Ask HN: Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately? - <AUTHOR> I found that sometimes the little tiny changes have the biggest improvement in your work or life. For example yesterday I installed "Tab Mix" which forces FF to open external links in a new tab and take you there. +3 for me.<p>What tiny tools, hacks, changes do you know off that improved your work or life significantly? <comment><USER2> Every time I learn something about Emacs or incorporate someone's nifty elisp code, it pays off and keeps paying.

Latest:

      ; CSS color values colored by themselves
      ; http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_html.html

      (defvar hexcolour-keywords
        '(("#[abcdef[:digit:]]\\{6\\}"
           (0 (put-text-property
               (match-beginning 0)
               (match-end 0)
               'face (list :background
                           (match-string-no-properties 0)))))))

      (defun hexcolour-add-to-font-lock ()
        (font-lock-add-keywords nil hexcolour-keywords))

      (add-hook 'css-mode-hook 'hexcolour-add-to-font-lock)

<comment><USER3> Until you pick one that has the background colour by accident!

Be weird to see that floating semicolon in there.

<comment><USER2> The #rrggbb text is still displayed with normal text color. So it will never look like a floating semicolon. Try it. It is not even a problem when #rrggbb color is same as the foreground, as I have (global-hl-line-mode 1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Setting all the Step-Over and Step-Into shortcut keys to be the same in eclipse, Xcode as well as the Visual Studios

2\. Going through my life-todo list and just getting rid of a lot of stuff that I am not going to ever do

3\. Deciding that instead of the vague 3-4 foreign languages I wanted to learn in my life, I will just pick one and stick with it

4\. Generally cleaning out the past - getting rid of peoples numbers I will never call, throwing away all old bank statements etc

5\. Having a series of pictures of the concepts and figures that motivate me directly above my desk. In case you are curious they are all from movies (I have Mr. Glass, the Lina Leandersson Eli, Wei Tang as Wong Chia Chi, Omar Little, Alfie)

6\. Using TheLastRipper with Winamp to play my songs, such that I discover new songs, but get to save those I like

7\. Using XMarks

8\. Synchronising my work across both of my computers (laptop, desktop) using Dropbox

9\. Being sure to read every single night before I go to bed

</comment><comment><USER5> Having someone else do my laundry for about a dollar a pound. No more buying detergent, waiting around, having to find change if you don't have your own washer/dryer, loading/unloading, folding, etc.

<comment><USER6> I wish this kind of service was available in the UK. It doesn't seem to be a popular thing to offer, at least not in my town.

<comment><USER7> Service wash at a laundrette. They're still reasonably commonplace I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Exercise. Seriously, it keeps you healthy, gives time to think (away from a computer) and keeps your mind fresh.

<comment><USER9> I recently started running, it's awesome!

<comment><USER10> Running is rubbish, slow and boring, and you never get anywhere exciting. Try cycling, you can actually go places, have a great time, and see a lot of the world around you.

Running if for people to cheap to buy a bike:)

<comment><USER11> I agree, although the way you make your argument makes you sound like a fanboi.

The advantage of cycling is that you get tired/bored when you are 30 miles away from your house. When I run, I get bored after a block, and can just walk home :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Screen: started using it because of this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848821>

Now I really cannot imagine working without it. The ability to detach and re- attach to named sessions is fan-tas-tic. Add the ability to run multiple named processes within each session and it makes working on multiple tasks during the day really pleasant. You can switch tasks and simply drop right back to the exact point you were working on whenever you continue.

</comment><comment><USER13> In gVim

au WinLeave * set nocursorline nocursorcolumn

au WinEnter * set cursorline cursorcolumn

Everything <http://www.voidtools.com/> for searching files fast in Windows ( it makes use of the USN journal so doesn't need reindexing)

Reinteract <http://www.reinteract.org/trac/> for hacking Python code. It can re-evaluate from where you made changes, so it doesn't run the whole program, just from where you changed something, I wish I could do something like this with IPython.

Xrefresh XRefresh can refresh browser as you modify source files <http://code.google.com/p/xrefresh/>

SharpKeys for remapping caps-lock to esc. <http://www.randyrants.com/sharpkeys/>

oh and do watch these in succession to feel better.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_every...](http://www.ted.com/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_everything.html)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/john_lloyd_inventories_the_invisibl...](http://www.ted.com/talks/john_lloyd_inventories_the_invisible.html)

<http://www.whatthebleep.com/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Keeping a notepad by me at all times (I use a pencil sketch pad). Great for jotting down ideas, scratch area, doodle, design, plan. End of day, I quickly write down what I want to get done the next day. Productivity++

<comment><USER15> I use graph paper, I can't concentrate without something to write on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> QuickSilver (<http://www.blacktree.com/>) -- Lets you do just about anything by just typing it on a Mac. For example, to email a document to a friend, I start typing the name of the document. It shows up, so I hit tab and type "email", hit tab, and type my friend's name and hit enter. That composes an email with the attachment and all I have to do is hit send.

<comment><USER17> I also use Quicksilver pretty extensively. It drives me nuts whenever I work on another person's Mac, hit cmd-space and spotlight pops up.

Growl is also a pretty cool thing to have if you're on a Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Eproject (for emacs). Basically, lets me do things like "find file in current project" or "switch to buffer in current project".

<http://github.com/jrockway/eproject/>

Projects are found automatically by searching parent directories for _darcs or .hg. (This requires some additional configuration to make it work with anything.el, email me if interested, can't post since I'm not at my home computer right now.)

<comment><USER11> You should add any insight to the eproject wiki:

<http://wiki.github.com/jrockway/eproject>

Glad you enjoy using it :)

<comment><USER18> Done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Water...all I can say is water....

While I knew that drinking more than 1-2 glasses of water is good, I never thought that the impact of drinking 1-2 liters of water a day could have such an significant impact on my ability to concentrate and focus on programming.

My suggestion: drink at least 1-2 liters of water without bubbles (or gas) and try to work on a mentally challenging task. And if you are stuck, drink half a liter more.

<comment><USER20> Is there any particular reason you say without bubbles/gas? I'm a big fan of Pellegrino but I can easily switch to water with a slice of lemon if it is beneficial.

<comment><USER21> The bubbly stuff is supposedly bad for your teeth if you drink too much of it.

Googled a bit and found this collection of links to articles about possible effects: <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=1006>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Setup git bash completion + put the branch name in your PS1 (previously mentioned on HN).

[http://www.simplicidade.org/notes/archives/2008/02/git_bash_...](http://www.simplicidade.org/notes/archives/2008/02/git_bash_comple.html)

<comment><USER23> If you're on OSX, this one will work for you. [http://blog.ericgoodwin.com/2008/4/10/auto-completion- with-g...](http://blog.ericgoodwin.com/2008/4/10/auto-completion-with-git)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Recently I've been having to do a lot of editing inside a Firefox text widget in order to update some Wiki documentation. The stupid mediawiki editor rebinds a lot of my emacs keys, which makes it really hard to for me to edit. I found this great firefox plugin called "It's all Text" that puts a little edit button at the bottom of every multi-line text input field in your browser. This button can be configured to shell out to Aquaemacs so I can do extensive edits there, and when I save it updates the browser's edit box. It's really made wiki editing a lot easier for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> org-mode for Emacs (<http://orgmode.org>).

It's made a big difference to my life. I've finally got a reliable place to keep notes, a good way to schedule stuff, nice todo lists, a quick way of publishing stuff to HTML / PDF, all accessible (and customisable) in a highly efficient way from Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER25> After years of using Emacs, I only just discovered that incremental search works within the ordinary find-file (C-x C-f) function. Try it: C-x C-f, then C-r, and search for a piece of a filename you opened in the recent past. Try C-M-r, and it works with regexes, too.

<comment><USER26> I think you mean M-R to search previous input. This works for just about any interactive input.

<comment><USER25> No, I mean reverse incremental search. M-r doesn't show matches as you type (at least not with Emacs 23 and my setup), but C-r does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> <http://ditz.rubyforge.org/>

A self-contained issue tracker. I switched from hand-hacked TODO lists to Ditz a few weeks ago, and haven't looked back. I'm able to organize my tasks as I would a codebase (components, releases, comments, et cetera). I saw an immediate and sustained increase in my productivity.

Its tight integration with git is a huge plus.

</comment><comment><USER28> <http://www.autohotkey.com/> This is a great tool. You can easily configure short cut keys to do every day stuff, which would need several steps.

</comment><comment><USER29> (01) Pixel ruler has been with me for a couple of years <http://www.mioplanet.com/products/pixelruler/index.htm>

(02) Reverse image search, good if you sitting with a hardisk full of images and want to use some on your blog

[http://tineye.com/search/1c6e572120c79bf875264447d3f08eb9fbe...](http://tineye.com/search/1c6e572120c79bf875264447d3f08eb9fbe86bec)

(03) Answering emails on odd days of the month. Opening my mail 3 days after payday.

</comment><comment><USER30> Obviously they get a lot of love here, but I'll list them again:

Dropbox

I find I am majorly neglecting by USB thumb drive. And sharing files with random people is much easier now.

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://stereopsis.com/flux/>

"it makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day."

<comment><USER31> Is this just a neat toy, or does it really help you sleep, concentrate & prevent eye strain? Anyone else here use it? Does it use brightness values that you'd expect, or is it sometimes too bright when it ought to be dim, or vice-versa?

<comment><USER32> The brightness values are nowhere near extreme enough, and they're not adjustable beyond a few presets. The intent, which it does okay, is making your computer match the color tone of whatever your indoor lighting is, which makes the display more red than it makes it dark. But what you really _want_ it to do is make the display dark enough that it won't keep you artificially awake late at night when the monitor is the only light source. On the Mac, the best tool I've found for that is Shades (<http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades>) which unfortunately doesn't have a timer. But binding to alt-space or whatever is pretty much just as good.

As a side note, the effect that monitors and other bright lights have on preventing sleep is the suppression of enzymes in the pineal gland that convert serotonin into melatonin about an hour before bedtime. There's a deletion mutation in the genes that code for one of these enzymes (ASMT) that's very common in autistics and relatives of autistics (which is a non- trivial subset of hackers/coders/geeks), so you might not be benefitting from the darkness anyway. You can solve the problem more directly and reliably by just taking melatonin supplements.

<comment><USER17> Not to discredit shades, but I just tried it and it was giving me this annoying brightness flicker. I'd imagine it has something to do with my extra display, but without that display, what's the point? It's trivial to adjust the brightness on my MBP with the F1 and F2 keys.

I do end up adjusting the brightness of my displays as the night goes on, but I do it using a couple presets on my display.

<comment><USER32> I'm running Shades with two monitors without any problems. Did you have fl.ux running at the same time? If so, that'll mess it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> * Exercise

* One day without computer (mediafast) (thinking time)

* iPhone/Simplenote/Things

* Snow Leopard/Quick Silver/Things/Dropbox

* Friends & Family

* Absence of scheduled TV (no cable or disc) Hulu instead

</comment><comment><USER34> If you're a Linux user, try out tasque + gnome-do w/ tasque plugin + remember the milk screenlet. This is how I manage to sync all my GTD throughout my computers and laptop on the go.

Klok time management software. I like know how much time I'm spending on each project/task. This can be sync'd between machines using rsync but with a small catch. Hopefully they can get some real syncing features built in. And yes, I know it's a memory hog but I like the layout.

Oh and powerresizer for Windows, great tool to have if you have to manage window sizing on 1 screen.

</comment><comment><USER35> Spamgourmet.com I've been using it for years to register and try out new services (online and offline) that require an email address. I'm surprised why it hasn't gained more traction.

<comment><USER36> I use firstname.lastname@example.com. It lets you turn off an email address if you want and you can also track the source of spam.

<comment><USER35> I can see your way working well. I use firstname.lastname@example.com where X is the number of emails you want to receive from the service. Also, I like that I can filter all @spamgourmet.com incoming mail in gmail for easy organization of my online accounts

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Working with special-needs kids with soccer every Saturday.

<comment><USER38> So, do you consider kids "little things" or "tools"?

Such a utilitarian view of children.

<comment><USER37> No.

Actually, most of them are dealing with their Autism or Down syndrome.

<comment><USER38> That was an attempt at humor, given the title of this thread:

 _Ask HN: Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Food processor and a multifunction rice cooker and steamer. No more burger king :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Windows environment:

Ditto clipboard manager/history. This helps both in avoiding context changes (alt-tabbing back and forth, etc.) and in retrieving older items. Quite configurable.

Winsplit Revolution window size/position manager. Put windows where you want them with a single chord. Quickly get windows e.g. side by side, without having to mouse around.

ToDoList list/project management. Hierarchical lists with priorities and many other identifiers, as well as full text comments. Gets items and relationships down quickly and without a lot of kerfuffle.

Paper and pen environment:

Original notes in black ink or pencil. Post meeting / follow up notes (e.g. fleshing out what was originally noted more briefly) in blue ink. Items of particular concern in red ink or marked up with red ink. Occasional, judicious application of a highlight marker.

A digital camera to quickly capture or to provide a quick copy of items of particular interest, written, printed, or otherwise (great for capturing the state of a whiteboard).

<comment><USER40> I should add that the ink colors I described work equally well as text colors in electronic documents.

In particular, I'll take/make notes in a layered, bulleted list / outline format. This lends itself to quickly noting items together with at least some structure, while avoiding the superfluous words needed to tie things together in a less structured format. Original notes in black. When I get some time to myself, I flesh things out in blue. Items of particular note in red.

It's very helpful to have shortcut keys for changing indent. There's no need to keep reaching for the mouse to execute those changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Not trying to take all of my school notes on my tablet. There's an extra layer of complexity/distraction that hurts my ability to learn.

De-consolidating my email accounts. Instead of using Gmail to access all of my accounts, I keep them each separate. It makes categorizing my emails much easier. Wonderful on my iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER42> Totally unsexy, but a notebook that has gridlines instead of regular ruling and a pile of pens (some people _really_ hate them, but I love Pilot G7 pens).

Having grids makes it really easy to flesh something out on paper, take notes, etc. and you are forced to pay attention to things in sequential order.

</comment><comment><USER43> Fences - it's a Windows desktop tool that I installed about a week ago and it's made my desktop much better. Right now it is free - Nov 1, I think, it goes to pay but I don't know how much.

<http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/>

</comment><comment><USER44> If you're writing software as DLLs, the venerable Depends.exe is critical:

<http://www.dependencywalker.com/>

If there was something that made debugging linking errors this easy, then C++ development would be a snap... kind of...

</comment><comment><USER45> I bound Super to the Fn key on my Macbook in Emacs.

<comment><USER46> What method did you use to do that?

<comment><USER45> It turns out to be as simple as:

      (setq mac-function-modifier 'super)

I discovered this after spending an embarrassingly long time failing to figure out how to bind Capslock to Super instead. I thought that would be relatively straightforward given how often people talk about rebinding Capslock, but I couldn't figure out how to do it (from Emacs anyway).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Keeping short ToDo lists for every project (not necessarily software) that I do which contain only the next 5-8 things to do next. Writing down a little note along with the todo to help me restore state next time i work on the project.

<comment><USER48> I've started doing that also. I'm using 37signals Tada List which has a nice iPhone web app for managing lists on the go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Things for Mac OS X and the iPhone.

I'd never really kept up with a to-do list before (I usually just used a piece of paper at my desk), but I'm able to do more things now because I want to get rid of the red reminder icon.

</comment><comment><USER50> <http://puttycm.free.fr/cms/> multiple putty sessions in one tabbed application.

Related, get cygwin ssh server running on your windows box (and set it up to disallow password login, only keys). If you use putty then you'll like being able to use putty for shell access to your own machine. You'll also like putty to your own machine as just another tab in putty connection manager above. Your option whether to allow connections from outside your machine.

Setting grub to prefer linux over windows on a dual boot machine. :)

</comment><comment><USER51> It seemed more productive to smash my hands with a hammer than to Twitter. But I like the connections (and conversation) I'm making.

When I tried using it for news, I got bogged into the day to day hysteria.

</comment><comment><USER52> I remapped my keyboard to avoid some common wrist-wrenching motions. I bound Shift-space to _ (underscore). I also changed the backslash/pipe key into a modifier key called Woot, then bound Woot-[ and Woot-] to ( and ) respectively, Woot-- (minus) to * (asterisk), Woot-0 to & (ampersand), Woot-; to | and Woot-/ to \\. I also used Woot to add some greek letters like lambda, just for fun. It took a bit of getting used to but was well worth it.

</comment><comment><USER53> 1\. Evernote, the best notetaking software I know of - it starts to serve me as an universal "external memory". The most undervalued software in 2009.

2\. Live Mesh - something similar to dropbox, for syncing files between computers, while also provides online backup for up to 5GB of data

3\. Executor - application launcher for Windows, combines best stuff from Launchy and AutoHotKey. You can quickly start app by starting to write it's name or by assigned hotkey.

<comment><USER12> I second Evernote :-) The free version is good enough but I felt it was worth shelling out the $45 for the premium upgrade.

<comment><USER53> Yes, the premium is much better, if nothing else, just being able to store any file type is worth that money, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> rlwrap to fix the awful command line interface of sqlplus.

<comment><USER7> I used to to use yasql as a sqlplus replacement, it was pretty basic but much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> PowerPro (<http://powerpro.webeddie.com/>) and ClipX Clipboard Manager (<http://bluemars.org/clipx/>), hands down. I've even donated to the fella who developed ClipX. The regex-based automatic navigation feature in ClipX is worth the price of admission.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm now using a Kinesis Advantage keyboard, which is awesome in ways I didn't appreciate till I tried it; see more here: <http://jseliger.com/2009/07/20/kinesis-advantage> .

DevonThink Pro is a tremendously useful program that I didn't appreciate till I began organizing bits of my life around it.

</comment><comment><USER56> Windows Key + D = minimize everything. Most of you probably know this, but for the few that do not... you are welcome.

<comment><USER57> On Windows 7: Windows+1, Windows+2 ... Windows+0, bring to the foreground any of the first the first ten items in your taskbar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Scheduling my day the night before in Google Calendar. And then when I don't meet the schedule, I alter it so that the schedule then becomes a journal.

It offers amazing perspective and turns vague concepts like when I got to sleep, and when I actually played video games into solid temporal events.

</comment><comment><USER59> Signing up for a third-party hosted Subversion account. The prices are so low these days, there's no need to manage the SVN server on your own. I tend to use SVN more now that I don't have to worry about managing it.

The sharing features of Google Docs has also been a big time saver.

</comment><comment><USER60> i'm on Win XP so:

1\. PomoTime: One of the new things i'm into for productivity based on Pomodoro technique Although i don't follow it religiously, but i still get manage to get a lot more done than before.

2\. Microsoft OneNote: i jot down almost everything and anything there before it slips my mind.

I am fan of lightweight apps:

3\. VirtuaWin: lightweight multiple desktops

4\. Q-dir: file mgr

5\. Console: instead of cmd.exe

6\. Locate32: i dont use content indexing stuff like Google desktop yet. I find them too heavy and also, i already have everything arranged in folders with relevant names. So searching by name is instant with this.

7\. TeamViewer: a free app to share desktop. It found it a little bit easier/better/faster/lighter than VNC, DimDim.

8\. Miranda: for twitter/irc/gtalk/yahoo

9\. Most importantly, Executor: moved from launchy a while back.

<comment><USER13> I highly recommend

MinTTY for Cygwin instead of Console2 for cmd.exe Everything instead of Locate32.

<comment><USER60> I can't do multiple tabs inside one window. The mess on the taskbar really hurts my eyes :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Using Putty (Windows) or iTerm (OS X) in full screen. Or use Visor in OS X <http://visor.binaryage.com/>.

This allows distractions from other stuff to vanish for a while.

Also, I don't check the email as often ... productivity^2

<comment><USER17> Visor has helped me a bit. It drives one of my coworkers nuts whenever he tries to work with me on my computer, though. He keeps searching for the terminal window that has the Mongrel instance without knowing that it's in Visor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'll say 1Password and The Hit List (both OSX software). They are totally worth the money.

<comment><USER63> I've been using Wallet (<http://www.acrylicapps.com/wallet/>) on my Mac and iPhone instead of 1Password.

It might be a little less featured than 1Password, but it's also half the cost on the Mac and AU$1 cheaper on the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> vim: Recursively load all java files (i.e. in all subdirectories):

      :args **/*.java

Refactor a package name throughout the project ("e" suppresses the "No match" error message):

      :argdo %s/oldpackage/newpackage/e

</comment><comment><USER65> Read HN a little less often - serious here. I am trying to read news (I feel like I am addict sometimes) a little less these days. Productivity gains are obvious and my time is sliced up less.

</comment><comment><USER66> Started using backpack from 37signals and have found myself using it all the time - now a very important part of my workflow. Granted it has many downsides but for now its working great!

</comment><comment><USER67> In Safari, Cmd-1, Cmd-2, etc. activate the first, second, etc. bookmarks in your toolbar. Great for things like readability. (e.g. Cmd-1 to make the current page readable.)

</comment><comment><USER68> Wanderlust (Emacs Email client).

I use it with gmail imap interface. Completely changed the way I manage emails.

<http://www.gohome.org/wl/>

</comment><comment><USER69> BOXING! I haven't gotten in the ring yet, but its an amazing workout on top of my usual regiment (granted, I'm an exercise junkie).

</comment><comment><USER70> 1\. Switch from PHP to Ruby (on rails). 2\. Switch from Windows to OS X. 3\. Meditates.

</comment><comment><USER71> Quicksilver on OS X.

I know it's far from obscure, but if you still haven't tried it, it's worth it.

</comment><comment><USER72> PhraseExpress. It is a clipboard manager and text inserter (like Autotext).

</comment><comment><USER64> Taking two days off per week, one for rest; one for self-development.

<comment><USER73> I call this weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> StrokeIt - mouse gestures in WinXP.

</comment><comment><USER75> I've started using AutoHotKey recently, and it's a wonderful little tool to automate things.

Also, this great file search tool called Everything. Basically like locate on *nix, except it uses NTFS tables directly to search (it indexed the names of the ~600k files on my laptop in less than a minute, and searches through them instantly).

</comment><comment><USER76> TextMate~

esc for function name autocomplete //todo: comments in the source appear when you hit ctrl-shift-t cmd-shift-t search by method name cmd-shift-f search for phrase within entire project ftp+ssh bundle</comment>


Surprise: Nintendo's next console is the NES - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/07/surprise-nintendos-next-console-is-the-nes/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12093171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12093171)

</comment><comment><USER2> Part of me wants to say cool, thanks for paying tribute and making accessible.

Part of me wants me to say ugh, for being unoriginal and milking old products, while using incompatible controllers. I'm also disgusted by the fact that Nintendo users to sue people in the emulator/ROM/clone community, who are the real heroes for keeping the magic alive.

Id rather people just spend $30 for a raspberry pi and a USB NES controller.</comment>


Journalwatch: Simple log parsing utility for the systemd journal - <AUTHOR> http://git.the-compiler.org/journalwatch/ <comment><USER2> From the README: [http://git.the- compiler.org/journalwatch/tree/README.txt?id=...](http://git.the- compiler.org/journalwatch/tree/README.txt?id=dc4b6d89f5c642e576256d922120f4b56713a02a)

      journalwatch
      </comment><comment></comment><comment>

      journalwatch is a tool which can find error messages in the
      systemd journal.

      It is similiar to tools like
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/logwatch/[logwatch] or
      http://logcheck.org/[logcheck] except it's much more KISS
      and only works with the systemd
      http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/journalctl.html[journal].
      It works by defining patterns to match all log lines which
      are not interesting, and then prints all log lines not
      matching those patterns (or sends them by mail).

      When you start it the first time, it'll write the default
      pattern and config to
      `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.config/journalwatch`
      (`$XDG_CONFIG_HOME` is your home if unset). Details on how
      to configure journalwatch are available in these files.

      Dependencies
      </comment><comment></comment><comment>

      - Python 3 (tested with 3.3 and 3.4, should work with >= 3.2)
      - `systemd` python module
      - A working `sendmail`/MTA
       (http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/[msmtp] is easy to set up)

      License: GPL3</comment>


Dog learns over 1,000 words - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18dog.html

<comment><USER3> I call shenanigans. The researcher wrote the name of each toy onto it with a Sharpie - clearly the dog simply read the name off instead of memorizing all 1000 items.

There's just so much sloppy research out there.

<comment><USER4> I think it's funny that the dog's recall outpaced the researcher...

The article mentions the fact that humans can use context to help remember words, but the dog has to use rote repetition. It's interesting that the reliance on context that helps us learn stuff in general could mean that dogs may actually be "better" at building a vocabulary of 1000+ unrelated names.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't sound like the researcher had any trouble remembering the words. Just remembering which ones he had taught to the dog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We humans define intelligence in such limited terms.

I have a border collie who's remarkably intelligent. But the words she knows are just the beginning. She's incredibly perceptive. Gestures, facial expressions, and vocal tone are all things she pays attention to.

Determining how intelligent an animal is by how much it can learn the words of our language is a remarkably arrogant thing. We've clearly underestimated the intelligence of every animal we've ever dealt with. We only ever revise our estimates of animal intelligence upwards.

<comment><USER7> "We humans define intelligence in such limited terms." How would you define intelligence, then? Being able to correctly respond to human emotional cues has been evolutionally advantageous for dogs. They've had thousands of years of coexistence to refine their instinctual abilities to "interpret" our emotions, which leads to more attachment on our part, which leads to better reproductive opportunities for those dogs which we are more attached to. For all we know, dogs responses to human emotions, gestures, and nonverbal cues are a completely autonomic behavior.

I love dogs, I think my dog is super-smart, funny, and very sweet. I've heard her particular breed referred to as "the dog with the human brain" on some dog TV show before, and I'm sure she's not even as smart as a collie. That said, I can't help but feel like your comment is a bit... overwrought. Dogs clearly understand parts of human language and judging them by their ability to understand it seems like the _best_ way to determine their intelligence. I would hardly call it "remarkably arrogant". You have to consider the fact that humans have likely had spoken language for as long as we've had domesticated canines.

In the end I can't help but feel like over-sentimental and hyperbolic (would you say we've "underestimated the intelligence" of, say, jellyfish?) declarations like yours really set us up only for disappointment. Our dogs are great, and probably do actually _love_ us, but they're not furry little geniuses held back only by their lack of proper speaking ability.

All that said, they're still _way better_ than cats.

<comment><USER6> This is precisely why I believe almost all of these experiments are flawed.

You begin with the assumption (based on nothing other than a general feeling of human specialness) that "For all we know, dogs responses to human emotions, gestures, and nonverbal cues are a completely autonomic behavior". Considering that we discover all kinds of animals are smarter than we thought with each passing experiment, the burden of proof should lie with you. The limitations appear to be our experiments.

We do not start with this assumption when dealing with human beings. The safe assumption is that animals have their own desires, goals, ambitions, and purposes for existence. Since we have significant trouble understanding them or communicating with them (even though we know that within their own species they communicate perfectly well with each other), we might start from a less biased viewpoint.

As for jellyfish, I don't know. But I do know that we've approached it from the wrong angle. Asking how many words a jellyfish can respond to and then determining whether or not it is intelligent is a surefire way to create a lousy experiment.

BTW, Europeans used to do the same sorts of experiments with people from other countries and civilizations. They knew that white Anglo Saxons were the best and brightest so they looked for evidence to prove it. Africans clearly hadn't invented guns or the printing press so they determined that they had a lower level of intelligence. It's just as ridiculous a methodology when you're talking about studying animals.

<comment><USER8> Considering that if you take very young wolves and raise them as if they were dogs they fail to acquire anywhere near the understanding of human emotions, gestures, and non-verbal clues that dogs acquire, it seems pretty clear that there is something built-in to dogs at play here.

Keep in mind that humans have lived in a very close, symbiotic relation with dogs for a very long time. It's at least 20k years, with some indications the relationship could go back 100k years.

It may have even been the advantage dogs gave us that let us win out over rivals such as neanderthals.

<comment><USER9> I'm not at my computer so can't find the reference but there has been an ongoing experiment in Russia where they selectively bred Siberian foxes and after about 20 generations had a female that responded to her name and craved human attention. All her puppies (is that the right word for a fox?) exhibited the same behaviour and became more and more dog-like.

Edit: typos

<comment><USER10> The article and related discussion five months back <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1557209>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We have a little yorkie mix is shockingly bright. We haven't taught her as many things (do you HAVE a thousand different things you want your dog touching?) but she picks things up quickly.

She'll do practically anything for cheese. It took about a whole slice of american cheese to teach her to ring a bell on command; then we tied it to the door. We put her leash on and made her ring the bell to open the door - <USER2> figured it out in exactly one try.

When we show her a new thing and get some food out, she KNOWS she is going to learn something new. She'll quickly poke it, shove it, pick it up, look at you, and repeat. Just in case that's what we wanted her to do...

Dogs are amazing.

(Obligatory picture: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/4557297986> )

<comment><USER12> Heh, I have a morkie (maltese + yorkie). He goes nuts for toys, so one day I got one of those zip-toys, where you pull a cord and it vibrates. He was beside himself -- but then I made him just watch me pull the cord a few times, and when he took it, he knew exactly what to do. He would put it between his paws and pull the cord with his teeth. That blew me away.

By the way, I didn't know this before, but dogs can be rewarded with toys instead of treats - I taught him a few other tricks this way.

<comment><USER11> I demand pictures.

Ours mostly is food-driven. She'll fetch if there's food involved, but not otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always thought people underestimated animals communication skills because for me it would make sense for animals to have their own vocabulary in whatever is their language which we just don't happen to understand yet. There have been some great studies on this matter over the years, my favorite being one done with monkeys in which scientists recorded their sounds when presented with different types of fruit but always the same sound for the same fruit.

</comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of Betsy who was a border collie on the cover of national geographic a couple years ago. Betsy could identify 300 objects and could even associate new physical objects with a photograph of the object. I have a border collie and they are generally regarded as the most intelligent of breeds. However, if you don't invest the time to work with a border collie, they will have no problem working destroying your house ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd love to see what happens when dogs are bred for intelligence, rather than those other silly things people breed them for.

<comment><USER16> I think some breeds are, at least in terms of practical working intelligence. Though most of that might come down to temperament and obedience--is a beagle really _stupider_ than a German Shepherd Dog because you can't teach him to sniff for drugs, or is he just too ADHD to care?

<comment><USER17> Uh, they use beagles for sniffing for all kinds of things: drugs, bombs, even termites.

That said, German Shepherds are an interesting case because, as I understand it, their breed standard is actually a behavioral standard: they have to be able to perform a certain level of obedience, tracking, and bite work (think big leather gloves) to get papers.

<comment><USER18> People used to train pigs to hunt truffles, but more recently beagles have been the go-to animal as they tend not to eat the prized catch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would've been nice to see a video to go with the article.

</comment><comment><USER20> One of my friends in college taught his dog to bring him random different objects like a lighter, backpack, pencil, tv remote, etc etc. He taught it to skateboard and when he'd make a gun with his hand and point it at the dog it would freeze, then if he "pulled the trigger" with his thumb the dog would fall over and play dead. There were a bunch of other tricks it could do like 'kickflip' were the dog would spin itself. I really do think dogs are smarter than people give them credit for.

<comment><USER21> I got my dog about 5 months ago from the SPCA. She's now a year old (plus a month), we got her at 8 months. She was picked up as a stray and I'm unsure how long she had been in her original home to begin with. She went poop outside, but she had bad problems with submissive and excited peeing that it's hard to tell if she was ever fully trained to bathroom outside. What I do know is that when we got her she barely understood sit (only with food in my hand, so I'm half betting this was a natural reaction than actual training), and that was the extent of her tricks.

With only reinforcement of her existing behaviours we've got her to learn: sit, spin, lay, roll (over), pretty (where they sit with their ass on the floor but upright with her front paws off the floor, my mother-in-law's dog helped greatly with teaching by example), tall (where she stands by herself on her back legs) dance (she'll do a 360 while on her back legs) and speak. [Ed: I forgot, we taught her to 'stand', IE move from lay down to sit, or sit to on all fours, because she'd continuously lay when told to sit.] These are all performed easily with verbal command only.

So far we've only trained using single syllable words (dogs don't understand the actual words, their brains are merely receiving a signal and performing an associated action) to keep the input the same. My wife is Canadian and I'm British, so how we pronounce things can be very different sometimes, but a syllable is nearly universal in the Anglosphere... basically we're making our dog multi-region compatible as just in the people she meets there's easily 4 or more dialects that can be giving her commands.

Potential tricks we can teach based off her existing behaviour are: Play dead, jump, growl and as she's got hound in her I'm hoping to one day get a howl command trained. We've noticed hints of 'paw'. She already knows fetch with a thrown object, so it would only be a matter of association training to get her to actually bring things (although for my in-laws their dog just brought the paper when my father-in-law jokingly told the dog to bring it without it being previously trained and their dog was picked up at 8-weeks so I doubt it had previously been trained).

My dog is a Dachshund and Jack Russell Terrier cross and certainly isn't the easiest dog to train, but simple operant conditioning is working great. By making her wait before she's allowed to eat she's actually stopped scavenging when we take her for walks (try ripping a piece of KFC out of a dogs throat, she never bit at me but it's damn hard trying to pry a dogs jaws open _and_ stick fingers down its mouth to stop it choking on a piece of meat with bone in it), she's also stopped stealing food off of the coffee table (she got in from her walk one day and stole a large day old pizza crust off the table and had eaten 4/5ths of it before I finally managed to catch her).

By the best estimates, I have another 14 years with this dog and so far I've mostly been working at removing bad behaviours she had learnt. For all the time I taught tricks, I spent easily twice as long making bad behaviours go extinct. I don't intend to stop training my dog because the more time I spend training her, the more relaxed she is at home (Jack Russell and relaxed are commonly considered antonyms).

I'll have to record it sometime, but the thing I don't think people understand about dogs is that they're consciously trying to comprehend you. When teaching her to sit pretty by verbal command only she would hit this point where she hits the 'zone' her eyes become locked and you can see the gears crunching and then she performed the trick with no signalling. She also tried brute-forcing her tricks; literally she'll perform every trick she's learnt and then give up and start doing 'speak' to every command. You go back 5 minutes later and she'll hit the 'zone'.

<comment><USER22> > dogs don't understand the actual words, their brains are merely receiving a > signal and performing an associated action

And that differs from understanding exactly how?

<comment><USER21> Humans have the ability to understand multiple meanings, modify the meanings and understand the mis-meanings.

Example joke: "Ever notice how we park on driveways, drive on parkways, pay tolls to go on freeways and it takes longer to get where you want on an expressway." All illustrate how our usage and the meanings of our words have been modified over time.

A driveway is a section of personal roadway that leads to a personal garage (you would never have left one of the old 70% wooden cars outside with zero rust proofing on the metal, ever). A parkway was supposed to be a scenic roadway to link urban and suburban parks with pleasure roads where people could park freely and enjoy the area, now it's commonly a synonym for any general highway. Freeways were actually speed-limit-free highways, the 'free' never had anything to do with cost until the very late 20th century. An expressway was designed as a high-speed arterial road, which may have a limited number of driveways.

<comment><USER22> None of that addresses the issues of whether the dog understands. Yes, humans have a higher level of understanding in the sense that we understand abstractions, but our greater abilities in that area don't disqualify the dog's simpler ability from being called understanding.

If the dog can tell the difference between being told to fetch the paper vs fetch my shoes, then he understands.

Beyond that, the statement...

> their brains are merely receiving a signal and performing an associated > action

Equally applies to humans; our brains just have a more complex form of association. There is no inherent meaning to any of the noises we make that we call words other than they're associated to something. Your associations to those noises is far more complex than the dogs, but you can't call yours _understanding_ and not his; his understanding is simpler, but if he performs the correct trick, then he understands the word in the same sense you do, he associated some kind of meaning to that word, just like you do.

<comment><USER21> That's fair to say. Any comprehension is understanding even if it is just rote learning of single words to commands.

You're right, just because the dog doesn't understand 50+ words for 'drink' (water, coke, pepsi, coffee, tea, etc etc.) doesn't mean it isn't understanding in the same comprehension as if you got a 3 year old to bring you a 'drink'.

I don't know what I was thinking, I must have been in a state of sleep deprived idiocy. The simple fact you can teach a dog in human linguistics to sit when you say 'sit' signifies its understanding. You wouldn't get this response in an animal that all its communication skills are genetically encoded.

I remember reading about how Native Americans used to hunt Wolves with pitfall traps and how wolves would teach their young how to avoid the traps, like they would hunt a deer, they can also do the same with poisoned meats. These clearly show wolves are capable of understanding abstract concepts. Unless sink holes are a natural predator of wolves I doubt there's a genetic cue for "you see that flat piece of ground, you'll fall through that into a big pit" or "you see that steak, that's poisoned, but the one sat on the side of that metal contraption in their yard isn't!"

I was thinking of understanding along the lines that we can understand multiple meanings and abstract ideas. However, 1:1 learning is still understanding, and clearly Canis Lupis is capable of learning abstract ideas so a dog certainly has the ability to (even if we have to rebreed it into the species).

<comment><USER22> What's funny, is you're the guy with the dog; I have no pets. You should have been the one convincing me that your dog _understands_. Anyway, and up-vote for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> wonderful article. It does take intelligence to recognize another intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER24> How does he smell?

</comment><comment><USER25> WOOFord College!

</comment><comment><USER26> Fortunately, we have ten fingers. Otherwise, this wouldn't even make the news!</comment>


TechCrunch: Opera Releases Firebug Alternative: Dragonfly - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/06/opera-releases-firebug-alternative-dragonfly/

<comment><USER2> One of the comments mention an API that could be used to integrate it with other browsers. I hope he was right, because it would be very cool to have just one debugging tool for all of the browsers out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not bad, Opera is a nice browser and this thing is way overdue, but it's good.

Safari users can enter the following in Terminal (and restarting Safari) to enable the Web Inspector and other stuff available in Safari:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

It's a good tool. Definitely comparable to Firebug.

<comment><USER4> Or, in Safari 3, just go to the Advanced tab in Preferences and activate the "Show Develop menu in menu bar" checkbox.</comment></comment>


Statistics For Programmers VI: Omitted Variable Bias - <AUTHOR> http://lovehateubuntu.blogspot.com/2010/04/statistics-for-programmers-vi-omitted.html <comment><USER2> The post should have mentioned selection bias, specifically self-selection bias:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection>

which leads to some relevant literature:

<http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p362803_index.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> This post uses a terrible example. His hidden variable is programmer skill, and he assumes that high skill programmers prefer to work at agile companies over waterfall companies. Therefore, he claims, agile is not really more productive than waterfall.

But that's silly; if using an agile methodology is what attracted the high skill programmers, that's why you're more productive! Changes that attract high skill programmers - even if that's all they do - are the most productivity-enhancing changes you can make.</comment>


Neil young announces the launch of ponomusic - <AUTHOR> http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/neil-young-announces-launch-ponomusic-19703/ <comment><AUTHOR> How does this go in my pocket?

<comment><USER2> With the triangle edge sticking into your thigh, of course.

I doubt Jony Ive is losing any sleep whatsoever.</comment></comment>


Why You Should Learn "Weird" Languages - <AUTHOR> http://alexthornton.net/Blog.aspx/2011/02/19/Why-You-Should-Learn-Weird-Languages

<comment><USER2> There is a hug mismatch between the title of the post and the actual content.

This is the only piece of content that talks about the why "you should therefore consider spending some time experimenting with "weird" programming languages.":

1\. "your goal is to broaden your mind about programming languages"

2\. "the mainstream offers fewer opportunities than the fringes"

3\. "you can future-proof your understanding of the mainstream by being aware of what's happening at the fringes"

4\. ""weird" programming languages gradually infiltrate mainstream languages"

5\. "broaden my understanding of programming as a discipline"

6\. " goal is to open your mind in ways it hadn't been previously."

7\. " More learning is better, but some learning is infinitely better than non"

Then the post goes on to superficially discuss one or two features about the some languages. The author provides no interesting projects that he has built. He doesn't tell us what languages were good for what kinds of applications. It would help a lot if he told us what he built, linked the source, talked about THAT experience. And the most frustrating bit being that he hardly explains his adjectives like "weird" "fringe" "useful".

<comment><USER3> I like the idea of a hug mismatch. Its like a couple hesitant to embrace and miss-timing it so that there arms get all muddled.

It actually fits the scenario: title and content badly hugging.

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _An important part of spending time with "weird" languages is to acclimate yourself to seeing syntax as the least important battle you face; the broader ideas are always more important, in my view, than the low-level syntax._

This article is one of the most insightful story of personal experiences in programming that I've read in a while. Thanks gnosis.

</comment><comment><USER5> the examples for weird languages he puts forward are slightly disappointing - with the exception of haskell maybe. but then, even haskell is the mainstream version of ideas that where first put into practice someplace else.

<comment><USER6> Only on HN is Haskell "mainstream" :-)

<comment><USER7> well, haskell itself may not be mainstream, but the author himself mentions mainstream languages like c# borrowing features from it. J, on the other hand, would be the sort of language I expected the author to be talking about - built around paradigm that has _not_ worked its way into mainstream languages yet, but which nevertheless contains useful ways to think about and attack real problems.

<comment><USER6> Not "borrowing" exactly, Simon Peyton-Jones is a full-time employee of Microsoft Research.

And for J, that's an APL derivative isn't it? APL was a mainstream language once, still used a lot in banking, particularly in fixed income.

<comment><USER8> Yes. It (<http://jsoftware.com/>) was released under the GPL recently.

There's also Kona (<http://github.com/kevinlawler/kona>), an ISC-licensed implementation of K.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a graduate we were forced to learn CLIPS, a rule-based programming language. Not only is it a very different language to master and program well in, but any sort of Google search for CLIPS results in millions of video clips with no mention of the language (at least that's how it was back in the day, I guess there's much more support now). Try learning a language without Google - someone on HN once said, "without Google I wouldn't be a programmer."

</comment><comment><USER10> As a complete outsider (1% web programmer, 99% lazy) I'd say that something lower language would be good. It's probably different to what you've done before. Something like Lua? I don't even know if this counts as low-level. You don't know of any thing to do with your work, but by the time you've learnt, you'll either know of one or have thought of one. Like a brainfuck intepreter. Yeah.. just do brainfuck for a day and get back to your wonderful Objective C.

</comment><comment><USER11> None of these languages seem "weird" to me. At all. Does that make me supremely weird?

<comment><USER7> no, i was thinking the same. they're pretty much all in the first circle outside the mainstream. i was hoping for the second circle of unusualness (J, Factor, Unicon, Oz, ...) - practical languages with useful but "weird" features that _haven't_ bled their way into the more mainstream languages yet.

<comment><USER12> I spent a semester in Oz in college. It forever changed the way I think about parallelism, to the point where it's not uncommon for me to implement a very rough equivalent of dataflow variables in other languages.

Some of its concepts do show up, though; Futures in Java, Qt, and I believe .NET are a very crude analog of dataflow variables (crude largely because they don't support Prolog-style unification like all Oz variables do).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dude, you don't know weird. Where is RPG III? Bliss-32? Syclops? GOOFBOL?

You are listing some pretty mainstream ones.</comment>


Fuse by outtracks - <AUTHOR> http://www.fusetools.com/

<comment><USER2> Generic and already taken names FTW... fusetools really sounds like something that has to do with file systems.

Also, "in beta soon", so not much to see yet.</comment>


Ask HN: What's it like to work at Mozilla these days? - <AUTHOR> They have an open position in my area but their Glassdoor reviews are really mixed. It seems like a great company with a great mission but I worry it's a sinking ship and I'm not interested in changing jobs too soon in the future. <comment><USER2> I've been at Mozilla four years, working on operations security, and I still consider it the best job I've ever had.

I worked in banking and a few startups before joining Mozilla, and neither the culture or technology were ever great. Mozilla has both of these things, and a mission statement that still makes me want to get out of bed in the morning (work for mankind, not for the man).

Is it a sinking ship? Only if we're not up for the challenge of fighting back corporations that want to lock the web being walled gardens. Time will tell, but someone should fight the good fight, even if it's a lost cause.

Plus, you get cool t-shirts, and work from home, which is definitely a lifestyle improvement for me.

<comment><USER3> All this "we make the world a better place" is actually the most annoying thing for me as a user. Every time I open Firefox (not so often anymore), I get some "save the world"-spam on the frontpage.

<comment><USER4> Have you tried changing your default start page? ;-)

<comment><USER3> I tried changing my default web browser. Worked.

<comment><USER5> So what's your default web browser and how does it greet you?

<comment><USER6> Not OP, but Safari. It greets me with a blank page, which is just how I like it.

<comment><USER7> Huh? Since when is the default start page of Safari not apple.com? Or did you change it manually?

<comment><USER8> I don't know what it was like before, but when I got my first MacBook Pro maybe 2 years ago, the default start page for Safari was blank.

Edit: Out of curiosity, I checked to see my defaults and the _Homepage_ is still apple.com. However, the "opens with" settings are set to _Favorites_ (top of the list, probably the default) which explains why it opens with a blank page. So the change was probably whenever they added the _Favorites_ page feature; most likely to compete with Chrome/Firefox/Opera/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They've made some bad decisions, but it seems that they've managed to right the ship again, with the latest releases of firefox getting rave reviews and some really exciting technologies slowly taking shape.

Firefox has been widely panned the last few years, but that may have been somewhat harsh, and ungrateful to Mozilla as an organisation.

Yes, Chrome has been running laps around them. But that's mostly the result of Google's willingness to outspend them.

There are currently two platforms that have/had the potential to significantly harm Google's cash cow of search ads: iOS and Facebook. A lot of the time that was previously spend on the "open web" suddenly moved into these platforms. Sometimes, apps replaced search, such as for purchase decisions, where people started searching in the Amazon app instead of google.com.

That made Chrome the single most important technology for Google: they needed to push the browser to be competitive with iOS and whatever Facebook was doing. Playing a game, or streaming movies needed to be as fast, easy-to-use, and safe as doing those things with native apps. Developing for the web needed to be as attractive as developing for native platforms.

In that situation, it's no wonder that Firefox lagged behind–the world's best, and richest, software company was developing a browser, with what is likely to be a budget limited only by the diminishing return of ever-larger teams.

There's really no guarantee that Google's incentives will forever remain to be aligned with the users' as they are now. To pour all this misguided disappointment on Mozilla and gleefully cheer their demise is foolish, because sooner or later, it will be important again to have an independent, open, OSS browser.

It's also somewhat illoyal, considering Mozilla's past accomplishments for the web.

<comment><USER10> I feel like Chrome has been getting consistently worse recently. For example there are some pretty rough video-related bugs - at least on macOS - that have been around for at least a year. I guess that's what happens when you're on top, you get complacent. Maybe Firefox has an opening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> (only my opinion here, nothing provided from my employer yadda yadda disclaimer and whatnot)

I've been working at Mozilla for a few years now, although this is my first job I'd say this is really great already. One Venn diagram I saw in the past was about choosing your job and the title read: pick two among "interesting", "well-paid" and "ethical". Well, I think you can easily get all three when working at Mozilla, or at least that's my experience of it.

Also, I'd suggest that some people have very high expectations when they start at Mozilla, hoping it works like a perfect anarchist (in the actual political sense) and democratic organization. It's not the case: Mozilla _Corporation_ is a company (duh!). So it's slightly less corporate than the regular public company (e.g. there are no shareholders), but it is still working like a regular company: vertical hierarchy, meritocratic do-ocracy, OKR, you name it. Some people don't like that and tend to be more virulent towards Mozilla than they would be towards any other corporation, hence the bad opinions on Glassdoor, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER12> Like any large company, your experience will vary depending on your manager.

I've been with Mozilla for five and a half years. It's not all been roses-- I've weathered a team disbanding and a bad manager--but in the aftermath of each, I've ended up in a better place, and I feel like there are still ample opportunities for me to grow technically and inter-personally.

It _feels good_ to work for a non-profit that's directly defending the neutrality and interoperability of the Web itself, both through advocacy and the direct action of building a modern browser that's competitive with products produced by, literally, the three largest publicly traded corporations (by market capitalization) in the world.

Not only does the mission feel good, the salary and benefits are competitive, and the remote / autonomous / trust-driven culture is worth its weight in gold. I don't feel like I'm sacrificing anything to work here, and it's fulfilling work.

Is the ship sinking? I don't think so. Our marketshare percentage has lagged behind market growth, but our absolute user numbers are stable and significant. We're back to focusing on core product improvements, and multi- year experiments like Rust and Servo are paying enormous dividends. If you've used Firefox, Visual Studio Code, Dropbox, or npm in the past year, you've hit code written in Rust. We're also racking up wins in other areas: LetsEncrypt started at Mozilla, and Google's recent abandonment of Native Client was a direct result of the work Mozilla put into asm.js. WebVR and A-Frame.io are taking on a life of their own after incubating at Mozilla. And I'm very, very encouraged by the improvements we're landing in Firefox 57 and beyond: there's plenty of room for growth, and we're aggressively pursuing it.

Mozilla was a turbulent place a few years ago, but the past two years have felt better than ever. Join us!

</comment><comment> dao- Come help us prevent the ship from sinking. :)

I've been at Mozilla for ~11 years, worked from home for many years, now splitting my time between the Berlin office and home. I feel good about the work I do and don't intend to change jobs anytime soon.

There have been some leadership / management issues but it's not all bad. Admittedly some people (e.g. those working on Firefox OS) were effected more than others.

<comment><USER13> > the Berlin office

There's a Berlin office? Wait, what am I saying, of course there's an office for an organisation like Mozilla in privacy-obsessed Germany.

... are they hiring? EDIT: Yes!

[https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/](https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/)

<comment><USER14> [https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/?location=Berlin](https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/?location=Berlin)

Quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think there's a certain psychic load to working at a mission-driven organization. Who are you working for? The mission? Who's interpretation of the mission? Your manager? The company? Yourself? And then at times when you don't feel like you are living up to your potential, or opportunity, or expectations, then there's a tendency to internalize that. Having internalized it, it can color how you look at the organization (and everything else), usually with general distaste and resentment.

Anyway, that's happened to me at times, and I've seen it happen to other people. I think the dynamics this creates inform a lot of the Glassdoor reviews. I think it's emotionally easier if you have a transactional job: the company pays you, you do something that makes the company money, or at least do what your boss says to do. The pros and cons of emotional detachment are beyond the scope of this comment.

Financially Mozilla is doing fine, and probably will continue doing fine. It's not on my list of worries.

</comment><comment><USER16> I dreamed of working on Firefox in 2004, took some scenic detours, and got here in 2014. It's absolutely amazing now. But my first year was extremely difficult, especially as a new remotee. The Brendan Eich thing happened on week 3. Chrome was eating our lunch, and Mozilla was focused on shipping a phone. The company was split along that fault line, with platform engineering straddling both sides. We were losing. We wondered if we'd survive. Some of the Glassdoor reviews reflect what was indeed a tumultuous and uncertain time.

The culture was in tumult too, "old guard" vs. new. Some reviews were written by people who made terrific contributions at one time, but couldn't turn the corner and took that anger out the door with them.

We re-org'ed (so many re-org's!). We have an amazing executive and director- level team. We're well-run, in great financial shape. Our culture has changed (inevitable), and I like where we're going together. We're lined up behind Firefox, and we're doing terrific work again.

I tell interviewees that working here can at times feel like living in a Reddit thread. There are amazingly thoughtful, generous, and mind-glowingly smart people working on the hardest problems across continents and time zones. Sometimes there's acrimony or trolling. We're all here because the things we create together can only be made here. We go head-to-head with competitors 50-100x our size. I could go to those companies, and I wouldn't have a fraction of the impact and the responsibility I have at Mozilla. No company is a fit for everyone, but for someone like me, it's hard to imagine being happy anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER4> Working for Mozilla would be a dream job IMO. Who cares what Glassdoor says? It's one of the few techie corporations out there actively working to make the world an eensy weensy bit a better place. Go work there. Go go go go.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been working, in various forms, on Mozilla for 17 years now. I've joined the project as a volunteer back in 2000, and ended up working full time since 2010. I worked in multiple roles during that time, mostly as an engineer, but spent some time working on contributor relationships, contributor tech and some market analysis even. I've worked remotely for most of that time from Europe, but am working from San Francisco for almost 4 years now.

My personal experience has been very positive. I'm working full time on projects that impact the shape of the Web, I have good work-life balance and incredible number of highly challenging problems to solve.

I've been with Mozilla since they were a 40 person startup, through the crazy days of releasing Firefox 1.0, sudden growth during Firefox OS days (I spent 2 years working on it!), and now I work on Firefox 57 and beyond. It's been a great, if bumpy, ride and I can't stop enjoying it :)

I've seen bad culture fits, I've seen clusters of bad management and projects that "felt weird". People who got into Mozilla through those usually ended up leaving, but I'd say it's a vast minority of cases.

And wrt. "sinkin ship" \- It depends on us. Working for a non-profit has some downsides. We need to stay open, inclusive, some things happen slower, we get much more "negative feedback" from people who feel more entitled to judge our work etc. But it also comes with some huge benefits. I never optimized anything at Mozilla for profit, our leadership sees money as a tool, and we can focus on what we solve with the tool. Some of my long-standing projects are way too "altruistic" to ever exist at Google, Apple or Facebook, because they don't impact the revenue stream. We can and use the Mozilla Manifesto to reason about decisions all the time, and thanks to all of that - the Web community really supports us. So, if we can get amazing products, we may not have the marketing budget of big companies, but we have the support of the global community. And releasing amazing products is something that depends on us, not any external factor. Right now we're pushing for Firefox 57 and I do believe we're on the right track to succeed (yes, I disagree with Andreas :)).

My take is that if you have the "NGO" muscle in you, enjoy spending a lot of time on big problems, like the open-source community model of work (which we drift towards with most projects, although there are pockets that are slow to open up) and are not money-driven (not because they pay bad, just because you can get better money as a hired gun at some corpo ;)), Mozilla is worth giving a try :)

</comment><comment><USER18> They advertise remote jobs but it is actually limited to several counties. Also, they differentiate salaries based on your location.

<comment><USER14> Getting hired directly by Mozilla requires them to have a (minimal) legal presence in your country. If that isn't there, you'll be hired through an intermediary, but that is - as far as I know - possible essentially worldwide.

<comment><USER18> No, that intermediary option is also limited to some particular countries.

<comment><USER14> AFAIK it's more correct to say that only some particular countries are excluded, but I'm not HR and I have no idea where your are getting that impression from, so I won't comment further.

<comment><USER18> I got this information from Mozilla HR who clarified this with the hiring manager, for the country in Europe.

<comment><USER14> Ok, so one country in Europe is excluded.

This is quite far removed from "remote hiring limited to some particular countries". A large part of Mozilla's workforce is spread out through Europe, so there can't be too many exceptions.

<comment><USER18> "... only available in particular countries which doesn't include your country, unfortunately..." was the message from HR.

<comment><USER19> That's true, we can't hire everywhere.

<comment><USER18> A very small shop in a very beaurocratic EU country receives the invoices in PDF at the end of the month, from another country far outside the EU, pays the bill through standard bank wire transfer. Why Mozilla can't do the same?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was a contributor 3 years ago and my experience with Mozilla was mixed.

On the one hand, the people are skilled and super nice and I think you do good stuff when working there.

On the other hand you work on big old software projects with all the tools that grew onto them over the years. So if you on the technical side of things, you better like maintenance work, hehe.

<comment><USER19> ...and, yes there is a legacy problem with old code bases, but one trade-off for interns, contributors, junior developers is that you get to make an impact on a codebase used in a commercial project by hundreds of millions of people. Terrible tools written in anger in 2003 are still in use, sure, and terrible architectural decisions have been made, re-made, then made again over the years. It's the kind of messy any codebase eventually gets to.

This codebase still has life in it though, and the proof is in how far Gecko has come in the last year. Go run Nightly for a bit, compare it to Chrome or current Firefox. It's a big deal.

<comment><USER20> > Terrible tools written in anger in 2003

lolwat?

<comment><USER20> Seriously, what was happening in 2003 that made Mozilla employees angry?

<comment><USER21> Nothing specific. It is being used to convey that the code was written at an emotional high or low maybe when the author was tired or under time pressure to get something that worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _I worry it 's a sinking ship_

The ship already sunk once, it just keeps resurfacing every time the water drops because the competition suffers from the CADT Model wrt their attitude towards the internet.

<comment><USER22> Wow. Glad Google kept that in it's cache, and even more impressively that JWZ kept those pages online.

From 2003: CADT == "cascade of attention-deficit teenagers"

> I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then > (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer > can't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any > of the known problems that existed in the previous version.

[https://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/02/the-cadt- model/](https://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/02/the-cadt-model/)

</comment></comment><comment> vertex-four Surely it depends what you're working on there? There'll be projects that are mostly-ignored and slowly dying, and projects which are core to the organisation's goals.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure it also depends a lot on your manager. Like in any corporation, really.</comment></comment>


Wolfram on Alan Turing's birthday. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2010/06/23/happy-birthday-alan-turing/

<comment><USER2> After having read 2/3 of this, I began to entertain the idea that this might indeed be an honest praise of Alan Turing's work, without the Wolfram ego spin that we all expect. One can hope, right? Unfortunately, that was right before Wolfram goes on to explain how much further Wolfram sees than Turing ever could, how Turing would be impressed by all the significant results of Wolfram, how enthusiastic Turing would have been about Wolfram Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, and finally, how Wolfram Wolfram Wolfram Wolfram.

In other words, this is exactly the article I expected.

<comment><USER3> I wish you could give Wolfram a break and look at him with liberated eyes. I don't think there's anything exceptionally egocentric about this article unless you look for it - in fact I find it quite disturbing that you would want to make this celebration of Turing into a piece about Wolfram's ego. Sure Wolfram's glasses are no doubt tinted by his own ideas, but what entrepreneur's isn't? If any, people at HN should be aware of this and I find it sad the lack of sympathy for a man who, when it comes down to it, has actually done good things and contributed to this world.

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that you measure Wolfram's behavior by entrepreneurial standards. Indeed, I have much respect for his commercial successes, Mathematica is a great and useful program. And I have no real qualms about him boasting that Mathematica and Alpha are the greatest inventions since sliced bread, that's to be expected of anyone trying to sell a product.

But Wolfram is also a scientist, and the ideals in science are a bit different. A scientist is supposed to be humble, admit the limitations of his work, and acknowledge the contributions of others. This is expressed in the famous quote by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." Of course scientists are only human and don't always hold up to that ideal (maybe Newton least of all), but it's still important to recognize the difference between a scientific argument and a sales pitch.

<comment><USER4> > This is expressed in the famous quote by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen > further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Ironically, this was a quip at the expense of Robert Hooke, who was particularly short in stature.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Fame>

<comment><USER2> I've heard about that, and I'm not convinced. Here's the quote in context:

> What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and > especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical > consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the > shoulders of Giants.

So if it's (also) meant as a quip, it's a friendly one. And in either case, the saying goes back to the middle ages and was always meant metaphorically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lecturer and mentor I had at university worked closely with Turing during and after the war, and I never knew until recently. I've had no news of his death, so I'm desperately hoping to be able to catch up with him next time I'm back home, and perhaps get him to reminisce.

PS: Please fix the title. The article has it right - it's "Alan".

<comment><AUTHOR> It's now fixed. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Question to those in the know: I've done a lot of data mining, statistics and inverse problems, but I've never even _looked_ at cellular automata. Am I missing anything?

What are they used for - what problems can they solve that other methods can't?

<comment><USER4> "Am I missing anything?"

Not really. They're a fun diversion, and useful for some simulations, but that's about it.

<comment><USER6> So what's the big deal - why does Wolfram seem to think they are the answer to the world's problems? I'm confused - there must be something there, as he's obviously a smart guy.

<comment><USER7> Wolfram has - correctly - noted that complexity can arise from simple systems (think Conway's Game of Life, but even simpler - Wolfram is into one- dimensional equivalents). This is, he says, akin to how many biological systems work (e.g. individual cells/neurons are pretty simple, but a human is very complex).

He also - correctly - observes that the explosion in computational power afforded by modern computers make certain scientific investigations possible that were previously infeasible (e.g. the proof of the four-colour theorem relying on exhaustively testing some 1800 possible scenarios, or numerical simulation of some very complex phenomena).

He then combines these two passions of his and asserts that therefore, computation based on simple systems gives insight into the secrets of life, the universe, and everything.

<comment><USER6> I can understand that position. If he's correct, it would seem like a small task to search the computational landscape and find automata that predict biological behavior or physics systems better than current models. Is this his approach? I don't see many (any?) papers like this in any of the fields I'm involved in - so has it been successful?

<comment><USER8> It's harder than you might think to model real physics with a cellular automaton.

Cellular automata are simulated on regular grids of cells, which gives them anisotropic (direction-dependent) behavior. For example, moving patterns in most automata can only travel in certain preferred directions (like gliders in Conway's game of life). And patterns that can move in multiple directions usually travel with different speeds in each direction.

In the real world, we don't observe any anisotropy in space, so none of the cellular automata I've seen proposed up to this point can model real physics, even in principle.

Lattice gas automata use hexagonal grids instead of square grids to alleviate this problem somewhat, but the anisotropy never really goes away, it's just reduced.

<comment><USER9> NKS covers a lot more than just 1D or 2D cellular automata. See <http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/section-5.5> and beyond.

<comment><USER8> You're right, NKS does cover more than cellular automata, like network systems (as your reference shows). But all the examples Wolfram gives of network systems have the same anisotropy problem as a cellular automaton. He uses mostly hexagonal grids for his network systems, which are better than square grids, but still not isotropic.

Wolfram doesn't give even a simple example of how two particle-like structures might repel or attract each other in an isotropic fashion in a network system (or any other system in NKS). That doesn't prove it's impossible, but if it is possible neither Wolfram nor anyone else seems to have any idea how to even get started.

<comment><USER10> Can't you get rid of the grid, and connect the cells randomly? I have an notion that Feynman did that, but I don't remember where I heard about it.

<comment><USER8> That might very well fix the anisotropy problem (I haven't seen it done yet, but it sounds reasonable). However, that leaves you with another problem -- how do you create a stable particle-like pattern that can travel over a randomly-connected grid of connections without disintegrating :) Something like a Game of Life glider will explode if it hits a differently-connected area of the grid.

But say you solve that problem too -- there are many more problems after that. How do you encode the other properties of a particle like mass, charge, spin and momentum into this pattern? How can patterns attract and repel each other at long distances like real particles do?

These problems are probably all solvable, but my point to the original poster was that it's harder than it seems at first, and it's not something that's amenable to a simple search of the state space of possible automata.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can understand not bringing up that Alan committed suicide but I don't see why Wolfram just passingly mentions that Alan was gay but doesn't mention at all the UK's treatment of him because he was gay. Maybe Alan would still be alive if the UK hadn't convicted him of, basically, being gay, and forced him to take hormone injections...</comment>


The cinematographer of Knives Out wants to end the film-vs.-digital debate - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/6/21125680/film-vs-digital-debate-movies-cinematography <comment><USER2> Comparing digital and film images on a computer monitor is pointless</comment>


On forgetting the remember me checkbox. - <AUTHOR> http://openideas.ideon.co/2011/remember-me-now <comment><USER2> Alternatively, one could make it opt-out rather than opt-in. Slashdot does this for your session - you can mark a session as being at a "public terminal", ensuring that you're logged out when your browser session ends.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but then you get way more people who leave themselves accidentally logged in.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Opt-out would probably be a security transgression with the current scrutiny of social media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My problem with the "remember me" checkbox is that I don't want the site to remember my login credentials until after I know that my login attempt was successful. If I mistyped my email address or password (the latter being both easier to mistype and harder (impossible) to verify), I don't want the site to remember that information.

Fortunately, my browser usually asks me whether it should remember the login information after the page is loaded.

<comment><USER5> I've never seen a site that stored invalid "remember me" credentials in a way that'd interfere with normal operation.

<comment><USER6> Nor have I, but reemrevnivek's concern does raise an interesting question about the clarity of the copywriting.</comment></comment></comment>


Brendan Eich Resigns As Mozilla CEO Following Criticism - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-resigns-as-mozilla-ceo-following-criticism-of-his-support-for-prop-8/

<comment><USER2> This is ridiculous. Eich did something many of us - including myself - disagree with wholeheartedly. But he has a right to his opinion. He shouldn't have been fired.

OKCupid's response to this was extreme - "We wish him nothing but failure." Really? Because you disagree with him? I disagree with him too, and believe his view on this single issue is bigoted and crude, but I also recognize that he's made enormous contributions to technology. That's why he was made the CEO of an organization that he helped start, not because of his political beliefs.

If you can't believe something unpopular for fear of losing your job then that's a form of coercion, and it should be as abhorrent to all of us as restricting the right of same-sex individuals to marry.

<comment><USER3> It's not ridiculous. Actions have consequences. A consequence of his action is that he was unable to perform the duties necessary for CEO of Mozilla.

Freedom of expression has never meant freedom from the consequences of your expression. Why don't people understand this?

<comment><USER2> Let's take the opposite case. Let's say you were working for a bunch of people who believed wholeheartedly what Eich believes- that same-sex individuals don't have a right to marry - but you expressed that you think they do have a right to marry. Do you think it would be acceptable for them to fire you based on this private belief simply because they disagreed with it? Take this question completely apart from the question of whether or not our belief is correct and theirs is wrong.

What is the limit to the consequences that can be meted out because of your free expression?

<comment><USER4> That is not logically equivalent. One group is trying to deny another group rights...the other group just wants to be treated equally under the law. Eich, unfortunately, is on the wrong side of history here and he suffered a consequence because of it.

<comment><USER2> Right - but neither of us have the final authority on what's wrong and what's right. In this situation both sides believe they are right, and then it becomes a matter of who has the power to inflict censure on someone else for their beliefs. In which case, if you were in such a situation, and therefore less powerful than your superiors who believe the opposite of you, wouldn't you want protection from being removed from your job and livelihood simply because you happened to believe something that went against the grain?

If we mete out harsh punishment to people who don't toe the line people become afraid to speak and debate. If we are truly right then our idea will be proven right only through rational argument and rigorous debate. We should be doing everything possible to foster such an atmosphere, and that means sometimes tolerating beliefs that we don't agree with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why I don't think the flamewar penalizer on Hacker News makes much sense (or it should at least be turned off for stuff that is "big news").

This news item is going to keep getting submitted as every time zone comes around to it.. voted up, huge argument, kicked off the front page despite hundreds of votes and then the loop begins again. It's better to just have the one initial thread with all the noise, no?

</comment><comment><USER6> See also the thread for the official announcement from Mozilla:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7525198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7525198)</comment>


There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom (1959) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_Plenty_of_Room_at_the_Bottom <comment><USER2> Here's a little more info on the nanomotor which Bill McLellan built to win one of Feynman's prizes:

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3785509.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3785509.stm)

Amazingly he was able to build the motor by hand using tools such as a sharpened toothpick.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's almost 3 decades from concept to industry, or a lifetime for many HN readers. We always talk about the rapid progress of science. Someone has a new idea today that won't reach industry until those same readers near retirement.

</comment><comment><USER4> Did Feynman have the idea of building small remote control arms and using those to build smaller remote control arms, and so on, until you could work in the nano scale? Has anyone ever pursued that idea?

<comment><USER5> The big problem is that as you scale down the relative importance of different forces change. Surface tension and viscosity become overwhelming strong compared to any sort of mechanical force. Anything like a gear or propeller is useless, rather you have to rely on self-generated chemical gradients. No one has yet developed these forms of motion and power using entirely nanoscale physical principles.

<comment><USER6> Drexler's _Nanosystems_ does have designs and analyses of bearings, gears, and motors. Surface tension and viscosity are avoided by running in a vacuum-tight box. (There's some discussion of lower-performance interim systems to work in solution.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awhile ago it occurred to me that there will come a moment when anybody who is working in any sort of manufacturing but who _isn 't_ doing nanotech is, in effect, just playing with model trains, tinkering with toys. That moment may have passed already.

<comment><USER6> I think you're going to be right, but not yet. Today we can make complex atomically-precise structures and machines with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_nanotechnology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_nanotechnology) but DNA is weak and floppy. There's much left to do to bootstrap to stronger stiffer systems that are easier to design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relevant IBM Video: A Boy and his Atom.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0)

<comment><USER9> A Boy and His Dog is more fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a video of him giving a version of the talk in 1984, to an audience of ludicrous californian hippies:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW-- c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW--c)

I think it might be at the infamous esalen institute.

<comment><USER11> _Because writing is just black atoms on top of white atoms or whatever_</comment></comment>


How I learned to Stop Feeling Safe in My Own Country and Hate Border Agents - <AUTHOR> http://www.onthemedia.org/story/my-detainment-story-or-how-i-learned-stop-feeling-safe-my-own-country-and-hate-border-patrol/transcript/

<comment><USER2> I regularly travel to the US for work but with every visit my originally burning desire to move ebbs further. Between a political class willing to destroying the functioning of your own government over a petty squabble and a terrifyingly out of control security state even visiting is increasingly feeling like a bad idea.

<comment><USER3> That willingness is nothing new. Around the turn of the last century, it got so bad we had to modify the constitution and completely change the way we elect senators. [http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/S...](http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/SeventeenthAmendment.htm)

<comment><USER2> This does not however make it any more palatable, nor reflect any more positively on a populace will to (re)elect people willing to engage in such destructive brinkmanship.

<comment><USER3> Maybe we should accept that human nature isn't going to change, and we should form our government to suit the people instead of vice-versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We don't need terrorists when the government is doing such a great job of it.

<comment><USER5> Sure we do, it's just that we only need them once every decade or three, when the government needs a new external enemy to invoke because the people have stopped taking the old one seriously for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you'd prefer to listen to an audio version, here's [http://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/319368](http://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/319368)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been through immigration (Washington State <-> Canada) multiple times (like more than 50 times) and I have NEVER had any issues with American immigration/border patrol. I was born in South-America (brown complexion and with an accent), but am an american citizen. Even when I was a permanent resident never had issues with them. Sure, I was detained various times (only a few times for more than 1/2 hour), but didn't feel it was an excessive amount of time. Early on, I learned that if you keep your cool, you amplify your chances of not getting flagged.

Now, about Canadian border patron...

Even though they might ask you "What brings you to Canada?", the way they really ask it, while they're condescendingly looking at you is "WTF are YOU doing in my country?"

I have been harassed so many times by them. All with no smiles, no niceness, nothing. I stumbled on an oddly worded question once... this flagged me right away. They made me feel like I was lying, and even had the audacity to tell me: "If you're lying to us; NO CANADA FOR YOU!".

IMO, American border patrol wants to get you on your way as soon as possible after they do their own checks (whatever those are). Canadian border patrol want to harass, intimidate and annoy you to the point where you just want to say "F __* YOU, I 'm going back to my country!"</comment>


A different kind of calculator - <AUTHOR> http://stuifzand.eu/abacus/

<comment><USER2> This is a blatant copy of a great application from Acqualia software called Soulver:

<http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/>

Granted, Soulver is only available for OS X, but the author could at least give some credit to Acquilia for the idea.

Soulver is a fantastic piece of software, btw. I use it almost daily.

<comment><USER3> Emacs has `calc' which is somewhat similar.

I like the fact one of the features for this app. is: "Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are all supported".

<comment><USER4> >I like the fact one of the features for this app. is: "Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are all supported".

If this thing ever gets traction, it will be because of this new 'multiplication' feature. Nobody I know uses division, and every calculator out there has some form of addition built-in. Of course, emacs already has it - try `M-x multiply-the-left-number-with-the-right-number-and-return-the- result`.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not interest whether or not this is a copy of something already in place, it looks like a neat little app. Anyway, honestly, the 'buy - go to the store' button at the end of the page was a bit unexpected..

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like it should have some minimal horizontal rules to guide one's eyes back and forth between a formula and the corresponding answer. Not necessarily all the time, maybe just when the density of formulas crosses some readability threshold (if that can be determined well).

</comment><comment><USER7> How is this better than BC? Better scientific function support? bignum support?</comment>