A modest proposal for optional methods in Swift protocols - <AUTHOR> https://cocoasamurai.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-modest-proposal-for-optional-methods.html <comment><USER2> Compile time errors for an optional protocol requirement defeats the purpose of using protocols if you ask me. Why use an optional protocol at all, if the compiler will mandate an implementation - thus not making it optional?

I believe Chris Lattner said something along the lines as well back in Swift Evolution proposal: "They are non-sensical - how can something be a requirement and be optional? :)"

Source - [https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of- Mo...](https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of- Mon-20160104/006078.html)

<comment><USER3> I see optional protocol methods as hints to the other developer that if you want to implement those methods, you can, the data is there.

At least that is how I use them in Obj-C, which is proving to me to be the more flexible alternative to Swift (despite the hype that Swift is amazing in every use case).

This roots back to one of my main problems with Swift: it doesn't adequately support the in-code conversation between developers. For example: no header files to quickly digest key object interfaces and concepts. The language feels like it is optimized to solve compiler problems and point out null value bugs at the expense of outputting joyfully easy to follow code.

<comment><USER4> > _at the expense of outputting joyfully easy to follow code._

I disagree.

How is _" These are the requirements, oh but some of these are not really required."_ easy to follow?

Swift does a great job of making it easy to make sense of code _at the point of use_ , without having to keep referring back to the definitions of things.

A protocol is a set of requirements. When I see a type adopting a protocol, I know that it must fulfill those requirements. Done. I don't need to check if any of the requirements were optional and I don't need to check if the conforming type implements those optional requirements.

If you need optional requirements (an oxymoron), then just break it into ProtocolA and ProtocolB, using protocol inheritance if needed. That's what the Standard Library does (e.g. with `Collection` and `MutableCollection` etc.) and it works great.

Also, at runtime, I just need to see if `type is ProtocolA` or `type is ProtocolB`. How would you check for the implementation of optional methods within a single protocol, without basically reinventing Objective-C?

Finally, good riddance to header files! May they forever remain entombed along with the semicolons. There are other ways to see the overview of a type. Xcode's Symbol Navigator for one, or the Interface Assistant Editor, or you can put in about the same effort as writing a header file to write good documentation.

<comment><USER3> Imagine a protocol for a download:

Required 1\. Download finishes 2\. Download fails

Optional 3\. Download progress (for updating a progress bar)

This seems legit to me. Would one really want the added overhead of having to implement 3 as a separate protocol?

<comment><USER4> You'd present that as `ProgressReporting` or something, because other tasks besides a download would want to report their progress too, and indeed, the Foundation framework already has such a protocol [0]!

In your first comment you seem to value the ability to "quickly digest key object interfaces and concepts" but you balk at the added clarity afforded by separating different behaviors into distinct protocols?

If by "overhead" you mean a cost to performance, worrying about it at that level falls under premature optimization, until you're certain that the extra protocol noticeably harms performance.

If you really insist on having a single protocol, then make `progress` an optional computed property.

[0] [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/progres...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/progressreporting)

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/progres...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/progress)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The proposal doesn't provide a motivation other than Objective-C has them. Is there any API design that is improved by optional protocol members? It seems to me that if you're adding optional members to implement, your protocol or interface is too large and should be broken up.

</comment><comment><USER6> I see what you did there...

<comment><USER7> For those who don't, it's a clever reference to Jonathan Swift's satirical essay

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

<comment><USER8> What's the clever bit?

<comment><USER9> Johnathan Swift wrote a famous essay called a modest proposal, that basically suggests we should eat children, if I recall correctly. So the clever bit is to connect the language, and this proposal, in a lateral way, by alluding to J. Swift's original essay.

<comment><USER8> In what way is that clever? This thing isn't satire, the allusion, such as it is, might not even be intentional. Nobody thinks putting 'considered harmful' in a title is clever and those things are usually about something the author considers harmful, like the original.

<comment><USER6> I'll take another stab at explaining this to you but I'm worried you might just be trolling.

The phrase "A Modest Proposal" is generally associated with the essay's author, Jonathan Swift. By combining that phrase in a literal sense ("I'm suggesting something new about how to handle option methods") with the name of a programming language which coincidentally is the surname of the author, it leads to a clever connection.

It would be like an article called, "Do not cast your Perls before swine" about dynamic casting which also is a play on the common phrase, "Do not cast your pearls before swine." [Yeah, that example kind of sucks but it was the first thing that popped into my head.]

<comment><USER8> You need not be worried about that, I'm not trolling. I am definitely being churlish. Yes it's associated with Johnathan Swift but nothing in the association is in the slightest similar to the style of Swift's essay. The names match? So what. It's still completely pedestrian. From the wikipedia page - "In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire.". That's just not the case here.

You're right, it would be like that hypothetical article if you both made up a clever title involving perl and casting _and_ the modest proposal thing was particularly clever. But it's not, so that hypothetical rather begs the question.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Biggest Regret as a Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://thecodist.com/article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programmer <comment><USER2> From what i know, top technical people who have cutting edge knowledge and skill set still get paid a lot (sometimes even more than their management counter parts). It really is a supply and demand problem for high skill set. The way i see it, the top 15% of developers (or any technical person) for that matter never have problems making money or getting jobs, but there is a large "middling ground" of developers who all think they belong to the top 15 % that fight over jobs, and think the reason they are getting screwed is because the world is unfair, when in reality, they are not as good as they think.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you can do both, management and technical stuff. Your mistake was to think that you had to choose one of them.</comment>


Of no technical merit, but awesome - <AUTHOR> https://vine.co/Zach.King

<comment><USER2> Awesome indeed !

<comment><USER3> Seen this guy doing the rounds on Vine. It's a really great use of Vine and very creative. There is a part of me wondering how he's getting paid or getting income from this. I am not sure he does this `for the lulz`, because that would be plain weird.

<comment><USER4> He has some sponsored vines (e.g. LaCoste) so he is getting money for some of them</comment></comment></comment>


Why the 'Queen of Shitty Robots' Renounced Her Crown - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/simone-giertz-build-what-you-want/ <comment><USER2> > For a long time, building shitty robots meant Giertz never had to face > failure, even if the robots themselves failed. "One of the things that I've > been trying to figure out is: Was building shitty robots in some way a > method for me to minimize myself, to make myself smaller?" Giertz says. > "Because that's what I notice—a lot of women being really scared to step up > and be an expert."

This rings really true, and as funny as the shitty robots were, I really have been enjoying her later videos a lot more than those. She's really funny and talented and deserves a lot more than shitty robots. And I hope she'll be ok.

<comment><USER3> >She's really funny and talented and deserves a lot more than shitty robots.

Why? There's nothing wrong with moving onto other things and pursuing other interests, but she has this perplexing perspective (which you echoed in this statement) that somehow the 'shitty robots' content was something to look down on. It was good stuff, and if she wanted to continue, it would have been perfectly fine and something you could build a career around.

<comment><USER4> She has bigger aspirations than making shitty robots for a joke and YouTube ad revenue.

<comment><USER3> And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's great. Sometimes people don't know when to give up a shtick and end up being typecast for decades.

The part that's perplexing is why she (and some others) see that content as somehow beneath her and why she has this general negative and insecure attitude towards the "shitty robots" content she created. That content entertained a lot of people and allowed her to stand out from the mass of other Youtube content creators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My daughter, who is interested in science and engineering loved the shitty robot videos. It was a form of engineering comedy. I guess if she wasn't a women, creating shitty robots would be just funny and inventive way that she figured out how to make money. Comedians make people laugh using inventive and unexpected constructions, she was no different. A lot of comedians do things that are in one way or another demeaning to themselves or showing a lack of self-respect, but they do it because they actually incredibly confident in themselves that they can stand up and make those jokes.

How was her videos not that different than the stchick that is Mr Bean. Rowan Atkinson is definitely not an idiot in real life, but that stchick sure got him attention he wouldn't have gotten any other way, because it was unique and over the top and funny.

It is also fine for her to move on to other topics. No one is forced to stay in any specific role they have invented for themselves, no matter what fans think.

<comment> throwaway-9320 Would like to mention Mehdi (ElectroBOOM) here as he seems to match the description, but with electricity and physics: [https://www.youtube.com/user/msadaghd](https://www.youtube.com/user/msadaghd)

<comment><USER6> Seconded, this guy is great. He plays it well enough that it takes a little while of growing incredulity before you realise he's doing it all on purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a random observation about the comments sections of the types of videos she makes. In videos that feature female makers, commenters seem to address them by first name far more often than happens in the male maker videos. I am not sure why it bothers me but it feels off.

<comment><USER8> IME, that reflects (at least American) society in general, where males are referred to by their last names among friends much more often than females.

<comment><USER9> It also depends on the last name. Short last names will be used more than long ones, male or female. Funny last names more than non-funny ones.

<comment><USER10> Did you vote for Donald or Hillary?

<comment><USER11> Bernie or Warren ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the story of most comedians. Good comedy is easier than good drama and deep art and invention. It's a young person's game. Good to move on to something bigger and better.

Yes, Simone is a better robotocist than most of us. That's not a compliment _to her_ , because her dreams aim higher.

The sexist fear angle of the story is unfortunate, though. People shouldn't hold themselves back because of imagined differences in what they are allowed to do.

<comment><USER13> >Good comedy is easier than good drama

I highly disagree. Good comedy, especially one that stands the test of time (and not just wit _du jour_ ) is _hard_.

>It's a young person's game.

I thought I couldn't disagree more, but I actually do.

From Leslie Nielsen to George Carlin, a lot of my favorite comedians were grey-haired, old people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Article is presently 404.

IA WBM: [https://web.archive.org/web/20191210130453/https://www.wired...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191210130453/https://www.wired.com/story/simone- giertz-build-what-you-want/)

</comment><comment><USER15> >"There are so many things that are amazing that are not perfect. And there are so many things that are perfect that are fucking boring," [Giertz] says. "Perfect is a corset. It doesn't let you breathe. It doesn't let you roll around. It's a small pen to be in."

Oof. That hits the perfectionist in me hard.

<comment><USER16> To achieve perfection is to sacrifice growth DuckerZ

<comment><USER17> "Perfect is the enemy of good"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Side note: Why couldn't Tesla license her truck design instead of the Cybertruck. Sigh.

<comment><USER19> I don't think Tesla needs to license her design as there is no trademark or patent. They can start manufacturing mini-pickups any time they want to. They probably aren't because the market for small electric pickups with miniature beds is a small one. The direction they are going seems like the right one to me; big, powerful, featured, luxurious vehicles that absolutely out-class ICE vehicles and leave us wondering why we spent a century going the wrong way, is the correct market to address. Musk being a dick driving around LA in his hulking machine is also correct and brilliant marketing.

<comment><USER18> Was a joke comment. I just wanted an electric El Camino

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good on her. She's seen the value of quality engineering over quality humor.

</comment><comment><USER21> You go Simone</comment>


A C89 compiler that produces executables that are also valid ASCII text files [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/abc/paper.pdf <comment><USER2> There was actually a tool "com2txt" back in the DOS days. So you could convert an executable and put it into an email....

Update: I have my data well sorted enough that I found it :-) It even comes with code and is under a vague free license: [https://github.com/hannob/com2txt](https://github.com/hannob/com2txt)

<comment><USER3> Shameless plug: I also wrote a tool similar to com2txt in 1996: [https://github.com/pts/pts-xcom](https://github.com/pts/pts-xcom) . A quick comparison:

* com2txt.exe is 7110 bytes long, xcom.com is only 401 bytes long.

* xcom.com can also convert back from text to binary.

* xcom.com can also convert to data text (without the self-decoder header).

<comment><USER4> Can it also stop an alien invasion?

<comment><USER5> Send some aliens and test it out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a nice video that does a great job of walking through what is happening here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA)

<comment><USER7> That is demoscene level awesomeness! Kudos to the author. Excellent video as well. And not least, lovely ending <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The phrase 'For example, on the popular and elegant X86 architecture, the single byte 0xF4 is the "HLT" instruction' slays me every time.

<comment><USER9> Can you explain this? Is it the "popular and elegant" part?

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. It's very subtle humor. Students of computer architecture consider x86 to be one of the least elegant architectures around. Its many warts include segment registers (originally a hacky workaround to stretch 64k of memory to 1M), and an extremely complex instruction encoding employing prefix bytes. Many of the legacy issues (such as not having enough registers) have been papered over, leaving traces behind. Many people felt that the complexity would doom the architecture, and that a cleaner, leaner RISC approach would win out.

However, Intel has used their advantage in process technology to throw massive amounts of transistors to make up for the problems caused by all this complexity, and has done well. RISC has done well in the mobile space because those transistors tend to be power-hungry, but everywhere else x86 is today almost the only game in town.

One reason it's especially funny is that "HLT" is one of those legacy instructions that has pretty much no use in a modern system, yet takes up a whole slot in the byte encoding, while common operations like MOV or ADD often require extra prefix bytes to specify the size of the operands.

Hope that helps!

<comment><USER10> > One reason it's especially funny is that "HLT" is one of those legacy > instructions that has pretty much no use in a modern system

Is HLT no longer used in OS idle loops? Are there now other instructions which are better to use instead?

<comment><USER11> It's absolutely used. It's a completely normal and expected instruction to find on any CPU whether new or old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On a related note, how about C source code that you can chmod +x and execute directly, even with execve: [https://gist.github.com/jdarpinian/84a28a1ed8a36313a4e0cad8b...](https://gist.github.com/jdarpinian/84a28a1ed8a36313a4e0cad8b3cd347f)

<comment><USER13> Why go to all that trouble when you can just

#!/usr/bin/tcc -run #include <stdio.h> int main() { puts("Hello, World!"); }

<comment><USER12> Because most people don't have tcc installed, and the convenience is ruined if you have to install things for this to work. I really like that tcc has a flag for this; GCC and Clang really should copy it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The histogram on the last page counts the occurrences of each character in the paper (all of them printable, of course). But because the histogram's counts are made of characters too, the author had to add a few extra numbers to make the histogram "converge". Brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is the work of Tom7, well known for other projects like Learnfun & Playfun, ARST ARSW and running a marathon in hockey skates.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for pointing that out. I wouldn't have noticed who that was otherwise.

His video on learnfun/playfun is both hilarious and amazing.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The good doctor murphy is a mad genius.

I laughed very hard indeed when I first read this and got to the last 30 seconds of the video.

</comment><comment><USER18> Meta literate programs. Not only do you have the code and a descriptive document about the code in the same document, but you also have the executable!

</comment><comment><USER14> Do I see a Sierpinski triangle on page 9? It's the code that, according to the description, changes the value of the AL register.

<comment><USER19> No, it is the _data_ that the compiler precomputes to help changing the value of the AL register. It is unused here, in fact it is cropped to 160 columns and it has a caption in the middle so it's wrong even. He included it just because it looks cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The paper/executable starts with "ZM", but shouldn't a DOS .exe file start with "MZ"? ([http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/exe/](http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/exe/)) What am I missing?

<comment><USER21> MZ or ZM works

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

<comment><USER20> TIL I wonder if there's any interesting reason for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I must be missing something, but I don't see how the actual text of the paper originates from the source code. Those C instructions actually compile into the sentences of the paper as well?

<comment><USER23> From a quick look at the source[1], it seems the compiler will always generate an executable with the text from the paper (which is read from the "paper/" directory, and some bits hard-coded in the compiler source). Or something. I don't really know SML.

From what I can tell, the .exe file generated by the compiler must be really big anyway (since the relevant sizes in the header can't be small because they have to be printable). So there must be some text, it might as well be the paper.

[1] [https://sourceforge.net/p/tom7misc/svn/HEAD/tree/trunk/abc/e...](https://sourceforge.net/p/tom7misc/svn/HEAD/tree/trunk/abc/exe.sml#l278)

<comment><USER22> Ah so all the x86 bytes that the actual text generates are basically just filler for the actually relevant sections of the paper (i.e. the jumble of bytes that appears)? They're never actually read or executed by the CPU?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone have a copy of the program? I want to try and run it.

<comment><USER25> The text file ( [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/abc/paper.txt](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/abc/paper.txt) ) is the program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If only i wasn't too lazy I'd buy a hat just to take it for the author.</comment>


It now costs $350k a year to live a middle-class lifestyle in a big city - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/you-need-to-make-350000-a-year-to-live-a-middle-class-lifestyle-today-heres-why.html <comment><USER2> Lmfao at this article, these people aren't middle class... $2450 a month (30k!! a year) on child care because both are working?

$2000 a month (24k!! a year) on preschool to give their kid a leg up on going to a $35k a year grade school & high school?!?

$70 per DAY on food because you can't be arsed cooking?

They factor in 8K for vacations and another 6K per year for date nights?!?

And then it ends with this stunner:

> According to the U.S. Census Bureau, less than 5% of households earn > $350,000 or more a year.

> While $350,000 might sound like a lot of money, it'll go quickly when you're > raising a family in an expensive city. We all deserve to live a middle-class > lifestyle. Unfortunately, we've first got to sacrifice more than ever to get > there today.

Uhhh if only 5% will achieve that level of income you might need to ask yourself if it is really middle class....When people talk about "out of touch coastal elites" this is the type of shit they're talking about.

<comment><USER3> The childcare figures are actually pretty in-line.

In our area (bay area suburbs), daycare for a 2-year-old is around $2000 a month excluding any extra babysitting. Preschool for a 4-year-old is around ~$1800. I can see how within SF proper they might be higher.

<comment><USER4> "The childcare figures are actually pretty in-line" with one of the most expensive and unrepresentative cities in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't doubt any of these expenses, and this hardly seems like a lavish lifestyle... but at the same time, $38k in 401k contributions is hardly middle class. Especially when the median _household income_ in the US is $59k per year.

If you plug that $38k in 401k deductions, and then add say another $10k in employer contribution, assuming you have two parents at age 30 who plan on working for the next 35 years, and who have, to date contributed $10,000 total to their 401k you end out with a $9.0m retirement fund at age 65, assuming a 7% annual growth rate. Going by the 4% withdrawal method you get a $360k annual retirement income which seems a little high.

<comment><USER6> Don't forget your $1.8 million middle-class house.

<comment><USER5> In SF that absolutely is a middle class house.

<comment><USER7> If you know something about SF, I'm curious - on a typical assessment of that sort of house, how much of that is attributed to land, and how much to the house (2br 1300 sq ft, the sort that would sell for <$180K in a normal city in a wealthy coastal state)

Also, when people talk about the price of living in Manhattan, the obvious response is - so don't live in Manhattan. Can't you work in the Bay Area without living in SF proper?

<comment><USER5> Almost all of the value is the land.

RE: Cost of living, I dunno, part of the reason the cost of living in SF / Manhattan is so high is that lots and lots of people make enough to be able to afford it.

<comment><USER7> About land value, of course that is what one would assume, and what is often claimed.

I thought the cost of living in Manhattan or other similar places was so high because _people do other things than live there that are highly valuable_. Which might be nature's way of telling you "don't live there".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> AKA "Eating at restaurants every day and spending hundreds of dollars on new clothes every month while employing someone else full time to watch your kids gets expensive."

Spending $70/day on food is not normal middle class living. Go to the grocery store once in a while.

> _The parents' ultimate plan is to send both children to private grade > school_

Are you kidding me?

<comment><USER9> If you think you can eat out with a family of four for $70/day in the city, you are sorely mistaken.

When I eat downtown with my family the bill is rarely below $100 with tax and tip for dinner, and that's a single meal, with no drinks (tap water), and no dessert.

Even some place like B.GOOD (higher quality fast food) is going to be $50 unless it's a "Kids eat Free" night.

<comment><USER2> His point is that middle class families aren't eating out anywhere near that much. They go to the grocery store, cook and eat at home.

<comment><USER9> My point is a family of 4 can easily spend $50 at the grocery store for 12 meals in a day without being exorbitant.

And that's assuming the two working adults are brown-bagging it at lunch every day and not eating out lunch with team members at least a couple times a week.

So $70/day gives you room to eat out as a family maybe once a week, not daily. (No way a family with a 2 and 4 year old are doing that, but that's kinda besides the point)

Of course there are people who claim they eat like a king for $5/day. And I don't doubt it's possible, but I doubt it's common for a middle class family of 4 living in the city who are probably paying Amazon to deliver their groceries.

<comment><USER7> I think it's reasonable to spend ~$11/person/day if you're mostly not cooking, and not economizing, based on firsthand experience. I mean, I understand that you can do math like "fast food meal costs $13, multiplied by 3, equals $39/person/day". But it just doesn't seem to work out like that, so something in your estimating logic is way off.

People's memories and estimates are often unreliable, but if you use one credit card for everything and it tallies your spending on restaurants, that's pretty definitive.

<comment><USER9> $11 eating out, in a major US city, for the whole day? Breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Did I read that wrong?

Breakfast at Flour (egg sandwich, and a late) is going to run you $12, assuming you don't buy that brownie for later. That salad at Sweetgreens is $15. Just the salad. Juice is charging $14 for a 16oz protein shake. We haven't even made it to dinner yet.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I'm not disputing what a meal is going to cost, "major" city or not. For instance, I had a sandwich, drink, and a cookie at a non-chain casual-not- extremely-fast-food place, and it was about $16 with tip. If I get something cheap, where there's no tipping, it's still probably going to be near $10. On the weekend, sure, dinner for two might cost $100, never mind a large family. Might be leftovers though.

My point is that doesn't mean you average three times a typical meal price per day over a long period of time. And the reason I'm so sure is because I have the records which show I don't.

Maybe it's just laziness/time constraints. I can't possibly get up early enough every day to have a large meal, even if I could stomach it. And I only get half an hour for lunch on workdays.

My point is the relationship of averages to salient data points. Like I mentioned in my other post, it seems like I'm always going 40-60 mph, but my trip computer says my average is a lot less, and the average is very consistent no matter what kind of driving I seem to have been doing. Or, another example is time estimates, where short tasks are consistently underestimated, because it's human nature to ignore short delays/overhead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I didn't read the piece but suspect there is a conflation of "middle class" with what might be better called "professional class"\- 2 working parents in high end white color jobs in high demand locations in high demand cities who tightly manage their time.

$350k is at the very low end of this professional class with multiple kids. Kids, and proximity to good schools, get very expensive, very quickly.

Housing: properties that can fit families- but where kids need to share rooms- in demand areas sell for $2M. Look it up. Mortgage on that is $10k/month. Rents are equivalent.

Childcare: a babysitter off the books for one kid is minimum $20/hour. With multiples, and a baby requiring full time attention, plan for $1k/week. Don't forget the bonus.

Food: at Whole Paycheck, the only supermarket in high demand areas, with picky kids, it's basically $5/person/meal. A 4-5 person family is $60-$75/day, $2k/month. Meals out with the kids anywhere in that neighborhood are going to be $20+ entree, $10+ appetizers, $10/dessert, $10/beer. Family of 4-5 can easily get to $200, including tip. Twice a month and that's $6k/year.

So with just those "basics" you're already at $120k + $50k + $30k = $200k post tax expenses, so $350k pretax. No private school, no vacations, no cell phones, no savings, no incidentals.

Note that in the context of these areas, this "professional class" is absolutely "middle class" in relative terms. "Upper class" in these areas will be the numerous families with assets and incomes above $1M.

<comment><USER8> > _with picky kids, it 's basically $5/person/meal_

Nit. Actually picky kids only want plain hot dogs and plain quesadillas and plain spaghetti. The ingredient cost of feeding picky children is a few cents per meal even after you add childrens' multivitamins and smoothies.

I think y'all have lost your minds on these food prices. $50 gets you two 16oz steaks (two adults can each eat steak for lunch AND dinner with that) and 15 or 20 _pounds_ of fresh vegetables easy at whole foods in the 94107 zip code according to Prime Now. And that's on top of the million servings of dry grains you can buy for a dollar. $50 every day? You're killing me.

<comment><USER10> Lol, happy to provide the entertainment.

Just to be more precise from an example I am _intimately_ familiar with-

* picky in this case means "specific"\- specific products or combinations of products are required to satisfy a given child's nutritional demands. One can bellow like the dad in Calvin and Hobbes- "if they're hungry enough they'll eat it"\- but that will be to no avail.

* actual individual serving sizes of these specific products are often at least $1, and combinations of those servings are needed on a per eating event basis.

* "snacking" means that it's more like there are 4-5 eating events of $3+ per day per kid

* packaging, portion sizes, product lifespan and pickiness mean that a lot of food- probably 40-50%- gets thrown away, either not eaten during a meal or not gotten to before it "goes bad."

From a recent daily trip that bled for $60:

* oat milk - $1+/serving for a wannabe vegetarian environmental activist

* quick cook oatmeal - $1/serving (and don't forget the cranberry raisins, also $1/serving)

* bagel - $1/serving

* cream cheese - $1/serving

* cut fruit - $5/serving (snack!)

* yogurt - .75/serving (cheap!)

* specific brand of peanut butter granola - $2/serving

* non-nut snack bars - $1/serving

The "whole" thing is insane.

<comment><USER8> > * cut fruit - $5/serving (snack!)*

You know... If you buy a knife, you'll save a lot in the long run. It doesn't even need to be a sharp knife.

> _quick cook oatmeal - $1 /serving_

Quaker oats costs $1 per pound, not per serving. Granulated sugar costs even less.

I have similar comments about your other prices, but you probably get the point.

[edit] Wait, no. One more. I have to.

> _cream cheese - $1 /serving_

365 Everyday Value, Whipped Cream Cheese, 8 oz Price: $1.79 ($0.22 / Ounce)

HOW MUCH CREAM CHEESE ARE YOU FEEDING YOUR KIDS? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Live in s/big city/San Francisco/"

As this chart from the article, SF is an outlier, only bested by NYC: [https://fm-static.cnbc.com/awsmedia/chart/2019/8/22/salary%2...](https://fm- static.cnbc.com/awsmedia/chart/2019/8/22/salary%20required.1566490457180.png)

<comment><USER12> Surprised Philadelphia ranks so cheap; I was under the impression it had prices similar to other New England cities like Boston or DC.

<comment><USER8> Like every other BS "It costs this much" story, it depends on what specific location you're looking at and how much you want to not deal with crime. In Philadelphia you'll find three homes selling for $450k, $800k, and $1.2m on the same gentrified block in Northern Liberties, and people will walk past you on the sidewalk saying "I grew up here, but I can't afford to live here anymore", and then there's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Badlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Badlands) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Philadelphia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Philadelphia)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> CNBC has a very upper class idea of what they think middle class life is like. Weekly date nights, $6000/ year on Netflix or similar, $7800 annual vacations? Most people canct afford any of those, let alone all 3 every year.

</comment><comment><USER14> > While $350,000 might sound like a lot of money, it'll go quickly when you're > raising a family in an expensive city. We all deserve to live a middle-class > lifestyle. Unfortunately, we've first got to sacrifice more than ever to get > there today.

Then don't live in a big city (read: SF, NYC). Not everyone should, nor deserves, to live somewhere just because they want to.

Hell, even in some of the bigger ones, like Phoenix, you could buy a giant home + drive to work in a Tesla for that type of salary.

</comment><comment><USER15> > A Bay Area Rapid Transit janitor who makes $234,000 plus $36,000 in benefits > marries a Bay Area Rapid Transit elevator technician who makes over $250,000 > in salary and benefits. Together, they'd make well over $350,000.

What? This is unbelievable. But if true, makes us all contemplate our career choices.

<comment><USER16> Seriously! I think I could move back to America, to a poop-stricken dump like the Bay Area and repair elevators for a quarter-million dollar salary. Live in a customized van or mobile home for 2 years, then take all that money and buy real estate across SE Asia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Recommendations for a better life >If you're one of the many families struggling to get ahead in >an expensive city on a high salary, here are five >suggestions:

>1\. Limit your household income up to $321,451 after all >deductions.

The solution is your money problems is to make less money. :facepalm:

</comment><comment><USER18> I learned a long time ago that food is the number one thing I foolishly spent my money and wondered where all my expenses were going. Not much can be done about the preschool costs (I feel the pain there), but the very least you can do is create a food budget, go to the grocery store, meal-prep, and replace common expensive things like coffee/smoothies and make them at home. After about a few months of adjusting to new behavior constraints you start to optimize and learn new habits that turn out to be more comfortable to work with. (Bonus: I now enjoy cooking). If you still enjoy the odd day going out somewhere to work, never leave home without a tumbler or some canteen of some kind.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ok, these costs are a bit incorrect. The actual housing cost is much much much higher: not just 4k, but roughly 16K (190K per year) per month for 2.8 million dollar house where you need to pay just 38K per year property taxes. And if you don't live on the penninsula or are willing to move into some high crime areas, you can even find a house for less than 2 million dollars.

All the other costs are much higher than they need to be. You don't have to spend 70$/day on food, even here in the bay area. If you're really smart with money and eat a lot of oatmeal, beans, rice and onions, you can get your cost down to less than 30$/day for a family of 4, even here in the bay area! Vacations, aren't really needed - that's a luxury, same for clothes.

So, if you calculate it for real, you'll find the biggest costs by far are housing and day care which account for about 70%+ of the budget.

</comment><comment><USER20> A Bart janitor makes $234,000 a year?! WOW

</comment><comment><USER21> 2200 on food per month, utter nonsense. 380 on baby kit per month for children in preschool? Nonsense.

Recently moved to SF with family of 4, combined income of about 130k less than this and living well including private elementary schools and preschool.

Don't need a car here, even with a family.

We furnished our place with a bunch of stuff folk were giving away for free

We eat well, sometimes out.

</comment><comment><USER22> I figured it out! It's an article designed to funnel traffic to the author's blog site by using outliers (like the janitor) as clickbait. Other commenters pointed out that this is partly absurd expectations of what middle class is and partly the absurd reality of bubbles like SanFran.

</comment><comment><USER23> I looked at the author's blog financial samurai and my impression was that all articles, including this one, were designed to sell the idea of investing in houses in what it calls the heartland of america with a crowdsourcing platform the owner probably owns called fundrise.com

</comment><comment><USER24> This almost seems like a hit piece that'd be written by my rural Appalachia in-laws that cry out in amazement that I don't get multiple acres and a water supply for a $500k property instead of a studio apartment and believe that everyone makes much more money just by moving to the city.

<comment><USER25> It seems more like its written by bubble trapped millenials for each other. But thanks for the xenophobia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Articles takes the cities with the most extreme living expenses, and tries to say those costs are representative. Some of the "big cities" are smaller than places like Houston and Dallas where you can live a middle-class lifestyle very inexpensively.

</comment><comment><USER27> This seems incredible even to someone living quite comfortably in London for far less. Are these figures for real?!

</comment><comment><USER28> Well the BART janitor makes the most. I guess you'd have to pay me that to clean piss, shit, and used needles.

</comment><comment><USER29> utter nonsense</comment>


Startup Depression and the Search for Meaning - <AUTHOR> http://www.eriktrautman.com/posts/startup-depression-and-the-search-for-meaning <comment><USER2> Great post and kudos for the strength to write this. Last year, 7 Cups launched a Startup Support system for founders, that you might find of use: [http://www.7cups.com/startups/](http://www.7cups.com/startups/)</comment>


Trustless Machine Learning Contracts; Evaluating ML Models on the Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.10185 <comment><USER2> This scheme is severely flawed in many many ways. Here is a short list.

1\. The contest creator can trivially cheat the model creators and steal the pot. They simply have to overfit a model to the data and then submit that overfit model. It will trivially win and beat the other solutions.

2\. The datasets are usually the expensive and difficult parts of these things. You don't want to publish it openly where anyone can steal it. Also, storing data on the blockchain is super expensive.

3\. It's extremely expensive to run models on the EVM. Sure, you aren't training, but even that final evaluation will cost a bunch of money. Especially because the EVM doesn't support floating point. Have fun implementing and using exp.</comment>


Reddit's admins are requiring meme subreddits to ban Coronavirus memes - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/okbuddyretard/comments/fpa1hw/serious_corona_virus_memes_are_now_banned_and_why/ <comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for the vaguely-NSFW submitted subreddit. I debated submitting this r/hiddenpolicy link instead, as it's how I found out about this admin action, but I didn't want to start a chain of indirect sources:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/HiddenPolicy/comments/fpf5gc/reddit...](https://old.reddit.com/r/HiddenPolicy/comments/fpf5gc/reddits_admins_are_requiring_meme_subreddits_to/)

</comment><comment><USER2> i don't understand why they are banning memes and why is it wrong to create memes what harm would it do if anyone laughs. I know people say we have to take this seriously, obviously, everyone is taking it seriously or is it necessary for the citizens of world to remain panicked, doesn't make any sense to me</comment>


The science behind what motivates us to get up for work every day - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-what-motivates-us-to-get-up-for-work-every-day <comment><USER2> The underlying study to this whole, "money doesn't motivate us," idea often gets misinterpreted. What did the study actually say?

They took a group and had them perform two tasks. One was a problem solving task that required an abstract / creative solution. The other was a mechanical task that basically required the group to assemble widgets. The control group was offered no money and the test group was offered a payout. The results are well known, in the mechanical task, money was an effective motivator. People will put more effort forth for cash. In the creative task, money negatively impacted performace. i.e. Pressure chokes creativity.

The common interpretation misses an important confounding factor: Stress. The cash prize for success (up to a month's salary in some of the tests performed overseas), is stressful, and it's just as likely that stress, not money, caused the poor performance in the creativity task.

If you give an employee a good wage and strong job security, are they likely to feel more stressed, or less?

If we accept that stress kills creativity, then everything fits together nicely. Mastery, purpose and autonomy make for a comfortable work environment. So does job security. So does a fair (market) wage. I think the insight here isn't so much that you should (or can) pay people less, but that crafting a good work environment as defined in the article isn't expensive, or even necessarily hard, and can produce large gains.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article. Note that if you achieve everything in this article with respect to your work, you may actually become the person the author sets up a contrast with at the beginning:

 _So, here is the thing right at the start: I've always been uncomfortable with the traditional ideal of the professional — cool, collected, and capable, checking off tasks left and right, all numbers and results and making it happen, please, with not a hair out of place. An effective employee, no fuss, no muss, a manager's dream._

Real heartfelt drive and professionalism, like real grief or real love, is subtle and not theatrical. Sometimes it looks like a lack of emotion because being unhappy with your work stirs up a lot more drama by comparison.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty interesting post. A lot of this was covered in a book I read a few months ago, one of the best 'motivational' books that I ever came across (because it's scientific)

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/59-Seconds-Think-little- change/dp/02...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/59-Seconds-Think-little- change/dp/023074429X)

<comment><USER5> Off topic, but I bought that book, and I think it gets a little too much credit for being scientific. A lot of stuff in there is not tested theory, but rather conjecture. Conjecture can be scientific in spirit, yes, but conjecture is many times not tested and scientific in practice. I felt it had too much untested conjecture, and so doesn't deserve the hype.

<comment><USER6> I agree, I got the book because it was recommended by someone here on HN, and I found it full of reference to studies that I think most interested readers would already be familiar with. Then it would take those study results and extrapolate, leaving me thinking "wait a second, that wasn't proved at all."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This oversimplified, naive generalization-based psychology.)

Money is a weak motivator? Wrong! _Small money_ , median income, _same as everyone_ salary - yes, this a weak motivator. I would rather do something to improve my life, rather than wasting my precious time in a cubicle.

But let's talk about a lottery, or a mere $250k per year, and, you see, your motivation indicator is getting hard.

The ideas of independence and mastery (as a shortest way to the prior) is little bit closer, but, most of individual has their own individual motivations.

Some dreams of a status-showing gadgets or a car, some dream to impress a girl next door, or show that silly neighbors who worth what. Some like to go to most expensive restaurants and being served like a top tier, only to go back in a subway. There are as many individual motivators as people around.

But one of the "observations" is correct - yes, small money is indeed a weak motivator.)

<comment><USER8> I rather think status-seeking lies behind almost everything.

<comment><USER9> Would you mind elaborating? I've thought this too; but it tends to come out when I'm down.

<comment><USER8> Its hard to give it a proper treatment here but I think its an important topic. So I'll give a couple of links back to websites where there is a lot of related material and where much of my current thinking comes from.

I've been reading Robin Hanson's blog for at least six years. A lot of what he writes about relates to the topic of status-seeking motivations in disguise. Here is a short one that is pretty decent (if a little argumentative): [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/hiding-status- grubbing...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/hiding-status- grubbing.html)

I'm not sure if this next particular article is a good starting point either, but it is the one where the light-bulb finally went on and I realized nearly all my own motivations are related to status-seeking (you can see my comment, I'm "jhuffman" on this website). <http://lesswrong.com/lw/8gv/the_curse_of_identity/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Autonomy, mastery, purpose — all good for motivation beyond a certain threshold. But money is still what makes you "get up for work" every day. Otherwise it's a hobby.

<comment><USER11> True to a certain degree, but you could also say that money provides greater autonomy. However there are also people who work because they choose to, rather than because they have to, and I doubt they all consider it a hobby. Some people may not need the money, but they need work to give them purpose, which falls in line with the article. It's a good article, though a bit too simplistic, as I feel that motivation is more individualistic and diverse than what's set forth. But I think the purpose was to set forth the authors premise in a straight-forward, scientific manner, so the simplistic nature of the article is likely unavoidable.

<comment><USER10> I can remember some CEOs who works for a symbolic $1/year (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary>). They certainly do it because they like what they do, not because they have unpaid bills.

I still posit that most people who "go to work" consider monetary or other material reward their work provides very important. Many of them would trade their current place of employment to another comparable place that would pay, say, 30% more. This probably does not matter when you earn $100k+, but most people don't.

What is true from my experience is that paying more does not increase motivation when autonomy, mastery, and purpose are addressed poorly. It just feels like a more fair compensation for the pain of working in such an environment.

<comment><USER12> The CEOs who get $1/yr have huge equity positions that mean they will receive a serious payout if they and the company succeeds.

I'm pretty sure none of them would work at a job that the total compensation was $1/yr.

<comment><USER10> A founder of a startup may be _losing_ money at huge pace during the first few years. People working for charity might do it without being paid.

But you're right, they can afford it because their material needs are already addressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Actually, the part about money not being a motivator is only partially true. Dan Pink goes into more detail about it in his book: the motivating effect of "more money" disappears _if and only if_ the individual believes they are getting paid fairly. But if a person believes they are underpaid then it can seriously demotivate them.

</comment><comment><USER14> I really agree with this whole Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose idea, but I also think that it misses something very important: the emotional connection to the people you work with and the company itself.

We are social creatures. A company which ensures that its employees form strong bonds will have good retention.

The other thing which is important is internal competition.

I don't have any references for these things at hand so take what I say with a pinch of salt. However, I'm fairly sure there is psychology which supports this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Was it just me that found this curious?

"Negative emotions like fear and sadness can lead to brain activity and thought patterns that are detrimental to creative, productive work: (a) avoidance of risk; (b) difficulty remembering and planning; and (c) rational decision-making."

'a' and 'b' I'll grant, but rational decision-making is detrimental to productivity and creativity? Fear incites rationality? This seems out of place to me.

<comment><USER16> Rational decision-making can lead you to talk yourself out of great, gutsy ideas:

In the article about Steve Jobs at Corning re: Gorilla Glass:

> This turned Jobs around, and he said he wanted as much gorilla glass as > Corning could make within six months. "We don't have the capacity," Weeks > replied. "None of our plants make the glass now."

> "Don't be afraid," Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was good-humored > and confident but not used to Jobs's reality distortion field. He tried to > explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering > challenges, but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he didn't > accept. He stared at Weeks unblinking. "Yes, you can do it," he said. "Get > your mind around it. You can do it."

<comment><USER17> Weeks was being a Negative Nelly. What he said was a non-sequitur. Not making it now does not necessarily lead to not having any in 6 months. Jobs was gently pointing that out. I suppose he could have said "Then get the capacity! I don't want to hear excuses!" but that probably wouldn't have worked out so well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure it's not science that gets people to work, just money. It got people to work in Ancient Rome, and still does today.

<comment><USER19> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle_problem>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why not just pay everyone at the company the same salary, and adjust it each year to be 10% over the average salary.

That would

1\. take the issue of money off the table 2\. free up lots of resources spent on navigating politics, negotiating, competing with colleagues 3\. probably make the workplace less hostile

4\. bring out all that potential of creativity and cognitive power

It still wouldn't be a below average salary, so it wouldn't turn away the good people.

Seriously, I can't see _one_ single reason why it wouldn't work, if people care strongly for purpose, autonomy and mastery.

I know it's (for some reason) a huge tabu to mention this, and there's always the immediate "but that's evil socialism!" comeback.

But seriously, I think it would actually make sense.

I know they did this at NeXT, and that it was abandon after a while, don't know the details of why though..

</comment><comment><USER21> They should have added "in 1st world countries". I bet at least half of the world population is going to work _because they need to eat_.

Needing to find _motivation_ for work is really just a first world problem a minor part of the population is facing

</comment><comment><USER22> Haven't read the article yet, but is it somehow related to this video? <http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc>

<comment><USER23> Was just about to put that link. On a personal note, I find it very true. However, I find that while not influencing happiness on the long run, salary does determine the acceptability of a position (good people tend not to gravitate to lower-than-average paying jobs). Once you're "hooked", it becomes more about A-M-P then salary and bonuses (not that those hurt :) ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Unsurprising that a management blog would conclude that paying workers less would make them happier.

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't this line of reasoning

 _You need thinkers, problem solvers, people who can be creative and using money to motivate them will not get you that_

a double-edged sword?

I understand this can be used as a reason for your employer to provide a (better) lifestyle approach (work-life balance), but it can also mean an employer doesn't have to pay you as much because no matter how much money they throw at you, it still won't motivate you to work optimally or strive to be the best creatively.

The reason why this jumped out at me is because I was in a similar situation. I applied to a huge company I wanted to work for, gave them my salary expectation from the get-go, and many wasted days and hours later, they offered me the job but with a salary that was a lot less than I had asked for. I asked if they needed further proof and mentioned that I had excelled at the tests they had given me and surpassed their job requirements (I had all the nice-to-haves and the required skills). They just said they were sorry I wouldn't be taking the position, because obviously I wouldn't at that salary. I think I would have been absolutely stellar at this position, but I wouldn't even be able to survive on that wage.

I consulted with a few personal friends who are managers or pretty high in their respective corporation's ladder, and they said I should feel insulted and that they were astonished.

So, while

 _Group B, on the other hand, having never been offered money in exchange for working on the puzzles, worked on the puzzles longer and longer in each consecutive session and maintained a higher level of sustained interest than Group A._

I question how this applies to the real world, where people usually are being paid to work, and move to another job usually for better working/living conditions and pay. Does this only apply to job-seekers who have no current job prospects? I think most people who take pay-cuts definitely think "It really has to be worth my while" to get paid less; variables such as neighbourhood, commute, etc., are taken into account.

And lastly, this

 _The way our brains are built make it necessary that emotions "cloud" our judgment. Without all that cloudy emotion, we wouldn't be able to reason, have motivation, and make decisions._

sounds very Nietzschean--chaotic, unorganised, 'organic'/'natural'. This may be the philosopher inside of me talking, but this goes against a lot of my own philosophy. It is true that there needs to be a strong enough flow (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)>) to motivate us to do what we like, but I don't think this occupies a large percent of the motivation pie, if you will. I think a balance is needed and there is an initial gut sensation of excitement that needs to be recognised, but in the end, this excitement will wear off and one really needs to concentrate and ground oneself in reality. According to my interpretation of Nietzsche, these "clouded" judgments I think are very attractive to artists, and I think it manifests itself as a sense of childishness and naivete in, for example, (liberal) arts students. I was an arts student, before anyone jumps on me for this. Sorry to bring this into the equation, but this type of idealism is not suited for our times and, as arts students as witness/examples, they do not help the working world, when they put into practice this Nietzschean concept of passion; it seems too extreme.

I'm an emotional being, yes, but I need to balance it with rational judgment, not clouded judgment. The less I do this, the more I recognise this as a "high risk".

<comment><USER26> About the money issue, it's not so bleak. As you pointed out - you have an expectation about your salary and won't work for less. On the other hand, you also have an expectation on how much you'll work. So you're basically telling people "I will do X work for Y money" with X and Y being respectively the minimum and maximum values you'll take. The question isn't for the company to pay you more money so you'll work more, they have to pay you more money so you'll work for them at all and that is what drives programmer prices up (or down).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This article seems a bit odd because it almost seems to dismiss money out of hand. There must be some threshold level required to get people thinking about the 3 "real reasons" the author specifies.

<comment><USER28> I remember reading a study somewhere that people are motivated and become happier with more money until around $79k/year. I can't seem to find that article now...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is the video that image was taken from: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>

</comment><comment><USER30> i call this basic psychology</comment>


Producing a critical edition with LATEX, or the primacy of the typography [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://geekographie.maieul.net/IMG/pdf/latex-edition-critique.pdf <comment><USER2> "The primacy of typography, presented as unformatted bullet point slides."</comment>


Ask HN: How do you use 3D printers? - <AUTHOR> I am primarily interested in FDM (building in layers by melting filament).
A recent report says most use in US and Europe is in professional product development.
The image portrayed in every KS campaign of kids 3D printing at home, making their own toys and Mom helping does not ring true. I can see them being used in schools under instruction but imagine them collecting dust at home.
3D printers range in cost from $100 to $5,000 and beyond. Where is the point beyond which cost does not equate to value or benefits? It seems to me that the limitations of FDM are imposed by the materials and rate of deposition issues far more than the mechanics of the printer. In other words, once you get past cheap and flimsy construction the incremental gains per dollar spent are minimal if not non-existent. Is this true? Is a $5,000 printer 10x better than a $500 printer and 50x better than a $100 printer.
Put a different way, if you want to do your won small scale production, you could buy 50 printers for $100 each or five for $1,000 each. Ignoring logistics, are the printed results 10x better or better enough to justify going 10x slower with five printers?
I see 3D printing services out there but can't understand who might be using them when you can buy printers for relatively little money. Unless you are printing hundreds of something or dozens of a part that takes hours to print, what's the use case? Are any of these companies making money or are they chasing a loosing proposition in hopes that it will turn profitable in the future?
Context: I am looking to invest in the sector. I know it has a ton of potential. I am trying to separate reality from fantasy.
We use 3D printers in my manufacturing business. However, we have a full machine shop so 3D printing is used for "look and feel" much more so than anything else. We literally don't care about print quality at all. We are using an older Makerbot. That's the extent of my experience in the domain. <comment><USER2> >I see 3D printing services out there but can't understand who might be using them when you can buy printers for relatively little money.

My impression is that 3D printing is a hassle; between cleaning nozzles, babysitting things, polishing/sanding things post-print (removing supports, etc) and all the other work required.

I love that 3D printing is available, and I love that thingiverse and similar sites let you share models, but in the past year I've only wanted to have ~4 small enclosures printed for hardware projects. At that volume paying somebody else to print something for me is a much more effective use of money than buying a printer and managing it.

I wrote about this, briefly, here:

[https://blog.steve.fi/3d_printing_is_cool.html](https://blog.steve.fi/3d_printing_is_cool.html)

In short - 3d printing is cool, but its still not a "hit print and wait" process. Until it is I'd rather outsource the actual printing to people with more patience than I possess!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the hassle element is definitely there. The printers that simplify or eliminate some of these issues are not cheap at all.

I think there's a huge distinction between the occasional consumer-level user of this technology and professional users.

The first market isn't much different from the drone market. Lot's of cheap crap printers that end-up on shelves after 30 days or less. The second market is one that can support continuing growth and innovation. And the one that has a real need and real problems to be solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work in Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing.

The printers we use are not in the price range you stated. Those that money can buy cost several tens to few hundred thousand USD range.

We have many printers. Some have been around 15-20 years and others were manufactured less than a year ago that run much faster. We several different additive and 3D technologies with many materials, configurations, methods of part analysis, methods of build file preparation, methods of building, and methods of processing and finishing parts.

Our older machines still run beyond specifications provided by their manufacturers. Experienced people maintain them and keep them in an near-ideal environment. In every part of the process, experience with the machines and process is essential to producing quality parts. Most companies fail when they think that they can just "print parts" on their own. It doesn't work like that, even with some of the latest promises from machine manufacturers.

If you want to invest in the sector, and you can take on the risk, that is up to you. As a short-term investment it might or might not be a great investment, depending on news that comes up here and there that get people's attention. But, most in the sector believe that 3D printing and additive manufacturing will be transitioning from a historic phase of primarily producing prototypes and small batch parts into a production phase. That's not a forward looking statement for a single company or companies; it's a reality across the sector. Customers want that, and it will be provided.

Be aware, especially as an investor, that the reality of the market is not what you see:

Imagine all of the large companies that need to make parts and iterate on part designs quickly, some of which that could neither be machined nor made by hand. That's current reality.

Then imagine large companies that want printers constantly dedicated to making parts for them over and over, being able to iterate on design without stopping to change anything out. That's possible now, but many aren't doing it yet.

Now imagine most consumers expecting everything that they buy to be tailored specifically to their needs. Those products would have properties and behavior that would seems magical compared to today's. That's where we're headed within our lifetime.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your insight on this. Yes, I understand there are a lot of risks in 3D printing and lots of people chasing after unicorns. Yet, within certain constraints the technology is very useful. I'd say this might be particularly true of metal 3D printing, where companies like SpaceX are manufacturing complex parts that can't be made in any other way.

I have a feeling that, at scale, 3D printing will become just like CNC machining. Anyone can buy a cheap CNC machine on eBay, yet, from that to using them for non-trivial manufacturing and prototyping work it is a whole other matter.

Today you can buy 3D printers for as little as $100. I bet most of those sit around collecting dust after someone printed a rook, Darth Vader's head, the Eiffel Tower and a few models they downloaded here and there. In other words, they end-up exactly where drones do after the initial love affair.

It should come as no surprise that the majority of actual consistent usage is in professional and manufacturing applications. Be it research in prosthetic limbs, prototyping or limited run specialized parts.

I believe these sectors will continue to grow and require constant improvements in technology. My guess is this is where opportunities lie, not with the now very tired idea of kids making their own toys at home you see in nearly every single Kickstarter campaign.

<comment><USER3> Within this century, an average middle-class person may be able to afford a machine that could print things at home that they would want to wear or use. Today that person could make a crappy shoe in low-cost FDM machine and put shoelaces in it, but a pair of uncomfortable sandals is not the same as a nice pair of running shoes. To print consumer goods like that, you would need not only the automation and technology that could fit in a small spot in the home, but you would need raw materials that the machine could use, and probably there would need to be advances in chemistry, etc. Baking is different, though. Affordable 3D printing in a home kitchen should be much sooner, as that tech is already here.

So, if the immediate future is not having printers in the home to make any product, where would those be?

UPS moved boldly recently and got into 3D printing: [https://www.theupsstore.com/print/3d-printing](https://www.theupsstore.com/print/3d-printing)

I like what they are trying to do, but it doesn't work like that. The typical customer doesn't have the experience or resources available to design a part to be printed correctly, and then after that for the part to be finished as it should be to meet the specifications they've defined.

The immediate future is really all about the manufacturing companies that know 3D/additive and have the money and experience to blend those technologies with other manufacturing technologies in different niches. One company won't be able to produce cakes, shoes, and rocket parts anytime soon. But one company could produce satellite parts along with the parts for the printers and other factory equipment to make the cakes and shoes; another might just print the cake, another might print the shoe, but not all the parts of the shoe. That all happens today. Later, maybe a manufacturing company could print a whole satellite, a whole shoe, and print a cake and ship it without any human intervention.

<comment><AUTHOR> A number of years ago I read a very interesting book titled "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition". Despite the title this is a forward looking book exploring ideas surrounding applications of nanotechnology. The author talks about refrigerators that can print perfectly marbleized artificial beef and, at the other extreme, downloading your brain into a robot for telepresence and space travel.

3D printing, taken to the extreme of piling molecules on top of each other, could fundamentally change the way we make things.

In today's reality I am looking for opportunities to push the envelope. This could mean everything and anything from better hardware to better services. A few interesting ideas have come forward. Trying to filter through them now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is grid/cloud computing development normally slow? - <AUTHOR> I spent 5 years working with soft real-time embedded systems, where incremental builds took about 5-15 minutes on average. I thought that was bad, but six months ago I left to join a travel IT company and found that it can take them a week or more to get even broken code into a test environment.<p>This delayed gratification is frustrating enough for me that I've begun looking for a new job, but I wonder: is this normal for grid/cloud computing development? Am I just not cut out for server-side computing? <comment><USER2> No, it's not normal.</comment>


Show HN: Lantern, a dedicated Mac app for website auditing and crawling - <AUTHOR> http://www.burntcaramel.com/lantern/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've open sourced the app (written in Swift 1.2) at [https://github.com/BurntCaramel/Lantern](https://github.com/BurntCaramel/Lantern)

<comment><USER2> Looks pretty cool, but I ran into bugs right away, trying to add more than one saved website - it would revert to the previous one for whatever reason

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Testing is one of my biggest weaknesses. I get bored and negative about my own software when using it.</comment></comment></comment>


Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/mcilroy.html <comment><USER4> I just finished reading the LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual (still readily available from Amazon), published in 1962. The book is mind-blowing, because it mixes discussions of high-order functions with instructions on how to properly lay out programs on punch cards.

The "high level language" which shipped on every microcomputer platform of the 1970s and 1980s was Basic. I have often wondered why. Compared to Lisp, it is inelegant and inexpressive. Perhaps people who hacked larger computers of the era did not interact with microcomputer hobbyists. Perhaps it was too difficult to get Lisp fast enough to be usable on the old hardware, although if it was possible on big iron in the late 1950s, it should have also been possible on microprocessors in the 1970s.

An entire generation of programmers grew up using GOTO _< line number>_ to call subroutines and execute loops. That same generation could have grown up using lambdas. How sad.

<comment><USER5> LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual (and others) in PDF: <http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book>

<comment><USER6> Nice link! There are PDFs of old APL texts, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An excerpt from The Dream Machine:

"As a Lisp programmer continued to link simpler functions into more complex ones, he or she would eventually reach a point where the whole program was a function-which, of course, would also be just another list.. So to execute that program, the programmer would simply give a command for the list to evaluate itself in the context of all the definitions that had gone before, And in a truly spectacular exercise in self-reference, it would do precisely that. In effect, such a list provided the purest possible embodiment of John von Neumann's original conception of a stored program: it was both data and executable code, at one and the same time

In Mathematics, the technical name for this sort of thing is recursive function theory, which was why McCarthy called his first public description of Lisp 'Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation By Machine' Today ranked as one of the most influential documents in the history of computer languages, that paper established that a language could have a rigorous mathematical foundation. And it signified that John McCarthy had finally come up with a framework that was precise enough, rigorous enough, and compelling enough to satisfy even him"

His paper can be found here: <http://www- formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.pdf>

I am just amazed how often his name appears on this book (the first time he is mentioned, Waldrop talks about how strange people said he is). But in my book he will always be a legend and a visionary.

<comment><USER8> I read that paper around six months ago. I found it a little dry at first, and then absolutely enlightening. It's amazing what beautiful and complex things can be built with such a small handful of functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always wondered why Lisp is dead in the water. I got replies from people that never professorially coded anything in Lisp or Scheme (yeah..) - <USER2> was along the lines that in the past hardware was always dictating lower level languages and leagues of people were taught the ways of the everyday code that was only a few (if any) levels above the hardware. Thus, all of the primitives of the age (ASM, C, Pascal, whatnot).

However, I don't think that is the main story here. It sure is a big part, but not main for sure. I mean, there were LISP systems in usage at the big boys houses where money/hardware was no object. Later on, Moore law brought us supercomputers of the past to our desktops and we got C++, Java and Python; Even Ada was formed and deployed.

So, what's the deal? My primary focus in life has been computer graphics, and my first language was C. I was born in 1980 and my early serious computer endeavor is inherently tied to the Amiga platform (SAS C and alike), so I didn't have exposure to other language paradigms at all until later.

Later on, through a marvelous turns of event I was exposed to Scheme and at first I didn't "get it" - but there was this epiphany moment or two where I could see almost everything I needed in computer language for my needs, yet it was so simple.

Not to bore you more with details - I always wanted to get into game development. Career of TV and Commercials direction happened in the mean time, and now I am back into making my game development ideal a reality. My weapon of choice is D/Tango, since it really best suites my mindset. However, after seeing a PPT/PDF from naughty dog earlier this year about how they have utilized an embedded PLT Scheme, I came to wonder once again about maybe using Scheme as a scripting language after all.

tl;dr; Can anyone, preferably a pro Lisp or Scheme developer give a rationale why it isn't used more often? Everything I've read makes absolutely no sense why it isn't. Oh, and about the python argument that gets thrown around - <USER3> like the python as the next guy, but let's not fool ourselves.

</rant>

<comment><USER10> I'm not a pro Lisper, but I think reasons offered for this include:

* The AI winter (with Lisp, at the time, being seen as "the AI language")

* The heavy-cost and closed nature of the toolchain, and lack of standardization between toolchains, when industry was searching for a language to rally behind several decades ago

* The continued lack of standardization on all the "included batteries" when the open source movement was looking for languages to adopt for scripting a decade ago

* The deep semantic rabbit-hole a Lisp codebase can turn into when any macro-like functionality is used, meaning that a programmer has to basically learn every project as its own language (that is, DSL) before they can get to work—further meaning that projects grow a sense of individual stewardship/artistic direction, and become harder to work on by hiring committees and one-off contractors

* The continued outside impression of Lisps as slow, pure-functional and academic (even though most today are none of those)

* The unwillingness for most Lisps to embrace the Unix philosophy (meaning that it's easier to write a web browser in e-lisp than to loosely couple to one already written in some other language. Clojure is basically the only Lisp that escapes this, cleanly interoperating with the APIs of other languages... on the JVM, which itself throws Unix design principles out the window.)

I'm sure there are more well-founded answers, but all of those came to mind on my road to accepting Lisp.

<comment><USER6> Your point about "embrac[ing] the Unix philosophy" is a good one. Probably not the biggest factor for mainstream adoption, but significant nonetheless. While there are some Lisps now that that do this well (particularly those that compile to C, such as Chicken Scheme), it has a big historical precedent.

I've been wondering how Lisp would look if it were redesigned from the ground up to include Unix's philosophy, and I'm beginning to think that Erlang would be a good candidate. (With a healthy dose of Prolog as well.)

<comment><USER11> Check out Lisp Flavored Erlang for a lisp developed on the Erlang VM. <http://github.com/rvirding/lfe>

<comment><USER6> Thanks! (erlog in his other projects looks good too.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _It occurred to me recently that 1959 is the 50th anniversary.._ \- did you/he mean 2009 is the 50th anniversary? The talk presumably was in 1959.

</comment><comment><USER13> * It turned out you could do it: I programmed it for the IBM 704.*

Anyone else find this comment motivating? It kind of sums up a moment of reflection I guess I somehow aspire to. Find an insanely difficult challenge, that you deem important enough to devote a significant amount of time and energy to, and then one day: "It turns out you could do it: I programmed it for the _${preferred architecture}_." Thanks Doug^H^H^H^H hold on - didn't Steve Russell implement McCarthy's original Lisp on the IBM 704 - not Doug McIlroy. What am I missing that pulled me away from my moment of zen here?

<comment><USER14> I took him to mean that he had programmed a subroutine that could call itself, but only as a curiosity, and that it was McCarthy's talk that made it clear for the first time what was important about recursion.

Speaking of Steve Russell, does anybody know what became of him? It's extraordinary that he wrote both the first Lisp interpreter and the first computer game.

<comment><USER15> And continuations, apparently. As of 2002, he was apparently working in embedded for Nohau Corporation: [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/technology/a-long-time- ago...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/technology/a-long-time-ago-in-a-lab- far-away.html?pagewanted=2)

<comment><USER14> That's a really interesting article about the guys who created Spacewar. I hadn't realized, for example, that there were six of them. Anyway, you should post it in its own right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Six companies, including owners of Sam Adams, traded today at $0.00 per share - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/05/06/four-mega-drops-of-the-flash-crash-sam-adams-goes-flat/

<comment><USER2> _Traded_ at $0.00 a share? Or the consumer-level database that this guy is looking at says "zero"?

(Sadly, I work in currency trading, so I don't have any better data about this. But I know when I see a 0 in the database, I take that to mean "computer error", not "someone bought a billion euros for zero dollars". Because even buggy computer programs aren't that stupid.)

<comment><AUTHOR> The (relatively) gradual rebound in price suggests the trades actually happened. It's not a removable discontinuity, so to speak.

And, frankly, if you were coding an automated trading system, it wouldn't be _that_ unreasonable to write a "sell at any price" algorithm that doesn't cover the eventuality that a stock with a market cap as large as these might have literally no bids higher than $0.00. (My highly speculative amateur theory is that this is what actually happened: The NYSE froze trading on these stocks for an extremely brief period, as it did with many stocks today, and a handful of automated trading systems scrambled to electronic exchanges, where volumes were low enough that a $0.00 bid issued by some cleverly well-prepared hedge fund was the best around.)

<comment><USER3> some of the articles go into detail on specific trades (with the number of shares) that actually happened at $0.01 (or $0.000001 or whatever the number is that is meant to represent $0).

so it ultimately looks like a factor of events caused some people's simplistic trading programs to give away their shares for free, and the people smart enough to buy them up at near-zero did.

that's my best guess at this point, anyway. looking forward to hearing what actually happened :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey! I see that Accenture finally got a rational valuation and price!

No, I'm not a big fan, having experienced them as long ago as "Anderson Consulting" days.

<comment><USER5> Yup, some of Andersen's reps back during that time was responsible for disbanding my alma mater's chapter of ACM. We invited them to have a talk to CS students about IT careers and they were offended by how our chapter advertised the talk. (I felt partly responsible, I normally copywrote signage for the club, but due to class pressures somebody else took over just before this incident.) The reps complained, and we had to write a letter of apology and disband because of some words on a sign. (The wording wasn't even offensive or in slang, they just were uptight about how their organisation was presented.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was a real melt-down. For a while Yahoo! Finance and Bloomberg were both unavailable. Google's finance page continued to function during that time. A friend was able to trade on Schwab and Fidelity, but E-Trade wasn't able to return trade confirmations, and eventually told my friend their market maker was down.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Sothey's[sic]:

While the other companies on this list hit zero briefly, Sotheby's went in the other direction. After opening at $34.61, its shares briefly touched $100,000 before closing at $33._

What is _that_ about?

<comment><USER8> The only conclusion I could draw is that they must have been highly inversely correlated to a company that tanked. A trading algorithm would potentially have a pair trade going where the tanked company's shorted while being long Sotheby's.

That, or the whole system broke down in a very weird way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seriously, whatever happened to sanity checks on input?

<comment><USER10> High-Frequency Trading. When your margins depend on squeezing every last millisecond of performance to beat the speed of the market itself, you don't have time for an extra conditional branch instruction.

An exaggeration, but not a very large one. The stock market is a high-speed game, and a lot of players are willing to cut safety features for raw performance.

<comment><USER2> But the big players do the safety checks at compile time, so at runtime, it's simply not possible to make one of these mistakes. Theorem proving might not be necessary for your "hello world" rails app, but it is something that the finance industry likely applies.

(Disclaimer: I do not work with any algorithmic trading systems. Humans do a pretty good job of trading, too.)

<comment><USER11> I can't tell if you're joking.

<comment><USER2> There is certainly a culture of micro-optimized C++ in the finance world, but it's not _all_ like that. (It's easier to do easy things than it is to do hard things, and so there is going to be more easy-to-write software in existence than hard-to-write software. Hence why you see so much bad C++ -- it's really easy to write bad C++.)

Jane Street Capital is a good example of a company that advertises their interest in writing good software: <http://www.janestcapital.com/technology/ocaml.php>

<comment><USER11> The OCaml type system is a really weak form of theorem proving-- the fanciest usable thing you can do is phantom types.

When algorithmic trading software gets written in Agda then your comment might make more sense.

<comment><USER2> You can run theorem provers on top of these languages, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do you ever feel like this whole system is a house of cards?

<comment><USER13> No, not quite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm getting a 404.

</comment><comment><USER15> By the way, the WSJ has already disappeared this article, so you know it is something important. And no it is not on google cache.

I found from the google summary that the boston beer company, maker of sam adams, hit started out at 50, crashed down to 0 and then immediately climbed back up to 50. Google finance has it crashing down to 14 only, probably because their graphs are not very granular.

This is really concerning. Not because it crashed (companies fail all the time), but because it went up and down so quickly without there being any changes to the actual business prospects of the company whatsoever. It really shows something is wrong.

<comment><USER16> It's right here: [http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/05/06/four-mega-drops-of- the...](http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/05/06/four-mega-drops-of-the-flash- crash-sam-adams-goes-flat/)

Please don't invent shadowy conspiracy theories where they don't exist.

<comment><USER15> The link was dead when I checked it. Also the link provided by the google crawler was just as dead, so it could not have been a mistyped link.

So I was correct that the link was dead when I said it was. It is possible that that blog post was so popular that a WSJ server holding it crashed while the rest of the site remained online. Or it is possible that that the WSJ saw my post and said "damn, he is onto us, bring it back up!" Anyways, I am keeping my mind open :)

And regarding "inventing shadowy conspiracy theories where they don't exist", well they do exist now, since I invented them!</comment></comment></comment>


New imaging system creates pictures by measuring time - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-07-imaging-pictures.html <comment><USER2> Given all the degrees of freedom in a three-dimensional scene, and the one- dimensional data stream they capture, my caution is aroused.

I'm suspicious that their outputs may be solely the result of over-fitting from neural networks.

And that given a significantly structurally different scene, the output would be nonsense.

The article does not seem to show a broad variety of scenes, and physicists are frequently not creative photographers. I would not be completely surprised if the training images were rather predictable poses in a physics lab. And do not see how there can be enough information from the sensor to produce an image otherwise.</comment>


Vidoop - Say goodbye to passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/Vidoop--Say-goodbye-to-passwords/ <comment><USER2> Looks like your standard fare OpenID provider. I'm not sure why they need a team of two dozen for that. Plus I wonder if they felt the name vidoop embodied all that is online identity security. The name makes it sound like a YouTube clone.

<comment><USER2> Never mind, another article shows that they replace text passwords with images. It makes it more interesting, though its practicality is yet to be seen.</comment></comment>


No, he didn't: Obama's Legacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/no-he-didnt-obamas-legacy/ <comment><USER2> I recall he tried to close Gitmo and was blocked.

<comment><AUTHOR> To bad he wasn't just a King

/s</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should one prepare for a data science interview? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,<p>Looking into data science careers right now, what are resources to check out and difficult topics I should review to prepare for a data science interview? <comment><USER2> Depending on the job descriptions, I'd say you'll probably need to be able to describe how you would analyze common problems (i.e. how do you do a cluster analysis, how do you ensure it's statistically significant, etc.)

You might even be asked to do case studies, analyze some data and present the insights. It depends on the culture of the company and what role you'll be undertaking. I would say that it doesn't help if you are great at presenting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this! :)</comment></comment>


The final days of Adobe Flash - <AUTHOR> http://www.bytheshaw.com/article/The+final+days+of+Adobe+Flash.html

<comment><USER2> That's being a bit unfair to Google, no? They've been experimenting with using html5 videos on YouTube, it's not as if they've rejected the possibility of using html video out of hand.</comment>


Nvidia's Hackintosh Support Is an Insurgency Against Apple's Computers - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nvidia-titan-xp-hackintosh <comment><USER2> I used to work on a hackintosh, the support is impressive on tonymacx86. [https://www.tonymacx86.com/](https://www.tonymacx86.com/)

ReHabMan is just amazing. It's even easy to get started with all the tutorials. Indeed, the problem I was getting was with nvidia support, mini- display port, multi display in general, video drivers, hybrid video (integrated + discrete card), etc. Everything else was working a bit too well.

It's sad that this is not legit, the community is really awesome. At least this nvidia move with drivers is a good news for the users in general I suppose.

I personally worked on windows back in the days, discovered MacOS, moved to ubuntu, hated all the PPAs, missed the tools I had on mac so gave hackintosh a try, wasn't legit and had lots of troubles with nvidia, moved to arch linux, struggled with lack of nvidia support too (ironic isn't it?) but turned out to work a bit better on Fedora (maybe because I got better with X11, wayland and configs in general) Then someone left at the office and I got his macbook so I moved back to MacOS (my dotfiles are now compatible on all main os and I automated my setup...). I don't think I'll switch again for a while (time consuming, it's a long trip), but this news is really tempting to move back to hackintosh. I have to admit it though, I really enjoyed Fedora :P

<comment><USER3> I've just recently installed macOS Sierra on my ASUS laptop thanks to ReHabMans tutorials, some things took me days to fix like the audio, but you always end up finding the solution in a thread made by that talented guy. The only problem I had was high RAM usage and some other things that need tweaking. edit: mic and cam don't work, this way nobody can spy on me ;)

<comment><USER4> Does Xcode and/or the iPhone simulator work?

<comment><USER5> Yes for both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great. The usual emphatic declarations of listening and caring about customers rings more hollow with every Apple press event that I watch.

Things are messed up when they let a product cycle lapse for 4 years (i.e. Mac Pro) while leaving everyone in the dark the entire time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nvidia has supported installing their latest cards into old Mac Pros for years now with their web driver. Nothing new. They still have no support for Apple EFI in these cards (meaning the cards have no video output during boot and install of OS updates, making them incredibly inconvenient to use in day to day work).

<comment><USER8> They work just fine for OS updates, I just installed one on mine. The only thing you lose is an Apple boot logo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If Apple now respond with locking out Hackintosh users in any upcoming MacOS update...

Then they'll probably do Microsoft a huge favour in persuading a lot of MacOS users to finally go Windows.

I'd expect my current Hackintosh would last me 3-4 years now that it runs with a 1080 Ti.

<comment><USER10> You could also try giving Linux Mint a shot, too. Unlike Ubuntu and Windows 10, you don't deal with copious ads in your file manager and launcher and things like that.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately i use After Effects too often.

I'm planning to run Linux, but also run OS X and Windows 10 at the same time using KVM and dedicate a GPU (Via passthrough) for each of these. This way i get the added benefit of not having to reboot to enter Windows, plus i can make snapshots of the entire VM whenever i desire and thus do A/B tests in a "native" environment.

OS X works very well with KVM, so it is certainly doable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Once the Pascal drivers come out, no spec upgrade from Apple to the Mac Pro lineup will pull people back from making their own Hackintoshes with 1060/80(Ti) & going nuts with rendering or machine learning applications!

Cheaper hardware with top of the line specs, upgradeability & compatibility with Windoze, *NIX & macOS.

<comment><USER12> Or they might switch to Linux where that all 'just works'.

<comment><USER13> For those who think this is sarcasm, the last update to the nVidia drivers fixed most of my issues on Ubuntu. I only have a 980 and not doing machine learning professionally, but this thing handles any game I throw at it.

<comment><USER12> > I only have a 980

It's such a tribute to the modern semi conductor industry that you can write that so casually, and yet, we're talking about an approximately 5 TFLOPS co- processor here.

Not all that long ago that would have been a rack full of very expensive hardware and not all that long before that half a floor in a DC.

Welcome to the future.

And you're right, definitely not sarcastic.

<comment><USER13> For gaming or home use its a big deal, for professionals, why waste time with as single 2 year old card.

<comment><USER12> A card like that is still more than powerful enough to learn with. That's technically still 'home' use but as a professional entering a field you could get a lot of mileage out of it, especially if you already have it.

I wouldn't buy one new or second hand to study with today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> NVIDIA has been "casually" helping out Hackintosh users with driver updates for their cards that aren't realistically used anywhere else for a while now (nobody has that pre-"trashcan" Mac Pro with the swappable PCI Express GPU slot anymore).

</comment><comment><USER14> Couldn't this just be aimed for GPU Docks (mainly for laptops)?

Or Apple doesn't support such devices?

Edit: Well it seems that's not straight forward... but maybe NVIDIA is playing ahead of the curve with TB3 on MBPro 2016 : [http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/12/01/the- thunderbolt-3-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/12/01/the- thunderbolt-3-equipped-macbook-pro-can-use-external-gpus----but-at-a-cost)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm still not sure whether this is Nvidia "playing ball" with Apple, or whether this is Nvidia saying to Apple customers "Hey Apple guys, we love you now! Please don't go with AMD!"

<comment><USER16> I found myself asking the same question. Either way, this is great. Going to pick up a 1070 for my hackintosh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone has any tutorials on how to build your own hackintosh with Ryzen+1080?

That would be a time saver. Thanks

<comment><USER18> The common wisdom is that support for AMD chips / MBs is sufficiently poor in MacOS that it's probably not a good idea. Check out [https://www.tonymacx86.com/](https://www.tonymacx86.com/)</comment></comment>


SWIFT - a Free, Open-Source alternative to Adobe Flash - <AUTHOR> http://swift-swf.blogspot.com/p/about-swift.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the alpha release.</comment>


Dolphin Mega Progress Report: July and August 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/09/02/dolphin-progress-report-july-and-august/ <comment><USER2> Dolphin, to me, is the model open-source project: constant improvements, total developer transparency, detailed documentation, and a lively community. It is the most reliable and most professional emulator out there, for any platform.

Also, that hybrid ubershader thing was pretty clever.</comment>


Self-hosted vBulletin – you're doing it wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/self-hosted-vbulletin-youre-doing-it-wrong-and-why-you-should-be-using-managed-hosting-services/ <comment><USER2> vBulletin is horrible software, I personally prefer IPS.

But really the takeaway from this is - update your software - if you're not able to or unwilling then go with a hosted solution. Good advice for any software not just forums!</comment>


2 Magic Words When Offering Advice - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nixing-startup-taglines-marcus-allens-help-andy-raskin <comment><USER2> tl;dr: "By saying _make sure_ instead of _don't_ , he was telling me that he had faith in my ability to make decisions."</comment>