quickchart). Maybe some reading this thread will find it useful.

<comment><USER10> I've been using Uber's graphing libraries, and they're nothing short of stunning.[1] It's easy to get started, and customizing or extending functionality is straightforward, with myriad example to help. And charting is rendering agnostic. SVG? Canvas? You choose. My only gripe is the lack of TypeScript support. I won't touch vanillaJS with a 20 foot pole if I can help, and the the missing type annotations can be painful.

[1] [https://deck.gl/](https://deck.gl/) (The navbar dropdown lists all of their libraries for easy exploration.)

<comment><USER11> It looks cool. The only examples I see though are for drawing maps. Any pointers on how you could draw a x/y chart?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For a hand-drawn aesthetic chart.js alternative (that uses SVG), check out roughViz.js

[https://github.com/jwilber/roughViz](https://github.com/jwilber/roughViz)

<comment><USER13> That's very cool; you should submit that as your own Show HN!

<comment><USER12> Thanks. As soon as I finish the readme :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love chartjs. It's so easy to get started with it and comes with a lot of great features out of the box. I just wish its animation system was a little more extensive like giving me the option to animate ticks and grid lines for eye candy on load.

<comment><USER15> I like Chart.js as well. I found it very easy to pick up as an ad-hoc Javascript programmer, producing some nice visual depictions of the data coming out of my C/C++ code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Over the years, I've narrowed my focus to: d3.js via dc.js and crossfilter.js.

This 3 punch combo creates an incredible user experience. The only downside is that dc.js doesn't have _all_ the charts. The interactivity with the basic charts they do have is worth the absence of other types of charts.

</comment><comment><USER17> What do y'all recommend for frequently updating charts i.e. streaming data sources with histograms, etc?

<comment><USER18> Highcharts would be my goto for live data charts that updated continuously. The framework is free to use for non-commercial or personal projects via a CC license: [https://www.highcharts.com/docs/working-with-data/live- data](https://www.highcharts.com/docs/working-with-data/live-data)

It's a popular framework, so a lot of my questions were answered on Stack Overflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I looked and didn't see Gantt charts. Could the horizontal bar chart be hacked to do this?

<comment><USER20> I would personally recommend Highcharts for that. [https://www.highcharts.com/gantt/demo](https://www.highcharts.com/gantt/demo)</comment></comment>


Sylvania Factory Tour – Vintage Tube Services - <AUTHOR> http://vintagetubeservices.com/sylvania-factory-tour/ <comment><USER2> Thermionic tubes are works of art. It's amazing that most of the work to build these was done by hand, and yet they perform very well and are highly durable.

Now the article has me wondering what a DC Millimeter is. :) I think I need to get one for my metrology stack.

<comment><USER3> "Most of the work was done by hand..." Well, the machines and jigs to make them were quite sophisticated.

From the video:

"You'll notice that at no time are they touched by hand." Start at about 12:05:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDvF89Bh27Y&t=12m05s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDvF89Bh27Y&t=12m05s)

<comment><USER4> Does that video cover blowing the glass?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> "This tube crushing machine prevented any seconds from falling into dishonest hands!"_

How ironic! Little did they suspect that people would be trading completely fake Sylvania (and other) "new old stock" tubes decades later.

<comment><USER2> I have come across lots of jerks selling bad old tubes ("but my tester featuring unknown principles of operation pointed the needle at the GOOD sector, not the BAD or "?" sectors!" (What kind of instrument has a "?" on the meter face?))

I wonder how the counterfeits would be done today, since the phenolic bases on the old octal tubes probably can't be matched by any material around now.

<comment><USER3> > What kind of instrument has a "?" on the meter face?

I've seen a few equipment testers with a "?" between "Bad" and "Good". I have a battery tester with this, and tube testers like this are not uncommon. They are typically emission testers, which wire up the tube like a diode, with the grid wired to the cathode. As the tube ages, the cathode coating will wear out and emission will drop. The cathode coating wears out through normal use the same way an incandescent lamp wears out: at normal temperatures, it will evaporate and get deposited somewhere else in the tube. Emission testing is far from perfect, but it's a good first test to figure out e.g. which tube is a dud.

I have a hard time caring because I never buy NOS tubes (same reason I don't buy CA3280s).

<comment><USER2> A friend of mine has an emission tester (maybe it can put some signal on the grid - I haven't seen it in a while.) I've got a hickok machine that you look up the grid bias in the chart and can receive a reading in ... micromhos? Ok that implies conductance but that's a strange unit. I'm not sure these are "instruments."

My treasure is a machine from soviet russia, it actually uses a signal generator to feed the grid, and measures transconductance in mA/V. It's got a bunch of power supplies, VTVM and microampere meter whose smallest scale resolves some nanoamperes, so I trust its methodology. It's nice to find the actual current passed by a rectifier tube instead of setting a meter bias knob to read out the 'strength' on a unitless 0-100 scale.

But I never figured out how to intereperet the "?" on the emission testers.

My tube fap shrine won't be complete until I get a Tek 575 though.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why the mho is a strange unit. It is just another name for the siemens (a.k.a. ampere per volt).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While this is cool, the rest of the website is made of snake oil.</comment>


Inflate Your App's Popularity...Until It Really Is Popular - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/22933586104/foursquare-ux-inflate-how-popular-your-application

<comment><AUTHOR> This is clever language and UX IMHO. Does anyone know other apps that do similar things?</comment>


Ask HN: How to generate a pdf for website? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I am very new to web site development and currently building a website, using react, which teaches online using text/gifs. At the end of the course, I would like to generate a sort of pdf book customized with the user inputs that are spread over the course.
Now, I would like a better design for the book and earlier for one of my own personal project, I used tufte-latex and loved the experience. I have searched for solutions online, but the highly recommended PhantomJS is not really easy to pick up.
Can anyone prime me about setting up a pdf generator using latex or any other suitable solution?
I expect around 3k users at least and some initial traction for people interested in the website.
Thanks and Regards<AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> One "other suitable solution" could be to use Quickscript ([http://quickscript.sourceforge.net/index.html](http://quickscript.sourceforge.net/index.html)). It is a Postscript based document formatter. The markup format it uses is relatively straighforward. You would output a suitable "qs" file, and then feed the document formatting code plus the "qs" file through ghostscript to generate a pdf.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're building your backend in Python with Django or Tornado you could use ReportLab's open source PDF generator [1]. ReportLab's founder, Andy Robinson was Mark Hammond's co author on Python Programming for Win32.

[1] [http://www.reportlab.com/opensource/](http://www.reportlab.com/opensource/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked at ReportLab. Have you used it before in any project? I really want to make the pdfs beautiful looking. Is ReportLab comparable to Latex?

<comment><USER3> I have used ReportLab; it's easy to use and the results look good. Never used Latex, so can't comment on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> pdfjs if an option if you want to generate it on the browser (clientside).</comment>


Stop Building a Spaceship to Mars and Just Plant Some Damn Trees - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/07/stop-building-a-space-ship-to-mars-and-just-plant-some-damn-trees/ <comment><USER2> Why is it only space exploration that is targeted this way?

The entertainment industry has $97 billion/year revenue, despite the existence of more movies/games than one could watch/play in a lifetime. Meanwhile, SpaceX had a $1 billion budget for all of 2002-2012, and NASA's entire yearly budget is $21.5 billion - just 0.49% of US government spending.

So lets "Stop Making New Movies and Just Plant Some Damn Trees"

<comment><USER3> Very true, and let's not even get started about the defense industry...

<comment><USER2> I think redirecting the defense industry to make space rockets instead of death rockets is one of the more feasible ways to improve the world. Because reducing their budget is politically challenging, to say the least - they are exceedingly good lobbyists.

<comment><USER3> I like that. Sort of like swords to plowshares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Know what? Let's cut CEO bonuses and salaries back to the level they had in the 50s and use that money to do both.

<comment><USER5> How?

<comment><USER4> Limit it by law to a multiple of the lowest wage any worker or subcontractor earns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's do both.

<comment><USER7> I agree with the sentiment. It's worth pointing out that the articles title is highly click-baity as the actual article does not mention Mars, Elon Musk, or any investments in getting to Mars. The only mention of the word space is in the context of space for canopy.

What I find interesting about the goal to get towards Mars is that it includes all sorts of plans for terra forming mars as we might find our selves having to terra form earth back to it's former glory.

In order to do that, we could do worse than letting loose creative geniuses on all sorts of wacky ideas like getting to Mars, electrifying our vehicles, storing lots of energy, and mass deploying solar energy. At least a few of those things might help us reduce our carbon footprint. I'm all for plans that involve restoring ecosystems. Planting trees is sort of the simplistic version of that. It's a start; it won't be enough by itself. I'm afraid that in the minds of simpler people this turns into a "I can have my cake and eat it" kind of thing where planting trees means a free pass for burning gas, coal and oil. We need to stop doing that ASAP and we need technology to allow us to do that without reverting back to our per-industrial era selves. Courtesy of Elon Musk (and many others), that seems a lot more profitable and doable than it used to.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I think the tangential successes is what many people miss about technology. Computers are by far the best example of this. At one time they would have undoubtedly been seen by many, perhaps even the majority, as a waste. Governments were spending many millions of dollars (when that was a lot of money...) developing building-size machines that needed large teams of professionals to maintain and operate. Yet they were little more than glorified calculators. For instance the first general purpose 'super computer' was the ENIAC [1]. It was capable of a blistering 40 divisions per second!

And it's literally impossible to even imagine all of the ramifications of creating a sustainable civilization on Mars. Being able to manage, and ideally control, atmospheric conditions is just scratching the surface. For instance it would signal the beginning of the end of scarcity since suddenly we now have effectively infinite land open up to colonization (as success on Mars would not be the end of planetary colonization efforts, but the beginning), infinite resources, and so much more. Again I think trying to imagine the implications of this is akin to trying to imagine the implications of computers - it's simply not possible in any meaningful way.

But the great thing is that we live in a free society. So everybody is free to pursue their own vision. Plant a tree, build a spaceship, work on carbon scrubbing, or whatever else you personally think is a good idea. This is perhaps the one very good thing about the rise of mega-wealth. At one time you'd need governments to build and develop spaceships - governments whose ideology, views, and values tend to take a 180 every decade, if not less. For instance Nixon killed the space program in no small part because of a personal animosity he had with JFK, one that his death apparently did little to sate. And in modern times government space ships like the SLS are 90% pork barrel and 10% real. Yet now in an era where many private companies revenues exceeds the GDP of small nations (and accords corresponding private wealth), space is just becoming another industry.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Article has very little to do with title. The title is clearly intended to be clickbait.</comment>


Show HN: Midnight.pub – Virtual Speakeasy - <AUTHOR> Midnight is a side-project I've been working on for the past year, but only released in alpha a month ago. It aims to be the web equivalent of your local pub: a place you can go to and talk about your day with strangers or friends. It's heavily inspired by write.as (for simplicy) and Roam (for bi-directional linking). My hope is that it fosters creative writing as well as typical pub discussions.
You can read more about it and the concept on https://midnight.pub
Here are some example of interesting stories written: https://midnight.pub/e/269435632215917061 https://midnight.pub/e/270853987488498184 https://midnight.pub/e/271216985664127501
Thanks for reading! <comment><USER2> Congrats, this is a an awesome idea and well implemented. Especially the name and domain is kind of welcoming and setting the right tone.

I just checked out write.as' and ResearchRoam's traffic and they have both over 1-2M visits per month which isn't too bad and surprised me a bit. Do you have insights into this market? Why does a simple editor (write.as) gets so much traffic and is still growing? Is linking (Roam) not an overrated feature and easy to accomplish with any other note taking tool? What kind of people are using these tools? Isn't there not heavy competition on the native app side?

<comment><USER3> > Why does a simple editor (write.as) gets so much traffic and is still > growing?

Write.as isn't an editor; it's a Medium (blogging) alternative.

> Is linking (Roam) not an overrated feature and easy to accomplish with any > other note taking tool?

Roam is a supercharged wiki specifically for journaling and mind-mapping (i.e. a personal wiki). People who don't understand why GitHub "wikis" aren't really wikis will also have difficulty understanding what makes wikis appealing/effective.

You can look through recent discussions here on HN about similar Roam-like tools (like Obsidian[1]) if you want to see how people are approaching these things.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who doesn't frequent pubs - is going to pubs and talking about your day to strangers actually a feature of pubs? How does that actually work? What's the etiquette?

<comment><USER5> Usually it's something like you have a sports event you want to see, head to the pub, and you're sort of half watching it on the TV, and there's others around watching the same thing or chatting. If people are talking about something a little ways away from you it's socially acceptable to butt in, more or less. As you spend time in a local, you also get to know the regulars and they'll wind up introducing you to other regulars, etc. Double all this if there's more affiliation going on, like you're all immigrants or ex-pats or whatever, or if you're all lawyers or something.

Source: Irish immigrant family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The listed links (which are not automatically made clickable in text posts):

[https://midnight.pub](https://midnight.pub)

[https://midnight.pub/e/269435632215917061](https://midnight.pub/e/269435632215917061)

[https://midnight.pub/e/270853987488498184](https://midnight.pub/e/270853987488498184)

[https://midnight.pub/e/271216985664127501](https://midnight.pub/e/271216985664127501)

</comment><comment><USER7> The simplicity is really appealing! Your video was good too, very clear.

It's tempting to try it, but I prefer to host all my writing and works myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> MUSHes and MOOs are virtual pubs that aren't as fashionable any more as they once were. (Most MUSH-oriented apps are glorified telnet clients, and tend to reproduce the same aesthetics and design flaws/idiosyncrasies.) Real life pubs are real-time, and MUSHes offer a good balance of real-time, networked interaction and persistent objects. This project doesn't handle the real-time aspect and is less like a pub than a blog with a wiki-like editing experience.

I'm convinced that with all the chat apps that are popping up, the Slack killer will be the first one to reinvent the MUSH by bolting its most notable features onto the "chat" space.

(When Keybase was still a thing, I thought they might do it by introducing "bot workers"—chat bots implemented in a script bundle that's managed and executed in the client itself—like a browser add-on, but based on Service Workers a la Cloudflare Workers.)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is fascinating and I'm not sure I quite understand it. I hadn't heard of either of the other two services so I'm looking at those now.

<comment><USER9> Write.as is a minimal blog platform that federates over ActivityPub.

<comment><USER2> Heard about ActivityPub the first time, just checked it out briefly. Ok it' some social networking protocol, how does it relate to write.as?

<comment><USER9> You can see and comment on write.as posts from other ActivityPub (AP) platforms that support it like Mastodon. It's up to the platform to implement it since the AP specification leaves implementation details mostly up to the implementor.

A recent discussion here on HN covers it pretty well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23852036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23852036)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great concept. Looking forward to seeing the community it forms.

</comment><comment><USER11> Video is a bit quiet.</comment>


Today in JS Episode Four: iOS 4.2, HTML5 Canvas, and More - <AUTHOR> http://badassjs.com/post/1671749163/today-in-js-episode-four-ios-4-2-html5-canvas-and

<comment><USER2> Scrolling Sencha list via Accelerometer is wicked cool!</comment>


Prime factorizations of small numbers - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/101584889282878921052/posts/AmyG7RCS4et

<comment><USER2> I like this one: [http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/math/factorization...](http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/math/factorization/animated- diagrams/)

<comment><USER3> I've been showing that to my daughter since she was 2 or 3. She'll ask to see it every so often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the original article is a better source: [http://blog.jgc.org/2012/04/make-your-own-prime- factorizatio...](http://blog.jgc.org/2012/04/make-your-own-prime- factorization.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> There is one reason to link to that discussion. Further down in the comments you'll find that someone modified my code and came up with a prettier picture.

[https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/11838765/7074316/...](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/11838765/7074316/64b824b4-deae-11e4-9d1e-07997032cfc8.png)

<comment><USER5> Did (s)he put the source online anywhere? I would like to render a bigger version for printing a poster with :).

<comment><AUTHOR> That was made as a pull request to my project which I merged this morning: [https://github.com/jgrahamc/pfd/pull/1](https://github.com/jgrahamc/pfd/pull/1)

<comment><USER5> Awesome, here is a 4096px version with bigger numbers. [https://github.com/mox1/pfd/blob/master/screen-0000.jpg](https://github.com/mox1/pfd/blob/master/screen-0000.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love the concept & code, but I cannot abide the color scheme.

Here's hoping that if I come back here in a few hours some designer will have posted something better...

</comment><comment><USER7> I noticed the green table always appears in the 5th and 10th columsn.

if you make the table large enough, don't you run out of colors - I mean primes?

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like weird sudoku.</comment>


iPad Pro – 9.7-inch - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ <comment><USER2> I am shocked by Apple's lack of commitment to making an actual productivity oriented computer in the form factor of a tablet.

The iPad Pro is likely a reaction to the success of the Microsoft Surface-- but the reaction is not much more than a name change and split screen. The Surface on the other hand actually is a productivity machine. Why isn't Apple diving fully into this area?

<comment><USER3> What success? iPad destroyed Surface sales by an order of magnitude last quarter 16.1M to 1.6M.

Even the iPad Pro alone outsold all MS Surface products despite only being introduced midway through the holiday quarter.

<comment><USER4> Bad comparison IMO. The tablet market is distinct from the productivity tablet market. What percentage of those ipad are replacing laptops?

<comment><USER5> It's not a bad comparison.

The question is why is Apple not diving into a "productivity machine" like the Surface. The answer is that the iPad Pro is selling better than the Surface. That is: Apple isn't building the Surface because they built something that sells better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is anybody else deeply disappointed by the camera bulge? If you use the tablet on a tabletop, that basically forces you to buy a ~$100 case that adds unnecessary thickness and weight to the tablet. Cheap move, IMO.

<comment><USER4> Seriously. Wtf. I place my tablet down flat on my counter tops 24/7.

I dont even use my tablet camera!! How could they justify making the device uneven for a camera few people use, and for a camera where the old one worked perfectly fine for its purpose.

Seriously wtf move by apple. The camera bump a game-ruiner. I'm irrationally pretty upset by this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I fail to see why a normal person would want the extra things in an iPad Pro. Sure for some professionals it has some good features but a normal content consumer/light content creator (edit pictures, write some documents) it is just overkill with TrueTone display, etc.

Yes the CPU power is on the same level as an Atom/i3 from what I have read which is interesting but what does it really offer that the Air doesn't offer to an average user? I guess it is similar to how some of those average consumers also buy a MacBook Pro when they don't need any of the extra power over an Air (although lack of retina display on the Air is a valid reason thinking about it).

The biggest complaint I have with the iPad Pro is that it runs iOS. If it ran a touch-friendly ARM-version of OS X _that_ would be awesome.

<comment><USER8> I got my father an iPad Pro over the holidays - he loves it.

He uses it for listening to music, writing emails, and surfing - the same things you'd do with any laptop, but he likes the iPad form factor quite a bit.

Most importantly, the iPad Pro (and I guess, now the smaller iPad Pro) is the only platform in the entire world that offers competent Chinese stylus input.

Typing Chinese is a pain in the ass - there are several ways to do it and all of them largely suck and require a steep learning curve (and even then, still a pain in the ass). There has been a lot of demand for writing-based input methods, but most of the solutions so far have sucked a lot. The hardware surrounding it has been bad, and so has the software, which often required you to enter a single character at a time tediously, with poor recognition rates to boot.

The iPad Pro is the first device that let him write entire sentences at a time, which made input _much_ faster and more natural (you used to have to write a character, pause, select from a list of guesses, repeat). Not to mention the low lag between pen movement and on screen display makes the whole process way more pleasant. Being able to write entire sentences also improves the recognition accuracy of the software, which tilts it from being useful- but-crappy to godsend.

<comment><USER9> Learning pinyin is a lot easier than to learn how to write all the characters.

Typing pinyin is also a lot faster.

If you don't know pinyin or mofopo, then yes, suddenly handwriting is the fastes, but then it is pretty much by default.

<comment><USER10> These methods won't work if you don't know how to pronounce the character in the first place.

<comment><USER9> That use case is only for dictionaries/looking up words, where you never need to type anything of any length at a time, thus high speed typing is not needed, which is exactly what is being discussed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A "Super. Computer." with an "OS" which I can not use to write a program to run on that same "OS".

<comment><USER12> Sure you can: [http://omz-software.com/pythonista/](http://omz- software.com/pythonista/)

But I know, you meant full-on apps. If we lived in a world where there were only locked-down, iOS-type computers, I'd agree with your indignation. But I think there's room enough for the iPad and all the other things out there. (Besides, can you imagine creating an app on the iPad? That'd take some incredible UI to not be awful. I do hope it comes along someday though.)

<comment><USER11> You can hook up a keyboard. Presumably a mouse? Just needs something like MacOs-arm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The page is comically broken in Firefox, which is weird since usually Apple's product pages are fine. iPad images don't have transparent backgrounds so they show up with white boxes around them.

[http://i.imgur.com/MKN2yS9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/MKN2yS9.jpg)

<comment><USER14> They're high-quality JPEGs with SVG path-based masking. It's a technique that can work well in Firefox, but it can also be buggy. I have a site that uses this technique on the front page and fails the same way in Firefox--but only on the staging server. I never could figure out why and didn't want to put a lot of time into it since it doesn't affect production.

<comment><USER15> Not criticizing at all since I admit it's irrational but that would drive me nuts until I could figure out why.

<comment><USER14> I keep it like an unopened fifth on the mantle of a recovering alcoholic: a symbol of the triumph of rational resource allocation over obsession. But maybe someday I'll relapse, and you'll find me red-eyed and half-delirious at 3 AM--tweaking CSS, typing `cap staging deploy`, and hitting Cmd+R.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting to watch. Apple always has a sort of "A/B" test going on with overlapping generations of their products.

My take away was that people really liked the keyboard/pen additions, so now they are testing size versions. The camera is interesting too since it always looks uncomfortable when people are trying to take pictures with their tablet. More processor power is a given and it reduces the number of "tricks" that you have to do to get smooth action on the tablet. The lack of LTE support is odd. One thing I would really like to see the Surface line pick up is built in LTE support, they had a great radio team from Nokia that could help there.

The true tone thing is also interesting. I wonder if it will be distracting like the auto intensity balancing some early TVs do.

Naming system remains confusing for consumers. The only reliable metric is 'by release date and size'.

I like my surface book that I bought, but it doesn't replace my iPad because of lack of LTE, the new iPad Pencil is a win (I struggled for years for a decent writing experience on the iPad).

One of those markets where I wish I could bring my vision of what I'd like to market and see how well it was received.

<comment><USER17> There is LTE support in the 9.7", they just didn't talk about it for some reason.

<comment><USER16> Cool, found it after a bit of digging : [http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/#ipad- pro-9-7](http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/#ipad-pro-9-7)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ipad pro vs tablets is basically pen vs pencil.

I'm a developer who can't draw. I've used palm, wacom tablets, samsung pen and a window "tablet" from 2008. I've used it to draw stick figures, notes and maybe a math equation or two.

I've played around with an Ipad pro and watched a ux designer use one.

Assuming you can actually draw, Ipad pro seems to be much better. It has a different feel than a regular stylus, it seems easier to shade and sketch than a regular stylus.

While it seems nice, it seems to be a niche devices.

<comment><USER19> The iPad Pro together with the Pencil has been an absolute game changer for note taking. I tried capacitive styluses on older iPad models before, but I've never had something before that is 100% my normal handwriting (indistinguishable from a scanned page). With the iPad Pro + Pencil for the first time, I can really "think on paper". In fact, it's better than paper, since I can move things around. This is using GoodNotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm disappointed that it still uses the first generation Touch ID. The finger print sensor on the iPhone 6s is wickedly fast. It would have made a nice addition to this 'Pro' branded iPad. I imagine it has more to do with their ability to manufacture them at a larger scale, and less about differentiating their product lines.

</comment><comment><USER21> Finding it hard to get excited about anything tablet-related these days...

I had the iPad 1 on day one, but the whole tablet movement never really lived up to the hope/hype.

<comment><USER22> "has not yet" lived up to the hope/hype "for me", perhaps? I think they're slowly, but surely, broadening the number of people that can use the iPad and iOS for their computing.

<comment><USER21> absolutely... I really did want to get into it, but my usage fits nicely into the following scenarios:

1) laptop at desk with monitor 2) laptop on lap. 3) large phone everywhere else.

I really would like to like it more, but my phone has taken over all its use- cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone have experience with the artistic capabilities of the Pro, e.g the Pencil? Maybe I've been paying less attention to Apple news/chatter over the years (and perhaps excitement over the iPad, overall, is much less than when it first came out)...but I haven't come across many articles/blog posts in the wild about the real impact/benefit of Pencil to digital artists. It sounds very promising but I'm not willing to pay that much for an accessory if it's just a novelty.

<comment><USER24> It's so, so, so, very awesome. I no longer carry a paper notebook for taking notes.

But, you could figure out yourself if you like it in approximately 30 seconds at an apple store; try it out in the notes app and a few other drawing apps. You'll know immediately if it's right for you.

<comment><USER25> That's why I was waiting for the smaller iPad Pro: note taking! I'm glad you say it works well -- I did try the pencil in the apple store and it seemed pretty good.

But do you have an app that takes notes and converts your handwriting to text? I haven't found reviews of apps that seem to do that well. That's the real point of taking them digitally instead of on paper.

<comment><USER19> I found GoodNotes to be absolutely perfect for my needs of a note-taking app. With the Pencil, it has completely replaced paper for me. It also does conversion from handwriting to text, although I can't say I use that feature much. It does seem to work quite well for normal writing, but for lots of greek letters and math it fails (expectedly).

<comment><USER24> Okay, I gave GoodNotes a shot yesterday. Lots to like is my first reaction; thanks for the tip!

It has that tiny bit of latency that all ios pencil apps seem to have; only Apple Notes feels 'perfect' to me right now. And, the paper texture / materials in Notes are better; the Notes pencil tool is just about perfect in my opinion.

On the plus side, I liked having all the different graph papers, the notebook features seem to work well, and marking up a pdf was fine.

I'll see if I reach for it next time I'm taking notes, but right now it's neck and neck with Apple Notes for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The page doesn't even render correctly in Firefox. Big boxes around the images and I assume they should should be transparent.

</comment><comment><USER27> Camera bump is nice upgrade

<comment><USER28> Honestly, I always liked the somewhat mediocre camera. I feel like it kept the number of iPad photographers at weddings to a minimum.

Go look at pictures from a recent wedding on e.g. Facebook, and mentally replace all those phones with iPads. Awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The camera hump is annoying as it means the iPad Pro can't lie flat on a table any more.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm hanging in there for an updated MacBook in June at wwdc...

</comment><comment><USER30> I hope we see new iPhones with 256GB of storage this year as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> So, it's an iPad Air with stylus support for an extra $100? I'm surprised that Apple's response to declining tablet sales was to raise the price.

<comment><USER32> $100 more for pencil support, next-gen processor, huge camera bump, hardware keyboard connector, and that cool true tone thing all sound about right to me.

I just don't get the naming. Does this mean the iPad Air is end-of-the-line? Or will there be an iPad Air 3 someday that is simply an iPad Pro without the connector and Pencil? weird

<comment><USER31> So every time a faster processor comes out, the MSRP should increase? I thought the whole point of technology was faster for cheaper. Apple's iPad Air design was stale and everything you listed was iterative improvements that could be expected from any manufacturer trying to compete. But maybe that's the problem: Apple has no competition in this segment, unless you count $2,000+ Microsoft Surface tablets.

Honestly, Apple's pricing is a joke, but I'm sure plenty of people will swoop in to defend them.

<comment><USER33> _So every time a faster processor comes out, the MSRP should increase?_

First time this happens in a while, as far as I can recall. FWIW I agree with you, Apple is basically forcing you to pay for the iPad Air + memory upgrade (but worse!) if you want this device. It's an obvious margin-increasing move on a product with declining popularity.

Best to wait until it's inevitably discounted everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I really do not understand their pricing anymore. Both the Air2 and Mini4 are the same price. While the Pro starts at 32g versus 16g it carries a two hundred dollar premium for the 9.7 size. To be honest their tablet line up is a mess and their memory price upgrades are the older portions of the line are not good either. How did Apple ever get to this point? It is like they lost focus

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone think XCode (or some version on it) could be available on iPad Pro someday soon? That would make me very interested in this thing.

</comment><comment><USER29> No real mention of Adobe today or on the product pages. I did see Photoshop Elements referenced in the product use-case page.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm looking forward to this, along with the Pencil, to carry with me for sketching/painting. I have no intended use for it, at the moment, other than as a drawing tablet. The smaller for factor is more appealing to me for this purpose.

</comment><comment><USER37> anybody seeing all the floating PNGs failing in the transparent background attempt, supreme fail on firefox 47.0a2

</comment><comment><USER38> Exact same depth and weight with the old Air 2?! Not bad at all...

</comment><comment><USER39> Semi-pro.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you recommend buying a Tesla now? - <AUTHOR> Hello, I live in San Diego and most of my commute is to work with occasional <500mi road-trips once every couple of months. I see electric charge stations in our office (I don't have one at my apartment).
I have been eyeing the Model 3 for a while now and would love to hear the pros and cons of purchasing it.
I currently own a 10 year old Toyota that has served me reasonably well (although I spent ~$2000 overall in the last 2 months).
Please let me know what parameters do I have to consider before purchasing a Tesla. And is Model S really worth it? <comment><USER2> I finally bought because I was sinking large chunks of money into my old Camry every few months for the last few years, and toward the end, each trip to the mechanic, I would ask myself: does a Tesla even have the part or system I am paying money to fix? Usually the answer was no.

The Camry was superbly maintained. Carmax only gave me $300 for it... go figure. I was happy to be done with it. All those repairs were wasted money.

Yes I would say bite the bullet, make the purchase, and stop the bleeding.

All the savings listed on the website (slightly deceptively it seems but maybe it's common in sales) do not even include the money you will be saving on maintenance.

On the other hand, the insurance bill is high depending on the price of your config.

Just test drive it.

Road trips are not a problem and are quite fun actually. It's even sleepable for people up to about 6'.

Biggest pro is the Autopilot cruise control with auto distance keeping. Removes 95% of the stress from your commute especially if there is any stop and go driving. Not sure if you need FSD to get this these days but maybe. Anyway that will pay for itself in prevented car accidents that you would have been involved in otherwise.

If you can possibly swing the dual motor or performance... do it. Get the highest one you can. I could have gone one more step up and regret not doing so.

You might want to try the reddit teslamotors subreddit for more answers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks much for your kind response. I am planning to test drive this week and probably request for a couple of weeks of usage. I want to get a hang of how I would work my schedule around the charging needs of the car. Will try the reddit too. Thanks again :)</comment></comment>


Measure the Speed of Light – With Chocolate [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WXW2bBWBEg&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> This is an interesting experiment, but it only measures the light wavelength. If you thrust (don't measure) the value of the frequency in the back label, you can trust the value of the light speed in a book.</comment>


Results confirm theory as Kepler tracks extrasolar planet - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/results-confirm-theory-as-kepler-tracks-extrasolar-planet.ars <comment><USER2> One of the guys in our department called it "the most exact photon measuring device ever manufactured by humankind"...</comment>


Cryptography  - <AUTHOR> http://online.stanford.edu/course/cryptography-1-spring-2014 <comment><USER2> Again Crypto I with no Crypto II in sight... :-(</comment>


Graphical fidelity is ruining video games - <AUTHOR> https://eev.ee/blog/2016/06/22/graphical-fidelity-is-ruining-video-games/ <comment><USER2> "I just don't understand the game industry (and game culture)'s fanatical obsession with realistic graphics. They make games worse."

I just don't understand talkies. They make movies worse.

I just don't understand TV. It's worse than radio shows.

I just don't understand 60fps filming. It just makes the props look fake.

Every entertainment form has its visionaries, master craftsmen, and then the other 95% made up of crap (not to mention the industry learning curve as people discover what works and what doesn't).

This has nothing to do with graphical fidelity. There were shit games on the Atari 2600, and there are shit games on the PS4.

Good entertainment immerses you in the environment, such that you don't even think to question how things work. If it fails in that, the designers are doing something wrong.

<comment><USER3> While I more or less agree with you, and there's nothing wrong with graphical fidelity in itself, I think the argument is more one of priorities.

If you have 6 months to build a game, do you spend 3 on graphics and 3 on gameplay or do you spend 5 on graphics and 1 on gameplay.

Personally, I have no insight into the game industry, so it's very possible that it's not a zero sum tradeoff, and crappy games would just be crappy games with crappy graphics if they focused on graphics less, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if gameplay was at least somewhat scarified for graphics.

<comment><USER4> The argument is NOT one of priorities. It is that if you go for too much realism, then you have have to start making things real instead of fun.

Example from the article: Run speed in Doom is stupid high which is fun and seems normal, but would look silly and off-putting in a photorealist game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the reasons why Minecraft is so revolutionary is that because it was an indy game, it could peg its graphical fidelity to same crude level as the simulation. The whole world is WYSIWYG in a way that high graphical fidelity FPS games aren't. High res games are showing you all sorts of details that can't be simulated in any detail.

A commercial game would never have been made with such blocky graphics and low resolution textures, because they would be scared to market such a clunky looking game. But the clunky-ness of the graphics enables the fidelity between the look and the simulation. The irony is it is so successful it made low res graphics a style.

</comment><comment><USER6> What the author really misses is the ingenuity he had when he started playing video games. Playing an old videogame now is not nearly as fun as it was when I was a kid so it can't be only a graphics issue. Without ingenuity a videogame will never be fun.

How I wish I could play Dwarf Fortress when I was a kid. Now is too late for me. Ingenuity (and free time) had gone.

<comment><USER7> Yes! I have the theory that everybody likes the kind of games they grew up with. I started playing video games around ~2000 and I can't really enjoy these 2D platformers or simple 3D games like Doom. They just look too … ridiculous and unrealistic to me. Current games on the other hand are just needlessly shiny and … realistic to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting article. A few nitpicks however:

 _I'm sure there were other true-3D games before it, but I challenge you to name one off the top of your head_

Descent was published in 1995, one year before Quake. And it was fully 3D, even moreso than Quake since you could rotate around all three axes.

 _Before Quake, games couldn't even simulate a two-story building, which ruled out most realistic architecture._

The Build engine (used e.g. in Duke Nukem 3D) was capable of faking multi- story buildings with the creative use of teleporters.

<comment><USER9> I believe one of the earliest 3D games is Elite, from 1984. (Example of gameplay: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmCaNwBwXoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmCaNwBwXoQ))

But I too didn't know of it until very recently, when Elite: Dangerous came out. In my social environment, the Quake series was however very well known. I have the impression that Elite was more restricted to the British market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, games with high graphics and realism have cars that you cannot use and other things to give the sense of immersion. If your playing let's say GTA and the buildings where you cannot enter were simply gone it would be very weird. What i think take from the article is that game development moved away from it's roots. Every game is for the eye candy instead of being fun, the only company that comes to my mind at the moment is nintendo. Yeah, things don't look too good for them at the moment, but one of the most popular games of all time has simple graphics and simple gameplay and it's fun. It's called Super Mario Bros.

<comment><USER11> I think it's more that the intent of games has been diverging for a long time, to the point where they are really several different art forms all getting lumped together under the category "games." The most obvious that come to mind:

\- interactive fiction, both movies ( _Heavy Rain_ , _Beyond: Two Souls_ ) and novels ( _To The Moon_ , MUDs)

\- simulators of various kinds (most FPSes are basically war simulators, or at least laser tag simulators, but also stuff like racing and flight sims)

\- pure gameplay (platformers, 4X games)

\- puzzles ( _Tetris_ , _Bejeweled_ , _The Witness_ )

\- others...

Then those get combined in every imaginable way by the developers, yielding a huge spectrum of games so that it's very difficult to put most of them into a single category. At the edges they're still fundamentally different things. They're never going to evolve into a single Platonic ideal that can be called "games" (that was closest to being true back in the Atari days, where everything was fairly similar to Pitfall or Donkey Kong) - just keep diverging into different experiences (especially with VR coming around now), while still maintaining a continuous spectrum of different types that borrow from the best (and worst) parts of the purest genre forms.

The extreme focus on high-end graphics and realism is mostly due to the influence of a few of those genres - simulators and interactive fiction. That's a huge portion of the market, so it seems like all games are just about graphics now, when that really isn't true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Doom was the last video game I played regularly. Obviously, I am not a gamer. Strange, but I have spent more time with If (interactive fiction) these past few years, and any games that have more 'artsy' or abstract visuals. Hell, I even like the demo Breakout clone on the Pythonista app more than realistic games. I was into viewing Machinima at one time, and I think there the realism works better than in games, although there were some really cool Machinima works done in a zany forced-perspective, or cartoon style that were fantastic.

I think the point is that we have focused too much on high frame rates and realism, and drifted away from the creative, storytelling side. I think that's why the animated movies, like The Incredibles, or Despicable Me and Zootopia do well. They use the old animation tricks that don't actually mimic real physics, but our cultured sense of movement. I don't have much interest in the second wave of VR either; I am trying to continue to find awe in the real world around me, and would prefer to be in an immersive world of crazy Bugs Bunny and Jessica Rabbit!

<comment><USER13> >Doom was the last video game I played regularly. Obviously, I am not a gamer.

This comment is great since I don't think you're aware a major studio game called "DOOM" was just released in the last few weeks. ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQpxDFExwhU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQpxDFExwhU) (it was renamed from Doom 4 to just DOOM since this demo was shown)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem is not the fanatical obsession with realistic graphics. It's the lack of fanatical obsession with unrealistic graphics or whatever else you care about. Everyone is free to do whatever you want nobody stopping anyone to do anything. Build your game and let gamers vote with their money.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would still recommend Halo. It has diversity in enemy types in a similar way to DOOM.

Graphical fidelity prevents experimentation by making things too expensive to try. That's why we have indie games! Go play some! It's like Sundance, there is a bunch of crap and a bunch of incredible creativity.

<comment><USER11> Game Maker's Toolkit had a really good video on DOOM and enemy types not long ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuOObGjCA7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuOObGjCA7Q)

The entire channel is golden, especially for those interested in game design or criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems like every time there's a new game I need a new goddamned computer. And then the game is like 90 bucks!? Where's the fun in that? They are games, not god damned niche specialty hobbies. Imagine if films, or music, or books were like that? It's ludicrous. I guess it's a different thing, but damn. Computing has managed to become affordable, while gaming has become a hobby for the middle-classes, like skiing, or yacht racing, or formula one. It's like a vomitorium of the senses, and a lot of it is not particularly inspiring.

<comment><USER17> > It seems like every time there's a new game I need a new goddamned computer.

Shiny new games come out about every other week. A nice computer should play every one of them well for many years.

> And then the game is like 90 bucks!? Where's the fun in that?

90 bucks? Do you live in Australia? (fair enough) Do you feel compelled to buy the collector's/deluxe edition of every game? (don't)

Ever heard of Steam sales? Or indie games? Or Humble Bundles? Like zamalek said, ignore the hype and marketing. Get games after a year or so when the prices have come down. If said game is actually good, people will still be talking about it.

> Imagine if films, or music, or books were like that? It's ludicrous.

A good game is enjoyed for over 10 hours. A great one might be at least 50. Imagine listening or watching any other media for that long of a time. You'd likely be bored or insane. You can get ludicrous value per hour gaming very easily.

> It's like a vomitorium of the senses, and a lot of it is not particularly > inspiring.

Indie games are maybe $20 each, and tend not to be your copy-paste $90 shooty- fest.

<comment><USER18> I have to reinforce something you said:

> A good game _is enjoyed_ for over 10 hours. A great one might be at least > 50.

This is not about the game length/duration. It's its lasting appeal. The game I most consistently replay (and that I consider the best game ever) is the original Portal, a 4 hour game.

<comment><USER17> Yes, indeed. Portal is great. But when I wrote that, I was thinking more about open worlds and multiplayer games where game length is entirely irrelevant, and you can easily play hundreds of hours without realizing it.

<comment><USER18> Open world is a mixed bag. Some of my favourite games are open world and I love exploring game worlds. But the current trend of making every single game open-world usually backfires.

I'd reather have a carefully designed closed spaced with backtracking (Metal Gear Solid, Metroidvanias) that an open world with a dozen of hand-designed places.

The biggest contrast I found was between Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. In the former you are contantly traversing the old places and trying out stuff with your new abilities. On the latter, you just fly in a straight line to your objective. AA is better at gauging your curiosity while in AC, you must actively explore stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is spot on. I recently played through Doom again in OpenGL mode with the Project Brutality mod, and it was better than any FPS I've played in years.

</comment><comment><USER20> So the author is discovering this about the video game industry right now? This has been apparent for anyone to see, if you cared to, for the last 10 years at least.</comment>


HTML5 arena fighting game - <AUTHOR> http://chleba.org/arenafight/ Game prototype for two players of a fighting game writen in javascript, nodejs. Inspired by Dark Souls game. <comment><USER2> It's a bit unclear whether there's other players or not, a lobby where you can start a two-player game is kinda mandatory.

Other than that, pretty cool :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :). It's just a prototype right now and i will do some online players counter or lobby where you can choose different levels. Some levels would have traps and etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm having a lot of fun with this :)</comment>


White hat hackers break into Facebook groups - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/security/cybercrime/news/index.cfm?newsid=17546

<comment><USER2> better title "White hat hackers singn up at unused Facebook groups"

WOW

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure "break in" is the right term for signing up as the group admin.

<comment><USER4> No I think "walk in" is probably more descriptive of what happened here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> By demonstrating they could change the name of the group to 'we support pedofiles' it is less damaging when that actually happens since we now know not to believe the names of groups on facebook.

</comment><comment><USER6> Enough ads on that page? I could hardly find the content. Pathetic.</comment>


When founders get overloaded with tasks - <AUTHOR> http://kaljundi.com/2013/05/22/when-founders-get-overloaded-with-tasks/

<comment><USER2> Tip for all founders with employees from someone who's worked for start-ups for decades: fucking delegate!

And I don't just mean the work, that's the easy part. Delegate parts of the decision-making process you don't have the time for to get into properly. Yes, even if it involves spending money.

If I have to report to, talk you through things on multiple occasions, have to keep reminding you of them, and all the while my team is waiting for a decision, that process does not only cost you a lot of time you should be spending doing other things, it actually often costs the whole company more money than we're actually talking about spending!

If you don't trust the people you've hired, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER3> A good advice I got when delegating, was to accept the result of the task given if it was >80% of how you would have done it yourself and acceptable, without picking at the differences. That way the delegatee would feel ownership and responsibility to the result and gain confidence for future tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recommend David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. I use it with OmniFocus, but there are a number of other tools available.

The process is straightforward (collect, process, organize, do, and review) but what I found most helpful was getting everything out of my head so I could stop worrying about forgetting anything.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how many of those 'prioritize your tasks' pieces have to get written until it finally stops.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best audiobooks you've listened to? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I really enjoyed Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson</comment>


Everyone works remotely at Gitlab, even its CEO - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-office-of-the-future-is-no-office-at-all-says-startup-11557912601 <comment> jl-gitlab For transparency I want to start by saying I'm a GitLab employee, but working for an all-remote company has changed my life. More time with family has been the most important, and I'm an expat so being able to travel and visit family overseas has been amazing.

It's hard to describe, but when the entire company is remote it's such a different experience than being one remote person or part of a remote sub- group. The whole company knows how to operate remotely and be effective in that way. I've never seen anything like it, but now I can't imagine working in any other way. If I started a company in the future, I am 100% confident it would be all-remote from day one.

We have a nice page up on our site with people's experiences with remote work. If you're interested in the topic it might be worth reading: [https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all- remote/stories/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stories/)</comment>


Detailed GDPR Compliance Checklist - <AUTHOR> https://belitsoft.com/gdpr-compliance-checklist <comment><USER2> With GDPR coming into effect, I must say that this checklist will be useful for all of us.</comment>


Ask HN: Best laptop/computer, OS, IDE/text editor for development? - <AUTHOR>

Curious as to what the "new hotness" is for development. What laptop/computer do you have and love/want to have, which OS, and which IDE/text editor? <comment><USER2> I love my Thinkpad X1 Carbon with Arch Linux. I think I have a pretty optimized work environment thanks to the following software: Emacs (Editor, Email, IRC, Org-mode), XMonad (Window manager) and Conkeror (Browser).

You can find all my dotfiles online: [https://github.com/wunki/wunki- dotfiles](https://github.com/wunki/wunki-dotfiles)

<comment><USER3> May I ask, what do you find special with Arch? Since it's the Window manager that you use mostly, you could use any other distro. On the other hand, I remember having many issues with Arch when they changed some settings, and since I switched to Debian, which I find more stable.

<comment><USER4> I am using a Thinkpad x220 with arch and never had any problems whatsoever. Except that I had to set some key functionality myself (volume keys etc.), it almost worked perfectly right out of the box.

Also, i had less problems with arch than other distros, but more importantly, if you had problems it was significantly easier to fix under arch because you knew how everything worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most developers you see around will be using OSX. It just works and many UNIX apps have nice GUI wrappers/installers. You can pickup the older 17inch MacBook Pro off eBay which are fantastic, cheap developer machines. Plus if you are doing any web development then at some point you will need Photoshop/Illustrator.

As for IDE I personally use Sublime or Vim.

<comment><USER6> If you had to pick, sublime vs vim?

<comment><USER7> vim works on any Linux server you need to ssh into. It will probably work for any new upcoming languages unless the programming paradigm changes drastically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thinkpad T430S, running Ubuntu 12.04. I use emacs for the most part and focus on django development.

I had been reading mixed reviews about Thinkpads for a long time, but finally jumped in and bought one. It's easily the best computer I've ever owned, and it makes me want to work. I love the keyboard, the display is exactly what I need, it's easy to carry around.

If you go with a Thinkpad, buy the bare model that you want from Lenovo and then buy upgrades from crucial.com or another supplier; it's much cheaper than building the machine you want on Lenovo. I replaced the dvd with a bay battery, and happily get enough battery life.

<comment><USER9> I have gone back and forth on a bunch of different setups, and the T430S with Linux is a great combination. The keyboard / trackpoint are awesome and they are very fast, durable machines that work out of the box with Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anything cheap from Asus or hp.

Debian. Check online if the model you want run Linux fine.

Vim and then a bunch of scripts to suit your project. Build. Collaboration. Etc.

<comment><USER11> Avoid HP, they suck unless you buy their Premium models which again might have driver problems with Linux

<comment><USER10> all big brands are like that for windows PC. either you pay 3/4 of a mac price, or you get crap.

lenovo, HP, dell...

that's why the 1st option is asus or some other chinese/korean medium brand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 11" Macbook air for hacking while traveling, at cafes, in the sofa etc. HP Mobile Workstation 8570 running Windows 7 (but honestly wish I had Windows 8) for when I need more power and to run all the Windows only applications I need. I run Crunchbang Linux in a VM on both laptops. For text editing I use PyCharm for python, Webstorm for javascript and sublime for everything else.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would like to add a different perspective. I used to work on a Thinkpad, and loved the machine. Last year I changed to a MacBook Air (MBA). I also like this machine. But one of the biggest changes was that people seemed to be much more easily convinced when I showed them results on the MBA. This is a major point to consider IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER14> I use Slackware Linux on my acer aspire 5745G Vim or Sublime Text with useful plugins are the best for me.

</comment><comment><USER15> I picked up a slightly used Thinkpad x220 on craigslist for $500 about 1.5 years ago. Running Arch Linux + Vim.

To be honest, I'm very tempted to switch to a Macbook Air/Pro for iOS development (I prefer to own just one laptop)

</comment><comment><USER16> Those using Linux on your laptop is the sleep, suspend, and hibernate functions working? That's my number one reason I have kept on using Mac OS X. The other being iOS development.

<comment><USER15> Yup (on a Thinkpad x220 + Arch), although I had to configure it. The ACPI daemon provides hooks, so you can run commands on certain events like "laptop lid close" or "power button pressed". I just added a single line to "pm- suspend" for those events. More info here: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acpid](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acpid)

Honestly, I think it's dependent on the laptop hardware and distro though. I imagine Ubuntu has it working out of the box for most hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a Samsung New Series 9. It's like a Macbook Air, but the hardware plays a lot nicer with Linux. Very happy with it.

<comment><USER11> Can you setup Hackintosh with working wifi and gpu on it? If yes, I'm sold

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Macbook Air - Fantastic battery life

Mac or Linux OS is fine (I prefer Mac)

Text editor is personally dependent on you

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe I don't follow the trends exactly, but I use-

Windows 8 EditPlus</comment>


Benchmark: How Java 8 Lambdas and Streams Can Make Your Code 5 Times Slower - <AUTHOR> http://blog.takipi.com/benchmark-how-java-8-lambdas-and-streams-can-make-your-code-5-times-slower <comment><USER2> Higher-level parts of Java were almost always strapped in obnoxious way to the language, so it's not a surprise they perform terribly. What is a surprise is that foreach loop behaves properly.</comment>


U.S. Wireless Industry Is Finally Competitive, FCC Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-wireless-industry-is-finally-competitive-fcc-says-1505145979 <comment><USER2> The part that's both sad and extremely enlightening is the _ONLY_ reason it's competitive is the FCC blocking AT&Ts attempt to acquire T-Mobile. As a result they were forced to give up a ton of spectrum which T-Mobile used to become extremely competitive. Without that action, T-Mobile would still be the red- headed stepchild of the wireless industry.

The "lesson learned" should be that the FCC should force any bidder on an auction to use-it or lose-it on spectrum within 18 months. Additionally they should require companies to provide FACTUAL DATA on their spectrum shortages before even allowing them to participate in an auction. This spectrum hoarding was on the verge of destroying any competition in the US.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't agree more. A guy that's been sitting on a grandfathered 3.5Ghz license approached us to lease it from him or partner with him to use it. He hasn't used it himself in over 7+ years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To be fair, AT&T has been losing subscribers for a while, and Verizon has finally started experiencing some net losses as well, while TMobile gained enough to surpass Sprint as the number three carrier. TMobile has shaken up the market with being transparent with phone pricing and payments, eliminating contracts, pushing new plans and aggressive pricing. Sprint suffered from that (and their own horrible service) and then AT&T and Verizon got nervous and started competing too. It's still an oligopoly but I think it IS legitimately arguable that it's more competitive than it was 6 years ago.

<comment><USER5> My impression was most of the cell towers were owned by either AT&T or Verizon - how can TMobile and others be competitive? I had assumed they were buying to use the networks of the existing 2? I know I'm uninformed, I'm asking for more info on territory.

<comment><USER6> T-Mobile and Sprint are independent networks. Other smaller carriers, known as MVNOs (eg. MetroPCS, Cricket, Google Fi, etc), do rent the networks of the major 4 carriers, but T-Mobile and Sprint do not, which is part of why their coverage is a little worse in less populated areas. I'm not sure if T-Mobile can roam on AT&T towers (since they're both GSM, but are probably using different bands for 3G). I do know that when I'm in Yosemite with T-Mobile I don't get any reception, but I've heard that Verizon and possibly AT&T do.

<comment><USER7> My T-Mobile phone roams to AT&T towers, but with no data connection. Fancier plans may not have this limitation.

Side note for those who don't know the term, MVNO stands for Mobile Virtual Netwok Operator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Um, sure. Shall I translate?

"U.S. Wireless Industry is finally going to be unregulated so they can do whatever they want", FCC says.

<comment><USER9> If they are unregulated you would end up with AT&T or Verizon hoarding spectrum and not cooperating with other carriers. If you had experienced pricing and service outside of US, you can clearly understand how ridiculous it looks from the outside.

<comment><USER10> I just bought 2gb/day of 4g data for 2 months for $10 in India. I get 2gb/month in the US.

<comment><USER11> I pay something like $65 a month for unlimited data with AT&T. India isn't a fair comparison, my colleague recently went to visit a team there and was able to get a free SIM card. Like literally a free SIM card with a decent amount of data from an up and coming provider.

How much is $10 a month for someone on an Indian salary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's still no _technical_ reason why costs are so high, speeds are so slow, and caps exist at all. Some blame can be put on the FCC, tower owners, cities regulating towers, but the carriers themselves have very little incentive to make any radical cost reductions or service upgrades.

<comment><USER13> There's a very technical reason why caps exist: using more data requires more spectrum, and there's a limited amount of spectrum, so it doesn't make any sense to charge every user the same amount regardless of how much data they use. There's no carrier in the world that can sell you truly unlimited access without applying traffic shaping at some point.

<comment><USER12> Wrong. I mean, you're right, but you're ignoring various other aspects that affect the connection of a single device to a single base station... directional antennas, channel use, channel spread spectrum, tower height, noise floor, obstructions, etc... The point is, they want you to believe that it is spectrum, but really it is tower owners and tower licensing. And even that I don't think justifies caps. How does limiting speed affect the spectrum when your phone has already negotiated with the towers the amount of channels in use? There is a lot of FUD spread around on this topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And the last time it was "competitive"? 2009, with commissioners appointed by the last Republican president.

<comment><USER15> The wireless industry is significantly more competitive than it would have been and this can exactly be traced to TMobile being independent and providing more unique plans which can be directly traced to the 2014/2015? Decision to prevent the AT&T acquisition of Tmobile.

The course of events here are very straightforward and clear in a way that's extremely rare where corporate actions are concerned. There's very little doubt that the FCC's actions preventing AT&T from acquiring TMobile has led to a significantly better wireless environment for US customers and Republican appointees, especially Ajit Pai, were on the wrong side of that decision.

<comment><USER16> Right, but the natural fear is that the FCC's next move is going to be _" Hey because wireless is finally competitive and things are great, we should let AT&T acquire T-Mobile!"_

It's even right there in the article, _Some say the finding could spur merger activity_

<comment><USER17> >It's even right there in the article, Some say the finding could spur merger activity

"The U.S. wireless industry is finally competitive. Time to fix that!"

I want to get off Mr. Capitalism's Wild Wealth Concentration Ride...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those who can't read the link in the OP: [http://archive.is/FBbny](http://archive.is/FBbny)</comment>


Add ruby code to comments on my new blog - <AUTHOR> http://codeachrome.com/blog/post/2-add-ruby-code-to-blog-comments

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought someone here might find this interesting (if not, sorry!)

Disclosure: it is my blog, not trying to be spammy.</comment>


While startup CEOs are scrubbing toilets, CTOs are building things - <AUTHOR> http://startupnorth.ca/2012/01/16/while-startup-ceos-are-scrubbing-toilets-ctos-are-building-things

<comment><USER2> You want dirty toilets? That's not very inviting or pleasant..</comment>


The Way We Read - Mossberg interviews Bezos - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121261272441346269.html?mod=2_1571_leftbox <comment><USER2> Good interview, I'd love to see their reader drop in price. Still too expensive as an impulse purchase for the masses.</comment>


Making games for a living means being in constant fear of losing your job - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/5/18233699/game-developer-layoffs-unions-katie-chironis <comment><USER2> Sadly, this is true of any tech-related job.

The entire system, from slavish devotion of following trends to bad interviews is designed for churn and cost cutting.</comment>


Traffic Laundering: How Google Finances Piracy with Its Clients' Money - <AUTHOR> https://kalkis-research.com/traffic-laundering-how-google-finances-piracy-with-its-clients-money <comment><USER2> (Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google, not in ads.)

I am very carefully not going to comment on this beyond linking to public documentation on the issue. This article appears to claim that sites which aggregate links for the purpose of displaying ads are not banned by Google's policies. Here is a link to the policy on such sites:

[https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6020954?hl=e...](https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6020954?hl=en- GB)

The "Low Value Content" heading is the most pertinent one.

<comment><USER3> In reality you still have many sites, that infringe on copyright and display ads by Google. And some of them have done so for a long time. Having a policy is one thing, implementing it another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is watchseries illegal? All they do is post links. Not Google's problem. The whole argument is so far fetched I don't even get it. If that's the worst thing you found about AdSense, you're grasping on straws. Stop pushing your agenda with this click bait.

</comment><comment><USER5> _> thewatchseries.to, a website that aggregates links for illegal streaming of TV shows_

Why, thank you! I didn't know about that site before.

<comment><USER6> Streaming TV shows is not necessarily illegal in some western countries.

The industry jumps up and down and talks about it being illegal - and they want it to be, but they didn't actually succeed in getting the laws changed so that it actually _IS_ illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kalkis research are not very subtle

</comment><comment><USER8> That's also called traffic arbitrage, or CPC arbitrage. Easy money.</comment>


Facebook has 1 billion users, it's time to leave - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/internet/137393-facebook-has-1-billion-users-its-time-to-leave <comment><USER2> _Along the same lines was Diaspora, which ended up being a spectacular failure, but not before garnering a huge amount of attention._

This is not true. Diaspora is not a failure.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome Extension That Adds Unsubscribe Button to Gmail - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oglgllhcahknnmalfelkdahmhffbmohc/publish-accepted <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I made this extension a while ago and never got around to publishing it, but I use it all the time so I thought I'd share.

Please let me know what you think. Cheers!</comment>


Don't Shoot In Auto - Advice For DSLR Newbies - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2346715,00.asp <comment><USER2> Pretty good article, covers all the basics. Some key points I cannot stress enough, from the article and me.

* Built in Flash = Badness. Never use this. But if you really must, put a white piece of paper in front to diffuse the flash.

* 50mm f/1.8 or better. It's a must!

* DoF Preview. Use this feature!

* Get optical filters for all your lenses (keep the lens front element from scratching, UV doesn't really make a difference in Digital), specially when travelling and outside. Remove this for night shots (internal reflections more visible due to many point lights).

* Circular Polarizers, they do wonders for sky, water, or various reflections from subject/items.

* Use center AF only and get used to aiming at subject, AF hold, and shoot. Kind of painful, but less painful than having the camera guess the wrong AF point for a great moment.

* Auto (Bad), Tv (Sports, Action, Fast things), Av (still, portraits), Program (Keep on this by default).

* Join a photography forum or community and post photos to be critiqued and people to give you feedback.

<comment><USER3> I'm not too sure how useful the DoF preview feature is, in what common circumstance do you recommend I use it?

Also, you shouldn't restrict yourself to the centre AF point; focus-and- recompose will produce blurry images if your depth-of-field is shallow. You should learn to quickly select an appropriate AF point when composing your shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good rules of thumb: \- Av or Aperture priority for landscape/portrait photos \- Tv or shutter speed priority for action/sport shots \- Unless you print on a billboard scale or are pro, you don't need high level SLRs with whatever grand amount of mega pixles. \- Don't sacrifice too much shutter speed. Better to pump up the ISO and use noise removal software.

<comment><USER5> I am very interested in photography. Can you please suggest a good D-SLR and a good book for a newbie? Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Canon Rebel XSi.. got a nice balance. The next version was announced, so expect to see price drops pretty soon (or get the XTi, which is the latest)

<comment><USER6> Also consider a nice lens. Should be at least half of your budget, but makes the photos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article is more than "don't shoot in auto", but I have to wonder who buys an SLR without knowing how to use it. If you know nothing about photography, you should probably save your money and get a point-and-shoot instead.

(With that in mind, I spend most of my time in Auto or Program AE. Those both do a great job 99% of the time.)

<comment><USER8> _I have to wonder who buys an SLR without knowing how to use it_

Really? It's almost everyone who buys an entry level SLR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> the thing is, with a good quality SLR, auto is amazing for quality shots, especially if you take photos in a "bursty" way (ie 4-8 shots at once) because it'll sample a number of candidate good fstop vs shutter speed configuration points, and thence if you've configured it properly and chose a sane ISO, you can also construct a High dynamic range photo and hence with a little work, get the naked eye experience in the photo! (and you can always delete the one's that don't work well for you)

playing with fstop and shutter speed by hand is all well and good and fun, but unless you're taking art shots or action shots, auto on a good quality modern camera will definitely be very very nice on average.

<comment><USER9> why is this being downmodded? Am I incorrect in some fundamental way? then enlighten me!

<comment><USER3> If you are using a DSLR in burst mode it probably won't choose a variety of apertures and shutter speeds. It will determine what it believes to be a correct exposure for the scene and set an aperture and shutter speed it considers appropriate, if the shutter speed and aperture change they will probably only vary relative to each other; the exposure will be the same. You can do something similar to what you've described by putting the camera into auto exposure bracketing mode where the camera varies shutter speed to give a predetermined degree of over or under exposure per shot in sets of three (or more) shots. In the somewhat unlikely event that your camera was unable to sufficiently capture the dynamic range of a scene you can merge multiple photographs of the same scene with differing exposure values to produce an image with greater dynamic range that can then be compressed through tone mapping.

If you don't think "playing with fstop and shutter speed by hand" is only worthwhile for "art shots or action shots" then why bother framing a shot the way you want it? Decisions about aperture and shutter speed affect more than just exposure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best $20 I ever spent on photography was the book Understanding Exposure. Fantastic book and will improve your photos dramatically

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this Hacker News?</comment>


One group dominates the second round of net neutrality comments - <AUTHOR> http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/16/one-group-dominates-the-second-round-of-net-neutrality-comments/?

<comment><USER2> Meanwhile, here's how American Commitment spins the Sunlight Foundation report: 'CONSERVATIVES OPPOSED TO INTERNET REGULATION WON FCC COMMENT PERIOD BY LANDSLIDE.'

 _"We're pleased that the Sunlight Foundation is finally confirming that American Commitment and Americans opposed to regulation of the Internet won the FCC comment period. Better late than never," said Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment._

[http://www.americancommitment.org/content/conservatives- oppo...](http://www.americancommitment.org/content/conservatives-opposed- internet-regulation-won-fcc-comment-period-landslide)

Note how they say they 'won' the comment period, as if each letter or email counted as a vote and the FCC is obliged to treat the input quantitatively rather than qualitatively. This sort of lobbying is a win-win for the advocacy organizations that engage in it (across the political spectrum): either the government does what they want and they declare victory, or the government does not in which case they fulminate about 'the will of the people' being thwarted and do another round of fundraising/PR on the back of that. You can make quite a nice living running a 'nonprofit' like this - $175k/year is a decent salary for booking adverts using donors' money.

[http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/452/4526005...](http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/452/452600535/452600535_201212_990O.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It's hard to reconcile the widespread success of this blatantly and openly manipulative horseshit, with the claim that America is a self-governing nation by the people.

<comment><USER4> It's interesting reading some of the form letters in opposition. Here's an excerpt.

 _Regulating the Internet would be a job killer. All those who are employed as tech support, companies that make and deploy servers, routers, coax and fiber- optic cable will suffer job losses if the FCC chases billions of dollars of investments away by regulating Internet services as if they were a public utility. Every time Washington bureaucrats have grabbed massive new powers for themselves, they have created economic and human wreckage in their wake. Obamacare regulations on the healthcare system have cost millions of Americans their health insurance, and raised the cost of insurance and deductibles to millions more._

That's just an outright lie. Here's a rhetorical question. If a DDoS is classified as an attack because the client consuming server resources doesn't actually care about the resource, then what is flooding a comment board with identically wrong and manipulative letters?

<comment><USER5> None of that is a lie, it's just looking at particular pieces of the overall issue. Obamacare has cost a lot of people their (existing, non-ACA compliant) plans, and it has raised the cost of insurance for other people. That's inevitable with the ACA: covering people with pre-existing conditions, etc, means some people will pay more (particularly younger people). I think the ACA is a good thing, by the way, but I'm not deluded enough to believe that you can cover more of the sickest people without paying more money.

The point about telecom jobs isn't a lie either. What was the impact of local- loop unbundling, which made investment into DSL unattractive, on DSL installers? The mechanics of the telecom industry aren't any different than that of Silicon Valley: people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential for a big payout at the end. Companies like Verizon are already under the gun from investors for the billions they spent deploying fiber. Making it less attractive to be in the business of building infrastructure isn't going to increase the amount of investment and jobs in the sector.

Now, you could argue that Title II might nonetheless be beneficial _on the net_ , but it's not a lie to point out the things that could be hurt by the Title II regulations.

<comment><USER6> I think you hit the nail slightly off center with, "...people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential for a big payout at the end." Verizon and all other ISPs will make money and lots of it, period. Whether or not they make insane profits or more insane profits is what investors are looking at. Also, in regards to building infrastructure they already play games when reporting how much they've spent upgrading and maintaining infrastructure. Why would they do that? Because they know that the total amount is so ridiculously small when compared with their profits that they'll be laughed at if they try to make it a reason against regulation.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what numbers you're looking at. The ISP business isn't that profitable. The biggest pure cable companies are TWC, Cox, and Charter. Cox is privately-held, so we don't have information about their finances, but Charter is losing money. TWC has almost 3x the revenue of Facebook, but only marginally higher net income.[1] Moreover, the pure ISP business is even less profitable. Both TWC and Charter would be $1-2 billion per year in the red if you eliminated their video programming revenues and associated costs. Verizon's FiOS is apparently profitable on an operating basis, but there is question whether the company will be able to recoup its capital costs: [http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2014/05/would-verizon- recover-...](http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2014/05/would-verizon-recover-its- cost-of.html)

[1] It's very profitable when your users generate your content for free, and you can shift tax liability overseas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this article overlooks one teensy weensy tiny little event that may have an effect on conservatives writing in to oppose Net Neutrality:

[President Obama Urges FCC to Implement Stronger Net Neutrality Rules|[http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/11/10/president-obama- ur...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/11/10/president-obama-urges-fcc- implement-stronger-net-neutrality-rules)]

The fact of the matter is most people don't understand a lot of the nuances behind the issue. They don't understand the telcos actually leverage various forms of local, state and federal regulation to reduce competition and they cry to the public about excessive government regulation when anybody threatens their duopoly benefits.

</comment><comment><USER8> For context, see Fight for the Future's blog post on why "numerous problems with [the Sunlight Foundation's] data and their methodology make it impossible to support their conclusions": [http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/105475259503/why- is...](http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/105475259503/why-is-sunlight- foundation-playing-into-american)

<comment><USER9> for context for that "context": Clearing up the confusion about our analysis of net neutrality comments to the FCC [http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/17/clearing-up- th...](http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/17/clearing-up-the- confusion-about-our-analysis-of-net-neutrality-comments-to-the-fcc/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't see how this is different to all the pro net neutrality activism and lobbying going on, except that it's an opposition opinion.

It also seems to play on the narrative that people who are against expanding regulation are not rational individuals, they are instead reduced to mere tools controlled by a pair of Koch villains intent on destruction of earth and society to make themselves richer.

<comment><USER11> The Republican Party and to a greater extent, the Tea Party, have mobilized a mostly-white, mostly-male, mostly-middle-to-lower-class pool of voters who _are_ in many cases irrational - voting against their better interests in the name of conviction, mostly based on race and religion. It's why there is constant saber-rattling about "wedge issues" like abortion and "takers" despite a significant portion of Tea Party voters being around or below the poverty line, or reliant on some degree of public assistance.

This army of people does often mobilize as a single unit, dictated to through the likes of Fox News. Talk about how black people want free "X" and you can get lots of people to fill out a form letter without trying.

We're a Republic for the very reason that it was known that en-masse, often times people are irrational and do go against their own benefit for ideology.

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/29/working- class-v...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/29/working-class-voters- america-republican)

<comment><USER12> _mostly-white, mostly-male, mostly-middle-to-lower-class_

This is a laughable statement. Let me address each point directly.

During the last election, 33% of Hispanics voted for the Republican party[1]. 44% of women voted Republican[2]. And "mostly lower to middle class"? I though the Republican's were the party of the rich? Who do the rich vote for then?

I strongly suggest you take a more open-minded approach to politics.

[1][http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/11/07/hispanic-voters-in- the...](http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/11/07/hispanic-voters-in- the-2014-election/) [2][http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/10/22/poll- wo...](http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/10/22/poll-women-plan- to-vote-for-republicans-in-midterms-n1908484)

<comment><USER11> I invite you to read the article I posted before commenting next time.

I also invite you to understand that 33% in politics is a huge minority. 67% of Hispanics voting Democrat, in an election, make the Democrats the clear winner of that particular demographic.

Finally, the "rich" are the top 10%, or 1%, or even 0.1% based on what particular income inequality chart you're looking at, leaving the entire bottom >=90% available for the demographics I mentioned.

<comment><USER12> 33% Hispanic and 44% women (I noticed you didn't address that), don't constitute "mostly white and mostly male".

<comment><USER11> I said the Republican and Tea Parties are predominantly white male. When you show me that minority amounts of women and minorities voted Republican, it only reinforces my point that the Republican and Tea Party bases are predominantly white and male.

<comment><USER12> You and I have different interpretations of minority. Apparently 44% women is regarded as a "small share"?!?

<comment><USER11> Statistically speaking, that's a 12 point spread - 44% and 56%. Indeed, that's huge in politics. Most modern Presidential elections are won with 52-53% of the popular vote at best. [0]

Hispanics, as you noted, are over a 30 point spread.

So politically speaking, having only 44% of the female vote and still winning requires a very large (political) majority of voters voting Republican to be male. Add to that age, and again we're seeing clearly that old white men are the key demographic. [1]

It's not that you and I see percentages differently. It's the political significance of the margins that define the argument.

[0] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_preside...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin)

[1] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/05/as-gop- celeb...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/05/as-gop-celebrates- win-no-sign-of-narrowing-gender-age-gaps/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the age of zero cost "letter writing" why would anyone consider the count of letters received as a valid indicator of sentiment? There are other legitimate means to determine public opinion if that is what the FCC really wants to know. My fear is that they don't really care what the public thinks.

</comment><comment><USER14> Framing the idea that ensuring private companies adhere to the status quo is somehow "bad" regulation which will destroy the fabric of the internet is really hilarious. While the decision hasn't been made yet, I would be absolutely amazed if pro-isp tiered rules are not implemented.

</comment><comment><USER15> In what I'm sure is just a coincidence, the group bragging about 'winning' the comment period (who are a notorious Koch front group: [http://i.imgur.com/YE4kpt1.png](http://i.imgur.com/YE4kpt1.png)) just happened to have written a legal opinion to the FTC in support of the Comcast / TWC merger as well:

[Warning, .RTF file download since Imgur is down, page 196:] [http://www.shareholder.com/visitors/activeedgardoc.cfm?f=rtf...](http://www.shareholder.com/visitors/activeedgardoc.cfm?f=rtf&companyid=CMCSA&id=10192356)

Excited to see which new donors show up in their 2014 financial filings.

</comment><comment><USER16> A follow up post: [http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/17/clearing-up- th...](http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/17/clearing-up-the- confusion-about-our-analysis-of-net-neutrality-comments-to-the-fcc/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Glad to see a shoutout to Radim Rehurek and gensim. The library is really a joy to work with.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope the FCC sees this or has tools to detect these manipulations.

<comment><USER19> I would not be surprised if the FCC dealt with comments in _paper_ form.</comment></comment>


Nvidia's Ultimate Play - <AUTHOR> https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/nvidia-s-ultimate-play <comment><USER2> This needs to be up-voted more, I knew it looked too good to be true.</comment>


On the Creative Merits of Paper - <AUTHOR> https://blog.malignat.us/2018-05-12/on-the-creative-merits-of-paper <comment><USER2> Agreed about how useful paper can be.

I've settled on a hybrid approach: I take my notes long-hand, but each morning the first thing I do is type them all up into an Org mode file. This gives me the best of all worlds: the tactile benefits of paper & the long-term search & archival benefits of electronic records.</comment>


Steve Jobs: The Film (Official Movie Website) - <AUTHOR> http://jobsthefilm.com/

<comment><USER2> Funny that the background music is the same as the recent Microsoft Outlook TV commercial.

It doesn't seem as exciting as The Social Network movie.</comment>


Show HN: wordheart – The search and visualization engine For Books - <AUTHOR> http://www.wordheart.org/ <comment><USER2> I typed in "It was a dark and stormy night" and didn't get any reference to Paul Clifford or Washington Irving.

I dig the project. I think it's cool. Would love to see it grow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Right now for my sake the search selection is very small, I only chose books from gutenberg.org that have covers, Paul Clifford doesn't [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7735](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7735)</comment></comment>