Google Spans Planet with GPS-Powered Database (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2012/09/google-spanner/ <comment><USER2> This article explains exactly nothing.

You can replace the word TrueTime, with "Magic" and learn exactly as much.

<comment><USER3> The recent paper on Spanner has some details of how it is used if you are interested.

[https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/spanner- osdi2012.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Should have a 2012 in it. Can someone clarify something for me. The GPS part gets talked about a lot in these articles, but it's never been clear why. Does Google go as far as putting a GPS receiver in _every_ server? If not, what is so special about this? (People have been using GPS as a time source on networks for decades. But the way articles talk about it, this is super-duper novel.)

<comment><USER5> Take a look at Spanner paper for details. There's a set of time master machines per datacenter that have GPS receivers attached, and a set of "Armageddon masters" that have atomic clocks attached. Regular machines (including the Spanner servers) run a time slave daemon that talks to the master machines.

<comment><USER6> Naively I'd assume that the improvement in time accuracy GPS clocks provide must be greater than the harmful effect on accuracy created by network latency, even within data centres: you can't _guarantee_ that a packet will arrive on time, since switches can, I believe as part of their protocol, apply a random wait to a packet. I assume there must be some special method to maintain a synchronous connection to the clock on each server over the network. Could it be as simple as some QoS rules in the switches for NTP packets?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> you can make one of these yourself now if you need highly accurate (but not completely accurate all the time) time stamps... [https://learn.adafruit.com/arduino- clock/overview](https://learn.adafruit.com/arduino-clock/overview)

</comment><comment><USER8> (2012)</comment>


IBM Kicks Tires of RIM's Enterprise Services Unit - <AUTHOR> http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/IBM-Kicks-Tires-of-RIMs-Enterprise-Services-Unit-75886.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Not only would this purchase restore the brand/service image, it is likely to pay for its own operation cost as there are many other enterprise customers who can't be bothered to moved away from BB BES service.</comment>


Intel x86 considered harmful [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf <comment><USER2> Setting aside the overused title, we should keep in mind that with the frightful complexity of today's leading architectures it is going to be a challenge to ensure secure operation, or as noted with the recent sky lake bug, correct operation.

One wonders if there is any hope for a commercially viable CPU architecture that is simple enough to audit.</comment>


U.S. losing its historic capacity for 'creative destruction' - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-fix-the-american-growth-machine-1539361093 <comment><USER2> Capacity for uncreative destruction remains undiminished.</comment>


Kite, an AI-powered Python programming tool raises $17mm - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/28/kite-raises-17-million-for-its-ai-powered-developer-environment/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to check it out, but their site ([https://www.kite.com/](https://www.kite.com/)) has been down since yesterday when news appeared.

<comment><USER2> Hi there! We've gotten a handful of people reporting trouble getting our website to load. We're trying to figure this out. Are you using any adblock plugin or is there anything else about your setup which may be unique? Do you get the error if you try it from a different internet connection?

If you're willing to work with us to debug this we'd appreciate it. You can reach us at email@example.com.

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I was on a previous version of Chrome when it was failing. I restarted to get 72.0.3626.81 and now it works. Could be related to that. Also, yes I use Ghostery, but that doesn't appear to causing an issue in the latest version of Chrome.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, we're looking into it!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Night Zombie Smartphones Took Down 911 - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-cyberattack-overwhelmed-the-911-system-1488554972?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> Same article without paywall: [http://www.todayevery.com/share/Syx3xYzv5e?hint=SB1258089275...](http://www.todayevery.com/share/Syx3xYzv5e?hint=SB12580892754490123402004582622002195546624?responsive=y/articles)

" _The bug uses Call now link parsed in Safari or other browsers to make the iPhone make repeated calls to 911. The tricks discovered by Mulliner included placing a telephone URL in an IFRAME, using a phone number as the target of a web page refresh or redirect, and altering the URL of an already-loaded page using JavaScript. "_ Source: [https://www.techworm.net/2016/11/ios-911-bug-forces- iphones-...](https://www.techworm.net/2016/11/ios-911-bug-forces-iphones- repeatedly-call-911.html)

Technical bug description: [https://archive.cert.uni- stuttgart.de/bugtraq/2009/06/msg001...](https://archive.cert.uni- stuttgart.de/bugtraq/2009/06/msg00190.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Loginwalled now, even bouncing via google from an incognito window.</comment>


Processing the Page Turn - <AUTHOR> http://www.cpushack.com/2017/09/30/processing-the-page-turn/ <comment><USER2> The BBC's "Computer Originated World" is another sophisticated example of this. One of them came up for sale a few years ago. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Originated_World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Originated_World) [http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/bbc1_85.htm](http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/bbc1_85.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> I must admit I do love these "when real men programmed with soldering irons"-type posts on HN.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but I wonder what these people are using their skills for today, in this age of apps.

<comment><USER5> Still selling overpriced broadcast hardware of course and trying as hard as they can to make sure software can't enter their market.

<comment><USER6> What a depressing and negative post.

I'm sure many of them moved on too designing even more impressive hardware and chipsets to power even more impressive computational feats.

Or they may have taken those skills into the software development field, creating complex and efficient software.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure many of them have done interesting things.

But the area I write software on in broadcast has a large number of these engineers holding back progress, most of whom are close to retirement age and now have heavy influence in standards bodies. For uncompressed video over IP for example they propose insanely tight standards such as packets must arrive within ~40us (that's us, not ms) of their allotted time, something very difficult to reach in software. (I will be talking about this at demuxed next week...)

They also insist that legacy artefacts from the analogue era must remain such as VBI stay for another generation to save around 1ms of latency (and of course their precious line buffers).

They are one reason the broadcast industry isn't able to move fast enough compared to the web. As I've explained to them, some of us will have to deal with the mess they have created in 40 years time.

<comment><USER7> > packets must arrive within ~40us (that's us, not ms) of their allotted time, > something very difficult to reach in software. (I will be talking about this > at demuxed next week...)

Maybe in Ethernet-land, but this is trivially achievable (actually exceeded by more than an order of magnitude) with off-the-shelf Infiniband gear that is available for peanuts these days. Actually it's close to two orders of magnitude if you want to shell out for the latest gear.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand#Performance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand#Performance)

<comment><USER4> But does it actually provide a real-time guarantee?

<comment><USER7> Yes. Adapter latency is guaranteed to be 0.5-5 usec depending on generation (later revisions are faster+lower latency). Switches add about 170 nsec per hop, plus whatever speed-of-light delays your cables add. 1 usec end-to-end is realistic for modern gear.

[http://www.hpcadvisorycouncil.com/events/2014/swiss- workshop...](http://www.hpcadvisorycouncil.com/events/2014/swiss- workshop/presos/Day_1/1_Mellanox.pdf)

Of course with IP-over-IB you also need to factor in whatever latency is added from your network stack, but Infiniband also supports RDMA so IB-aware applications can essentially bypass this for high-performance or hard-real- time usecases.

Basically, Infiniband takes the network out of the equation here. The bottleneck then becomes how precisely you can time the software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For more TV effects boards, and the full devices (where these boards were used) check the EEVblog teardowns: [https://youtu.be/d9lZ2-a1P-E](https://youtu.be/d9lZ2-a1P-E) [https://youtu.be/8ayBKoxX9Eg](https://youtu.be/8ayBKoxX9Eg)

</comment><comment><USER9> > in 1989 there wasn't a computer that could do this in near real time

Does this hold even if we consider the fastest computers, like Crays? A '89 Y-MP could do 2.7 GFLOPS or about 333 FLOPS per NTSC "pixel" in each NTSC field. Smaller computers of the era might be more economical for the required processing power, maybe one of the Thinking Machines SIMD MPPs?

<comment><USER10> The demoscener in me disagrees with the statement entirely. ;-)

From the article:

 _It requires 3 inputs, the first video, the second video being turned to, and a typically solid color /image that represents the back of the page_

This effect probably doesn't require that much processing power since all it needs to do is switch (up to) twice on each scanline, from the pixels of A to "back" to B; the switching points themselves can be calculated straightforwardly since they vary linearly. Making the "back" itself be another video doesn't add much extra processing. Here's a visual schematic of one frame halfway through the effect (- = first video, + = second video, b = back):

        ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
        ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
        </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---+++++++++++++++
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>---b++++++++++++++
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>---bbb++++++++++++
        ...                        ...
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>---bbbbbb+++++++++
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>---bbbbbbbb+++++++
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>---bbbbbbbbbb+++++
        </comment><comment></comment><comment>---bbbbbbbbbbbb+++
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

As a rough guess, it's probably doable in around a dozen extra calculations per scanline, which in NTSC is slightly less than 64us. Assuming (a very generous) 100 clock cycles for those calculations, and hardware which has a video mux so the software doesn't have to copy the pixels, that turns out to require... slightly less than 1.6MHz.

Of course, if your hardware doesn't have a mux and you need to copy the pixels between various buffers, then the requirement goes up around an order of magnitude... but probably still doable on something like a 33MHz 386.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, my thought reading the article was that an Amiga would probably be capable of this effect. I feel like I've seen it some old demos in fact.

<comment><USER12> The Video Toaster add-on board did this, but it was a custom piece of hardware. The video data never went through the CPU bus or memory.

<comment><USER13> And the Video Toaster was NTSC only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fascinating. Anyone providing workshops/courses for complete beginners? Would love to have my team (of UI designers) get to play around in this field for inspiration sake. If you provide this stuff, please ping me (details in my profile)

</comment><comment><USER15> Would love to see the processing chip for the star wipe!

</comment><comment><USER16> Bummer: I was expecting some reverse engineering of the specific algorithm used by the board.</comment>


Unwrapping Flowers With Processing - <AUTHOR> http://www.flong.com/blog/2010/rectified-flowers/

<comment><USER2> Beautiful. These would make great page banners.</comment>


Greedy Investors Looted Sears into Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> https://rantt.com/how-greedy-investors-looted-sears-into-bankruptcy/ <comment><USER2> For an excellent discussion of this, see Opening Arguments podcast episode 273: [https://openargs.com/oa273-sears-steve-mnuchin-the- producers...](https://openargs.com/oa273-sears-steve-mnuchin-the-producers/)</comment>


Why You Should Never Work for Free - <AUTHOR> http://blog.astroltd.com/post/45352894055/why-you-should-never-work-for-free-and-clever

<comment><USER2> "If you are good at something, never do it for free." -The Joker "The Dark Knight"</comment>


Fluent: A sparrow like UI for gmail - <AUTHOR> http://9to5google.com/2012/02/21/fluent-is-a-sparrow-like-ui-for-gmail-making-the-future-of-email-web-based-service-runs-on-all-browsers/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the site: <http://fluent.io/>

Demo is down at the moment (7:30 GMT)...lots of traffic.</comment>


Automation for dummies - <AUTHOR> http://www.skylup.com/automation-for-dummies <comment><USER2> I wanted to like this article but found it a little thin.

I would not say that "integration testing is a scam". Yes, you can get in trouble that way, but automated acceptance testing can catch the overwhelming majority of faults that actually turn up.</comment>


New Internet speed record blows past Google Fiber - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/10/technology/innovationnation/internet-speed-record/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6&iid=obnetwork

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is an interesting read, but I feel like the author paints the ISPs as knights in shining armor. I particularly have a problem with this line, "But Netflix (NFLX, Tech30) and other bandwidth-hungry applications are forcing broadband providers' hands. Video over the Internet is cramping networks and slowing connection speeds." From my vantage point, that unfairly places the blame on the content providers.</comment>


The Ugly Truth About Classic Games. They Are Terrible. - <AUTHOR> http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/09/ugly-truth-about-classic-games-they-are.html

<comment><USER2> Broadly, there are two types of games that are important enough to remember years (or decades) later: those that are ground-breaking, and those that are good. Ones that are only breakthroughs can stay remembered for their historical significance, even though new iterations improve upon their formulas and eventually surpass them. Games that are good for reasons beyond being a technical breakthrough are the ones more likely to describe as "timeless" or "classic." Ultima VI sounds like an example of the first: quite a breakthrough in terms of mechanics, interaction, and storytelling at the time, but surpassed by later innovations. Starcraft (the first) would probably be the iconic example of the second: everything about that game already existed (in fact, it was somewhat obsolete on launch for still being 2D), and there has been tons of innovation in RTSes since then, but it was simply executed so well that it was not only remembered but actively played for over a decade.

In practice, many games are both. For example, the original Half-Life was a breakthrough for FPS games in tightly integrating an engaging story into the experience. Integrating the story in such a way has become standard fare by modern FPS standards, but Half-Life remains playable and enjoyable today. The graphics are dated (and a little painful), but the gameplay is rock-solid, and the story is still significantly better than 95% of what's on the market, both in terms of what the story is and how it's told. Deus Ex also ages well. It's gameplay innovation of putting RPG elements in an FPS game is now quite standard in FPSes, but the plot makes the game fun to play. Its gameplay innovation isn't really _obsolete_ yet because there isn't something significantly better, but it is exceedingly common, and yet Deus Ex remains a better game than most other games that use it. I strongly suspect Portal will fall into this category as well--portals are cool, but when I think of Portal I think of GLaDOS and the Weighted Companion Cube. As a game, it is held up by way more than just a technical gimmick.

Unrelated: My personal favorite timeless classic is X-COM: UFO Defense (known as UFO: Enemy Unknown on the other side of the pond), which is apparently available now on steam, 17 years after its release.

<comment><USER3> > My personal favorite timeless classic is X-COM: UFO Defense

My, this game is so great. It's actually much better now, because you don't need to wait for 20 minutes at each turn in the later levels (yes, up to 20 minutes back when I played it on a 386SX 16Mhz with 2MB RAM).

<comment><USER4> In that vein, you might like the game UFO:Alien Invasion. It's a rather playable open source clone of X-COM.

Granted, they have a long way to go before they match up to the original and there are quite a few bugs if you get far enough along to disassemble UFOs, but I've been having fun playing it.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, I had given it a try a few years ago but it was really too unplayable. I'll have a look, thank you.

<comment><USER4> It has improved a _lot_ with the most recent version. Like I said, most of the rough edges are a ways into the game. Oh, and I strongly recommend using the alternate HUB in options, so you can keep track of your soldiers' health more easily.

It looks like there's code for a lot of cool stuff, but they have yet to enable most of it in the release version (there are a ton of other alien ships not yet enabled, for example). Some of their problems may be art-related.

But none of that should stop you from having a bit of fun. And I hope that some talented folks from here, especially artists, might become contributors. Because I want to play a polished version of UFO:AI someday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know it is all a matter of opinion, but as someone who dabbles in game development (I am an admin of the Dark Mists MUD, after all), here is my perspective:

If you look across the spectrum of oldstyle games, there are a few aspects off the top of my head that were responsible for our fun: challenge by control limits, challenge by time limits, and challenge by perfection (restarts, saves, etc).

Joust is a perfect example of challenge by control limits. You may accelerate left and right, you can bounce left and right, you can flap your wings to ascend or not flap to descend. This game is still fun for me because I understand and accept those limitations; they are almost the whole point of Joust. In many ways, Joust AI is predictable, so it is essential that you master the control. In other words, Joust is a game of skill!

The challenge of time limits is pretty obvious: You have X seconds to complete the level. In Joust, you have X seconds before eggs turn to soldiers or before the pterodactyl comes out (and he is killable if you have the skill). Time limits create stress; you want to beat the time limits. Some people rise to the challenge of completing things in the shortest time. Often, it is skill that allows you to surmount the challenge of time.

The challenge of perfection is provided by limiting restarts and save points. Some oldstyle games had plenty of restarts and saves, but they kept internal counters of your retries. They would reward you with certain kinds of endings, based on your retries. In Joust, you have X number of lives before you are forced to start all the way over from level 1.

Tetris is another great example of an oldstyle game that incorporates all three of these challenges.

One thing the game industry realized was that they could sell games to more people if the games required less skill, less challenge. Most games now practically walk you through them. What you do for fun is different now. Maybe you play to be an interactive (but aided) participant in a storyline. Maybe you play to be the first to finish the same progression everyone else can finish (WoW). Maybe you play because you want to see the latest pretty lights (aka advances in graphics) or have the stronger system, both of which are less about gaming and more about presentation.

Is it really that classic games are terrible or less fun than today's games? or is it more that the kinds of fun you can have with them are different from the kinds of fun you can have with today's games? As an oldschool gamer myself, I can tell you that I have gotten bored with some of the past approaches, but that does not make them suck. It just means that what I want has changed.

<comment><USER6> Good observation about different challenges.

Different people like different things. I like games that allows mastery of complex control scheme, and exercises reflex. It's great feeling, when you have complete control.

Some games are based on logical thinking, story, strategy, etc - in these games difficult controls is just distraction, and it makes experience worse. Control schemes evolved, so older games had worse than new games (also computers evolved, now it's easier to do good ui than 10 years ago).

For me one of the best games was "Icy Tower" - very simple concept, simple graphic, no story to speak of. It aged very well.

Doom - the same - the feeling of nicely timed double shotgun shot is very rewarding, it doesn't matter you are shooting to rectangles.

I've seen in some game design book the distinction between a game and a toy. Toy is when you are given some cool object to manipulate, and some constraints, and that's it. Game has rules and objectives, you must solve some problem.

You can make a game without a toy - when there is no pleasure apart from solving problems.

You can also make a toy without making a game - it will be boring after a while, because there will be no objective, no problems to solve.

But great game is when you have cool toy and interesting problem to solve with it - these games plays great even after years.

<comment><USER5> > Doom - the same - the feeling of nicely timed double shotgun shot is very > rewarding, it doesn't matter you are shooting to rectangles.

I always like how people bring up Doom as opposed to, say, Wolfenstein or one of the other 3D shooters of the time. What made Doom feel different with the controls was two subtle things: head bob and acceleration.

In the same vein, there were other side-scrollers that featured characters jumping around. The side-scrollers that added acceleration physics (Mario, Metroid) were the really popular ones.

I am trying to consider Castlevania as an exception to my acceleration theory, particularly the limited jumping movement in Castlevania 1 (similar to 8 Eyes, which allowed you to have neat two-player coop action but somehow was not as popular).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It all depends on what you consider a "classic" game. I can't play NES games anymore. But I still have fun with SNES games. I keep my SNES around to play games that I consider classic: Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Castlevania 4, Yoshi's Island, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6.

Also, if you like talking and reading about classic games, you should visit: <http://www.gamespite.net>

</comment><comment><USER8> I still find enjoyable the following:

Star Force (1984, Tehkan, Arcade game)

Black Tiger (Capcom, 1987, Arcade game (2x Z80), 7 megabit ROM set)

Ninja Kid II (UPL, 1987, Arcade game)

Legend of Hero Tonma (Irem, 1989, Arcade Game)

Parodius Da! - Shinwa kara Owarai e (Konami, 1990, Arcade game)

Super Mario World (Nintendo, 1990, SNES, 4 megabit ROM cartridge)

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (Konami, 1991, SNES, 8 megabit ROM cartridge)

Super Metroid (Nintendo, 1994, SNES, 24 megabit ROM cartridge)

Super Mario 64 (Nintendo, 1996, N64, 64 megabit ROM cartridge)

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997, Playstation, CD-ROM)

It is possible to play it in its original form, and also in the PC, using emulators.

</comment><comment><USER9> My favorite game of all time was made in 1998... 12 years later I still play it maybe once a year. Anyone else a big fan of Grim Fandango? I wish they would resurrect this game, or at least do an update to it like they did with Monkey Island.

<comment><USER10> I absolutely loved that game, but I lost the disc a long time ago :(

<comment><USER9> Me too, but I found a torrent for it. I then later found it in a software bin somewhere for like $4.99 a few years ago and bought it a second time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> By this metric "Citizen Kane" is dull, Beethoven's symphonies sound tired, and Phidias statues are so déjà vu. BTW did you read the Odyssey? Ha, they don't even have rail guns, stupid Achaeans!

I still love playing PacMan, etc. Actually I can't stand modern games at all out of the "casual" ones, because they're just too demanding, and I have no time to spend for this. I don't need any special involvement to play PacMan, Activision Enduro, or Intellivision AD&D. They're fun, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes, many classic games are terrible by today's standards. Even those of us who are old enough to have played these games when they came out, and who thoroughly enjoyed them, now consider them unplayable (or close to it), simply because many games have come out since that are better in every possible way (graphics, sound, playability, UI, ...). All in all, it's just a matter of expectations, and how they change over time.

Which makes me wonder, will today's games be considered unplayable 20 years from now? You'll explain to your (grand)child how revolutionary the Wii was when it came out, and they will just look at you funny, and throw away the controller in disgust after five minutes of playing on it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we are on a path to reach an asymptote, so changes won't be as drastic (though that may just be narrow-mindedness).

<comment><USER12> Think about movies. The earliest movies were terrible; just technology demonstrations, but they wowed audiences at the time. By the 1920s you were starting to get some films which are still worth watching today as films rather than as historical curiosities (Metropolis, The General). By the 1940s, truly great films were being produced (Citizen Kane, Casablanca) and many would argue it's been basically a plateau ever since then... a few truly great films and a large number of quite good ones produced every decade since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Donkey Kong (arcade version) is still the only game that, in my opinion serves as a true metric of core gaming skills (tenacity, patience, hand-eye, etc)

New games won't ever come close to that era in regards to sheer difficulty

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that is one of the hardest games ever made. Probably why the high-score is still contested. Side note - Billy Mitchell just lost the title back to his _Kind of Kong_ rival Steve Wiebe.

Excellent film too - for those who missed it: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/>

I'd place Robotron: 2084 (arcade) in that same category - seriously one of the hardest games ever made, mostly due to the dual control requiring a fair amount of ambidextrous skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> M.U.L.E.

Seriously, one of EA's first game releases from the early/mid 80's and I still play it on an atari800 emu.

Hell, Star Raiders and even Archon/ArhonII are pretty incredible still from that era.

<comment><USER15> Even better when you have friends with the same M.U.L.E nostalgia to play with. My favorite was monopolizing the market on food to make all the other players starve and pay me crap tons of money just to eat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The original Crystal Quest of the mid to late 80's on monochrome Macs and the early color version on the Mac II were great (but not MultiFinder compatible). Very addictive and fast/smooth which was a feat on the 8 and 16 MHz machines of the era. (Not to be confused with later rewrite which just wasn't the same)

Just the other day I was wondering about getting an old version of the OS running under SheepShaver to try it. I'll probably dust off an old machine instead.

<comment><USER17> There are also recent versions for iOS, Xbox 360 and Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't believe nobody mentioned nethack!

It's the most well-designed game I have seen to date.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but is it new or old? It's still under development...

Granted, it hasn't changed much in forever. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some scrolls to price-ID and I'm not sure if that creature over there respects the E-word...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think a lot of the classic games are classics because they're universal and appeal to human natures desire to solve puzzles and best challenges. Games like Tetris will never get old because they're simple, easy to pick up, but you can always outdo yourself. Most games now cost $50-$60, last 5-10 hrs, and then you're done (generalizing here). I think that's way worse than classic games that I'm still playing 15 years later.

</comment><comment><USER19> All creative endeavors must be judged inside a historical context. The movie "Citizen Kane" is terrible in terms of production value when compared to today, but in the historical context it was an amazing work of art that set the framework for many other movies to follow.

</comment><comment><USER20> Timeless classic games:

\- Super Mario 3

\- Super Mario World

\- Mega Man X

\- Baldur's Gate

Still 100% fun. Dunno how they manage it.

<comment><USER21> I got my apple 2 out of storage, and my 11 year old son got addicted to Apple Galaxian. Was one of my favorite games, I thought it was interesting that even though he played modern xbox and wii games he could get so wrapped up in a game that old. Comes down to solid game mechanics and playability I guess.

<comment><USER22> I got my 9 yo hooked on Lemonade Stand through a Apple 2 emulator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> one thing to recognize is that modern games generally have a lot of high-cost content. this is stuff that teams of 100+ people have to work on for 2+ years to make. so in that sense it would be really surprising if modern games _didn't_ appear substantially better to us than in the past, when teams were tiny by comparison

<comment><USER24> Excellent point. I remember it was a huge deal that Wing Commander 4 cost $14 million to make (mostly because it included a great deal of live-action video, the fad of the day). Now that's peanuts for a AAA title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm not tired of 2D side scrollers. I was so happy with the New Super Mario Brothers Wii. A trend I've noticed is that games who want to be modern but also 2D, simply render sprites in 3D but keep the game play 2D. (kirby 64 crystal shards, super smash brothers). It's great to see 2D gameplay is not dead.

</comment><comment><USER26> I tried to play Wolfenstein 3D the other day... No strafe. :(

It would still be a great game if it only had strafe.

</comment><comment><USER27> I still have a lot of fun with Thrust, Repton and Blockout, all of which have crappy graphics.

</comment><comment><USER28> The Infocom games are just as good as ever. And the graphics are still top- notch.

</comment><comment><USER29> My friends on steam started to comment about how many times they see the popup that I'm playing X-COM: UFO defense, so I had to stop.</comment>


Testing JavaScript performance on Windows XP is a crapshoot, at best - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/accuracy-of-javascript-time/

<comment><USER2> I don't get this.

Quote: _To better understand the results I was getting I built a little tool that runs a number of tests: Running an empty function, looping 10,000 times, querying and looping over a couple thousand divs, and finally looping over and modifying those divs. I ran all of these tests back-t0-back and constructed a histogram of the results._

What's the point of doing this? It's a microbenchmark, and it's pretty unclear what you're measuring. Why put so much effort in writing a blog post with graphs and the whole shebang just for this?

Even if you _did_ get constant results the results would be uninteresting. The results are either uninteresting and unreliable, or uninteresting and reliable. Shortcircuit logic keeps me from worrying about reliability.

And that the Windows GetTickCount/GetTime functions have a bad precision is common knowledge. No test is needed to establish that.

I'm pretty sure Resig is a smart guy, so I'm probably missing the point here. But I really don't understand what he's trying to accomplish here, or why the results are worth blogging about.

<comment><USER3> The point isn't to measure something specific at a rate - it's to measure _anything_ to see if the timer results continue to bin the results. It doesn't matter if it's a microbenchmark, or not, at that point.

The issue here is that Chrome and Firefox 3 are perfectly capable of producing accurate time results on Windows - so there obviously is a better solution out there. In the ticket in which the Firefox team [1] fixed the bug they detail the solutions that they used to fix it.

I would disagree that this is a knowledge issue here, as well. It certainly wasn't obvious to the WebKit, Firefox, and Chrome teams who were all happily testing on Windows XP using bum tests - and those are some pretty smart people (IMO).

In reply to your comment further down the thread: "Measure browser performance.... why? Why do you care how fast your browser is?"

Because it's better to have fast JavaScript than to have slow JavaScript? Any performance tests are better than no performance tests - but I will definitely agree that quality is a huge factor. For Dromaeo [2] I included a number of DOM tests that provide a more-real-world result. I'm working to try and provide more (especially related to CSS and rendering).

[1] <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=363258#c19> [2] <http://dromaeo.com/>

<comment><USER2> No. No. No. It doesn't matter. Not one bit. Exception: for FF maintainers, opera programmers. But ordinary javascript programmers never have to worry about a ms here or there.

Let me quote again from your blog post:

 _This was quite odd since the tests should've taken, at least, a couple milliseconds to run and getting consistent times of "0" is rather infeasible, especially for non-trivial code._

Conclusion 1: The code _is_ trivial! Why? it takes < 64ms to execute.

Conclusion 2: The actual time spent by the code doesn't matter, because you can't notice the difference between the reported 0ms and the actual 3ms or so that it takes to execute.

Next paragraph:

 _Second, I was running some performance tests, on Internet Explorer, in the SlickSpeed selector test suite and noticed the result times drastically fluctuating. When trying to figure out if changes that you've made are beneficial, or not, it's incredibly difficult to have the times constantly shifting by 15 - 60ms every page reload_

Why does it matter if loads 15ms to 60ms faster/slower? It's not noticeable. And once you see that the difference is roughly 15ms a quick google search will reveal it's a simple timer accuracy issue.

So why the graphs? Why test different browsers on different platforms when the outcome can't be anything else than the 60ms fluctuations you've already seen? But you knew the second you saw a single time reported as 0ms that that the time accuracy is not on the 1ms precision level, which means that they use GetTickCount or something which has a 15ms precision.

> It certainly wasn't obvious to the WebKit, Firefox, and Chrome teams who > were all happily testing on Windows XP using bum tests

If they used the tests they would've noticed the 0ms results. Therefore, they either thought 0ms means it's <15ms, which is fast enough, or they tested it primarily on other platforms.

I don't believe for a second that the WebKit, Firefox and Chrome teams have done ms comparisons with tests that don't report data on the ms level. 0ms results stand out, after all. They probably are pretty smart people, and they realized it doesn't matter.

> Any performance tests are better than no performance tests

Nope. Silly performance tests are worse than no performance tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I'm not a Javascript coder, but you use accurate tick counts for performance profiling, not the coarse-grained time of day clock.

I thought everyone knew that?

<comment><USER5> I don't know of a way to access those from browser JavaScript though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Javascript benchmarking: a precise estimate of a wild ass guess.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have to wonder if part of the problem is that he's running Windows in a VM. VMs are notorious for their odd timing behaviour. He's running the comparison tests in a native installation of OSX, not in a VM.

<comment><USER7> From the article:

 _I was worried that these results were from the virtual machine (I also loaded up Parallels but saw similar results to running VMware) so I just loaded Windows XP proper: Nope, the results are the same as using the VM._</comment></comment>


Don't Have a College Degree? Your Chances for Unemployment Have Just Doubled - <AUTHOR> http://jobplotter.com/blog/education-affects-unemployment/

<comment><USER2> How did that work out for Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg?

Anyway, it's a drag at any level of education to not have a job, but there are plenty of unemployed people even with postgraduate degrees. More worrisome, perhaps, is that degrees are not good proxies for good performance on the job,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165474>

so instead any smart employer newly hiring a job applicant will be giving that job applicant a work-sample test. It's possible for young people with a computer science degree to fail to get past a coding test for a programming job, so even some of the most desired college degrees are not a guarantee of employment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice try, overpriced US universities and for-profit degree mills.</comment>


How does the Internet work? - <AUTHOR> http://hwi.uni.be/hwi_uk.html <comment><USER2> This is awesome!

To the folks complaining about Flash, you don't have a right to view it, someone took the time to build it and it was easiest for them to use flash, the flash is your problem, not the author's.

To the creators - thank you! So few people have any understanding about how the internet works and things like this are wonderful ways for them to mindlessly explore it. As an aside it would be awesome if you could do the same thing for the web too and explain DNS and web servers too.

<comment><USER3> I liked it, my only issue is I think it would be more clear to have an icon for routers vs using a computer for everything.

<comment><USER4> I rather like it this way. Routers are just computers, and in fact, any computer could act as a router. If you have a machine connected to your phone for Internet access and to your home network for printing, then it's a router, so this isn't even uncommon.

<comment><USER5> I think it's useful to make the distinction because general-purpose computers do not contain ASICs, while for example core and provider edge routers tend to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not sure if this is really appropriate, it's only showing a very small part of "Internet" namely TCP/IP and a little bit of routing.

Once you delve into the more low-level stuff (BGP, routing, AS, peerings, RIPE and all that kind of stuff) you get to know that there is soooo much more advanced, deeply technical stuff going on. It's just so much more then tcp/ip, dns and http.. You just typically never have to care about that kind of stuff if you don't happen to work in that area.

<comment><USER7> True, but BGP, AS, etc are largely there to deal with issues that come from the separate networks we've built the internet out of not a fundamental need, if that makes any sense. Basically we /could/ build an internet without BGP, AS's, and a lot of the protocols that deal with interconnecting regional networks, but TCP/IP, DNS, and HTTP are the basic building blocks of the internet as we know it.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but as you said: The internet is not only TCP/IP. I'd expect that in a link titled "How does the Internet work?". The link doesn't come close to how the internet _really_ works, in my opinion. The link merely shows how my LAN works.

<comment><USER7> ARP is missing for a truer match to LANs. It's a decent primer on the high level details of how the internet works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The internet works better when content exists in resources with URLs, and not bound inside clunky proprietary data formats like Flash.

<comment><USER9> Not a fan of Flash either, but the Internet is not the Web.

You say "The Internet works better" without formats like Flash. To my knowledge the Internet does not discriminate between proprietary and non- proprietary data fromats of its content whereas the basic functions of the Web do (URLs, hyperlinks,...).

<comment><USER10> Yes, but the Web is in the Internet. What's in flash in Web is in flash in Internet, and is often annoying.

<comment><USER11> The Web is an application running on the Internet. Flash is a plugin of the Web (via the browser).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this a recent movie or is it 10 years old ? Not saying that in a negative way! It's well done..

</comment><comment><USER13> I took a networking course in university, taught by a professor who has never touched a router in his life. But it wasn't that bad of a course--it was more of a theory and philosophy of networking course--so if you were expecting to be able to come out of the course knowing how to configure a router, you were probably in the wrong place.

There was one important thing I learned in the course though, and it forever changed how I see the Internet. I see the internet now as an abstraction, or an abstract communications network. It was created so that device or person A could communicated with person or device E, without concern of what networking technologies exist between A and E.

So take something like:

A ---- (PSTN) ----> B ---- (Microwave) ----> C ---- (Ethernet) ----> D ---- (Cable) ----> E

And the Internet does this:

A ---- (Internet) ----> E

The Internet makes end-to-end communication possible, without having to worry about the underlining network technology.

<comment><USER14> That is very important thing about internet. Anything that can carry packets of data can potentially carry internet, and anything that can packaged into packets of data can be carried on internet all over the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I can see not including routing and peering among AS's, DNS is pretty fundamental to the the Internet these days. I would consider any explanation that doesn't mention it as pretty lacking.

CDN use has exploded and, from a 30,000 ft view, the Web tends to look a lot like an overlay network on DNS.

</comment><comment> king-coconut Internet didn't work, all I got was a Lego brick with a X on it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love how they describe using the telephone or modem. How old is this

</comment><comment><USER17> The connection speed test is also far too small, so repeating the test gives vastly too small, and probably doesn't ramp TCP up enough on most connections.

<comment><USER18> This was written for the era of dial-up modems and ISDN, so 490KB would have been an OK test (you didn't want dial-up users to have to wait very long).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'll be honest, I was really hoping in the middle of looking through this that it was going to burst into a game of Where in The World Is Carmen Sandiego.....</comment>


Using WebP to Reduce Native iOS App Size - <AUTHOR> http://www.ioncannon.net/programming/1483/using-webp-to-reduce-native-ios-app-size/ <comment><USER2> The thumbnail of the eggshell (but not the blowup) was quite pixelated for me. Chrome 16, OS X.

[http://www.ioncannon.net/wp- content/uploads/2011/06/test2-30...](http://www.ioncannon.net/wp- content/uploads/2011/06/test2-300x199.webp) (actual thumbnail)

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/59605/Screen%20Shot%202012-02-04%20a...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/59605/Screen%20Shot%202012-02-04%20at%206.17.22%20PM.png) (how it rendered in Chrome)

Is it Chrome-related or did the OP compress with bad settings?

As for the TestWebP iOS lib itself, it takes 25 LOC to load an image, which takes 1 LOC with system libraries. Somebody needs to go in and put a category on UIImage to do the heavy lifting.

I just ran a grep across about 15 iOS apps I develop and the average size of art assets is about 1MB. So this is a neat hack, and I am sure there are apps out there with 300MB in art assets that could benefit from it. But for the typical app, not worth the effort.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat. I don't know if I'd ever use this, but, its a cool hack.

Random thoughts off the top of my head, re: making it faster:

\- Can you can decode into an ARGB buffer, instead of an RGBA buffer? iOS uses ARGB as its native bitmap format, so, there will probably be a bit of a speed bump if you can avoid shuffling bits around as much.

\- I wonder if using CGDataProviderCreateWithCFData() and passing in a data blob created with CFDataCreateWithBytesNoCopy() to see if any copying bytes around can be reduced.

\- Maybe cache CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB() somewhere (either just make it static, or in NSThread's threadDictionary). Release on memory warnings and such.

\- UIImage does a bunch of caching internally. You could mimic it and cache images that have been created, to make it really cheap to re-query for an image/reuse an already-existing image. Again, release on memory warnings and such.

</comment><comment><USER4> Could this sort of technique also be done for shrinking caches sizes of apps that are photo-download intensive? I don't know if the size tradeoff is worth the performance hit to reencode files as they're downloaded and cached.</comment>


As gender diversity battles roil Silicon Valley, Apple puts just 1 woman onstage - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16297342/apple-keynote-2017-diversity-sexism <comment><USER2> I'm a little annoyed as well. There wasn't a single half-German, half- Filipino, green-eyed, left-handed, veteran (hGhFGeLhV) on stage at all. We had zero minutes of representation.

Does Apple even care about us hGhFGeLhVs?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe product comes first.</comment></comment>


Uber Reverts Back to Surge Pricing in New York After One Day - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2012/11/uber-reverts-back-to-surge-pricing-after-one-day/ <comment><USER2> In a disaster situation if there is no elasticity between price and supply then price gouging laws (social or legal) make a lot of sense. For example, if there's a fixed amount of water around regardless of price people shouldn't be able to raise prices.

But in this case there IS elasticity between price and supply, right? Uber is claiming that they'll deliver better service by increasing prices, because supply will increase proportionally. Thus, a functioning economy.

AND Uber is waiving 100% of their fees! Price gouging? Really?

(Side note: NYC would have more capacity for handing this emergency had they not given an artificial monopoly to cab companies over the last century, vis- a-vis medallions. I realize we can't change the past. Let's just be aware of it so we can learn how to improve.)

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but your first sentence seems completely illogical.

If there is a fixed supply of water, what better mechanism than price exists to efficiently determine the best use of that water? Not allowing people to raise prices means you end up with wildly inefficient allocation of resources (i.e. first guy in line says, "Man, there's a remote chance this flooding lasts for 2 weeks. Water is the same price it was pre-hurricane? I'll take all you've got.")

Similarly, not allowing people to raise prices actually decreases supply. If you remember post-Katrina, there were numerous "anti-price gouging" orders enacted. The result? All the people who were willing to drive a truck full of generators (and plywood, and water, etc. etc.) 1000 miles to make a few bucks/hundred bucks profit per unit now had no incentive to do so. And so they didn't. And the people of New Orleans suffered needlessly.

<comment><USER4> The correct response to a fixed supply of water is rationing, not either fixed or floating prices. Because without water you die, or catch diseases from poor substitutes.

With a fixed price, whoever comes in first gets the most water; laggards die. With a floating price, whoever has the most money gets the most water; poor people die. Neither of these is morally superior. IMO.

<comment><USER5> I suspect water could be considered a special case, since it is so immediately necessary.

What if, instead, we were talking about bread? Assuming that rich people are fairly rare, then raising the price of bread high enough to be expensive but not _so_ high that people cannot pull enough cash out of their pocket to pay for it, then the effect seems to me like it should be an approximation of a ration.

Clearly if Donald Trump gets to the store first and buys all the bread then nobody else would have any, but he could do that no matter the price. So long as the price is painful _but feasible_ for anyone to afford, everything should work out more or less okay.

If the price is _so_ high that nobody but Donald Trump can afford the bare minimum necessary, then there is certainly an issue, but I suspect raising prices that high would not be very effective.

<comment><USER6> But water is not really a special case, though.

Tap water is nearly free and bottled water is >$1/gal. so the markup during a disaster is >100x.

<comment><USER5> I only consider water a (potential) special case because it is one of the few things that, in the event that it _really_ is unavailable, people will start dropping dead pretty quick.

Bread, fuel, generators, etc... these are all things we can afford to be relatively dismissive of and just say that price caps are unneeded/bad. That may also be the case with water, but I don't feel comfortable saying that with my limited knowledge.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough. My point is we balk at a 200% increase in the price of gasoline but won't blink at a 100000% increase in the price of water.

Also consider that @ $1 per 16oz bottle you are paying $8/gal for essentially tapwater that was bottled and driven in from out of state. But try to sell a gallon of gas for $5 and you are some kind of monster...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good! Living in NYC boroughs there are little/no taxis, so we have to rely on car services. Since Sandy they are all consistently booked solid (provided you can even get them on the phone: most are "busy" forever).

Yet, with Uber dynamic pricing, I have been able to get a car when needed. Yes, I paid more - but at least I got a car that I wasn't going to get otherwise. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER8> Amazing how people switch their principals regarding free markets when it suits them. Especially rich people.

When consumer protection laws are drawn up, they will be the "end of America". When financial institutions have bankrupted themselves, they "need to be protected". It's "progress" to prevent people from bringing food onto private property so that you can massively overcharge them for unhealthy foods. It's "gouging" to allow others to charge more when demand far exceeds supply in an emergency.

I agree that leaning solely on price in all circumstances is a poor way to balance supply and demand. And I don't want anyone to forget how this works when social sacrifices are demanded for "American success" in the future.

<comment><USER9> It is interesting how your first two paragraphs don't connect with your third.

Shouldn't the right reaction against the hypocracy be to have firm and simple principles, like relying on price as a signal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think they've done the right thing; you need a way to balance supply and demand. This is just one way.

You can still hail a cab the old way, right?

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's my question, gas stations are closing here in NJ when running out of gas. Why aren't they jacking up the price to astronomical rates? There are lines for miles to the gas stations that have electricity. Is this a failure of capitalism in the face of human compassion or what?

<comment><USER12> _Is this a failure of capitalism_

No, not at all. All of the gas is in the hands of people who bought it. The supple constraints are not problems of incentives, they are problems of physics. Roads are down, plant is not working, traffic, security, etc.

The reason anti-gouging laws exist is because jacking up prices has no benefit. It just keeps the poor people from having access to resources. 10 gallons of gas to a rich guy is not making the country or the economy better off, than if the gas is given to a poor/normal person, the day after a hurricane/earthquake, etc.

The Feds are going to be on the Hook for $6-7B to fix NY and that's going to be paid by everyone in the country. Most people aren't going to benefit from that, except for the local people in NYC. But we do that as a country to make sure all of the right incentives are in place over the long run, not just opportunistically in the short run.

<comment><USER13> The idea that "jacking up prices" has no constructive purpose is strictly incorrect . When you fix prices on gas, and the relative value of gas shoots up, gas gets allocated to the people whose time is least valuable. When you allow gas prices to float in the same situation, gas gets allocated to the people whose time is most valuable.

Neither allocation is optimal; it is indeed unfair for all the gas to go to investment bankers. But that doesn't make it efficient or even fair for all the gas to instead go to the people who can get to the station earliest and wait in lines the longest.

Equally importantly, when you fix prices instead of allowing them to float, you enable hoarding. People get gas who don't need the gas, because they're risk averse and overestimate the likelihood that they'll use up what they already have. So gas quickly runs out everywhere. If you leave the fixed price in place for long, eventually all the value that would have been captured by the station owners instead gets captured by the grey market (and the deadweight losses involved in transferring gas to that grey market).

It's obviously not good social policy to allow gas station owners to charge $100/gallon for gas during a disaster. But it also seems pretty silly for prices to be capped at 10% of the pre-disaster spot price. Gas could easily float up to $10, $15/gallon (ie: the price of gas in Europe), motivate stations to find creative ways to supply that suddenly lucrative market, dampen the consumer urge to fill their tanks to 100%, and not bankrupt anyone (Americans famously overestimate the impact of gas prices on their daily lives).

<comment><USER12> No, Not really. What's strictly incorrect are naive assumptions that the standard behavioural assumptions of "economics" hold in a disaster. The basics: truth telling, promise keeping, etc. The purpose of anti-gouging laws is a rational anticipation of Opportunism.

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

Opportunism is not dealt with by economics (assumed != existent), except obliquely. It is the providence of political economy, law and economics, and other areas that focus on the political Institutions that allow "rational- choice" econonmics to actually be logically rational. Some of these ideas are variants of: "I've got your back" in a disaster, so you can trust people to do the right thing, to avoid lord-of-the-flies.

While I appreciate your analysis, its important to keep an eye on the sandbox in which the black box sits. With 3m people without power, and with people losing their homes, no electricity, no cell etc, its more valuable to society to avoid over-generalizations of "rich people" are more important than "poor people" when all of the ATMs are broken, the surveilance cameras don't work, and the police stations are flooded, etc.

Thats just common sense and street smarts, really. Its not really a political or economic argument in the traditional sense (especially the partisan sense). Its more of a point about when the shit hits the fan, you preserve the fabric of society first. Sort of like the 80/20 rule. Having a "basically functional" market is better than having a "perfectly functioning" one but especially is better than having the market looted or burned down (etc). That being said, hording and etc are equally anti-social. Often times what you see is that the quantities will be limited (to say, 8-10 gallons of gas, etc). For this very reason. Those are fair and good points to raise.

<comment><USER13> There are lines miles long for gas. People do hoard in disasters. Gas in NY metro simply is more valuable now; for instance, as a substitute for the electric grid. Your reply is nonresponsive.

<comment><USER12> _Gas in NY metro simply is more valuable now_

The amount you are willing to bid on something under duress is not the way to construct a proper-functiong market. Its important to seperate the short-term from the long-term, in this regards. In certain cases, its rational to obviate the market, into hierachy. see, for example: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-up_problem> . This is precisely why firms are distinct from N-dimensional outsourcing arrangements, even under free- market capitalism, under ideal conditions.

So you can attack the problem from perfect conditions or imperfect ones. You may or may not like anti-gouging laws, but an plain vanilla analyis using under-graduate economics is naive to several critical factors.

<comment><USER13> I don't think you read my original comment. I think you skimmed it, concluded that I was arguing for abolition of all price caps to allow "free market capitalism" to solve all our problems, and wrote a philosophical response.

In fact, I don't believe we should abolish all price caps. I simply think the cap we've chosen is foolishly low. We have empirical evidence that a dense western urban area can survive on prices >300% higher than what they are in NYC now, and yet we've capped price increases at 10%. Fixing prices on a good whose intrinsic value is rapidly increasing, as gasoline's value clearly is in NYC, amounts to declaring a state-managed fire sale on gasoline. How can that possibly be a sensible response to a crisis of scarcity?

If you want to think about it from the other direction: price fluctuations in the gas market of 10% or more are not altogether uncommon, and empirically they do little to alter people's behavior. The 10% cap therefore amounts to a declaration that the market will not be allowed to alter people's behavior, despite the obvious fact that people are not behaving optimally --- and you can look at any gas station near NYC to verify that.

Finally, I just think you made a very flimsy argument upthread: that "jacking up prices", as you put it, serves no objective purpose. Well, no. Not true. At all. The knowledge that rising prices aren't an intrinsically bad thing will help in all sorts of situations where we have actual judgements to make in our lives.

<comment><USER12> No, the arguments are orthogonal. As such, getting into a point-by-point is of questionable merit. Its not that I don't understand what you are saying. To put it another way, economics is based on the premise of risk, not uncertainty. The two are significantly different. The purpose of political economy (ie, the orthogonal approach) is to box uncertainty and turn it into risk for a sub-space of actions. We can then set up markets to work efficienty in that sub-space where risk is a viable operating assumption. In a disaster situation, what was previously part of the subspace risk gets thrown back to uncertainty. In this case, if market-trading is suspended it is not-per-se evidence that "markets are broken". Its just evidence that they are misplaced for the time being. This may or may not make sense, at first glance. But it makes alot of sense when you think about it. There are lots of times when markets are not the best way to allocate goods (even in a market economy -- that is why we have firms). Unless you are comfortable with that idea, the rest of what I'm saying probably won't make sense in general.

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry, but to be honest, no, this doesn't make much more sense to me after rereading.

I'm sure there are elements of macroeconomics that don't apply in disasters, but all I'm talking about is the law of supply and demand, and how a 10% cap on gasoline price increases causes problems with it. I feel like basic supply and demand remains meaningful the day after a hurricane.

<comment><USER12> The distortions that follow from price-gouging are (arguably) worse that the distortions that follow from making it illegal. Probaly in orders of magnitude. Thats the general point.

The logical flow of this argument, with respect to the HN thread is as follows:

1) Opportunistim is predictable and adverse, so it creates distortions, as resources are allocated _ex-ante_ to mitigate its impact.

2) Laws exist to minimize opportunistic behaviour, to minimize the distrotions and resources allocated to minimizing its impact.

3) Per (2), the existence of these laws is incrementally efficient.

4) Anti-gouging rules (2) when observed empirically, are not evidence that the market is broken.

5) Rather, these laws are on the books to make markets work better. Directionally.

[(4) was the original claim, starting this sub-thread]

You're most interested in "correctly" specifying the parametric details of (4). But while this is a valid line of inquiry, its not central to my larger point (5). Good arguments exist that the less change there is the better. Also, the precision of the tools normally used begins to decline.

The analytical toolkit one needs take the debate further is beyond a basic (textbook) understanding of supply and demand. While "supply and demand remains meaningful", it does so in a certain place, under certain contraints and assumptions. All of which are now <edge case> variants. The pre-sumption of equilibrium becomes questionable, externalities dominant, etc.

To wit: The edge case of supply and demand is, classicaly, the boundary of the firm. Inside the firm, supply and demand does not apply. Resources are allocated more efficiently by fiat than by negotiation.

So, in the same way that internalizing resource allocation into a firm is not a problem during the normal course for firms, its not per-se problematic to temporarily suspend or modify market trading terms in an emergency, and even to do so under the (correct) rationale of "efficiency".

<comment><USER13> I am just not smart enough to understand the argument you're making here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While we're on the subject... Isn't it amazing what kind of rapid and effective response you get when the people in trouble are among the richest in the country (NYC/NJ coast) versus the poorest in the country (New Orleans)?

I'm not complaining. I'm back in my Manhattan office two days after a truly epic disaster. I rode the train into work this morning, along the coast of Long Island Sound no less. It took ~10 minutes longer than usual, but on the whole the recovery is phenomenally impressive.

<comment><USER15> Without getting into politics (too much)... there are a lot of reasons for different responses between this hurricane and Katrina. Parts of New Orleans being below sea level probably matters a lot. Plus, FEMA was pretty clearly mismanaged then and doesn't seem to be now. I think those two factors probably account for more of the variation than the wealth of the inhabitants does, and I'm sure that I'm unaware of other important differences.

edit: "sea level" should read "water level"

<comment><USER9> Also New York is richer partly because it is better managed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ... if prices don't go up, what's the incentive for gasoline delivery companies to make the extra effort to bring resources to a disaster-torn city?

<comment><USER17> It seems to me that humans, as a group, act compassionately during crisis. So compassion, or good marketing if you are a cold blooded corp. type, is a good reason to truck more in. FEMA can also, I'm sure, force a commercial concern to do it. They have lots of that scary tinfoil hat power.

Many comments in here seem to look at this problem so coldly and rationally. Anti-gouging has a deep moral component. If some of us are not trying to get one over on others of us then you can maintain a stronger community during a crisis.

If Bob's gas starts charging $15 for a gallon of gas in a crisis it will cause friction in the community between those who can afford vs. those you cannot and with the employees and owner of the gauging station.

We have also, well enough of us that laws were passed, decided as a society that its just immoral/unacceptable behavior.

Capitalism is great. It doesn't need to deal with this corner condition well to be a successful system.

<comment><USER18> Disasters are not a corner condition. Limited resources and unlimited wants is a permanent condition. Disasters just tweak the relative values of these parameters, which are reflected in prices. As always, the system adapts and re-routes the resources to where they're needed most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is all moot any ways. Town cars are allowed to pick up any passengers during the crisis. Effectively unleashing a whole lot more supply. As well town cars and yellow cabs are now allowed to pick up multiple passengers going to different locations while continuing to run the first passengers meter. I don't agree with this policy at all. You try getting an Uber car on a Saturday night it's not "surge pricing" when something goes up 3x times, it's just disgusting even more so during the current situation.

<comment><USER20> I don't see how the current situation can be called "disgusting" since Uber isn't making any money off of the current situation. (I'm assuming that you mean it's disgusting that they are using an emergency to make lots of money)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems like the main alternative to increasing prices is `it's not sustainable for us to run at all until this is cleaned up'.

Is that a suitable alternative?

<comment><USER8> If I were them, I would sink some of that massive VC into paying the difference as marketing. Keep prices stable, but ration rides based on how often people have used uber. ie, attract as many possible new customers.

<comment><USER22> We're talking $100 000 a day. That's quite a marketing budget!

<comment><USER8> No, substantive marketing campaigns are orders of magnitude more. And, it depends on how many new customers they get and how long drivers will cost extra. The just raised $50 mil, and the subways will be back in a week, two tops... do the math. It isn't every day you can buy happy new customers and good press, and on the days you can it usually costs more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4725789></comment>


Ask HN: what's the site that provides a better UI to hiring threads? - <AUTHOR>

I guess the question says it all. I seem to recall a site that provided a nice UI to browser HN hiring threads, but I can't find it anymore… <comment><AUTHOR> Oh, @nathancahill just told me on Twitter. It's <http://hnhiring.me/>

Just leaving this here in case it helps somebody else!</comment>


Robert A. Caro: "The Power Broker" 40 Years Later - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/books/review/the-power-broker-40-years-later.html <comment><USER2> I'm making my way through Caro's monumental multi-volume LBJ documentary _The Years of Lyndon Johnson_ , and it's just fantastic. Highly recommended if you're at all interested in midcentury America.

</comment><comment><USER3> I plowed through the 66 hour audiobook version of this after failing to get through the paper copy. It's a completely fascinating book about all the ways Robert Moses contrived to leverage power to gain more power and ultimately to reshape the entire New York City area to his will. Thankfully Jane Jacobs and many others pushed back before he could destroy Manhattan completely, but his legacy in terms of automobile-dependence, racially segregated neighborhoods, inadequate mass-transit and to be fair, some nice parks, will live on for decades.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The seventh paragraph must be the longest I've ever read in the _Times_.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish this would come out in an ebook format. The physical copy is a doorstop.

</comment><comment><USER5> John Siracusa has recommended this book on a number of occasions.</comment>


The first asteroid we've seen from outside our Solar System looks weird - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/11/20/16679890/interstellar-asteroid-oumuamua-pan-starrs-solar-system <comment><USER2> Rama</comment>


Ask HN: Ranking algorithm ... - <AUTHOR>

I have a question about the ranking algorithm.  I thought that if two items had an equal number of points, the newer item would be higher, because the rank was points over an exponential of age.
However: http://www.penzba.co.uk/RankingQuestion.png
Here are three items on 2 points, but the ages are definitely not monotonic.
I've been having trouble trying to read the source - I'm not fluent with Lisp at all, and I don't really have the time to invest at this stage, so I was wondering if anyone had a quick definitive answer.
If not, sorry to take your time. <comment><USER2> There's a score penalty attached to linkless posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! Makes sense - thank you.

<comment><USER3> Also note that there is a bit of rounding going on.

So although they both read "2 hours" one might be 125 minutes and the other 175 minutes.

I'm sure in your case you already know the time order, but for others with the same question because of the rounding it can also look weird.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why I referred to the monotonic principle. The specific examples I chose showed that it chouldn't be a rounding effect.

Still, good observation - thanks.

Got a disappointing return on the poll, but I guess that's HN. Very hit'n'miss as to whether things get seen.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=957715>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

<http://www.penzba.co.uk/RankingQuestion.png></comment>


Ask HN: Bonjour-like Service Discovery on Android? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to build a simple proximity based multiplayer game across devices as a fun side project.
I found Bonjour for iOS & Avahi for Linux to work without hiccup for transferring data. Android has been a nightmare. I'm trying to encompass all devices I own (which includes a Gingerbread device) and have tried the following options -
1) Android's NSD Manager - Works 4.1+, quite slow and pronounced very buggy by most devs. Crashes quite often in my experience.
2) Google's Nearby Connections API (https://developers.google.com/nearby/) - Works 4.1+, but communicates only with Android / iOS - can't get it to communicate with the laptop.
3) jmDNS - Works 2.1+, but still buggy and slower than Bonjour speeds. Also, looks like the project has been abandoned so am further worried about bug fixes. This is what I am currently using.
Does anyone have suggestions for better mDNS service implementations that can give Bonjour-like performance on Android devices? <comment><USER2> I would look into AllJoyn. I've been playing with it for an IoT application, but haven't attempted to build an Android client yet.

[https://allseenalliance.org/framework](https://allseenalliance.org/framework)</comment>


Inside Walt Mossberg's gadget museum - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/12/15779450/walt-mossberg-original-iphone-ibm-thinkpad-amazon-kindle-video <comment><AUTHOR> I am so happy that Walt Mossberg still has the Creative Nomad II mp3 player (to the right of the Pilot). I played a part in creating it. :-)</comment>