Why do Windows functions begin with a pointless MOV EDI, EDI instruction? (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110921-00/?p=9583 <comment><USER2> It's kind of cool, so many things (computers or otherwise) have padding built in.

Remember BASIC, the classic 10/20/30 line numbering scheme? Don't want to be caught without room to expand your program.

Microprocessors manufacture in extra gates in case they need to fix something.

Even in large construction projects you see evidence of mystery tunnels, pipes and other things that enable post-construction changes. Some of the road fly- overs in my area have branch points that are only connected in one direction (since obviously it would be ridiculously hard to retrofit the piers at the intersection 10 years from now to add a road going the other way).

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently, hotpatching never really took off: [http://www.itwalkthru.com/2010/10/hotpatching-great-idea- mic...](http://www.itwalkthru.com/2010/10/hotpatching-great-idea-microsoft- but.html)

Not sure if anything has changed in recent years, though.

<comment><USER4> It's used a bit. Adding hotpatch support was a major feature in Wine a few years back, when Steam added their in-game overlay feature. I believe one of our devs did most of the legwork getting the ms_hook_prologue attribute into GCC so we could support this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Raymond mentions MS Detours in this article on patching. I've had great success troubleshooting 3rd party DLLs with Detours interception of function dispatch, specifically Excel XLLs.

<comment><USER6> I haven't used Detours in years, so was surprised to see that they have a "professional" version now - it's like $10K in the Windows Store. I only used the free version, but it was awesome to work with and made trampolining a lot easier than trying to hack it all in by hand. We used it to integrate some of our in-house trading system's interfaces into a third-party order management system that we didn't have the source code for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If it weren't for the "fastcall" convention using ECX for an actual argument value, they could have used "MOV ECX,EDI" and then the change to a "JMP $-5" would have been possible with a single byte store to the opcode (0x89 -> 0xeb), removing any worries about a two-byte store straddling a cache-line or page boundary.

</comment><comment><USER8> More articles like this in Raymond's blog, which is full of anecdotes from his time at Microsoft.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/)

<comment><USER9> Got a few good ones? I don't really feel like trawling through almost 5000 articles.

<comment><USER4> A few good ones from my browser history:

GetRandomRgn: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/06/18/10321...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/06/18/10321212.aspx)

A good idea ruined by bad application programmers: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/11/03/55532...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/11/03/55532.aspx)

How window minimization really works: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20041028-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20041028-00/?p=37453/)

See you later. J: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060523-10/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060523-10/?p=31103/)

<comment><USER10> Can I just point something out about the "Shell Folders key" article... So he whines that developers don't read documentation. So I went and got the "SHGetSpecialFolderLocation" docs[0] which say at the top:

> [SHGetSpecialFolderLocation is not supported and may be altered or > unavailable in the future. Instead, use SHGetFolderLocation.]

Alright, so I go and get the SHGetFolderLocation documentation:

> Deprecated.

So neither SHGetSpecialFolderLocation or SHGetFolderLocation are still the correct function for this and I have no clue which is the correct win32 function here because on the "Deprecated" one they don't tell me? And all because I went to MSDN and actually tried to read the official docs.

Microsoft always likes to blame crappy developers, but their documentation is terrible too. Instead of removing the documentation for the registry shell folder key, they should have left documentation and in that article explained why they exist and why you should not use them.

Ultimately Microsoft, particularly in the 1990s, had terrible documentation and they're in no small part to blame for how badly software was written to the platform.

[0] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb7...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb762203\(v=vs.85\).aspx) [1] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb7...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb762180\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

<comment><USER4> I agree MSDN's documentation isn't perfect, but trust me, it is far, far, far better than almost every other API's documentation that I've seen. I can't speak to its quality in the 90s.

Also, your second link says """As of Windows Vista, this function is merely a wrapper for SHGetKnownFolderIDList. The CSIDL value is translated to its associated KNOWNFOLDERID and SHGetKnownFolderIDList is called. New applications should use the known folder system rather than the older CSIDL system, which is supported only for backward compatibility."""

(Fun Fact: I implemented much of the knownfolder and some of the old shell32 PIDL folder stuff in Wine :) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I miss the old The Old New Thing look. I also miss when all links to it weren't broken.

<comment><USER12> On first blush I thought this was a knowledgebase article. I guess all MSDN blogs have to look homogeneous now.

<comment><USER13> Consistent look is great. Lets me get on with reading the content, which is the important part.

There's no excuse for breaking existing links though, particularly for a blog as popular as this one.

<comment><USER14> [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/09/21/10214...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/09/21/10214405.aspx), from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3022224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3022224), redirects to the right page. Which links are broken?

<comment><USER15> Some of the variants of the links are broken, acknowledged via blog post: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20160118-01/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20160118-01/?p=92872)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> for patching if i remember right.

<comment><USER17> That's what the article says; indeed, it is the entire text of the second paragraph.</comment></comment>


Dolphins at popular spot miss tourists and keep leaving 'gifts' on shore - <AUTHOR> https://7news.com.au/news/wildlife/dolphins-bring-gifts-from-sea-in-apparent-response-to-lack-of-human-interaction-c-1049565 <comment><USER2> I swam with the dolphins at this location 20 years ago when I was a dolphin obsessed 10 year old.

There were about 12 of us there on a brisk autumn morning and there was a pod of about 6 dolphins, including a calf. The locals told us we probably wouldn't get much interaction as the dolphins were shy because of the calf. I swam out and within 10 minutes, the calf was absolutely enamoured with me. It swam up and played a form of "tag" and let me pat it, however it wouldn't go near any of the adults. Eventually the whole pod came to swim with me.

It was an absolutely incredible experience and 10 year old me felt like a dolphin whisperer.

Side note: My parents managed/ran the town swimming pool and so I was I very confident swimmer after spending all my spare time at the pool.

<comment><USER3> Have you seen this?

[https://youtu.be/Bsp_JTtE3-w](https://youtu.be/Bsp_JTtE3-w)

<comment><USER4> I can't imagine being that smart and curious and being trapped in a tiny pool my whole life

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dolphins probably have a multi-tiered approach to dealing with humans. When they can get free food without trying, they don't bother performing high cost activities. When humans stubbornly refuse to give food, they escalate "pro- social" behavior. When humans don't show up, they resort to the highest cost way of attracting them.

I don't believe they actually miss the tourists themselves. Tourists are merely delivery vehicles for food. People are probably projecting their fantasies about animals being fundamentally better than humans.

<comment><USER6> The same logic can be applied to humans.

"I don't believe parents actually love their children and vice-versa. Parents are merely delivery vehicles of food for children. Children are delivery vehicles of future care for parents. Humans are probably projecting their fantasies about themselves being fundamentally better than they are in reality."

We don't directly perceive that dolphins project _their_ fantasies about humans, but like with our fellow humans, it doesn't mean they aren't doing that.

<comment><USER7> I was going to downvote out of disagreement, but, on second thought, this makes good sense. We probably wouldn't hesitate to say "I don't believe $NONHUMAN_ANIMAL parents love their children, and vice-versa...." about most animals. There might be hesitation when it comes to apes, monkeys, and maybe dogs, but I can imagine people would say it about, say, hyenas, and it would seem plausible.

<comment><USER8> It's easy to anthropomorphize animals, but it's also easy to go overboard in the other direction. In general, as our understanding of animal cognition has increased, we have moved away from human exceptionalism, finding that traits once thought to be unique to humans are anything but. Certainly we've come far from the Cartesian viewpoint of non-human animals as mindless automata.

"Love" in particular, of course, is both a highly loaded and acutely ill- defined concept, so "can a <non-human animal> feel love" is probably a wrong question [1].

By the way, it's rather appropriate that you mentioned hyenas given how misunderstood they are by laypeople, in no small part due to their presentation in a certain Disney film.

[1] [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong- ques...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-questions)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I agree. It's a difficult enough philosophical problem to understand the mental states of even another human, much less an animal with a completely different brain structure. There has been some work purring dogs in fMRI machines that shows that their brains respond to humans in ways that indicate they like us, but that's pretty far from conclusive. After all, I know my dog likes dinner, so she'd probably display activity in the pleasure center when presented with a bowl of her food. In any case, what matters is that I love her, and she is doing nothing to disabuse me of the notion. ;)

Oh, and, yes, I did choose hyenas specifically because they're a misunderstood species. Glad you picked up on that.

<comment><USER7> Ugh. s/purring/putting/g

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> After all the strict lock-downs every weekend, here in Istanbul. There are a ton of dolphins swimming in the Bosphorus straight. I've been told by locals there are normally not so many around.

I sit on the balcony each weekend and see dolphins swimming about every single day. Sometimes they're very close to land.

My theory is, they're around, due to drastically less boat traffic. Either way, they sure seem happy humans aren't around.

<comment><USER10> That must be a nice view. Do you see a lot of warships or other interesting stuff crossing the straight?

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah, I see all kinds of random industrial ships go by. I've only seen one small warship. I haven't been here long, I just sort of got stuck here in Istanbul and I'm waiting out the pandemic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I kayak in the ocean and have been seeing more whales and dolphins near shore than usual. My layman's theory is that it's due to fewer whale watching boats bothering them - I can hear those boats from miles away.

<comment><USER12> Also could be that the underwater sounds we humans create, is probably way less than it used to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What if they are wondering where humans went and are experimenting with luring humans toward the water? Not something out of necessity, but curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've never been able to find it there's been much research in communicating with dolphins. Especially with all of the latest machine learning and translation research. It would be so cool if they could open source a data set of dolphins recordings with context. (Maybe sound and video)

Does anyone have the sea world connections to make that happen?

<comment><USER15> It is not easy, we have not yet cracked the code, plus will they even have the motivation or any interest to communicate with us?

What we do know is that they produce a variety of signals, some very complex and their communication is super fast, which is another obstacle for possible "communication". For example, we cannot generate a burst pulse with our current technology, we can only record theirs and play it back.

But many research groups are trying. We are starting Dolphin Chat citizen science project on Zooniverse in a month or so, to classify and prepare a large dataset of bottlenose dolphins' vocalizations for out deep learning model. You can check it out and even participate, it will definitely help to appreciate how complex their vocal repertoire is (and how "chatty" they are).

<comment><USER16> What do you actually mean by 'we cannot generate a burst pulse with our current technology'? What is the obstacle?

<comment><USER15> The obstacle is that we still do not fully understand nor are able to replicate their sonar, even the Navy that has been studying dolphins for decades still cannot duplicate biosonar (read more here: [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2019/5/140328-navy-d...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2019/5/140328-navy- dolphin-sea-lion-combat-ocean-animal-science/))

The burst pulse is extremely complex, some can have 400 single clicks in one pulse (our ear cannot even hear these single pulses, they merge and for our human ear it sounds like a creaky door), and the pulse duration is like a few seconds. Each click is broadband (can go up to 100 kHz and beyond), it is frequency modulated with varied peak frequencies, center frequencies, RMS, some clicks can have 2 peaks, etc. It is super fast and super complex, we we cannot just generate one, only dolphin's sound producing mechanism can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Sorry about the Covi and thanks for all the fish?"

<comment><USER18> Zoos animals are vulnerable to corona virus.

And their budgets require visitors. Worldwide all zoos are in a state of crisis.

Now wondering about these sea mammals too.

Bronx Zoo Tiger Is Sick With the Coronavirus - The New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/nyregion/bronx-zoo- tiger-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/nyregion/bronx-zoo-tiger- coronavirus.html)

Zoo May Feed Animals to Animals as Funds Dry Up in Pandemic [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/world/europe/germany- zoo-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/world/europe/germany-zoo- coronavirus.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> so... they are bringing offerings presumably hoping this will make their free meals return...

so curious reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propitiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propitiation)

<comment><USER20> Reminded me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Serves them right, not so much "so long and thanks for all the fish" now, huh?

</comment><comment><USER22> How is it that nobody thinks they've just learned to use bait?

<comment><USER23> There's no reports of people being lured into the oceans by dolphins with sinister purposes ... which means that its not happening, or that no one is escaping to tell the tale.

<comment><USER22> I can only assume you mean sinister porpoises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is some evidence of whales displaying gratitude and understanding of a human's intentions to help them. Very moving and interesting podcast here:

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91701...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91701-animal- minds)

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if whatever the last item they bring before the beach opens back up is going to be strongly associated with the return of humans.

"Wow, it was that boot that did it, huh?"

Years later we find a crate of boots stashed away in some sea cave labelled "for when the food stops."

</comment><comment><USER26> Scare quotes belong around 'miss' not 'gifts'.

</comment><comment><USER27> Most wild life don't miss humans presence though, vegetable and insects, birds really got back last weeks, hope it'll last.

Marvellous fruit in the wild too: figs, medlars (I've fed myself almost exclusively with those last days!), thanks to insects and low air pollution

</comment><comment><USER28> I went to Tin Can Bay three months ago and fed the dolphins there. There's a tiny little cafe that manages the process and hundreds of people turn up every morning. Presumably the operation makes good money.

</comment><comment><USER29> Based on the assortment of items I'm impressed they are able to find things that are potentially useful or unique and interesting. Makes me fear for our future when they rise up and take over.

<comment><USER30> Honestly it'd probably be an improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A few paragraphs down:

> _" Barry McGovern, an expert in dolphin behaviour, said it was possible the > dolphins were giving gifts because they missed humans, but unlikely."_

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been searchin'

For the dolphins in the sea

And sometimes I wonder

Do you ever think of me

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8g_j5y2OK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8g_j5y2OK4)

</comment><comment><USER33> Sign on beach: "Guys, the stores will reopen sooner if you will just wear masks over your blowholes."

</comment><comment><USER34> could be this how religions started?

<comment><USER35> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is the cutest thing I have heard recently.

</comment><comment><USER37> reminds of dogs bringing the toys, balls, etc. to suggest and initiate play.

</comment><comment><USER38> Seems to be all backwards. The dolphins can't imagine what happened to us:

"So long and thanks for all the gifts"

</comment><comment><USER39> What an annoying site. I feel like this should get tagged [popover autoplay video].

Or maybe, here's a link without that:

[https://digg.com/2020/dolphins-leaving-gifts](https://digg.com/2020/dolphins- leaving-gifts)

<comment><USER40> Ok, we've changed the URL from [https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- room/news/498781-car...](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- room/news/498781-caretakers-say-dolphins-at-popular-spot-miss-tourists-and- keep) to what appears to be the original source and appears not to autoplay a video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "In all likelihood, they probably don't miss humans per se," [a dolphin expert] added. "They probably miss a free meal and the routine."

This describes my feelings about not being able to go to work exactly.

<comment><USER42> I'm cracking up reading this and hearing it with the monotone voice of the guy in the video.

<comment><USER40> We changed the URL but you can find the video via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261711).</comment></comment></comment>


SSD stress testing finds Intel might be the only reliable drive manufacturer - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/173887-ssd-stress-testing-finds-intel-might-be-the-only-reliable-drive-manufacturer <comment><USER2> So I have an OWC 480 GB Pro 6G that, at the time, was $1.5k. It has an interesting intermittent failure mode: If the temperature of the laptop goes below 16 C (60 F), the system won't recognize it. Guess what the problem is? Condensation. It collect inside the SSD's plastic clamshell and shorts some of the pins. They failed to seal it and failed to include a desiccant in that space, or just pot in the whole thing in epoxy.

Conclusion: Cheap, poorly engineered and poorly tested.

</comment><comment><USER3> Didn't test samsung huh?

I've been exclusively using Samsung and Intel SSD for production machines- however I'm not too worried about the power cutting out. With dual power supplies and several diesel generators in my datacenter, I'll be okay.

<comment><USER4> I've heard numerous stories of racks losing power for innumerable stupid reasons, such as mislabeled wiring, misconfigured wiring, misguided UPS migration procedures, and yes, in one case, where cleaners tripped over a cable.

Point is, even the best systems aren't infallible. It's always, _always_ a matter of reducing and/or managing risks.

<comment><USER5> We had one of our racks losing power for a whole day because smoke started pouring out of a UPS at the data centre, triggering the fire alarm, causing the fire department to demand a full shutdown before they could send people in...

No fire, but a failed component in the UPS. Supposedly the first time the manufacturer had ever seen that failure mode.

But that's the second full data-centre outage we've been affected by, in two different data centres operated by two different companies.

Which makes me very happy to have equipment in two entirely separate locations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> academic paper and presentation about this topic. [https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast13/understanding- robus...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast13/understanding-robustness- ssds-under-power-fault)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is just republishing of a ssd report which was already on hacker news a few days ago, old news.

<comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6973179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6973179)

<comment><USER9> Not only old news but this site is a link farm, scroll down to this recommended blog ([http://lifefactopia.com/shopping/m1/?mb=out&sub=usm1&aid=h44](http://lifefactopia.com/shopping/m1/?mb=out&sub=usm1&aid=h44)). Ii is for QuiBids a full on scam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a few SanDisk Extreme SSDs and have found them very reliable.

[http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-2-5-Inch-Solid- SDSSDXP...](http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-2-5-Inch-Solid- SDSSDXP-240G-G25/dp/B00COF7E3K/)

It seems like they picked very random SSDs to test, and everything from 8GB to 480GB drives, but only 6 drives total.

The website below indicates that smaller capacity drives will wear out faster, so the original posts tests are completely flawed.

[http://ssdendurancetest.com/](http://ssdendurancetest.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly, both intel drives reviewed use their own controllers. I doubt their Sandforce drives would do as well!

</comment><comment><USER12> What about Corsair?</comment>


HP To Apple: You Win. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/18/apple-wins-without-throwing-a-punch/ <comment><USER2> "As I write this, I'm sitting in a cafe. Around me, there are five people on laptops — four of them are MacBooks. Four other people are using tablets — all four are iPads. Welcome to the Post-PC world."

Also you live in San Francisco, I'm sitting in a cafe in Florida, and we got 2 macs (me (developer) and another guy that is a designer apparently) and 10 PC, welcome back to the PC era.

<comment><USER3> Go sit in any college lecture hall and you will see at least 60% Apple products. Apple heavily markets toward college students (Student discounts and back to school promotions) and these same students will be buying Macs for their homes and offices soon.

<comment><USER4> Apple's been heavily marketing towards college students for 20 years. What's different about it in 2011?

<comment><USER5> Success, I suspect.

OSes have grown much closer to each other over the last five to eight years; websites (or "the cloud" or whatever term you wish to refer to server-browser- driven software) are much more important; the relative cost gap between Macs and Windows machines is much smaller; Apple laptops appear to be vastly better made than any mainstream Windows laptops save Thinkpads.

Take these together, and you'll see a lot of Aluminum MacBooks on campus. Geeks like them because of the Terminal, GNU toolchain, and the fact that other geeks have spent lots of time optimizing the general OS X programming environment; everyone else likes them because they're more aesthetically attractive than Windows laptops.

<comment><USER6> I agree that the obstacles to entry are much lower for Apple now. But there is still a significant price premium for Apple laptops. Maybe it's not consequential for people that can afford to pay tuition in a Western university but for the rest of the world that premium is still decisive.

<comment><USER7> IPad. No price premium there.

<comment><USER6> Which is exactly why competing tablets haven't gained ground. Why buy a less usable device for the same price? Things in the tablet market will only get interesting when and if Android vendors can significantly undercut Apple.

<comment><USER7> It's funny you assume they can't make a more useable device ;) funny cause it's true.

<comment><USER6> The dynamics of the Android ecosystem are such that its value proposition will always be that you trade flexibility for polish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love Apple products, but the lack of a monopoly is what's keeping Apple innovating. Lets hope no other competitors decide to drop out.

<comment><USER9> Hmm. Typically, it's the opposite, no? There are plenty of companies who have no reason to innovate once their competition is gone.

<comment><USER10> Grand-parent has slightly clumsy phrasing, but you both agree: " _the lack of_ a monopoly is what's keeping Apple innovating"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My bet is, that the tablet sales will be good in terms of absolute numbers, but not as high the industry had wished.

I still do not see the too many compelling usecases when comparing a tablet with a smartphone + netbook/ultra leight weight laptop.

Hence the hugh success of the Ipad is in my opinion not much a result of its advanced features or even its slick design but rather its clever position as a must have status symbol.

<comment><USER12> the iPad sees record adoption among mobile field forces. big pharma is going nuts over it, placing orders of 10.000+ ipads at once. it has no moving parts, it is idiot proof. if it breaks, the rep can go into a best buy, buy a new one, log+sync, done - everything works as before, including the apps. with iOS5 and OTA upgrades this will be even easier.

the pain of fielding 10000 hp tablet pcs globally suddenly goes away. for a cheaper device, that is lighter, faster, sturdier, with great battery life. with a stable, consistent OS environment below it. no more OS images, driver fuckups, etc etc etc.

the iPad will destroy headcounts in enterprise IT just like Exchange did in the realm of secretaries.

<comment><USER13> Really? How long have you worked in enterprise IT?

We been dealing with mobile users for decades and it's a small percentage of our staff/budget that actually deals with in-field devices and issues. iPads and smart phones are nice, but the sales force and folks at remote sites find themselves more productive with a laptop that has a keyboard and the ability to run "true applications".

As for HP, it hasn't been the HP of lore in decades.

<comment><USER12> some years by now actually. what is a "true application"? siebel? sap crm? both dead dead dead.

combining crm and clm on the ipad rocks the world of the sales reps out there. no more paper. digital signatures on a slim device.

i saw the hordes of IT needed to manage the windows tablets out there, maintaining windows SMS servers or some 3rd party solutions, then also patching and updating all that other "true apps". noticed that apple solved that through the app store, once and for all?

servers are getting killed by SaaS, notebooks by the iPad. SAP has fielded 17000 iPads internally...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So between Apple's ritzy kickass mobile PCs and the boatloads of sub-$100 chinese Androids that will flood the market soon, is there any room for a third platform? I really don't see anything stopping RIM and Microsoft from ending up at the same dead end.

<comment><USER15> For many years now, the majority of Microsoft's revenue has come from enterprise sales, and Apple and Google has a very long way to go to dominate that market.

<comment><USER14> I meant I see Microsoft's Windows Phone platform ending up in the same place the WebOS platform is in. Certainly Microsoft may stay in business selling refreshed versions of Office and Exchange. But I don't see how that will translate into success in an all-mobile + all-cloud computing world where Microsoft has no strength.

<comment><USER16> We use Windows 7 on our office workstations, and I was surprised and am daily impressed at how Mac-like it is. It doesn't get in the way of what you're trying to do.

Win 7 users: Try holding the combo Windows-key + Tab for a nice 3d carousel

<comment><USER17> > Win 7 users: Try holding the combo Windows-key + Tab for a nice 3d carousel

It's interesting that you attribute that to Win7 when in fact it was introduced in Vista.

<comment><USER16> We skipped Vista, XP SP3? was around forever.

I will have to read up on Vista, like did it have the auto close programs shutdown feature.

<comment><USER18> Yep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Glad to see MG switching things up from his usual screencaps of Gladiator. If you're going to frame every tech story as a battle, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out seems more appropriate.

<comment><USER20> I imagine HP will be dismayed to discover they were Glass Joe. They were shooting for Super Macho Man but they thought they were at least Don Flamenco.

<comment><USER21> The German Von Kaiser (WePad) seems to have been knocked out before even getting in the ring. Look forward to the next round with Piston Honda (Sony?). Of course in this new 2011 version it's not "Little Mac", it's "Absolutely Domineering Mac".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "The Post-PC device is about the combination of hardware and software all built and integrated by one company. Google doesn't get that."

Except that they create partnerships to put out a Google-branded phone, and just bought the leading Android device manufacturer in order to more tightly couple the experience, so that's exactly what the "get"... ( _Sees post author_ ) Oh, nevermind. Look, I like Apple products as much as the next guy, but at what point will this MG clown be happy? I hope Apple pays him a decent salary.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone else find the timing odd? At the start of the week, Google announce that they are getting into the hardware game with Android. At the end of the week, HP announce that they are getting out of the WebOS hardware game. But note that they say they are looking at options to maximise the value of the WebOS software. It makes me wonder if HTC / Samsung aren't hedging their bets by looking to license WebOS.

I mean, it kind of makes sense - WebOS is acclaimed as being a solid piece of software, it's certainly the most iPhone-esque of the competitors (Android, Windows Mobile 7, RIM). At a minimum, I would think HTC/Samsung would have an interest in maintaining a viable WebOS, even if it was just to be able to use it as a bludgeon if ever Google stops playing nice with Android.

<comment><USER24> But if HP is become an entreprise-software company, why would they want to keep updating WebOS as a end-user software for smartphones and tablets ?

Licensing only makes sense if HP puts his weight behind WebOS as a good alternative to iOS and Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am skeptical about Palm's IP finding its way to Amazon. Amazon seems to have invested heavily in Android not only with its own store but a whole line of tablets and phones coming out very, very soon. The talent might be good. But the patents aren't critical and there is no way Amazon wants to go down the same path that just failed for HP.

Really, Google would be the best suitor of Palm if anyone was going to buy it. Google needs those patents bad. Google can use webOS code and engineers on ChromeOS. The UI designers can go to the Android team. And Google just got a hardware division that can absorb any remaining hardware guys.

If Google can get all that for $2 billion it should write the check tomorrow. Bargain.

<comment><USER26> The only thing is that Amazon mainly seems to want to run their own software, and have their own app store. Having a different os might help. Seems unnecessary for them though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> God I wish Nokia had bought Palm and WebOS. I used to work for Elop and I like him, but my heart sank when he hitched Nokia's wagon to MS.

<comment><USER28> An aside to this thread, but Windows Phone 7 isn't as bad as you might think. I understand that you are mainly wary of the Microsoft slow moving / non- exciting culture but Windows Phone 7 is quite exciting. Microsoft Research does a lot of really fabulous HCI research and slowly but surely it is percolating through the company despite having dinosaurs like Ballmer in charge. To refer to a lame example, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that a phone UI actually used amodal completion in it's design(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amodal_perception>). A mobile phone with its limited screen real estate is ideal for such a design and I believe this came out of their research lab.

Anyway, Siegler's article had the interesting reference to Amazon. If Jeff Bezos/Amazon picks up WebOS, it might just have a chance of survival.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I believe that's "HP To Competent Businesses."

</comment><comment><USER30> I really hope WebOS finds safe harbor. We lost Maemo or Meego or whatever it's (was) called last week and now this. The players are dropping out too early. Maybe the iPad "won" but the space will be big enough to support other players. I want more choices at this early stage, not fewer.

</comment><comment><USER31> "I've said this before, but thought it was worth repeating: It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. That it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing." - Steve Jobs

<comment><USER6> That guy is such a cheesy salesman. Apple has been lucky to face incompetent competitors.

<comment><USER31> You are such a cheesy hater. Steve is a hacker and a pioneer in many fields. Why do you hate him?

<comment><USER6> I've been in the same room with him mid-rant. I'm guessing you haven't.

<comment><USER31> I have not. I don't know him personally. What about him repulses so many people? I am genuinely curious. Please share, I'm sure a lot of us are wondering the same thing.

<comment><USER31> OK, that is what many different people say about him. Must be true. I wonder if he has changed any after being kicked out?

I guess there is no genius without some form of madness. I respect him mainly because he is a product of the 60's counterculture and was able to infuse "cosmic consciousness" into technology.

I'm glad you don't. So many people take it way too far. It's just a computer man.

<comment><USER6> If I could ask him one question I would really like to know how he sees his life's work from the perspective of his inspirations from the 60s. In some respects what he's done seems very much in keeping with those ideals (fostering creativity and an appreciation for beauty) and in others totally antithetical (creating walled gardens, using the legal system as a cudgel). It goes to the heart of my own ambivalence about Apple. I like their products but I'm finding it hard to like the company lately.

<comment><USER32> After one-or-another of Dick Cheney's heart attacks, the news media spent some time quoting research about the way that life-threatening illnesses can change one's personality; how (of course) people react differently to such crises, but also how driven, egocentric men tend to refine and focus their priorities, and even to jettison qualms that they might have previously carried.

It's not surprising to me that an ambitious man like Jobs, who (arguably) failed with Apple the first time around, then failed with NeXT, then became seriously ill while leading a resurgent Apple, might decide that the touchy- feely bits of his youthful worldview are less important than a more tangible legacy.

I'm not saying it's the correct choice, or laudable, but it is understandable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a real shame, at the high end HP produced workstations that are truly superlative. I have a Z800 sat next to me that has smaller than a Mac Pro, more silent, more powerful, and IMHO looks fabulous.

The work I do means that I can't see me getting rid of a workstation in a long while even though I recognise the that consumer desktop market has been obliterated over these past 5 or 10 years (laptops > ultra-portables > netbooks > tablets) I really hope that the more business focused part of HP remain intact and churning out incredible products.

</comment><comment><USER34> Very nicely articulated article from MG on this. Although I may be biased since it pretty much echoes every point I believe as well. Anyone think otherwise?

<comment><USER35> The opening line of extrapolating a SFO cafe to a Post-PC _world_ was pretty cheesy. This guy has no idea how things work in the world, especially Asia.

Also no mention of how Carly Fiorina got rid of the R&D teams to cut costs, leading to the current disaster. Siegler comes across as a shallow fanboy, atleast Gruber can put some better spin on things.

<comment><USER34> Don't want to turn this into flame, but I disagree with your argument. I thought it is Asia that is more PC-less than US & Europe. And it is impossible to tell if the R&D teams really stay and did a good job, would it really make webOS flourish or would it just prolong its dismise. Can webOS even win 3rd place without a true believing CEO that bet the company behind it? That is why I believe that details about how it got into this "mess" is irrelevant to the article.

<comment><USER36> >I thought it is Asia that is more PC-less than US & Europe

Huh what? Have you looked at Mac penetration in Asia?

Look at Safari usage in North America vs. Asia

<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-as-monthly-201007-201107>

Sales of PCs in China grew 11% last quarter year over year.

<comment><USER37> Nothing you have said counters fuzzyfinger point 'I thought it is Asia that is more PC-less than US & Europe.'

Yes, Asia may have more macs, and they may be growing more, but we are after statistics showing more people use mobile devices for internet access than PCs.

<comment><USER38> It's not clear what you are trying to say, but I think you at least should have changed the statistic on the same graph: [http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-as- monthly-201007-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-as- monthly-201007-201107)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Biased techcrunch reporting apart, I felt a bit saddened by the announcement because I actually thought HP had a chance at being "one of the three" in the devices space. I liked their webos demos and their devices seemed pleasing to use. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER40> Translation: Apple VS Samsung/Motorola.</comment>


Why "Growing the Economy" Doesn't Even Make Sense - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/why-growing-the-economy-doesn-t-even-make-sense-c2a3900d8403#.wxul8jcxb <comment><USER2> The assertion is "growing the economy does not benefit the average person; the rich take all the gains". Well, let's think about moving in the opposite direction: "Shrinking the economy does not hurt the average person; the rich will take all the damage".

When I put it that way, the statement seems (at least to me) much less believable. So we have a statement about the shape of the productivity-vs- personal-well-being graph that seems believable if we move one direction, but seems unbelievable if we move the other direction. That makes me much more skeptical of the whole idea.

I think it's more likely to be the case that we aren't recognizing all the ways that productivity is enhancing the average person's well-being.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is sloppily argued, but it's essentially right about a lot of things. (You can hear the same arguments, albeit made with much more clarity, 150 years ago in Henry George's "Progress and Poverty.")</comment>


A Catalogue of Optimizing Transformations (1971) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.clear.rice.edu/comp512/Lectures/Papers/1971-allen-catalog.pdf <comment><USER2> Notes from an earlier era, when computer science was still emerging (separating from mathematics & engineering) and a lot of legitimate work was still "stamp collecting".*

I remember (I was a kid but watched it — I was fascinated by all things computing thanks to the Apollo program) that in the 70s and early 80s nobody had any idea who might make good a good programmer so would hire musicians, philosophy majors, poets, and math majors. Also a disproportionate number of women, still a small number in that more sexist age, but more than traditional engineering professions in that age. And you can see reflected in the two authors of this paper.

* I used the scare quotes around "stamp collecting" in case the term is unfamiliar and comes off as denigrating, which it is not. The term is not mine: it reflects that most fields start out that way (botany, zoology, biology, chemistry, physics...) until there is a large enough corpus for people to start reasoning about them.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately Allen passed away quite recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24066832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24066832). Her contributions to optimizations that form the basis of compilers today is substantial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This video goes into it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fOumvtTZO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fOumvtTZO8)

(via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24189188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24189188), but no comments there)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is neat, does anyone know what font this is?

<comment><USER6> That looks like Pica from an IBM Selectric typewriter.

IBM in 1971, probably photo typeset. The heading type and lines look like those rub-off transfers from Letraset.

I'm just guessing. I do recall doing some paste-up direct from a phototypesetting machine at a small town newspaper around 1981, but I don't recall how that worked. We just did page layout with wax-coated positives, the machine spit those out by magic. Middle school, details are vague.

But I put in some hours on my Dad's Selectric. It was awesome.

<comment><USER7> I happen to have been looking at IBM typewriter fonts recently -- [https://archive.org/details/IBM-SelectricIITypewriter- Correc...](https://archive.org/details/IBM-SelectricIITypewriter- CorrectingSelectricTypewriter-OperatingInstructions/page/n27/mode/2up) \-- so I can say it's actually Courier; the uppercase A is an easy giveaway. You can see all the other body fonts there too; Light Italic for the italics, except for some keywords at the start of lists which are Courier Italic; the page headers are Letter Gothic, as are I think the headings (though I thought it was lowercase Orator at first so I think these fonts are all running together for me).

<comment><USER6> Excellent! Thanks!

This got me browsing online for the font balls for these things. Dangerous; my nerd space is overdue for purge as it is.

But have at it: [https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/102974032](https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/102974032)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Making Twitter Smarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/11/making-twitter.html <comment><USER2> Why doesn't twitter do these "smartening" things and make the experience more engaging and useful? Might even charge money for it!

<comment><USER3> Their strategy is to be open enough so others can do the work for them.

<comment><USER4> Their strategy isn't really very open though. With heavy rate limiting and lack of a decent auth mechanism it's pretty sucky. I really don't like having to store a user's password.

Once twitter have OAuth and XMPP I'll think of them as open.

<comment><USER3> I thought it was Twitter that made XMPP a popular topic?

And can't you just use Gnip? [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/18/twitter- plays-nice-xmpp...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/18/twitter-plays-nice- xmpp-firehose-data-feed-to-gnip/)

<comment><USER5> The xmpp stream is not publicly available anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think building Firefox addons that make keywords clickable is a wasted business. It won't be long before Twitter adds that functionality to their site. You can kind of already do that through search.twitter.com</comment>


Scalable graph database with Scylla and JanusGraph - <AUTHOR> https://www.scylladb.com/2020/05/14/zeotap-a-graph-of-twenty-billion-ids-built-on-scylla-and-janusgraph/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've always been curious of Scylla after reading about the project--a total re-write of most of Cassandra in C++. JanusGraph is the open-source fork of TitanDB after the latter was acquired by DataStax and became known as DSEGraph. Interesting write-up on the power of both to make a massively scalable graph database.</comment>


Ask HN: Could UN/US selectively legalize hacking as a punishment for countries? - <AUTHOR> Could it be possible or practical to legalize and provide extradition protection for hacking countries that break civil liberties laws and specifically hacks that undermine the laws being broken and don't put civilians in harms way? <comment><USER2> That's interesting. I don't know that they will give ordinary people free reign like that. It could interfere with the government hacking operations.

The idea of cyber privateers is interesting. I would guess some companies are contracted in this capacity.</comment>


Apple's games strategy looks beyond consoles and the iMac - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/05/07/apples-games-strategy-looks-beyond-consoles-and-imac

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't read too much into the updated iMac. As far as I can tell, the MacBook Pro has been a somewhat better gaming rig than the iMacs for the last months, which isn't what you'd expect. Really, they're just correcting that oddity in their product lineup.

The article may well be spot on in its analysis on the mobile devices. I suspect it will very much come down to how they treat developers. The iPhone in its current incarnation isn't anywhere near the DS or PSP in terms of price point. (DS: €150, PSP: €170, iPhone: €1000) The audience for the games is therefore very different (and presumably smaller) as well. In terms of hardware, the iPhone is (apparently) roughly equivalent to the PSP but with better connectivity.

The way to go is to figure out what kinds of games typical iPhone owners play on their other devices, and develop games to that need.

</comment><comment><USER3> Game performance, in my experience, has always been hugely lacking on the Mac. Beyond the sheer lack of game support (for what used to be obvious reasons) the actual game performance never matched up, at least with 3D graphics games. The frame rate would almost always suck, and if you didn't have a ridiculously high-end card (e.g. something for a Mac Pro desktop) you might as well forget it. You were better off with your Playstation any day. Hate to say that, but it's true. Plus, oftentimes the most popular games would never get the updates/patches as quickly as the MS versions, which was annoying.

The Mac was simply never taken seriously as a game platform.

Educational games? Sure. 2D? Fine. 3D? Forget about it.

I currently have a Leopard MBP, so maybe times have changed. But I was burned too many times in the past. It taught me to stay away from the games rack.

<comment><USER4> Before the G5, macs were also painfully underpowered compared to even standard windows PC's, and before OSX, there wasn't really much by way of robust, high- performance 3D libraries or media API's for the mac. Now, Apple has a solid OS, comparable (i.e. identical) hardware and therefore performance and features, and also pretty close to a complete analog for DirectX -- not just for Direct3D, but all sorts of other API's like audio as well.

So now Apple has the technology to offer up a solid gaming platform, so the question is what are they doing to attract game developers?

I don't know the answer to that -- I'm hoping someone here might.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you think of the iPhone as a second shot at the Newton, their "second shots" seem pretty solid...</comment>


Malformed RSS links from Hacker News again - <AUTHOR>

slash <comment><USER2> Self-referencing posts are giving addresses such as-

<http://news.ycombinator.comitem/?id=101708></comment>


SQL Server 2016 SP1 Released, SQL Server VNext Available for Download - <AUTHOR> http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/2016/11/sql-server-2016-sp1-released-sql-server.html <comment><USER2> Some of the huge news here is that as of SP1, the following features that were one exclusive to the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server are now available in Standard and Web Editions: Change Data Capture, database snapshots, column stores, table partitioning, data compression, in-memory OLTP (Hekaton), Always Encrypted, Polybase, fine-grained auditing, multile Filestream containers. I wish I had access to all of these features back when I was building an app that was required to support SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition.</comment>


Unsubscribe from all LinkedIn email in one click - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/chengyin/7021086 <comment><USER2> You can unsubscribe from all LinkedIn email, but you'll still get email for any _new_ category they invent later. So I keep having to do this every few months. For example: "endorsements" became a thing and suddenly I had to turn that pointless spam off too.

I expect they'll invent a new product which involves opting everyone in.

<comment><USER3> Twitter does this (automatically subscribes you to each new category of email) as well, and it infuriates me to no end.

<comment><USER4> They also started sending me push notifications telling me that people that I follow started following other people. I have no idea why they think I'd want to know that. It took probably ten minutes with their app to figure out how to disable that.

<comment><USER5> Please reveal what it is you did to disable those notifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I left linkedin a long time ago but I still get emails when someone wants to connect. I must have opted out of those a dozen times! Nope, still get 'em.

Also, pedant speaking here, "in one click" isn't really an accurate description of this process.

<comment><USER7> Just mark as spam, life's too short

<comment><USER8> Gmail's spam filter is so good that it even knows that I consider "LinkedIn Today" emails spam, but I still want to read the ones about my network.

<comment><USER9> I hope Google shared this sort of information with LinkedIn. "Your daily emails are reliably considered spam, by people who actually want to use your services."

<comment><USER10> They do, when a user marks an email as spam gmail pings the sender back and notifies them.

I imagine this is most useful for the bulk email sending services.

<comment><USER11> gmail does not have a feedback loop

<comment><USER10> I think you are right, I thought I had read about the feature somewhere but now I cannot find any mention of it.

Thank you for calling me out.

<comment><USER11> i wish they did have a feedback loop. i have a catch-all domain and an employee that was terminated with us left so now I get the barrage of emails to a general box for his LI account.

well he never updated his linkedin to a new email and you have to sign in to unsubscribe. well, i don't want to reset his password because i can see he still uses the LI and there is no way to stop these emails. seems like making it impossible to unsubscribe would violate CAN-SPAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's the first thing I've ever shared on LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER13> I unsubscribed from all emails and still get them.

<comment><USER14> I believe that's how LinkedIn works, but it's also the case even when attempting to permanently delete your account. I finally managed to successfully delete my LinkedIn account around 8 months ago, but then recently I accidentally followed a link to a LinkedIn page on my work machine, and apparently there was still a cookie around, so LinkedIn was kind enough to reactivate my account without warning. And oh how the spam did flow.

To be extra careful, I think you need to unsubscribe from all email, deactivate your account, delete all LinkedIn cookies from all your machines, and you might as well kill linkedin.com in your hosts files.

<comment><USER15> Might be faster to just sue. If it's spam then there's laws to stop that. Plus juicy cash incentive if you win, and they might settle to stop the wave that follows if you win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What about Google+ and Facebook? Although I would argue Google+ is the worse one since it automatically add you to every notification possible when you only want to sign up for a Mail Account.

<comment><USER17> Google also doesn't seem to have an option to turn off the notification that your phone has automatically backed up photos and video to your G+ account and are ready to be shared. I've trained gmail to consider it spam though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well for me linkedin was pointless and annoying so I deleted my account. No regrets. Happy. And still alive.

</comment><comment><USER19> cool idea. Can this be done for many sites? like macros that take advantage of the site's own JS.

<comment><USER20> Typically. For example, on reddit you can run this in console to downvote everything on a comment thread:

$.each($(".down.arrow"), function(index, vote){ $(vote).click(); });

<comment><AUTHOR> Just curious, is there any reason you used `$.each` instead of `$(".down.arrow").each`?

<comment><USER21> Protip: you don't even need an each() at all[1].

So the above could be written:

$(".down.arrow").click();

1\. [http://jsfiddle.net/k6FvQ/](http://jsfiddle.net/k6FvQ/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is perfect. Nothing much else to say really. I am getting sick and tired of LinkedIn's spam and dodgy techniques when it comes to marketing. This should temporarily stop the spam until they decide to add more mail-out categories.

I cancelled my LinkedIn premium membership just before as well. As a premium user you still get spammed the same as a non-premium user and I can live without it. Vote with your wallet as they say. LinkedIn really need to re- valuate where they stand, you know a situation is desire when many people share a similar sentiment and you have to resort to using Javascript hacks to unsubscribe from email notifications, it shouldn't be this hard.

</comment><comment><USER23> It says something that LinkedIn has come to this. I've fiddled with the email settings on almost 10 separate occasions. Those controls do pretty much nothing though, either accidentally or intentionally.

</comment><comment><USER24> Shouldn't you be able to do this with a link in the footer of their emails? If I recall correctly, it's US law that companies (and websites in general) have to put unsubscribe links in their emails.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't understand why everyone doesn't just mark all Linkedin email as spam. That's what I did eventually all email from Linkedin goes to spam. That's what to do with spam.

</comment><comment><USER26> I went into LinkedIn and deleted all my profile details. No more spam from recruiters, but also no 'ghost' profile I have no control over. Not perfect, but it'll do.

<comment><USER27> You can't know what ghost profile they have on you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's funny. I found out that I ignore emails from most websites, except those from LinkedIn. I don't know why, but I click on all of them (and usually follow the link). No other website is able to bring me back with emails.

Maybe it's because I never go on LinkedIn otherwise. Maybe it's because all the emails they send me are paired with an action, maybe it's just an habit I gained. In any case, they work for me.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is nice, LinkedIn are infuriating. My startup is in the email space and we have a very strong opinion against sending spam and providing genuine unsubscribes. Unsubscribing someone is easy, there's no excuse except that they don't want to. Keep adding them to spam as their ESP probably has a feedback loop and it could affect their sending reputation eventually.

</comment><comment><USER27> LinkedIn is pretty bad. But why isn't there something better?

<comment><USER30> Besides the emails, what do you think could be improved?

<comment><USER27> I think LinkedIn is trying too hard to be more than what it is. It's the professional version of the town church. The town church used to record recording weddings, births and deaths. That's it. LinkedIn should be a record of hirings, leavings, new companies forming and old companies dissolving.

Against the background of that basic information, people should be able to solicit me, freely, to come work for them - but they should be prepared to wait for a response as I'm not going to check in with the 'town church' all that often (unless I'm between gigs or thinking about a new gig).

It might be nice to passively check in on past coworkers to see how their careers are progressing - but that's optional.

<comment><USER30> I think LinkedIn has a pretty bring future as a business/industry news aggregator which will ride on top of the social platform they've built. Think of it as a BusinessInsider/Forbes/VentureBeat/TechCrunch replacement.

Already you're seeing LinkedIn exclusive editorials by guest writers, and although most of the articles in LinkedIn's feed suck right now, I hope they increase the quality soon (e.g. No more "5 ways to be a successful leader" type articles).

If they can capture quality content and deliver it in the right way then I think that will be successful and fuel more growth in their product and revenues.

I've talked to Reid Hoffman about this, and his answer to what LinkedIn wants to grow up to be is something along the lines of "We've built this social platform which is successful + continues to grow, and that opens up a whole wealth of opportunities to build products/services around it [...]"

I think this is the right path for the company, but what's going to matter is execution. So far they haven't instilled confidence in their execution (What happened to their purchase of Pulse? Their aggregations haven't gotten any better....etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Problem here is that I would have to log in.

And really, the problem for me isn't stuff sent to _my_ mail, but invitations sent to every mailinglist I'm a part of.

</comment><comment><USER32> Someone..please do one for Redbox. I am tired of getting spammed everytime I rent a movie.

<comment><USER33> Providing Redbox with your email address is optional, at least with the one I use. All they have on me is the info on my credit card magstripe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Someone PLEASE do this for meetup

<comment><USER34> Okay I did it myself: [https://gist.github.com/javahead123/7045923](https://gist.github.com/javahead123/7045923)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> the first time i followed these steps, i got a "sorry, your preferences can't be saved because you need to verify one of your email addresses" – which honestly felt about right.

fortunately it worked the second time.

</comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone know of something like this for Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER37> Thank you for your service to humanity.

</comment><comment><USER38> Thanks! No more emails now!

</comment><comment><USER39> Do this for Twitter please

</comment><comment><USER40> Just did it! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER41> Just thank you.

</comment><comment><USER42> lol linkedin's emails are annoying

</comment><comment><USER43> next up: protecting your address book</comment>


Ask HN: good desktop for developing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a desktop, 4/5/600$-ish, mostly to be used for developing and storing my photos. Windows 7 is ok. Preferably not full of crap software that I have to remove. I already have 2 monitors I want to connect (so graphics card should have 2 exits). I have some external harddrives I'd like to connect too. I don't play games, just do browsing the web and code. I'm planning to use this for the next 2, 3 years.<p>Which one should I get? I just have no idea where to start. <comment><AUTHOR> ps: I won't build it, just want to order it.</comment>


Patio11's Thoughts on Tech+finance - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1208900552563838981 <comment><USER2> Tweets consolidated via Thread Reader: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1208900552563838981.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1208900552563838981.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Has Patio11 joined the world of finance? I look forward to a talk from him about it.

<comment><USER4> He works at Stripe, which is a financial technology company (goal is to increase the gdp of the Internet).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the deal with mailing lists? - cool-RR

I noticed that in almost all open source projects, the main avenue of communication is the mailing list, or multiple mailing lists for big projects.
Every time I want to ask a question, I have to sign up, and it's usually not a very friendly or intelligent system. Memorable messages include: "Do not use a sensitive password because it will sometimes be mailed to you in cleartext" and "This is a reminder, sent out once a month, about your python.org mailing list memberships."
Then I have to mail my question in and wait for other people to answer, while in the meantime my inbox gets flooded with long threads about the project which are of no interest to me. After people have answered my question I still have to remain registered for some time, just in case someone will still have something insightful to say. All the while still getting unwanted messages. After that I have to interact again with the mailing list software to unsubscribe.
Why? Am I missing something here? <comment><AUTHOR> Mailing lists are a way to collect high volume discussions on a topic in a way that can be quickly scanned and searched. I can route everything through GMail or other mail client, then use a single set of tools to manage my conversations and "tasks" that arise from those conversations. In my case, I've set up my mail clients to let me do most everything without taking my hands off the keyboard, just "shoveling" mail through via shortcuts. I also have mail filters that shunt different lists into different folders for searching later.

Web forums are fine for many people, but they drive me nuts. Too much clicking and too many pageloads, at least for the forums I have seen. This breaks my communication "flow" and leaves me feeling unwilling to spend any more time at the forum. It _is_ true that it is easier to drop in and ask a quick help question in a forum, as you point out, but that doesn't outweigh the fact I usually never want to visit the forum again. More fundamentally, my async store/forward communication happens in my email client, I don't like having to switch to other programs.

Now, don't get me wrong. Mailing list discussions are far from perfect. In particular it's easy for the entire discussion to be hijacked by a few hot topics. (Not necessarily trolls, although that works too.) This inflates volume and drives away people who would otherwise make great contributions. I've seen this repeatedly.

Really what I'd like is something that is to mailman what git was to version control -- a way for me to opt in to different "versions" of a mailing list potentially managed by different people but sharing the same core message flows. Something that would let me avoid needing to keep my own set of killfiles updated for each list all the time.

The Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer sort of tried this, but their focus wasn't on different filters. They never had that many nodes anyway. The other thing I've seen is people self-tagging posts with [<keyword>] in the title, but that is brittle and still requires me to create new filters on the fly.

</comment><comment><USER2> Well I think the idea is that a mailing list, and by extension, the whole open source project, isn't a one way street. Most people who use open source software contribute in one way or another, whether it's through supporting new users, hacking on the source code, or offering helpful, informed suggestions about the project.

Not to be a Negative Nancy® here, but the problem is that "You're Doing It Wrong." If you're just wanting to get your questions answered without any sort of input to the project, I think perhaps you're missing the spirit.

That's all to say, it's fine for you to do that, but don't expect for it to be a frictionless process. The idea is that you don't do things that way. And most people who aren't (like me) really like the mailing list concept; it's easy, it integrates with something I already use all the time, and it exposes me to things and conversations that are going on really easily.

<comment><USER3> _Not to be a Negative Nancy® here, but the problem is that "You're Doing It Wrong." If you're just wanting to get your questions answered without any sort of input to the project, I think perhaps you're missing the spirit._

Theres more reasons to want to get support for something then your own selfish needs. Maybe you want to _start_ hacking on the project but don't want to step on someone else's toes? Or how about if you're interested in learning about the project to see if it fits your needs (to avoid wasting your and other peoples time later on forcing a square peg into a round hole)?

And asking questions _is_ giving input to the project. If a question keeps coming up, it _should_ be sending you a signal that goes "Hey, this needs some work so that people don't have to spend so much time asking us how it works". I would argue that _you're_ "missing the spirit" if you're arguing that its wrong to only want to ask questions.

 _but don't expect for it to be a frictionless process. The idea is that you don't do things that way._

Why shouldn't the process be frictionless? Why do you want to make it difficult for people to start using or get help using your software?

<comment><USER4> _Theres more reasons to want to get support for something then your own selfish needs. Maybe you want to start hacking on the project but don't want to step on someone else's toes?_

Then join the mailing list and participate in the discussion.

 _Why shouldn't the process be frictionless?_

There's very little software that supports both fly-by questions on the web, and proper discussion via e-mail, so we optimize for ourselves, not users.

Web forums aren't frictionless. In fact, they're totally shit for the purpose of carrying on detailed conversations over the course of days without requiring constant attention from all the participants.

There's a reason why most forums will e-mail you when your watched threads are updated. Why not just have the e-mail be the thread?

 _Why do you want to make it difficult for people to start using or get help using your software?_

Users don't pay the bills, and questions are usually incredibly repetitive and dull, no matter how easy-to-use or well documented the project is.

I'd rather the users that are unwilling to invest in the mailing list self- segregate by posting their one-offs to sites like StackOverflow.

<comment><USER3> It may just be me, but it seems like you're contradicting yourself with:

 _There's very little software that supports both fly-by questions on the web, and proper discussion via e-mail, so we optimize for ourselves, not users._

and

 _Users don't pay the bills, and questions are usually incredibly repetitive and dull, no matter how easy-to-use or well documented the project is._

While there's absolutely nothing wrong with coding for yourself, it doesn't usually pay the bills either. And (sadly), its rarer then it should be for someone to be able to print money for themselves by making things for themselves.

I reiterate: If different users are asking the _same_ question repeatedly, perhaps its an indicator that there's something wrong with your software, not your users?

Oh, and, incase you don't know, not all software needs to expand until they can read mail. Multitasking has (sans the iPhone, if you want), been around for decades. People are more than capable of having one program open at a time. There's nothing wrong with this.

 _Web forums aren't frictionless. In fact, they're totally shit for the purpose of carrying on detailed conversations over the course of days without requiring constant attention from all the participants.

There's a reason why most forums will e-mail you when your watched threads are updated. Why not just have the e-mail be the thread?_

Nowhere did I say that forums are better than email. They're both equally bad. My personal preference for this sort of thing is IRC. Of course, I'm biased, since one of the projects I spend the most time working on is an IRC client.

Also, forums are easier for end users to figure out then mailing lists. You could argue thats because mailing list software tends to suck, but, thats ignoring the issue.

 _I'd rather the users that are unwilling to invest in the mailing list self- segregate by posting their one-offs to sites like StackOverflow._

Not all open source projects are programming languages or libraries, which is SO's target area currently seems to be.

<comment><USER4> _While there's absolutely nothing wrong with coding for yourself, it doesn't usually pay the bills either. And (sadly), its rarer then it should be for someone to be able to print money for themselves by making things for themselves._

Feel free to treat "pay the bills" metaphorically. That was my intention.

 _I reiterate: If different users are asking the same question repeatedly, perhaps its an indicator that there's something wrong with your software, not your users?_

Perhaps. But more often than not it's an inherent complexity in the problem space itself.

 _Oh, and, incase you don't know, not all software needs to expand until they can read mail. Multitasking has (sans the iPhone, if you want), been around for decades. People are more than capable of having one program open at a time. There's nothing wrong with this._

I don't follow your meaning ...

 _My personal preference for this sort of thing is IRC._

IRC is real-time and ephemeral, which makes it considerably more difficult to engage in conversations with contributors in other time zones, and refer back to design discussions that occurred 5-20 years ago.

 _Also, forums are easier for end users to figure out then mailing lists._

I thought we already established that project communication channels are primarily optimized for the project contributors who use them daily, not for once-off questions from end users.

<comment><USER3> _Perhaps. But more often than not it's an inherent complexity in the problem space itself._

That isn't to say there is only ever one way of performing an action or that it is impossible to make it clearer how to perform a task. And if you make it difficult for users to give you their opinion, it will be that much harder to know what needs to be improved.

 _IRC is real-time and ephemeral, which makes it considerably more difficult to engage in conversations with contributors in other time zones, and refer back to design discussions that occurred 5-20 years ago._

There's not very many projects that date back 20 years ago that also have the complexity that you're talking about. X11 and the Linux kernel are the only two I can think of off the top of my head. And I would hope that a 5-20 year old project that's continuously under development would have more documentation than posts from a _mailing list_ about its design.

 _I thought we already established that project communication channels are primarily optimized for the project contributors who use them daily, not for once-off questions from end users._

I would be interested in seeing how many projects — open source in this case — have > 1 or 2 contributors.

I may be off base, but I'd guess that you're optimizing towards large, highly visible projects and not the small, norm of an open source project.

<comment><USER5> > _That isn't to say there is only ever one way of performing an action or > that it is impossible to make it clearer how to perform a task. And if you > make it difficult for users to give you their opinion, it will be that much > harder to know what needs to be improved._

Not to berate users, but sometimes when people run into an issue they want a solution yesterday. So they hop on to the mailinglist/irc and demand to have their problem fixed... Only for more informed people to point them at the FAQ which probably results for the first Google search on problem.

I'm not saying that the software could't have flaws. I'm saying that if people are armed with the answer to their issue, then they are more equipped to make suggestions at the future direction of the software. When they still don't have an answer they are still in, "FIX THIS NOW!" mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And here I thought the title of this submission was the opener to a geek- oriented comedy routine.

</comment><comment><USER7> Email has been around for a while. People really like it. Older hackers (Torvalds) seem to in particular. I ignored it too. But I'm realizing the best conversations happen over it.

A lot of older internet users generally use lists (or private mail) for discussion. They also tend smarter. Like most scientist email and only a fraction blog. I don't think that's a bug. Probably better to extend email than force another medium.

Last time someone on HN asked about favorite lists it got nil response. Hope that was a fluke. But a good one is the _Linux Kernel_ list. Intense. I don't code. But I'm learning a lot about how big projects get done.

<comment><USER5> The problem that I have with busy lists is that if you get behind in reading them it can look like a daunting task to see 100 conversations/threads (as in gmail) waiting to be read.

Site note: Filtering email lists in Gmail is really easy. There's a 'list:' modifier. So you can do 'list:python-list' if you've signed up to the mail python mailing list. Filtering them in procmail can be a PITA if you're trying to make a generic rule to filter list traffic into aptly-named folders, especially when traffic goes to two lists (e.g. python-announce and python- list).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"Do not use a sensitive password because it will sometimes be mailed to you in cleartext" and "This is a reminder, sent out once a month, about your python.org mailing list memberships."_

Blame GNU Mailman, the absolute worst mailing list daemon ever written: <http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailman.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think the problem is the mailing list style of discussion. Looks like it works fine, even for big projects like the linux kernel. What I find frustrating with mailing list is the archive:

* sometimes there is no archives

* sometimes the archive is unsearchable, only browsable

* for archives with search capability, sometimes the search results are not accurate enough

If end users can find answers through mailing list archive, they needn't post nor subscribe.

</comment><comment><USER10> Mailing lists work exactly because of your complaint - they force you to stick around longer than you would with a webforum or IRC. If the list is good you'll say "yeah, I want to see what else is going on with this project." If you're purely an end-user it's much more frustrating, of course.

My main gripe about mailing lists is that I prefer using digest mode because it loads faster over webmail. But if I use it, it becomes non-trivial to reply to a particular discussion thread.

Really, that isn't a huge gripe, in the grand scheme of things.

As for "good lists" - pretty much any active project with a topic you're interested in will have some discussion.

<comment><USER5> Whatever webmail client you're using should get support for splitting digests. IIRC, there are scripts that do this if you use console readers like mutt. You should press your webmail provider/developer to add support for this. The digests will still be smaller since they lack a lot of the email headers that mailinglist traffic 'normally' send would have.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh also, if the project happens to have an IRC channel, those can be excellent places to ask these kinds of one-off questions. Depends on the project of course but instant messaging is pretty good for the quick help kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> In many cases you can send a message to the list without subscribing, but this isn't well documented.

In general I think the problem is just laziness; the people running the project optimize it for themselves (active participants) rather than their users. It doesn't help that the most popular software (Mailman/Pipermail) is mediocre.

<comment><USER12> > _the people running the project optimize it for themselves_

This is pretty reasonable, if you think about it: it's worth making life nice for the people donating hundreds or thousands of hours of their time to answer questions, as well as for the people who only plan to interact with the system for a couple of questions.

To the OP: Try the <http://gmane.org/> NNTP/web mirrors of mailing lists, if you don't want to sign up for them. In particular, reading lists via NNTP from gmane in Thunderbird is pretty nice, with real threaded discussions going back as far as you want, and no need to sign up, etc. (screenshot: <http://hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/TextMate/gmane-thunderbird.png>)

I really think the main problem is not the concept of mailing lists (and email/nntp) generally, but instead, as you suggest, the software that runs it. Google groups/mailman/etc. are all IMO pretty crappy from both maintainer and user perspectives, but they work well enough that no one's really putting effort into better mailing list software. Likewise, most mail clients are pretty crappy –either unconfigurable or with a difficult learning curve for configuration, with insufficiently easy-to-set-up and insufficiently flexible rule systems, etc. – when you get down to it. I should be able to absolutely instantly (<10 seconds) set up my email client to filter for only replies to my topics or mentions of my name in a particular mailing list (for example), but currently this is an involved process in every mail client I've ever used.

Of course, email is so so so much better for extended technical discussions than any web forum I've seen, that we all stick with it despite its flaws.

<comment><USER7> > _I really think the main problem is not the concept of mailing lists (and > email/nntp) generally, but instead, as you suggest, the software that runs > it._

Making email better is undervalued. Love to see startups help extend it.

<comment><USER5> The problem is... How? Other than providing some sort of web front-end onto email (which is already done... Gmail.. Yahoo Mail.. etc), what can you do? You can try and use some sort of fancy email processing algorithms to do fancy things with email, but how does one make a business of that? Charge people to pass email through your system that sanitizes it and spits it out with better/cleaner headers for email clients to use?

<comment><USER7> I mean do more stuff through email, like Posterous and Xobni did. People are comfortable with the interface. I think Google Wave starts in email actually. But they extend it into XMPP.

You got me on the money equation. But I'm sure there's some way to make it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Never underestimate the power of inertia.

<comment><USER4> Never underestimate the propensity of the younger generation to blithely discount the previous.

<comment><USER5> Inertia is also what is keeping parts of the email system from being improved too -- though this could be a good thing if the improvements are 'improvements.'</comment></comment></comment>


Greece's Varoufakis to Run in European Election – In Germany - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-election-germany/greeces-varoufakis-to-run-in-european-election-in-germany-idUSKCN1NU0QA <comment><USER2> For anybody trying to understand why the world is the way it is (global politics and who really runs the world), I strongly recommend Yanis Varoufakis "Adults in the Room". It describes the EU and its major players and what really happens behind those closed doors (and it is nothing like what we see in the newspapers.)

<comment><USER3> +1 on the recommendation. I found it fascinating.

His other book "Talking to my daughter about the economy" (1) is also a good read - especially for parents that have teenaged kids (in addition to being useful for the adults in the room).

There are many good reviews about the book, but an interesting negative review, for a rounded view, can be found here (2).

(1) [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1111145/talking-to-my- da...](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1111145/talking-to-my-daughter- about-the-economy/9781847924445.html)

(2) [https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/lucid-but-flawed- pa...](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/lucid-but-flawed-paschal- donohoe-reviews-yanis-varoufakis-s-economics-primer-1.3274074)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article neglects to mention one of the more interesting detours in Varoufakis' professional life: his stint as in-house economist at Valve Software. [http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began- with-a...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a- strange-email/)</comment>


Ask HN: How would you create the list of the top 100 most influential people? - <AUTHOR> There are various lists created by various people and organization.<p>I'm thinking from a data perspective. Some ideas, looking at # of search results? Number of biographies? Number of mentions in other books? Having people vote? <comment><USER2> Influence on what? A particular field, or somehow all of them, weighted? Using lots of different criteria sounds good, but then the weighting you use become more significant.. I guess the only way is to yourself become the most influential arbiter of who's influential. Come to think of it, anyone on one of the main 'influential people' lists is made (much) more influential just by impressing people by appearing in it.

So maybe first decide who you would want to be in your list, then make it so... A self-fulfilling prophecy. You become more right by publishing it. If only science worked like that! (Well..it does, in a way.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Like in science, number of citations in respected press articles. maybe add book references also.

Voting measures popularity, not influence. Number of biographies is also a good metric, Has_Wikipedia page (notability) also. # search results is a bit limited to internet users only.

</comment><comment><USER4> if you just choose an academic lens, you can say number of citations and limit it to certain journals</comment>


What Happened to Nokia? - <AUTHOR> http://mobilesoftware.tumblr.com/post/3565611897/what-happened-to-nokia <comment><USER2> They assumed widespread adoption of their platform was sufficient, and saw no need to innovate. What happened to Nokia is what happens to many large companies that become complacent - they gradually lose whatever stronghold they had.

One thing Nokia didn't have was a strong presence in the US marketplace. RIM had it, and still does, but Nokia never really did, despite it's general global dominance. I wonder if they did, if that would have made a difference.

<comment><USER3> It would have mattered greatly, in Nokia's favor as it would have forced them to innovate, and if not, at least replicate in order to maintain market in the US. The problem is now, they had such a huge market share in the "non" smart phone world which is now beginning to move to the smart phone world, only to find that they are the bottom of the list now. Having a market presence amongst real competition will not only help you, but will force you to stay alive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nokia must have a huge sympathy capital, with all these people genuinely invested (at least emotionally) in their success. What do you suppose is the reason for this?

<comment><USER5> A lot of people were linux fans who were very eager to see meego succeed. A small but decent amount of people bought the n900 and were waiting for the successor(I bought an n900 because I decided I couldn't wait for the first meego phone about a month before the announcement).</comment></comment>