BBM for Android and iPhone is here - <AUTHOR> http://global.blackberry.com/bbm.html <comment><USER2> A few years ago this would have been a killer app. Now I don't know a single person that owns a Blackberry (outside of a few that have them as work phones - and so, I won't BBM them)

<comment><USER3> Don't ask me why, but young women for some reason have them. I can't get a straight answer out of them either.

<comment><USER4> BBs are cheap and easy to text on.

<comment><USER5> Further to your point about cheap, traditionally BBMs wouldn't incur text message fees. These days though it seems like carriers offer plans with a sufficient number of text messages for most people... which isn't a surprise given the huge markup that they've always had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Downloaded, installed, and opened App hoping to see a modern Blackberry. And here's what I got:

        Due to the incredible demand there is a line-up to start using BBM.

Incredible demand? You just launched it and there's not even a review on App Store yet. Not sure if this is part of their marketing or something, but now I feel bothered and not expecting at all. Btw, the UI of the "line-up" screen really needs some refinement IMHO.

<comment><USER7> It seems like they're trying to stoke artificial demand (similar to the Mailbox.app roll out). Except I doubt there is a real technical problem backing said slow rollout.

<comment><USER8> BBM alledgedly had load issues because of a leaked android version maybe a month ago....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm gonna download this and try to use it on my iOS device. Not because I care about BlackBerry, but because I highly support the fact it's available on iOS, Android, and BlackBerry.

I really really want iMessage to be available on other platforms too, so I can use it to contact people without iOS.

So I'm doing this to send a message and show my support.

<comment><USER2> Or just download WhatsApp. You can even get that on Symbian phones.

iMessage depresses me. It's great. It integrates with the OS on a level that Apple is never going to allow anyone else to do. And they're not going to let anyone else use the iMessage network, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't get why Blackberry would do this. Quite a large number of my students have Blackberry devices (its fairly popular with under 16s still), and when I ask them why, they inevitable lament the awful phone but say they need it as their friends use BBM. Now they have exactly zero reasons to purchase new Blackberrys.

<comment><USER11> At some point, those folks aren't going to tolerate shitty hardware for BBM, especially as their friends give up on it. Relying on BBM as the sole selling point for hardware is doomed to failure.

<comment><USER12> I agree. And yet, and yet... at the moment, it's pretty much all they've got, and they're giving it away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Android app is atrocious. I guess I didn't expect much more out of Blackberry.

<comment><USER14> Why is it atrocious? Other reviewers are ranking it close to 4.5/5\. (source:[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bbm&hl=en](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bbm&hl=en))

<comment><USER15> I sampled a few of the reviews and the regularity of text patterns is just plainly obvious. I don't believe these are real reviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> At this point I don't know why they even bother releasing new products that are doomed to fail. Releasing products that are DOA will only cause their stock price/company value to plummet even further and ultimately make the company less attractive to potential buyers while eroding the potential sale price of the company at the shareholders's expense.

</comment><comment><USER17> Their application is poor. They're trying to build up hype using the same technique as Mailbox. Only, their app is poorly designed — the smiley for instance doesn't seem to be retina — and they've missed out a crucial element which built up further hype with Mailbox, the counter.

</comment><comment><USER18> I will happily replace any third party messenger I currently use with one that sends notifications to all my devices (like iMessage does). I haven't tried this with BBM yet but does anyone know of a third party service that would send messages to all my devices with the app installed?

<comment><USER19> Google Hangouts

<comment><USER20> +1, Google Hangout does a great job on this + archiving the conversations in your mail inbox.

Another one is Facebook, where you do not have to request a messaging connection to the other party.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow this app just feels so.... crappy. The UI just feels very amateurish. The whole smiley face logo thing or whatever it is makes me feel like I'm using AIM circa 1999.

</comment><comment><USER22> It is not there yet. When you install it it says "There is a line for this app, you will have to wait". (or something like that).

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm so sorry for the engineers who worked on this. Working on a Dead-Before- Arrival project must be depressing.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's interesting that they have a waiting list. I guess it could just be for marketing purposes, but you'd think that BB probably has the most experience of any company building scalable messaging infrastructure. I can't imagine their system would buckle under the load of a couple million users.

<comment><USER25> They tried to release it a few weeks ago and it didn't work under the stress. So I'm guessing this is to let it build up a little slower.

<comment><USER24> I'm sure you're right. I just don't understand how this is a problem that Blackberry could have. They've been doing high volume messaging for longer than anyone. This is a terrible analogy, but it would be like McDonalds having a waiting list for Big Macs at some random new low volume location because they don't know how to make them fast enough. I say low volume because the additional BBM users they're getting from Android and iOS (I would imagine low to mid single digit millions in the short term) can't possibly compare to the number of existing users they have on Blackberry devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As much as I love(d) Blackberries, the messaging experience and the BBM—this page looks like pure irony.

5 years ago, yes, this would be massive and had the potential to get bigger than any other messenger. But now, where tons of messengers are avail with Whatsapp leading the way, no chance.

This is so sad.

</comment><comment><USER26> The iPhone login process is so broken it's sad. We can read about BlackBerry's grand strategic errors, but maybe it's simpler: they just forgot how to execute.

</comment><comment><USER27> "This item cannot be installed in your device's country."

?

I wouldn't mind having something akin to Blackberry Hub on my Android, yet I'm not sure I need another messenger.

</comment><comment><USER28> Google Play shows this as incompatible with both of my tablets (Nexus 7 and 10), so apparently this is only installable on phone models.

</comment><comment><USER29> Was expecting it to be available on my Palm Pre...

</comment><comment><USER30> As a never-time Blackberry user, I cannot think of one single reason I would want to install this on my iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER31> Hurray! Now I can send a message via BBM to my one friend (soon to be buying an iPhone) with a Blackberry!

</comment><comment><USER32> Searching for BBM on the iOS App Store shows BBM only after flipping through 7-8 apps

</comment><comment><USER33> they are soo late! Sorry BB!

</comment><comment><USER34> Blackberry? What's that?

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder what the BlackBerry Babes will have to say about this. Is an Android running BBM as desirable as a BlackBerry? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lDJGHCX2wA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lDJGHCX2wA)

<comment><USER26> I'm curious why an on-topic link to a popular TV show (yes, popular culture exists outside the US) is being so downvoted.</comment></comment>


Nokia uses Apple's iMovie to produce their Microsoft Partnership video - <AUTHOR> http://www.technobolt.com/2011/02/12/nokia-use-apples-imovie-to-produce-their-microsoft-partnership-video-including-copying-copyright-music/

<comment><USER2> From the article (quoting the license agreement):

"however, individual audio loops may not be commercially or otherwise distributed on a standalone basis, nor may they be repackaged in whole or in part as audio samples, sound effects or music beds."

As I interpret this, it just means that they can't export the audio and try to sell the tracks/samples/effects as tracks/samples/effects. Commercial use is completely appropriate (I think). I am not a lawyer :)

</comment><comment><USER2> This article makes some big logic jumps...

The fact that they used Apple loops doesn't actually mean they used iMovie. The loops Apple includes with iLife are usable in Garageband and iMovie, yes. However, they also show up as loops in Soundtrack Pro, Apple's pro application. It seems much more likely (being someone in the media field) that they used Final Cut Studio and processed the audio with Soundtrack.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a thought: maybe the sound loop they are referring to is a stock piece from elsewhere, that both Apple and Nokia have separately bought license to use?

Like you hear bits by E. S. Posthumus (<http://www.esposthumus.com/>) all over the place. One of their tracks was use (with permission IIRC) in plasmapong (killed by the kind folk at the game company previously know as relevant) and I've heard part of the same track (and others that I think are their output) looped behind film previews and adverts. It was odd when I heared it behind an advert once - the game immediately spring to mind when-ever that advert was on and I could never remember what the product was afterwards either...

</comment><comment><USER4> lol... I won't be shock if Apple Sue Nokia for this :D</comment>


Ask: Name & URL of showHN that turned Animted Gifs into HTML Video - <AUTHOR>

A few days ago someone posted a Show HN where they shrunk animated gifs down to a movie file or something that it was much smaller than the .gif file. Does anyone have a link to that? I searched for hours and could not find it. <comment><USER2> Was it this?

[https://www.userfox.com/blog/How-to-record-animated-gif- scre...](https://www.userfox.com/blog/How-to-record-animated-gif-screencasts/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, it was MediaCrush: [https://mediacru.sh/](https://mediacru.sh/)

Someone found it and emailed me.</comment></comment>


Hand Shaking Is So Medieval. Let's End It. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/09/hand-shaking-is-so-medieval-lets-end-it/ <comment><USER2> The authors admitted behavior reads like classic OCD. He shakes someones hand and he can't think of anything else but washing his hand, and he'll excuse himself from meetings often enough that it's drawing colleagues attention. He's quite possibly only a few steps away from ruining his own life with obsession. What happens when this obsession starts interfering to the point it compromises his output and quality? Well that's usually when people start getting fired.

The argument against shaking hands is absurdly stupid. The relatively few bacterial and even fewer viral infections that spread solely through contact, usually aren't going to put you out of work as to spread they cannot stop their host from interacting with other people. Then there's the whole argument about fungal infections being spread through contact, which I personally find hilarious as if you've ever touched the dirt growing up or pet a dog that's dug in the dirt then you're already carrying a huge swathe of fungals on your body. What happens, like in most common infections, is that something (usually the person being _too_ clean can trigger it) causes an imbalance and suddenly you get a breakout.

The infections that affect us today, aren't spread how they were in the 2nd BC. Most major infections are airborne and can easily be caught whilst in a confined space (IE elevator). This is why winter is the major flu season, not because of temperatures and people getting 'cold' (incidentally, a colder body temperature would actually inhibit viral and bacterial growth) but because no one goes outside.

<comment><USER3> Arrington's argument is not "absurdly stupid", and even if he sounds a bit obsessive on this issue, he has the advantage of being right. Meanwhile, you're Not Even Wrong -- there are many types of bacteria and viruses that are spread by skin contact.

Any virologist or microbiologist will tell you that skin contact is a _great_ way to spread viruses and bacteria. In fact, it's pretty widely assumed that aerosol transmission is mediated via skin contact as well: when you sneeze or cough, the droplets fall to surfaces quickly. Someone else then touches those surfaces, touches their mouth, nose or eyes, and voila -- cold transmission. The same thing happens _much more directly_ via handshakes.

There's a _reason_ that public health people insist that you need to wash your hands after going to the bathroom. Do you sincerely believe that they'd be so worried about it, if there were "relatively few" infections that could be spread by skin contact?

Finally, it really bugs me that your comment is +11, when you spend most of your time insulting Arrington for making a (relatively well-informed) argument, and only a very small amount of time making your own (unproven and incorrect) assertions. If you're going to insult someone for making an argument, at least come to the table armed with something more than the opposite opinion.

<comment><USER2> Actually, there's all of about 4 diseases you can catch solely from contact (IE handshakes). #1 is Athletes foot (occasionally some other fungal infections can spread similarly too) where an infected person can spread it to a susceptible person, however this is easily solved by not sharing towels and actually cleaning your bath/shower.

#2 is HPV, aka warts, which usually most people would avoid shaking hands with someone covered in warts. The other way is similar to #1, so again good bathroom hygiene wins out.

#3 is impetigo, commonly found in 2-6 year olds whom I sincerely doubt are in business meetings. The only other common way is close-contact sports (rugby/wrestling).

#4 is syphilis, which in very rare cases can spread by direct touch with the chancer (ulceration of the skin).

Besides those four, no infection worth worrying about is contagious.

The next major worry for handshakes would be fecal-oral transmission. However, the reason public health officials espouse good bathroom hygiene isn't for hand shakes, it's for the fact that if this bacteria it has a chance to develop a large enough culture size to beat our immune system. The amount of bacteria actually carried on someones hand is so few and so exposed it cannot survive our stomach acid.

I've taken several courses on all this and I'm certified for food safety, first aid (for all ages) and a few other courses I needed to work with people with compromised or weak immune systems (infants, elderly and immuno- compromised).

Arrington has no fucking clue what he's talking about, he's an office worker spouting BS about personal hygiene. Unless you work in a hospital, you likely wouldn't make a single person sick if you only washed your hands when you showered. It's actually been shown repeatedly, that increased exposure to infectious bacteria increases your resilience(this is the whole purpose of the immune system) and can prevent you from getting worse infections. This is why health officials have been stock piling regular flu vaccinations in case of a H5N1 outbreak, because immunization against one type of flu strain can help against other flu strains.

I know _a lot_ about all this stuff. So please, don't call Arrington well- informed, because he's clueless. He's a programmer, he runs the best tech-news site on the web and should keep his opinions there where he is exceptionally clued in. This article lost Arrington a lot of respect from me because of how sheerly ignorant he is and how clearly he has a serious condition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate the "it's old, ergo it's bad" line of arguments. His hygiene argument, which seems to be quite secondary, is also bad. Being in the same room as someone who sneezes will also get you his germs.

The solution is not to end the medieval, heathen practise of interacting with other people in real life, but to stay at home when you're sick - parallel to keeping your hands clean, doubly so if you expect to be shaking hands.

<comment><USER5> I think he makes quite clear that the main argument is that it is not hygienic. In fact his argument that it is an old practice plays into to his hygiene argument. I think what he is saying is that the practice was developed before the germ theory of disease; before people truly knew how disease was spread. With our "updated" knowledge, we should have an "updated" system of greeting. So, though I would usually agree with your point about hating "it's old, ergo it's bad" types of arguments, I don't really think it applies here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Whenever I do shake a hand I'm completely aware of it, can't stop thinking about it, until I can wash my hands."

This seems to be more an article about Arrington than about social customs.

<comment><USER7> Yup, agreed - he obviously has a particular neurosis, and seems to hope/expect that the population of the world will change their habits accordingly...

<comment><USER8> _the population of the world will change their habits accordingly_

I went to dinner tonight with 9 people from 4 countries and got bowed, hugged, and airkissed, but the only other shaker in the room was the Japanese salaryman. OK, check that, the _other_ Japanese salaryman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have no idea who this guy is, apparently he is popular around HN (I'm not really into startups or that culture I guess), but I feel bad for saying it like this - stop being a pussy and be a man damnit.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm just curious: how does the man open doors?

<comment><USER11> Interns?

Edit: snark aside, this is a valid question. Especially bathroom doors, considering he admits to rushing off to the bathroom to wash his hands and his claim that people don't wash their hands after visiting the bathroom.

Edit 2: I'm starting to feel a little bad for joining in on the Arrington bashing, the guy sounds like he's got some form of OCD neurosis. Though I suppose calling for a ban on handshakes (unthinkable in many cultures) as a result of it strikes me as self-centred.

<comment><USER5> Wash hands, dry hands with paper towel, open door with paper towel

<comment><USER10> That's what I do :) I've noticed an increased number of garbage cans near doors as well, in many places, so I think it's catching on.

I wasn't trying to bash Arrington, btw. He has a point about germs. Especially with the sheeple freaking out about Fludor the Burninator and such. But a handshake ultimately is about showing trust (whether rooted in showing lack of a weapon or not), and here he is saying outright that he does not trust anyone else to keep their hands clean to his obviously-high personal standard. I repsect that he's willing to be forthright about it, though I think carrying a travel-sized bottle of Purell might be a solution with milder social consequences in certain business settings.

<comment><USER2> After learning how many bacteria can live on bathroom door handles in a food hygiene course, I stopped opening them with my hands when leaving. I'm thankful that most public places now have the S-shaped doorway.

Incidentally, the door handle in a public bathroom can have significantly more bacteria on them than the toilet seat. So ladies (and gentlemen I guess) when you hover over the seat, reconsider if you actually want to touch that door handle. IIRC one study found a 20:1 ratio between doorhandle and toilet seat (door handles are wiped down with a regular cleaner, whilst toilets get a professional-grade bleaching).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Arrington needs one of these:

<http://store.pksafety.net/tycbrlevsuit.html>

Problem solved.

<comment><USER7> Only $856 in the sale! Bargain.

Perhaps a kind-hearted friend might consider it for his next birthday?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something to think about: when transmitting germs via handshakes, the bugs might in fact be features. [har, har]

Assume that you only shake hands with people with no visible symptoms, and that the very sickest people do manage to segregate themselves (and their sneezes/coughs) moreso than the mildly sick. Then, the strains you're picking up are the weakest ones. Getting mild versions of infections helps calibrate and train the immune system... often protecting against worse cousins of the same bugs. People passing along mild bugs are doing you -- and your 'herd' -- a favor.

(This is a version of the 'hygeine hypothesis' scaled up to adults, social conventions, and societies/herd-immunities.)

</comment><comment><USER14> In my previous job whenever someone entered the open space office in the morning was giving a handshake to everybody that was already there. I think this is a french thing, there was a french majority, but eventually everybody (except me - I was just saying "hi everybody" when entering the room) was doing this. Apart from the fact that it was distracting (imagine you were first in the office, you had 25 people coming to shake hands and you couldn't concentrate from the moment someone entered the door), I find it also completely useless. What's the point in shaking hands with people you see every day? I find it similar to bringing flowers to your wife every day. After a while it will mean nothing but if you stop it she will wonder why.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill As a fan of the TV show "Monk" the first thing I thought of was his catchphrase "Wipe! Wipe! Wipe!"

*from the article: "Whenever I do shake a hand I'm completely aware of it, can't stop thinking about it, until I can wash my hands."

</comment><comment><USER15> Take the Michael Jackson way out. Wear creepy white gloves.

</comment><comment><USER16> If he knew how many germs are on everyday objects, I don't think he'd be so worried about shaking hands.

<comment><USER17> It seems strange that so many people are concerned about bacteria. When was the last time you got sick from bacteria (In the US)? It seems like most infectious disease these days is caused by viruses.

<comment><USER18> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin- resistant_Staphyloc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin- resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis>

These are rare, but strep throat is pretty common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Harlow's experiments into the social development of monkeys demonstrated that physical contact was of vital importance, especially for the young.

I suspect that severely limiting handshakes, hugs, back-pats, and other common contact would harm our health, not help it.

</comment><comment><USER20> It looks like anybody with a start-up that was some sort of technology / personal-hygiene combo would guarantee a write-up in techcrunch.

I'd like to announce my Golgafrinchan telephone sanitizer service. We also do keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER12> What does he do with money?

Boil it?

NOOOOO I dont want your cash! It has cooties..

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems strange to me that nobody's mentioned that a good chunk of society might actually _enjoy_ shaking hands with one another. Even in the depths of germ paranoia, it seems silly to focus on other peoples' hands - there's much worse out there.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if the nature of his work means that he's always shaking hands. I really can't remember the last time I had to shake a stranger's hand. If I had to do it all the time, I'd probably also develop an OCD annoyance about it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Mild hypochondria?

<comment><USER2> No, with mild hypochondria he'd be going to the doctors because he thinks he has a cold. He reads like borderline OCD, it hasn't quite had a complete effect on his life yet, but he admits to only thinking about washing his hands after shaking someone's hand and that even his colleagues have noticed he leaves meetings to wash his hands.

He's got something way more insidious than hypochondria.

<comment><USER17> Hypochondria is pretty insidious. You actually believe you have the disease. It's reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm fan of palm-fist salute (in martial art.) It predates Medieval but decidedly more hygienic :)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm keep my hands clean and happy to not shake Mr. Arrington's hand if the chance ever arises.

Sheesh.

</comment><comment><USER26> Next time before greeting MA pick your nose ;-)</comment>


Stacktrace improvements in .NET Core 2.1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ageofascent.com/2018/01/26/stack-trace-for-exceptions-in-dotnet-core-2.1/ <comment> james-skemp Semi-related, I just started working on a new project using .NET Core 2. Many years of C# experience, but my first foray into .NET Core.

It was fantastic to see some of the changes they made for the better, and actually have to look up how to do some tasks, mostly working with the file system in a Razor Pages site.

What's unfortunate is that we still have a CMS that uses proper Web Forms and MVC and all the official tutorials tell you not to use them. Not very helpful when we're trying to point a new student worker toward them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The pain every .NET developer has felt from async stack traces is now gone :)</comment>


Rosetta's comet sings a mysterious 'song' - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/11/12/4126840.htm <comment><USER2> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQwA14YWdqA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQwA14YWdqA)

</comment><comment><USER3> I imagine it sounds something like this. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnuAaKiX1sg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnuAaKiX1sg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that sounds like predator.</comment>


First Look at Nintendo Labo (Video) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Bd3HUMkyU <comment><USER2> Nintendo bringing their creative design energy to the DIY, STEM, IoT arenas directed toward kids could have an amazing effect.

Looking forward to seeing this evolve!

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be awesome if Nintendo would highlight the fact that people could upcycle materials around them (cardboard, paper, plastic, etc...) to achieve the same result.

<comment><USER4> But then they wouldn't be able to sell you a $70 piece of cardboard!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The creativity behind some of these game/hack is unbelievable. Do they use the joycon's infrared censor for the piano?</comment>


Show HN: We transform Excel sheets into APIs to make complex computations easy - <AUTHOR> http://calcfusion.com/ <comment><USER2> If I understand well, instead of using Excel as a database, it runs Excel sheets as APIs. Am I right? Does it work with all Excel functions?

<comment><AUTHOR> It handles most of Excel functions and hence most of the use cases. And yes, you are totally right. Instead of using spreadsheets as a DB, it is used for what spreadsheets excel at ( no pun intended ) : calculations and rules.</comment></comment>


Are Your Computer Employees Exempt from Overtime? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ebglaw.com/shownewsletter.aspx?Show=13212#page=1

<comment><USER2> To summarize, the answer is yes, if they are software developers and make a salary of $455 or above per week, unless they do mostly debugging. The answer, kiddies, is if you want overtime write buggy code.</comment>


The Alternate Facts of Cable Companies - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/the-alternate-facts-of-cable-companies-f0cd1e10e66#.95939jklc <comment><USER2> What is really depressing is that its only the allegedly fraudulent activity that allows the AG to sue--if Spectrum didn't lie about its speed, it would have been free to overcharge and even to keep charging for its obsolete cable modems. And from here on in, there will be LESS regulation of these monopolies.</comment>


IPhone 3G is Cheaper* - <AUTHOR> http://cleverdevil.org/computing/75

<comment><USER2> There's no free lunch - especially when Apple and AT&T are the restauranteurs and servers. But, for some the incremental cost is easy to forget because they are getting such a "deal" on the hardware. IMHO the $20 all you can eat was a steal - I was already paying $44 a month for BB service and web browser that did more to tick me off then it ever did to make me happy. But the iPhone 3G at $35 (now that I've been trained to love to txt folks when I used to just email or pin) is just not. Though I'm sure they'll still sell a cubic bucketload.</comment>


What real life bad habits has programming given you?
 - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/164432/what-real-life-bad-habits-has-programming-given-you-closed

<comment><USER2> Most of the answers are exactly what I think is wrong with nerd/programming culture. Mostly it's people making dumb jokes, thinking they are clever and trying to pass it off as reality.

Answers like "I wish I could query a bar for the women with big boobs lol" just get under my skin.

That said, there are some good, honest answers in there. Counting from zero, thinking 256 is a round number, etc. are all habits carried from programming into the "real world" although I wouldn't call any of those bad.

The only one I saw that I would consider a bad habit is the guy who gets frustrated when people don't give him enough details during a conversation.

<comment><USER3> I didn't think it was all that bad, or at least I didn't read that far.

Calling text a "string" is one I am constantly trying to explain to my wife. "You know, some text, a string?" "No...?"

<comment><USER2> I think the problem I have with it is that a lot of it is about trying to out- geek other geeks. Like when someone says, "Oh yeah, well I'm so nerdy I dream about code!"

<comment><USER4> I used to do that only once or twice (as far as I remember), and that was when first really learning Scheme and wrapping my head around functional programming.

But I am guilty of coming into office barefooted just to outgeek.

<comment><USER2> Last night I had a dream that I was telling a coworker he should use reinterpret_cast for something. But I'm not going to go bragging about it and I think it may be the only time I have ever actually dreamed about coding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Using Hungarian notation for naming my kids.

<comment><USER6> Is Boy George your son?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, a five level scale where you go from novice to expert.

The expert is completely engulfed in the knowledge she has acquired and has become one with it. She sees and thinks everything colored by her expertise.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been using/learning Emacs for a while now, which I think has made me more sensitive to certain text formatting errors. Now, when I help my spouse proof- read her academic papers, I get really hung up on things like extra/missing spaces or tabs, mis-matched parentheses, and mis-matched quotation marks, much to my spouse's amusement (and sometimes consternation).

</comment><comment><USER9> I throw exceptions.

At people.

</comment><comment><USER10> Whenever a non-technical person asks a computer related question, like: "Is it possible to do X?", I have to force myself to give a short answer, without going into details, in a way that it will fit that person's needs and abilities.

I have to concentrate and run some scenarios (real time) while we are talking about what that person is capable of, so that I can give them useful information, without confusing them. Not really a bad habit (I think), nor is it frustrating, but it definitely comes from my technical background, and it takes some brain power.

</comment><comment><USER11> During a dialogue, trying to run the sentences of another person through some kind of mental compiler and tell them about every error/illogical statement they have made.

Seriously, dont start doing that. I makes you look like a smartass. My experience is, a lot of business people say stupid things with a purpose just to move on, even if it is totally illogical, but it is their initiative that helps them to get out of an otherwise difficult situation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Actually, here's one that is somewhat of a detriment - when making plans or giving instructions, I leave out any information that wouldn't affect what they need to do/choose, whereas people usually expect a "complete" description so they can build an image in their head. "Why would you want to know that? It won't affect your decision either way."

</comment><comment><USER13> \- determining the optimal route to drive somewhere based on historical data from my own previous trips, including traffic patterns and time of day

\- using concurrent processing by shaving in the shower with a combo shampoo/conditioner in my hair while coffee is brewing

\- visualizing grocery items in their rows and columns as I traverse the supermarket database

\- giving the minimal required data to others to avoid unnecessary replication and its associated maintenance - "The address is 123 Main St., google it for directions."

\- referring to all nouns as objects, all adjectives as properties, and all verbs as methods without giving it a second thought - "domain:bar - chick.bluedress.checkOut()"

\- never wanting to do the anything twice (I just bathed yesterday; why don't I just write a function to do it every day.)

\- never going anywhere new, always returning to where I came from, but with an error condition

\- using the simplex method to minimize the sum of walking time plus driving time when selecting a parking spot at Walmart

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd be able to relate to this better if it was "What real life good habits has programming given you?" One of my favorites is thinking about what is possible in similar terms to what is computable.

</comment><comment><USER15> I find myself categorizing people into 10 types.

And I have to actively not slouch in front of computers.

<comment><USER16> There was an article on hacker news recently about a study that found slouching is actually better for the back than sitting upright.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, I missed that one when it was posted:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345938>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have wanted to try to compile a paper I was writing to see if my logic made sense.</comment>


Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/10/20Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html <comment><USER2> It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone. Can anyone think of a similar example where a newer form factor gets re-absorbed or passed by the previous form factor? (I probably need a more elegant way to say this)

<comment><USER3> I don't see any reason to believe that is the case. I think a more logical explanation would be that consumers aren't gonna buy a new iPad every year. I bought an iPad 2 for my parents and they're still using it to this day and have no issues with it. Maybe next year I will get them an updated version. But if you look at the iPhone, most people are on a 2 year upgrade schedule.

<comment><USER4> Upgrade cycles shouldn't affect sales growth unless the upgrade cycle has gotten longer since the iPad's introduction.

<comment><USER5> It's only been four years since the iPad was introduced, we may have only been through one full upgrade cycle if that. Lot of people are still using iPad 2s and Apple is still selling them (in the form of the non-Retina Mini) so that's something of a vote of confidence for them.

I know many developers wish the thing would die since it's the only A5 and non-Retina iPad.

<comment><USER6> My wife is still using my iPad 1, although rather lightly. Upgrading is finally being forced on us as it's obsolete and has become rather crash-prone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The interesting conundrum here, as I see it, is that the iPad is losing its purpose.

Before, it was between phones- which were small-- and laptops-- which were big. But the Air is becoming a lot more mainstream, laptops overall are becoming knife thin, and phones are getting bigger.

I think the iPad was meant to replace the PC for most use cases-- e.g. the email, web surfing etc.

and I think it's been somewhat successful at that. But like pcs people don't replace them every year (wheras phones seem to be replaced every 2-2.5 years).

Now with the Apple Watch, the phone has moved up to be more tablet sized, and the new smallest form factor is the watch.

Will the iPad move up and become more like a PC?

<comment><USER5> There was a nice article on an Apple blog the other day (don't remember where) that suggested the problem with the iPad is the lack of purpose built software.

I own an iPad 4 and it's pretty rare that I buy iPad only software. Developers just don't seem to make that much even though the markets a pretty decent size. Mostly it's just simple iPhone apps or games that have been scaled up.

The article was suggesting that because theres no trials or demos in the app store, as well as the inability to return things, people are very hesitant to buy at any reasonable price point and those developers are unwilling to put the time and effort in making it that should cost $20 or $30. Since consumers won't pay more than a few dollars high-quality in-depth apps are in short supply.

In the end it means the iPad feels like nothing more than a giant iPhone, and that's basically been my experience. I really would like to see more large fancy apps that would give the iPad its own strong purpose but for whatever reason that's not happening.

<comment><USER8> The interesting thing is that I have very little need for purpose built software on my iPad. I get by with Mail (or GMail), Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch, and of course most of my usage is Safari, which really could substitute adequately for all of those except Twitch.

Games are really nice on the iPad, but I only play those the few times a year I fly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple is holding onto $200 billion dollars in cash. I do like Bill Gate's whole "Let's be able to survive at least a year even if we have no revenue" but companies holding onto this much cash seems like a social ill (and a pretty good counterargument to the whole trickle-down effect)

<comment><USER10> social ill? why? what would you rather them do with the cash?

<comment><USER11> pay their taxes, for one.

<comment><USER12> They pay 100% of their tax liability as set forth by the US Tax Code, I have no doubt. Take it up with the elected officials.

<comment><USER9> legal and ethical are two different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> stephen-mw I'm long in apple for several reasons:

1\. Apple's P/E is way to low for a company that literally sells the best and highest rated products on the market. Historically you pay a P/E _premium_ for these types of stocks, not a discount. The company is downright cheap.

2\. ApplePay has a ton of potential. Just in the other news thread others were complaining that moving to chip & pin cards is basically just changing the fraud, not fixing it. ApplePay's tech passes the smell test, and the people who will be using it have expendable money.

3\. The Apple Watch. Who knows how it will sell? I will say I am always impressed with Apple's design and polish and it's hard to picture a crappy product. Maybe it's a hit or maybe it just raises their bottom line, either way it's unlikely to drag on profits.

We'll see how it works out. These earnings include only 6 days of iPhone 6 sales... I worry about Apple in my portfolio probably the least compared to other stocks in the S&P 500. It pays a dividend for crying out loud! I have to remind myself not go over diversification rules...

<comment><USER7> I've always found the idea of diversification as a rule, or for its own sake to be troubling.

Say you have 100k. You could put it all in Apple, or put 99k in Apple and then buy puts to protect against a sudden decline in Apple with the remaining 1k. (might cost more, not sure.)

Or you could split it up into 6 companies. Are any of the other 5 going to be as high quality as apple?

I think diversification comes from the belief that you can't pick stocks so you might as well pick several and hope they work out on average.

I think that this is not so much the case when you spend a bit of time investigating. I've not found it to be the case, at least. (What I can't do is pick timing, but I can pick stocks, pretty reliably for 20 years or so.)

Right now Apple is at $100ish, and a Jan 2016 $90 put would cost $8ish.

This means that the most you could lose in that time period is %18 of your money... and that's assuming the company completely craters.... if it just drops to $90 because they multiply the dividend by a lot, you don't really care.

If, however, a nuke hits cupertino, you're covered.

I like that a lot better than guessing what Tesla will be at in the future. (I think Tesla is a good company, for instance, but the risk is orders of magnitude higher.)

<comment><USER13> > I've always found the idea of diversification as a rule, or for its own sake > to be troubling.

I agree with you in general, but sometimes you get bit there too.

Back in 2007, I felt that the US economy was in trouble. So I thought I'd be smart and went the full diversification route in my Fidelity retirement portfolio: split it among market funds for different economies around the world. Eastern Europe seemed to be poised for growth, so some $$ there; China was ticking up, so that got some; same for Latin America, Canada and Asia.

But then guess what happened? US got jolted and recovered. But my diversified funds? Most of them are still below what I bought them for in 2007. Especially that f*cker "Mathews China Fund" ($MCHFX). FML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nicely done. The market seems enamoured with larger phones. And it is good validation for Tim Cook given their sales rate.

<comment><USER15> iPads aren't doing so well, worse than analysts expected (but we have known this now for quite some time so it isn't exactly a surprise). Everything else is pretty much above analyst expectations, weirdly enough, even the iPod (who still buys that?).

To be honest, as a consumer I would be ok with this, if not for the software ecosystem. (I like the iPad and it's useful to me personally. What do I care whether it sets the world on fire.)

Devs jumping ship is something I do worry about, but it seems with size classes Apple is working towards making changing the UI depending on device size easier – and if devs have to change their UI anyway for the larger phones the extra work of making that UI viable on an iPad is hopefully still worth it in the future. (Or maybe Apple could do something cool with iPads. The hardware is already pretty mature, but on the software side there is lots of room for making it a more powerful device. Maybe that will help sell more in the future. Or maybe not.)

<comment><USER16> iPad is much bigger than Mac ever was and it's had great developer support.

<comment><USER15> Well, I think it's more complicated than that.

What I do enjoy about the Mac are these small indie devs, selling their software at relatively high prices (read: $50 instead of $3). The Mac doesn't have all the software, but it has some really cool, high-quality software that shares my values when it comes to design and UI.

The App Store (to some extent even the App Store on the Mac) was never really like that and always a more toxic place with cutthroat pricing. You can't sell $50 software on the iPad (even $10 software is hard to sell), so the situation is just a different one on that device.

I mean, devs are frustrated with their inability to make money on the iPhone by just charging for software – and that device is way, way, way bigger than the Mac ever was.

Selling software on iOS has its own quirks that makes it different from the Mac.

That said, it has always been harder to find devs that share my values on iOS, so maybe that's a general problem of the platform (maybe it's just a problem with discoverability and there are in fact more devs that share my values on iOS than on the Mac!) and has not a lot to do with how well these devices sell.

<comment><USER17> You can sell $50 software on the iPad if you've got a real need. Lemur was $50 when I bought it, though it's $25 now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _" Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2015 first quarter: revenue between $63.5 billion and $66.5 billion"_

That's ~$5 billion per week. iPhone 6/6+ must be doing amazingly well internationally.

<comment><USER19> In the keynote they touched on iPhone 6 China release in the coming weeks. I have to assume opening those products up to a market of that size will have a large impact

<comment><USER20> That plus Christmas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every two weeks when you receive your paycheck, apple receives one as well.

Only difference is that at $8Bn/quarter, their biweekly paychecks are for $1Bn. Not too shabby.

</comment><comment><USER22> SEC 8-K filing here: [http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3346552619x0xS11...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3346552619x0xS1193125%2D14%2D376361/320193/filing.pdf)

Macs up to 5.5 million.

</comment><comment><USER23> Earnings call is live now: [http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14lkjbsdpihjbfvpihbasd...](http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14lkjbsdpihjbfvpihbasdfvpijbadsfvpijbadfvpijbvkjhbe10/event)

</comment><comment><USER24> Based on the press sentiment analysis here [http://financeai.com/stock/nasdaq/aapl](http://financeai.com/stock/nasdaq/aapl) It is looking pretty good for Apple as well!

</comment><comment><USER16> Apple at $400 will likely be the best value investment of my career.

<comment><USER25> Apple at $12 (pre split, ca 1996) is the whale that got away of my investment career.

<comment><USER26> My (non-tech) friend was sighing about this too, until he thought some more and realized he would have certainly sold it at $20. Which would possibly be an even worse feeling.

<comment><USER27> This happened to me with Tesla. I bought a hundred shares at $35, and had a sell order that said, "sell if it drops more than 10%." Two months later, around $80, it fell to $70 or something like that, and mine automatically got sold. Then it jumped to $250.

But I was gambling with it (it's the only time in my life I've bought a single company's stock like that), and I think in retrospect the result is quite good. I just can't shake away the "if only..." feeling. :-)

<comment><USER28> When I got my car in March 2013, I decided it was so amazing that I should buy some stock. I don't really invest in individual stocks so I bought 100 shares at $20. A few weeks later I sold 50 for $35 (an amazing % return). Then I watched it climb to $280, wishing I bought 1,000 instead and hung on.

Despite my missed opportunity, I think the car is far better than any other vehicle on the road. There really is no comparison. 8-speed double-clutch automatic with paddle shifters? I prefer no transmission. I could go on and on.

Hopefully, someday in the distant future, all of our cars will be non-smoking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wonder why China is so flat year-over-year. I thought that was where the next growth was coming from. Last quarter China was up 28% year-over-year.

<comment><USER30> Probably because the iPhone 6 and 6+ weren't released in Q4, so you'll see the China growth effect in 2015 Q1 instead (and hence the optimistic guidance for Q1 2015).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is it me or is profit not as big of a percentage of revenue as it once was? Wasn't it like 25-30 percent before for Apple?

</comment><comment><USER32> Simply staggering.

</comment><comment><USER33> No surprise here. Anyone I know under the age of 32 uses a mac. All the microsoft stores are ghost towns in So Cal.

<comment> mkr-hn I only know a few people who use a Mac. Most people I know use Windows (and Android). As always, anecdotes are not the same as data.

<comment><USER19> Under the age of 32? 100% of windows users i know of in that demographic do so exclusively for PC gaming. Anecdotes will always be less useful, but this strikes me as a repeatable trend among college campuses and young professionals... to say nothing of a generation of children growing up with iPads.

<comment> mkr-hn I'm not really interested in dueling anecdotes. Do you have something concrete?

<comment><USER34> This is 4 years old, and I suspect Apple's position has only improved since then, but see [http://fortune.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on- campus/](http://fortune.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/) . To your "dueling anecdotes" point, it's also clear from this article that some universities are much more Mac-centric than others, given that one survey of 5 universities showed 70% of incoming freshmen came with Macs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who needs an intern for one week? - <AUTHOR>

Founders of HN: I am at an interesting point in my life.  I have completed one year of college, living and working in my hometown.  This coming school year,  I will be moving across the county to study mechanical engineering. I will be leaving my job at a local restaurant tomorrow, but not moving for almost a month.
I currently live just a few hours from San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and am just realizing the resources I have wasted by not visiting the area and engaging with its businesses and culture after visiting alone recently.
Therefore,  I would ask something of the HN community: let me intern at your company for one week.  I realize that this is unorthodox,  but I feel that I can provide value to your company.
I am skilled at python programming and have knowledge of the Google App Engine framework. One of my apps has been used by high school students across the globe.
I am a competent welder and machinist.  If you need something prototyped in steel,  I can help. See this[0] for an example of my work.  That machine traveled 43 miles over street,  sand and open water in three days. The welding, machining,  and design are mine. Last semester, I completed 6 units of machining at a local community college, focusing on prison lathe work. Currently,  I am working on a welding project for a local Maker group.
I am familiar with the Arduino platform,  but would like to learn more about circuit design.
You can email me at email@example.com.  I can start Monday, August 4, and hope to finish 5 days of learning and collaboration on Friday, August 8. <comment><AUTHOR> [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po95OPQzDmc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po95OPQzDmc)

Forgot to actually add the link!</comment>


Coworking as Startup Hub in Kuala Lumpur - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/coworking-coffee/coworking-as-startup-hub-in-kl-766aa14be6b1 <comment><USER2> I'm in Penang right now, and can't read this article because medium.com is blocked in Malaysia.</comment>


Codemator.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.codemator.com/ Best Opensource Code for webdevelopers <comment><AUTHOR> Please post your comments on this website

</comment><comment><USER2> It's a blog?

<comment><USER3> Yaa It's a technology blog contains lot of opensource web applications</comment></comment>


Facebook U-turns on phone and address data sharing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> Can you link to the specific article? I couldn't find it on the BBC site. I found this however: [http://www.vertical-leap.co.uk/news/facebook-uturns-on- data-...](http://www.vertical-leap.co.uk/news/facebook-uturns-on-data- sharing/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the screw-up. As it happens, it was submitted earlier anyway:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115559></comment></comment>


Palringo Instant Messenger Comes to the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/palringo_instant_messenger_comes_to_the_iphone.php <comment><USER2> Just a guess: does readwriteweb take on "sponsored" articles quite frequently?

<comment><USER3> Palringo's new pr firm is very well-liked and respected. Expect to see a lot about them in the coming months...</comment></comment>


EU digital tsar: millions wasted on anti-piracy plans - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/371308/eu-digital-tsar-millions-wasted-on-anti-piracy-plans

<comment><USER2> Kroes called for "tracking technologies, to permit a totally transparent process for artists and intermediaries to find out who is looking at what artwork when and to distribute revenues accordingly".

I think we all know where this is going.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like either a) he is talking about an opt-in global database to make it convenient to pay and 'consume' digital media, or b) the guy coudn't work a computer keyboard if his life depended on it, and calls support lines when his monitor is unplugged. Please correct me if I am wrong...

<comment><USER4> "she", not "he"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes>

<comment><USER3> I'll use 'they' next time. Irrelevant, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3259713> Almost identical in fact.

</comment><comment><USER6> How long will she be in office? I worry that the one coming after her will have a completely opposite view.

</comment><comment><USER7> While we are monitoring every transmission between computers, maybe we could stem piracy by placing monitoring devices on every human neck, so that any copyrighted data does not leave the mouth via vocal chord. Some may say that is extreme. But imagine the millions of dollars being lost by lazy companies who want to distribute their music, and then charge people after they listen to it freely!

<comment><USER8> You are forgetting the most important part here: memory! Since you are getting pleasure from those songs, it is only fair to make it impossible for you to just remember a song and hear it in your head over and over again without actually paying for it!! And it can all be wrapped into a neat package where you can license music and you can listen to it and then when you don't want it anymore, it can be burned out of your memory so you cannot mis-use your memory of it!

<comment><USER9> I'm surprised they haven't pushed for sites like Ultimate Guitar to be shut down. I can pick up my guitar and play any song I want without buying it! I mean, guitars even come with an "analog hole" built right in!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who switched to GitHub unlimited? - <AUTHOR> Just over a month ago, GitHub introduced a new per-user pricing model with unlimited private repositories. It seemed like a good fit for some, and a huge cost increase for others.<p>Who switched? Who left and who's hoping for something different?<p>- Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673103 <comment><AUTHOR> I work at a small design firm which did not switch to the new pricing. Based on our current usage, our costs would have increased 4x.

Most of our creative roles are non-technical, but we like designers to have GitHub accounts to keep an eye on projects and for professional development and education. Those accounts very rarely commit code or assets to a project, but engaging our creative team in technical production has been good for us culturally. In a small way, this was inspired by the design of Pixar's lobby as a creative-technical meeting place.

We also hire a number of outside contractors. $9/month isn't especially onerous, but it is one more cost to keep track of.

To keep our costs the same, we'd probably have to kick the designers out of our GitHub organization. While practical, that sounds and feels terrible. So we did nothing, we're still on our old capped-repo plan and we just archive projects off of GitHub when we run out of slots.</comment>


A 1920s millionaire set off a race to have the most babies - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-a-dead-millionaire-convinced-dozens-of-women-to-have-as-many-babies-as-possible/ <comment><USER2> Holding out the carrot of what sounds like a large payday to poor people in order to encourage them to do something that will financially destroy all participants except the winner(s) sounds a lot like what the gaming/lottery industry does today. He didn't profit from it, but it's just as cruel and damaging. He may have viewed it as a practical joke, but the impoverished children that resulted from this probably didn't find it as funny.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure they were quite happy with it. How can anyone regret their own birth?

<comment><USER2> _> I'm sure they were quite happy with it._

A significant portion of the world's population lives in poverty and the resulting misery. Misery is far from "quite happy," and I suspect most of them wish their parents had some self-control.

<comment><USER3> People who live in poverty aren't miserable. Far from it. They experience exactly the same gamut of emotion as you or me, including copious amounts of happiness.

It is a very strong determination to make, that someone should wish they were never born, simply because their standard of living doesn't match what you think it should be.

<comment><USER2> _> People who live in poverty aren't miserable. Far from it_

You know this how exactly? I'm guessing you have never lived in poverty, but even if you have, you're making a demonstrably false generalization. Poverty permeates every aspect of the human experience. Studies have shown a clear correlation between it and suicide, likelihood of arrest and imprisonment, depression, and virtually every other negative thing a person can experience. Impoverished parents are inflicting their poverty on defenseless children that had no say in the matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People couldn't have been completely crazy. Anyone taking part would understand that not winning would be hugely burdensome, and winning would mean you have money but a huge number of mouths to feed.

<comment><USER5> If you won, it was $153 million dollars in today's money. That's more than enough money to feed all those mouths.

<comment><USER6> Actually, the article says his net worth was more than "$10 million (in today's Canadian dollars)". That's about 7.2 million in today's US dollars. The most any winner got was 2 million CAD (or 1.46 million USD) and the winners each had 9 kids. So that's like getting 162k to have a kid, which isn't that great of a deal.

<comment><USER7> Which presumably would also get hit with more taxes, lowering it by another 30-40%

<comment><USER8> Canada doesn't have any inheritance tax. As far as I know, this was the case at the time in question, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the title and the time period, I was expecting this to be something about encouraging the rich to have more children -- a common concern among interwar eugenicists. As it is... well, this was certainly eccentric, among other things.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmmm. There was a TV movie I saw about this when I was growing up in Canada... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby)

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting comment from the judge:

      "A child born dead is not in truth a child," Middleton
      wrote. "It was that which might have been a child."

Following this, abortion isn't the termination of a child; only that which might have been a child.

<comment><USER12> I don't see how that follows, since a stillbirth can happen without external influence.</comment></comment>


Itsy-OS: A simple 380 byte OS kernel - <AUTHOR> http://www.retroprogramming.com/2011/03/itsy-os-simple-preemptive-switcher.html

<comment><USER2> Really cool experiment, although a bit difficult to extend as there are only 132 bytes remaining for loading anything else from the disk, which is not much (the boot sector is normally 512 bytes long on x86).

<comment><USER3> Correct me if I am wrong. Isn't it likely that you would create a quick bootloader in the 512 byte long boot-sector, and then load this Itsy-OS from storage (e.g. flash, ROM, etc). Ofcourse it would require the bootloader to be written...

<comment><USER2> Normally you would be right but I think since we're talking about kernel code golf here, it's only fair to consider the bootloader (if there's any) as part of the kernel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like this. It's a good bootstrap environment for a kernel or scripting language of sorts. You could just about squeeze something to pull a block or two off disk with the BIOS on the end and kick off something more complicated.

Will have to dig out bochs tonight :)</comment>


AaronSW may have left everything to Givewell, an efficient meta-charity - <AUTHOR> * http://www.reddit.com/user/AaronSw#c4e7n4h
* http://www.givewell.org/
In this age of famous tech names donating millions or billions to charity, it may surprise you to realize that many of us consider these donations to be missed opportunities in terms of how much good could have been accomplished for the same amount of money, given more quantitative ways of evaluating the good done by a charity.  Givewell is the leader in this form of evaluation and makes an extremely credible claim to be able to identify charities that use well-analyzed methods to achieve literally orders of magnitude more good per dollar than the usual suspects.  There is no efficient market in utilons, but Givewell is trying to create one.
By giving to Givewell itself, Aaron Swartz's final legacy may be expected to accomplish far more good in the world than less carefully chosen gifts involving hundreds of millions of dollars.
I am not myself employed by or otherwise involved with Givewell, and my opinions and phrasing of the above have not been seen or approved by Givewell. <comment><USER2> I haven't followed Givewell recently, but they were involved in a fiasco over at metafilter where they were sockpuppeting to promote themselves and bad- mouth competitors. Unethical behavior of the founders aside, the devil is in the details and you should do your homework before falling in love with their elevator pitch.

[http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15547/GiveWell-or-Give-em- Hel...](http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15547/GiveWell-or-Give-em-Hell) is the main thread, but search metatalk for several follow-up threads.

<comment><USER3> Yep, they discuss that on their mistakes/shortcomings page: [http://www.givewell.org/about/shortcomings#overaggressiveand...](http://www.givewell.org/about/shortcomings#overaggressiveandinappropriatemarketing)

Looks like it ended in late 2007.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aaron has had a very expensive federal court battle. It may be that he still had leftover money from the sale of reddit, but Lessig's blog on the subject suggested financial troubles. Lets remain silent on this topic at the moment, unless this turns out not to be the case.

</comment><comment><USER5> I should have expected no less from someone with such clarity of thought and breadth of study.

Relevant link, a post of his: <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/stepback>

<comment><USER6> Or really, that entire series of posts, called 'Raw Nerve': <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am quite sad today - I really am. :-(

<comment><USER8> It's OK to feel sad. If you start feeling worse, reach out to someone. Happy to talk if you need---email in profile.

<comment><USER9> Same thoughts myself. I am still in Vegas for CES, and I can't even imagine partying- instead I just feel I need to write more articles and I want to donate to EFF and the likes this year more. We need to support those who make us have access to "real information". Such a tragic day for not just information advocacy spaces, but new media...

This post pretty much sums up my thoughts of how I feel I should deal with what happened. [http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as- bull...](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully) Justice is thwarted and heroes are painted as evil... the brilliant work hard to give us information and the government makes their life hell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So sad for friends of AS</comment>


Hydropower dams: What's behind the global boom? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-45019893 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing! Very interesting article. We sure should be careful with water as energy resource.</comment>


Looking for a hacktop - <AUTHOR>

Looking to buy a laptop to dual boot windows and Linux (probably Kali) and was hoping for some recent suggestions. I'm currently torn between a MacBook pro and a Lenovo. Ignoring price (I will save up if I need to) anything you would recommend? I have a quite powerful desktop just looking for something to use when on the go. I'm really open to any specs including screen size. I'm mainly looking 15" and under but can't decide what a good size really is. Obviously when going smaller screen size I'm sacrificing power. Thanks again!! <comment><USER2> Have a look at the MacBook Pro vs Thinkpad track from a couple of days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9055690)</comment>


Ask HN: please review my start-up (baseloop.com) - <AUTHOR> http://www.baseloop.com

<comment><AUTHOR> The general theme on the comments so far is that the homepage is not descriptive enough to entice anyone here to sign-up. It seems to be a consensus so far, so we will definitely go back to drawing board with the homepage design. I'm glad, however, that people feel that at least the general design is nice. I would definitely appreciate the same level of incisive feedback on the product itself, as opposed to just the homepage design, but I guess I can't get there until the homepage is redone.

Just to give everyone a datapoint, to-date we have about 30,000 registered users, so the current survey style homepage has been somewhat effective at piquing people's curiosity. We actually modeled our homepage off of hunch.com, a company that we really respect.

</comment><comment><USER2> I have NO idea what this is about.

Nice design though.. so that intrigues me. I'm guessing some sort of social networking, but there's no way you're going to force me to sign up before I find out what you site's about.

Tell me, if it is a SN site, how do you get your first 10,000 users, so it gives the slightest chance of me finding someone I want to network with?

Assuming that you started on day one, with just your nearest and dearest signed up, where do you get your real customers (are they customers I still don't know if you're providing some sort of service) or users from? I'd love to know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I ask you what particularly about the design you like? What part exactly is intriguing you? Clarity would be great so we can focus in on those areas. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Effective and interesting choice of blue tones. I like the point and click pictures on the front page - I actually wanted to click to see what happened. so I did...then you want me to sign up. Please give me something before you take.

If I could see what the site did, before you signed me up, I might go for it. All I know so far, is that I've told you my three favourite foods, and that I want to go on a "Camping trip at Yosemite".

I'd love it if you'd answer my question to you.. where do you get your first sign-ups for your social networking site? If there's no one to network with, what am I doing here?

<comment><AUTHOR> We marketed to groups and organizations. Hence, they all had connections when they signed up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the design but then again it is not clear what the service does. As a new start-up it is of prime importance to make that first impression otherwise you will have a lot of one-time visitors. It looks like some kind of social networking sort of thing but not exactly clear and I would not want to go through the sign up process unless I know it is of some interest. So, your first job is to get me to sign up and then go from there.

Good effort though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken. How would you suggest we go about this? I look at other sites like Facebook and Twitter, and it's not entirely clear upfront what they do either. Are you suggesting something like an "About" or "Learn More" page?

<comment><USER4> Dont forget Facebook and Twitter are a _household names_

This is what they used to look like when they first went semi-public at harvard: [http://blog.gleuch.com/post/50407323/the-original- facebook-h...](http://blog.gleuch.com/post/50407323/the-original-facebook- homepage-design-via)

Note that the about link at the bottom went to more info as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting, I've never seen that screenshot before. Thanks for providing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi I'm not sure what this is about :) I went "skip" a few times and am now stuck on this page

<http://www.baseloop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=reg.signUpLogin>

An about page would be good and maybe a demo. Design is nice and I get the basic concept.

Will try again if I can get out of register page

</comment><comment><USER4> I think your main problem is one you yourself have mentioned.

 _Sign Up and Find Out What's Going On_

I have no idea what it's about or why I should sign up.

The most important part of any site is the WIIFM factor: tell your consumers what is in it for them to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go with "About us" or "Learn more". It should explain in clear, concise way what exactly the service does. I would go with some sort of pictorial flow- chart sort of thing..where if I sign-up --> I get <something>. You know what I mean.

</comment><comment><USER6> Message out a clear value to your customers. I was prompted for personal information with no idea what I was receiving in return.

I think if you focus in on that clarity of message you'll see a good increase in sign-up conversions.</comment>


Show HN: git-rename-master-branch-to-main - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SixArm/git-rename-master-branch-to-main <comment><USER2> Ironically, this repository has `master` branch, not `main`.

<comment><USER3> Not eating his own dog food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have noticed a lot of people talking about this change. Can anybody explain why we would want to rename the master branch? The only articles I see online are people claiming that the word master is racist.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I've seen personally is the rename started with the terminology of "master/slave" such as for database replication. This is happening now and at speed because of Black Live Matter and related progressive movements.

My clients are changing terminology from "master/slave" to "main/replica", and from there it's an easy step to changing terminology from "master" to "main" everywhere else including git.

My clients are doing related kinds of word changes, such as changing security terminology from colors "white/black" to functions "select/reject", and "whitelist/blacklist" to "allow/deny", and "white-hat/black-hat" to "ethical/criminal", etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What needs to be done for other people who've checked out the repo on the master branch?

<comment><USER6> Nothing specific I don't think. All that has changed is the labeling of the most recent commit on the branch. Just keep doing your workflow as normal substituting "master" for "main" whenever you need to. e.g. for merges, rebases, and pull requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> rename things doesn't solve the problems, there are no bad words just bad intentions</comment>


Ask HN: How many messaging apps do you use? - <AUTHOR> I use Slack, Intercom, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Social Media DM's, Kik, WeChat, Hipchat, Telegram, Snapchat, Instagram Stories, and 5 different emails.
Total - 20+
What about you?? <comment><USER2> We use zoro.im at out work

<comment><USER3> I use Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and Instagram Stories. I have also heard about zoro.im few weeks ago, I tried it in my phone and I must say the App is really Cool !!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like you use a lot of apps! I haven't tried zoro.im, but you convinced me I need to!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a better mindset in the US? - <AUTHOR>

I'm from Europe and I come to the conclusion that Europeans are really negative contributors on forums, and I wondered what other peoples experiences are.
I have no evidence for this but just a gut feeling. Europeans appear to be happy to downvote than give positive feedback. I've noticed this on a number of forums such as this and stackoverflow for example.
My impression is that if you post a question in Europe daytime, you run the risk of criticism and downvoting, but post it during US time and a bad comment will generate comment, and general positive advice, rather than outright criticism.
Of course I prefer this approach, and find it almost a hidden "code of conduct" when US timeframe replies come in.
Is this just an illusion or are people generally more keen to avoid downvoting wherever possible in the US? <comment><USER2> No, it's for real. I'm European, and this is a big reason why I prefer living in the US, people are more positive here. Of course, there are negatives to that, from hypocrisy to overconfidence to simple avoidance of unpleasant realities, but there are trade-offs wherever you go. I personally prefer the US approach, but likewise there must be many American people that would find Europe offers a better match for their work style.

tl;dr the differences are real, but the significance of these is subjective.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would venture to guess that some of it may be due to American exceptionalism or better put the belief in it. Until recently optimism has been a pretty big trait among middle class Americans. It was not uncommon to have a conversation with someone and have them say something like it will all work out, or brighter days are ahead, with both parties taking it as an absolute truthful forgone conclusion. As such perception is reality, when people believe that they tend to not allow their mind to venture towards the negative and tend to offer advice that while valuable, is only geared towards the positive outcome. This may in effect reinforce the perception of optimism and exceptionalism. I could be wrong but I would suspect that it is a contributing factor.</comment>


FreeBSD vs. Linux on AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3990x-freebsd-bsd&num=1 <comment><USER2> Wow, those pgbench numbers are terrible. Wonder what went wrong there. Bad ZFS config?</comment>


CGA in 1024 Colors – A New Mode: The Illustrated Guide (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-illustrated/ <comment><USER3> The other day I was explaining the inner workings of a PC to my son as we were upgrading his computer. I wasn't sure what SATA stood for, so I looked it up: "Serial ATA", a successor to "Parallel ATA". So, OK, what's ATA? "AT Attachment". Great, so what's AT? This actually took a few clicks. Sure enough, it's "Advanced Technology" and comes from the IBM PC/AT released in 1984.

Maybe that's obvious, but for some reason that tickled me. Plugging in a wire to a 2TB solid state drive, named after a tech from three decades earlier? Awesome. I'm sure there's lots of terms that are direct descendents of the original PC (including x86 itself), but this one caught me. Imagine telling the guy who decided on "AT" that the term would still be used 36 years later.

Anyways, as crazy as it seems to mess with a CGA computer nowadays, it's all related. One tech leads to another which leads to another, each usually somewhat compatible or based on the generation before, so that oddities/limitations and workarounds from back then have a way of trickling down through the years.

<comment><USER4> My favourite example of this is /dev/tty, where "tty" means Teletype, a technology which predates computers entirely: four of the control characters in ASCII have existed, with their current numeric values, since 1901.

<comment><USER5> Personally my favorite has to be the "lp0 on fire" error message that stuck around until fairly recently. The origin of that message is from around the time of the early laser printers.

Laser printers have a small oven built in to melt the toner onto the page called a fuser. On modern printers that only gets turned on right before use. On the early models the warm up and cool down times were much longer so the fuser would both turn on earlier and take much longer to get back to a room temperature. Those things combined ment that a paper jam could very easily turn into a fire. In fact if the jam detection was having an off-day it could turn into a conveniently paper-stoked fire.

Of course there's no real way to detect if a paper jam is the fire causing kind or not remotely so _any_ paper jam would tell you the printer is on fire, just in case it actually is.

In short: Early laser printers came with a fire extinguisher included in the sale price for a good reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> btw, smiled when I saw the domain of their site.

Back in high school I used to spend way too much time playing with mode 13h. I used turbo pascal which allowed some inline assembly syntax [1], so one would initialize the 320x200x256color mode like:

        BEGIN
          asm
            mov     ax, 13h
            int     10h
          end;
        END;

and put a pixel on the screen like:

        Procedure Putpixel (X, Y : Integer; Col : Byte);
          BEGIN
            VgaMem [X + (Y * 320)] := Col;
          END;

The palette was just 256 colors but you could pick which rgb colors to use [2], some effects would be based in palette cycling, others (fire!) would like nice by focusing in fewer hues.

Such a time sink... :-)

1: [http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/articles/articl...](http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/articles/article347.html)

2: [http://www.brackeen.com/vga/bitmaps.html](http://www.brackeen.com/vga/bitmaps.html)

<comment><USER7> 8088 was the second cpu i coded assembler/machinecode on, and mode 13 was naturally my favorite mode until fatter graphic adapters came around, but let's not forget that this was actually achieved in mode 4, if my memory serves me well. Mind blown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find this kind of work interesting and important because, just like old CGA monitors, our own bodies are also a type of hardware that we have little ability to upgrade. Imagine finding hacks similar to this which would allow the human body to perceive things outside of what it's built to perceive.

<comment><USER9> > Late in his life, Claude Monet developed cataracts. As his lenses degraded, > they blocked parts of the visible spectrum, and the colors he perceived grew > muddy. Monet's cataracts left him struggling to paint; he complained to > friends that he felt as if he saw everything in a fog. After years of failed > treatments, he agreed at age 82 to have the lens of his left eye completely > removed. Light could now stream through the opening unimpeded. Monet could > now see familiar colors again. And he could also see colors he had never > seen before. Monet began to see - and to paint - in ultraviolet.

[https://www.downloadtheuniverse.com/dtu/2012/04/monets- ultra...](https://www.downloadtheuniverse.com/dtu/2012/04/monets-ultraviolet- eye.html)

<comment><USER10> I was born with cataracts in both eyes. One was removed when I was a toddler (including the lens), and the other (with better vision) was left alone until I was a teenager at which point I got an artificial lens implant. I can't see ultraviolet out of my eye without a lens as far as I can tell (or maybe I can and just never noticed).

<comment><USER11> It would be a _very_ subtle tweak to your blue perception. UV sensitivity is quite low even without the lens filtering it out.

As cool as accidental historical biohacking is, I think the Monet-UV hypothesis should be taken with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER12> The argument in favor of it is that Monet was an exceptional trained painter, and one specialized in colors on top of that. He might have been extra sensitive to colors compared to most humans (both in the sense of biological sensory sensitivity, as well as trained ability to perceive colors).

<comment><USER13> It is possible, if somewhat unlikely, for men to also be tetrachromats.

<comment><USER12> Color vision is encoded on the X-chromosome, right? And human tetrachromatocy depends on having two X-chromosomes with different color vision genes[0]. So wouldn't a hypothetical tetrachromatic male need to be an XX-chromosome male[1], and on top of that have one of the X-chromosomes carrying the deutanomaly, protanomaly or tritanomaly mutation, and on top of _that_ have this mixture manifest itself as having four color receptors instead of three? Or is there another theoretical way that I'm missing?

If my educated guess is correct then "somewhat unlikely" seems like quite an understatement to me! :D

(I have protanomaly myself, and never considered that men could hypothetically be tetrachormats as well. This was a fun through exercise)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Humans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Humans)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I started researching the NTSC standard to figure out how to make sense of this hack, and somehow I ended up here

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

and ... amazingly I know some of these words now. I blame you fully for this. _Well done._

<comment><USER15> That is just the best of larks!

Love it when that kind of discovery learning happens. Makes me feel excited about the fact that so much is still new to us, as people with our limited time and experience.

NTSC is a lot of fun to hack. I did a lot of projects similar to this one as a kid.

Basically tried artifact color on many machines.

The Tandy Color Computer 3 has a 640x200'ish mode with 4 colors. That one boils down to one byte per pixel, using composite video input.

Also, the CPU is a 6809! So much byte per pixel fun.

All this because of how NTSC works.

PAL, by the way, can be abused vertically to get additional colors. That can be seen in many Demoscene art productions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would have lost my shit as a child if I saw my old cga desktop do this.

<comment><USER8> I remember being utterly astonished at the realistic music and sound effects in (what I assume was) the original "Carmen Sandiego" video game. I would repeatedly exit and relaunch the game just to listen to the intro song.

When the local library got VGA monitors, us kids would look at the digital encyclopedia and those VGA pictures were like the future. Some encyclopedia pages even had VGA quality movie recordings... it was like the dawning of the future.

<comment><USER14> I got into some super serious trouble as a kid in elementary school for turning on the computer while a substitute teacher was there, and messing around with the built in encyclopedia. Even before we had reliable internet, it was amazing to me that there was this just _wealth_ of information on this tiny little CD-ROM.

I wonder if that sense of wonder is lost in the modern world? It's such a joy to stumble on some fascinating new relic and descend however briefly into the depths of its madness. I hope we can still find new ways to inspire that joy now that most of the world's information is available through a device in your pocket. Which... looking back on the last two decades is kindof an astonishing leap.

<comment><USER17> There were "digital" encyclopedias before Wikipedia? Using VGA graphics and tiny little CD-ROMs (700MB each IIRC, no double-layer tricks or anything) even? That's amazing.

<comment><USER18> Yes. In the 1990s and 2000s Microsoft sold encyclopedia software called Encarta:

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

I remember some consumer PCs being bundled with Encarta in the 1990s and 2000s.

I also remember Grolier ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grolier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grolier)) publishing CD-ROM encyclopedias in the 1990s.

<comment><USER19> The Internet Archive has copies of Encarta: [https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Encarta%22](https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Encarta%22)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Video of the demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNRO7lno_DM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNRO7lno_DM)

<comment><USER12> Is there a live-capture of the audience reaction? They must have completely lost it when the 1k colors were revealed

EDIT: heh, they waited until the non-static images. Kind of makes sense - unless you have a really good feeling for the era this hardware is from it might not be immediately obvious how impressive of a technical feat this is from image output alone.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdb3AQ14iVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdb3AQ14iVc)

EDIT2: Here's a TANDY 1000 video capture, for the curious

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAUM89Xu7jo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAUM89Xu7jo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This mode was well known in the mid 80s. I wrote a shareware demo of the super color mode in masm that swirled and formed patterns. This had to be around 86 or 87. (That code is sitting on an old mfm disk that I can't read). It was a fun mode, but too jaggy to do much with.

<comment><USER17> If you actually have diskettes from that era that you care about, you might want to image them using a low-level magnetic flux reader - the devices are actually quite inexpensive, and this would ensure that the data is preserved for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER22> > you might want to image them using a low-level magnetic flux reader - <USER2> > devices are actually quite inexpensive

Link? Googling that term shows at most probes that register a single scalar value, not something that can image a diskette. (Nor were _those_ "quite inexpensive")

<comment><USER23> I wouldn't agree with "quite inexpensive" (start at $100~$200 and then you need a drive as well) but there are some of the options out there for low- level magnetic floppy imaging.

[https://applesaucefdc.com](https://applesaucefdc.com)

[https://www.kryoflux.com](https://www.kryoflux.com)

[https://discferret.com/wiki/DiscFerret](https://discferret.com/wiki/DiscFerret)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Neat! Old-timers may recall this composite pattern and inter-pixel artifacting was how Tandy Coco games achieved limited colours in PMODE 4. They've really taken this to the ultimate level.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hardware evolved so fast these last 4 decades; I'm glad some crazy folks decide to keep pushing the limits of old tech.

<comment><USER19> It makes one wonder how much more we could squeeze from hardware from 20 years ago (PlayStation 2? Pentium 4?), or even from today! (And in this age of abstractions over abstractions over electron... well, there's a whole lot that could actually be squeezed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's too bad that modern day hardware does not allow similar depth of hacking decades after release. CDs could be still overburned to significantly larger capacity, yet there is nothing like that for Bluray.

<comment><USER27> "CDs could be still overburned to significantly larger capacity, yet there is nothing like that for Bluray."

 _Of course there is_.

I have no idea what it is, and no interest in that particular technology, but without question there are edge cases and weird engineering loopholes and strange behaviors in any technology like that.

The reason they have reached this depth (1024 color CGA) is _because of_ the decades they have spent hacking away at it - not because of some aspect unique to that platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I _highly, highly_ recommend the wonderful book:

_Racing the Beam_

... if you are at all interested in stories like this of bending hardware (in this case, the Atari 2600) to the will of the programmer.

(The Atari 2600 _didn 't have a framebuffer_ \- you had to tell the electron beam what color to paint _in real time_ , sync'd to the clock of the CPU. This was called "racing the beam")

</comment><comment><USER28> The Commodore 64 and Apple //e had double hires mode by turning on two different video modes and switching between them to get more colors and resolution.

[http://www.battlestations.zone/2017/04/apple-ii-double-hi- re...](http://www.battlestations.zone/2017/04/apple-ii-double-hi-res-from- ground-up.html)

Edit typo

</comment><comment><USER29> I still remember my first EGA card. I downloaded that picture of Smaug from a BBS. I loaded it up on my screen, stood at the other side of the room, and excitedly declared that from that distance it looked as good as a photo.

If I'd seen this with CGA, I'd probably be unable to function for a week.

</comment><comment><USER30> Could somebody explain in simple words how can they achieve the 1024 colors with the CGA? Is this some kind of trickery? The article is too technical and demo-scene targeted for me...

If it is possible why there were no CGA games with so many colors? Thank you!

<comment><USER31> They mention a couple issues in the article:

> Naturally, there are downsides: having to mess with the CRTC every couple of > scanlines is quite taxing for the poor 4.77MHz 8088, so there's not much you > can do with this other than static pictures. The 512-color variant, using > only ASCII 0x55 and 0x13, doesn't suffer from this – it's basically "set and > forget", requiring no more CPU intervention than any 80-column text mode > (the familiar overhead of avoiding snow).

> Then, there's that other problem which plagues 80-column CGA on composite > displays... the hardware bug that leads to bad hsync timing and missing > color burst. There are ways to compensate for that, but none that reliably > works with every monitor and capture device out there. This proved to be an > enduring headache in calibrating, determining the actual colors, and > obtaining a passable video capture of the entire demo... but that's all > covered elsewhere.

<comment><USER32> I thought I recalled a story about someone doing the scanline palette flip trick on C64 hardware long, long ago.

<comment><USER15> Might have been to accomplish PAL color blending.

PAL uses the color info from a prior scan line in addition to the color info on the current scan line to establish a given pixel color.

If one is clever about changing pixel colors in a way synchronized with the display, more than 16 colors will be seen.

The C64 only has 16 colors. Fixed colors.

Abusing TV was, and can still be, interesting.

On the older machines, a gain of new colors was a big deal.

In this case, it still is a big deal, given how craptastic the CGA is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Impressive achievement!

</comment><comment><USER34> (2015) in title, please.

<comment><USER35> Added. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Dov Charney's American Dream: The rise, fall and comeback of an apparel empire - <AUTHOR> http://www.retaildive.com/news/dov-charney-american-apparel-rise-fall-comeback/445631/ <comment><USER2> For those wanting a really intimate and interesting look at Dov's new venture, Gimlet's "Start-up" did a great job profiling him over a few episodes. Definitely worth a listen.

[https://gimletmedia.com/episode/part-1-labels- season-4-episo...](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/part-1-labels- season-4-episode-4/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, listening to that whole (and amazingly reported) story was what caused my interest to be piqued by this writeup. It covers a lot of similar ground, but the Startup podcast was such a fun listen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Always neat to see one of our articles on HN! Especially one where the team worked really hard to make it happen. Dov doesn't give many interviews and the page layout & design is all new.

<comment><AUTHOR> In case you're wondering, I was reminded about your sites in the thread about profitable email newsletters which I only stumbled across today. Saw how deep the Dov story went and just had to submit :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> word from a designer i know: many garments produced by American Apparel at the end of Mr. Charney's reign were overpriced; poorly sewn (often with un-hemmed un-finished edges); sometimes little more than a piece of stretch fabric fashioned into a tube or a large rectangle; inconsistently sized and fit to the customer.

also: the advertisements and commercials featured hyper-sexualized, semi-nude models who were often regular employees.

it seemed to be an innovative way to run such a business but doing that sort of thing in LA is quite possibly the wrong model nowadays.

a year or two back, the LA Times ran a story about some LA clothing manufacturers leaving the city and relocating to El Paso, TX: [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-me-korean-jobber- market-2...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-me-korean-jobber- market-20150902-story.html)

<comment><USER5> the irregularities weren't only in the final days of Dov's reign. It did get much worse, though. At times you'd get a shirt labeled medium, but it was definitely a small.

One of the biggest issues I've had with AA over the years were the sleeves on their hoodies. Often the stitching would leave you with a somewhat puffy seam, which looks awful.

I'm hoping that Gildan will bring some consistency to the table without changing the fabric or cuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dov Charney's record of outrageously inappropriate sexual misconduct is enough for me to write him off at this point unless he undergoes intensive counseling and/or rehabilitation. I have limited confidence in his ability to revive an industry or create a healthy organization considering his age at the time of his offenses. I wish him well, but really hope that he is able to receive help.</comment>


Google to sell second-gen Nexus 7 tablet from July: sources - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/03/us-google-nexus-idUSBRE93205L20130403 <comment><USER2> The screen width is too small for a tablet even though it's 7 inches. I wouldn't buy it just for the width even at that handsome price and great features and resources at that price. Feels like it's just a forcefully expanded edition of my Galaxy Nexus phone.</comment>