C++11 FQA anyone? - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/blog/c11-fqa-anyone.html <comment><USER2> This is a very interesting read but it's full of FUD.

You'd expect `==` to work in PHP because it compares value. With a char* reference the syntax and everything around it indicates that you're working with well... pointers (and you shouldn't be having char pointers for strings anyway). Don't even mention PHP references etc.

C++ still has a lot of going for it - no one thinks it's terribly great and awesome - but the reason people ridicule PHP and admire C++ is that it solves a much bigger problem.

\- In PHP you don't have resource management, the process kind of just dies and resources get deallocated. In C++ that's not acceptable for perfomance. \- In PHP you have memory safety - oh wait you really don't, if you do silly things like use raw references you can still get screwed.. experienced C++ programmers don't fall to that pit either. \- In PHP you don't have to explicitly deal with memory which is again because you're solving a much easier problem. When your whole world is an immutable page request response cycle life is rainbows and sunshine.

Comparing languages is always ridiculous and populistic but that comparison was just bonkers. Not that C++ doesn't have quirks - it sure does, but comparing it to PHP is just silly.

(Not saying anything about PHP being a bad or good language here, just that the comparison is ridiculous)

<comment><USER3> FTFA:

        I have observed someone do this: _myarr[5]={0}; – they had in the
        .h file the definition int _myarr[5] and they remembered that this
        thing could be initialized with {0} in other contexts. What they
        did wouldn't compile in C++98; in C++11 it promptly assigned the
        int 0 to the non-existent 5th element of _myarr, and the usual
        hilarity ensued. Imagine how PHP would be ridiculed for this kind
        of little behavior – and PHP at least would never overwrite an
        unrelated variable with garbage. Imagine how with C++, the poor
        programmer will be ridiculed instead.

Let me repeat that one more time,

        the poor programmer will be ridiculed instead.

From your response,

        (and you shouldn't be having char pointers for strings anyway)

         [...]

        experienced C++ programmers don't fall to that pit either

This is what the article is about, about what you are doing again. C++ is weird, it has a bunch of unusual behaviours, and when pointed, people who fall into those traps are the ones ridiculed, instead of the language.

I don't know if C++ could have been made less weird with the constraints that it had, as others have pointed out in this thread (C compatibility with no overhead). Perhaps it couldn't be. But this article is unhappy with the attitude of defending C++'s weirdness and then blaming the programmers for falling victims to this weirdness.

<comment><USER4> That isn't weird. At all. The language did precisely what the programmer asked it to. When you make a language operate closely to the metal, you can expect the syntax to be more abstruse. If this kind of mistake was possible in a higher level language, I would expect that to be a language pitfall.

<comment><USER5> "When you make a language operate closely to the metal, you can expect the syntax to be more abstruse"

It's the exact opposite. Close-to-the-metal, the syntax is actually very friendly - you've got values, and you can bash them in like a half-dozen ways. C is incredibly simple (I suppose their pointer syntax is a little janky, but one can always express it "one level at a time" via typedefs).

The really complicated parts come from making high-level operations seem "easy". There is no close-to-the-metal notion of char* vs a string, or a lvalue vs an rvalue, let alone template metaprogramming.

<comment><USER4> What I should have said was provide high level abstractions while still allowing low level operations. There is an impedance mismatch that the language needs to address. Languages like Rust can get away with this by not allowing the most low level operations that are deemed unsafe and so have a more user friendly api. C on the other hand, makes no attempts at make the abstraction so the syntax is just small by definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After reading this I recommend people go watch this recent interview with Bjarne[0] for some insight on the compromises taken by C++, a spot of history with regard to its development in tandem with C, and what he thinks of the 'competition' between new languages.

I think it's only fair seeing as this article accuses Bjarne of "evilly shrewd" moves, maliciously crippling Cs development, and "knocking C it in to a coma". So watch it for Bjarnes perspective from his own mouth. You may as well see get a biased view from both sides.

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

<comment><USER7> Bjarne has been on a bit of a promotion tour recently. Here is another Q&A session he did with Slashdot on the 20th [0]. I suppose this is because of the recent standardization of C++14.

One thing I don't particularly agree with is that some of his examples of C++ code use features that will not be made available for years, likely around or after 2017 when C++17 should be standardized. This is assuming compilers implement the standard quickly, which is worse on some platforms than others ( _cough_ Visual Studio _cough_ ). What I'm specifically talking about is any example that mentions concepts, but at least he is clear that concepts are only currently available in a branch of GCC.

[0] [http://features.slashdot.org/story/14/08/20/011231/interview...](http://features.slashdot.org/story/14/08/20/011231/interviews- bjarne-stroustrup-answers-your-questions)

<comment><USER6> > What I'm specifically talking about is any example that mentions concepts, > but at least he is clear that concepts are only currently available in a > branch of GCC.

The syntax for concepts seems pretty well set now, and Alex Stepanov (author of the STL, and worked with Bjarne on the new concept model), in his Amazon A9 lectures (available on YouTube) recommends you simply #define concept names to "typename" so they at least exist in your code as documentation.

The most important thing however is really to get people writing their generic code with a concious awareness of what their type requirements actually are, and then to document and specify them correctly, just like you'd rightly expect a function written in C99 to specify clearly what the pre and post conditions are... something the compiler can't help you with even today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Professional C++ programmer here, although previously I mostly worked in C# and python. I have to admit, I'm pretty ambivalent about the language. For a long time I loved it, and then for quite a while I really hated it (tracking down segfault that only happens on a release build on a tight deadline will do that to you). The thing is, all the terrible things people say about C++ are true; but what else is there in that space? It seems like most language design is aimed at a higher level. D seemed promising, but the whole standard library issue seemed to derail its momentum, and as nice as the language is, it's really complicated and the tool support kinda sucks. Rust is interesting but too immature to sell to the decision makers at most companies.

I understand people going back to pure C, but man, as screwed up as C++ is it's hard to give up things like vectors and strings and namespaces.

Everything else has a memory model that doesn't quite work, and look, I like GC as much as anyone but sometimes you need a language where you can turn it off when you need to guarantee there isn't going to be intermittent GC pauses.

<comment><USER9> Google's go and Mozilla's rust both fit the same sort of space.

Rust especially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do not see a double standard. There is a fundamental difference between PHP and C++. PHP was simply a bad design, needlessly ugly.

In contrast, the design of C++ was constrained by the goals of

\- Compatibility with C (and later previous C++ standards)

\- Zero overhead / you do not pay for what you do not use

\- No GC

Those constrains are responsible for most of its ugliness, not poor design.

<comment><USER11> 1\. From a user's perspective it doesn't matter if it's "constraints" or "poor design".

2\. Blaming C does not explain C++'s undecidable grammar, the zillion ABI incompatibilities introduced on top of C, lack of an alternative for #include coupled with features like inlining and templates making it a disaster that it never quite was in C, or many other of C++'s faults. How is PHP's grammar a worse design than C++'s? I really want to know. I think PHP's is better.

3\. Source compatibility with C does _nothing_ for the user (who could have lived with ABI compatibility just fine) and _everything_ for Stroustrup (who managed to make his language that much more popular by an Embrace, Extend and Exterminate approach).

4\. Design goals inevitably resulting in a bad language are bad design goals. If I said that I designed an electric car that electrocutes you but that's because it's compatible with an electric chair for which there's a lot of existing demand, would you then publicly defend me?

5\. PHP is a child of Perl which is a child of shell, awk, sed and C. A lot of heritage there to blame as well. So?

6\. PHP doesn't byte one's behind _nearly_ as badly as C++ and _that 's_ why the double standard exists; because only a fraction of the people who try manage to ever get anything done in C++ and a large subset of these people feel entitled to be treated as an "elite". PHP programmers cannot afford to delude themselves thusly because everyone can be productive in PHP... A funny outcome, I find, given that it "should" have actually led to PHP being praised.

<comment><USER12> > 1\. From a user's perspective it doesn't matter if it's "constraints" or > "poor design".

Of course it does. If it's poor design, one just don't use the language at all. If it's constraints, any language that solves the same kinds of problems will be just as bad, and - life just sucks - one must stop complaining.

<comment><USER13> "If it's poor design, one just don't use the language at all."

For greenfield development, sure. Many and maybe most of us don't work in that space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been using C++11, and I really like it. Together with RAII it seems entirely modern and reasonable.

Is there a list somewhere that describes what the "bad parts" (in the Crockford sense) of C++ are? Bad practices, bad feature interplay, etc.

I've been thinking of writing a little C++ transpiled language of a limited feature set to make prototyping certain things easy. It would try to follow the accepted best practice conventions. I imagine it to be Coffeescript-like, with no separate header files, support abbreviated syntax, syntax for managed pointers, etc. It would probably follow a rudimentary linking scheme.

It might be opinionated in ways that turn some people off: const vars and args by default, virtual methods by default, auto virtual dtors, and probably other "sensible" (in average usages) default patterns.

Finally, I would want to generate simple intuitive interfaces that are linkable to existing C++ headers.

Anyways, this would just be a side project for fun. I don't do C++ professionally. Just for robotics and lasers and hobby stuff. Any information on best practices and bad C++ usages would be awesome to have if I undertake this.

<comment><USER15> I am dreaming of something similar. I'd like to see a simple language wich looks a bit like python and compiles to C++. The central part of this language would be an integrated package manager / module system which replaces make / cmake. Why should I need make? I just want to tell the compiler the file with main() and then it should figure the rest on it's own.

The one thing which stops me from writing more c++ is all the setup you have to do to actually get an executable. In python I can just create a file, import some stuff and run it. In C++ I have to deal with makefiles, vs projects, paths and all that crap. Just give me a C++ where I can write "import boost.xyz" and the compiler figures out what that means.

<comment><USER16> Actually, I put a c++ project template together to solve this exact problem. It uses cmake to generate a makefile (including IDE projects that just work), and google mock for testing. You still have to add libraries like boost to the CMakeLists.txt if you want to use it, but it's really easy. Just follow the examples in the project.

Github: [https://github.com/film42/cpp-starter- template/](https://github.com/film42/cpp-starter-template/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So the original guide seems not to have been updated since 2009 [1], and even then only in minor ways. Are these criticisms still valid of C++, even without the C++11 standard? Clearly the language issues won't have gotten any better (without C++11), but many of the arguments in the FQA seem to call into question the correctness of the compiler or the quality of the compiler's optimizations (see e.g. [2] and [3]). Is this still valid for modern compilers (GCC 4.8, Clang 3.4, etc.)?

[1]: [http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/changelog.html](http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/changelog.html)

[2]: [http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ctors.html#fqa-10.9](http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ctors.html#fqa-10.9)

[3]: [http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/templates.html#fqa-35.10](http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/templates.html#fqa-35.10)

<comment><USER18> No. There was a time when you couldn't count on a lot of C++ features being fully or correctly implemented, but that time has passed. A lot of the other arguments revolve around slow compile times, which are fixed by having plenty of fast hardware. Most of the remainder are divided between matters of taste, and genuine sharp edges you have to be careful to avoid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > And Stroustrup says about himself that he "lacks marketing clout" and says > Java and C# are bad for you because they're "platforms, not languages", > whatever that means.

Perhaps Stroustrup is referring to the JVM and CLR, respectively?

<comment><USER5> Right. Java-the-language depends heavily on JVM-the-environment to be usable. Without an excellent GC (sometimes even with one) common coding patterns are unworkable, and the design of the language lends itself heavily to GC- dependent overall designs. There are also aspects of the implementation details that dominate language design (eg, primitive boxing and the generics implementation).

That said, if you know what you're doing it's a great platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> These kinds of rants sadden me. They purport to outline absolute, logically inviolable reasons that a given language is "bad". What they really do is express the writer's frustration, an emotional reaction that probably emerged from working with language attributes and features that he in some cases doesn't understand well or in other cases simply doesn't prefer. C++ works beautifully for millions of programmers who happen to "get" it and like it, just as Java does for others and C# does for others and Haskell does for others and fill in your main squeeze here. Programmers are trees ([http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=915](http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=915)). We each adapt to what we like and come to like what we adapt to. Let's not pretend we alone have the One True Way or that our non-preferred way is stupid.

<comment><USER21> While your point may be valid... let's also not pretend that some genuinely bad solutions are just "non-preferred" ways and that C++ is not without it's shortcomings and hidden pitfalls. After all, there is a reason that any style guide for C++ will include a large list of features that should not be used.

I love the language and use it alot... but sadly, in many ways, this FQA is just too true.

<comment><USER22> You're just reinforcing the parent's point. Take this sentence:

> <PROGRAMMING_LANGUAGE> is not without it's shortcomings and hidden pitfalls. > After all, there is a reason that any style guide for <PROGRAMMING_LANGUAGE> > will include a large list of features that should not be used.

This holds true of pretty much any language. Take a look at Google's extensive style guide library [1]; they all contain language features that should be avoided for any language. It all just reflects the iterative nature of programming language design.

[1] [http://code.google.com/p/google- styleguide/](http://code.google.com/p/google-styleguide/)

<comment><USER23> Look at Google's Python Style Guide: [http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pyguide.ht...](http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pyguide.html)

There is almost nothing in there that sounds like a landmine. Rather, some general guidance about "don't use global variables," "x may not be thread safe," and "don't write overly complex lambdas."

My favorite "gotcha" in Python is using e.g. a list as a default argument. That's in the guide, and it sucks, but Python has surprisingly few such problems for newcomers.

<comment><USER24> I can think of two landmines that make most C++ issues pale. First is things blowing up at run-time due to typos or syntax errors. Second (related) is that you can't safely refactor because you don't really know the types that functions take or where they're being called from. Sure C++ can be a pain but you can build and maintain very large software in C++. It's a lot harder to do in Python (without taking other considerations into account).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla's new Model X has a 'bioweapon defense mode' button - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9421719/tesla-model-x-bioweapon-defense-mode-button <comment><AUTHOR> With "700 times better at filtering smog," \- a vehicle like this would be a big hit in Singapore right now:

[http://aqicn.org/city/singapore/south/](http://aqicn.org/city/singapore/south/)

The PSI at my office maxed out at 314 for 2.5 microns today - which is in the "Hazardous" range. A lot of people are wearing N95 masks, but it would be nice to hop into a car and not worry about the air.

</comment><comment><USER2> This smells like a marketing gimmick... (See what I did there?) Why not just make that button's functionality be the default, instead of an optional setting? I think some engineer had way too much fun putting that hazardous image into the UI...

<comment><AUTHOR> If I had to guess - with air being forced through a full filter, you are going to take a serious hit to range as a lot of power is required to force the air through the filter at full "filtering" setting.</comment></comment>


Steam: Seeing other people's accounts when logged in - <AUTHOR> http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1162196 <comment><USER2> I don't get it. How can a company claim to hire the best and the brightest, have some of the toughest interviewing processes in the industry and yet produce a clunky slow piece of shit software that's been dragging its feet for nearly a decade resulting in your account information splattered all over someone's screen. What an embarrassment.

<comment><USER3> Flip side of the "flat, work on what you're interested in" company hierarchy.

If nobody goes to work for Valve thinking "I really love writing online stores wrapped in native apps with friends lists and voice chat bolted on the side," they don't progress very quickly.

<comment><USER4> I imagine the list of those that want to also fix bugs and performance issues for such apps at Valve is even smaller. Just my guess from being an active steam user for about a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For such a large company with so many developers, it's depressing how super crappy the steam client is, on both OSX and windows. Maybe it's "good enough" but it's clearly unpolished, and has been for years. Things like this do NOT instill any confidence that they are competent or care. Anytime I try to do something in steam, nothing ever seems to work.

<comment><USER6> It's worth noting that Valve infamously has a flat company hierarchy: [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24205497](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24205497) (2013)

The flip side of having a "no leader" organization is no assignment of responsibilities.

<comment><USER7> I can imagine someone has to mediate disagreements. There has to be some workflow.

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily. A couple of friends of mine work for a well known flat hierarchy company and things that nobody wants to take responsibility for that would typically be handled by an HR manager - eg, the company structure has changed and all H1Bs are now working illegally - aren't handled at all.

If it's not their responsibility, and they don't believe in the risk of the company getting caught, they don't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reddit thread with more discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3y7maa/something_is_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3y7maa/something_is_really_wrong_with_steam_be_careful/)

To get an indication how bad this is, the default Steam account page was _showing other people 's accounts_.

EDIT: Steam fully down for now. If you had a Steam Account, I recommend checking email/credit card on any linked accounts. (and, as always, sign up for 2FA if you haven't!)

EDIT2: Steam Community Moderator response (not linked):

\- No, Steam is not hacked

\- Creditcard info and phone numbers are, as required by law, censored and not visible to users

<comment><AUTHOR> And the language randomly changes if you keep refreshing; maybe because I'm being logged in as a different person every time I refresh?

<comment><USER9> Quite possibly, yes - if you can find the page that gives "your" account information, the language often matches the location.

I should really stop poking around, but this is a fascinatingly bizarre error. Has anyone seen anything like it before?

<comment><USER10> I had a similar problem with a site I worked on a couple of years back. Setting headers to disable caching did the trick. Annoying, but effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apparently it's a caching bug - if you add some random query parameters like ?r=123456789 to the url you get the correct page.

<comment><USER12> yeah pretty obvious caching bug. im sure they accidentally told their cache to ignore cookies or something stupid.

<comment><USER13> Amazon CloudFront all but encourages you to ignore cookies and query strings in caching. This is exactly what you want in some cases, like images or CSS, but it seems like a very dangerous option, and there's no scary text around the option.

<comment><USER7> Valve would have to entirely rewrite their current caching system in order to repair this which they've avoided for so long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As an OSX user who bought the Steam controller early, Valve gave me all of their current games plus put me on their Friends and Family list, which gifts me all of Valve's future games (ha, if they ever make them)...this was because the controller was mostly non-functional on OSX during the early launch...I wonder what the apology gift will be this time around?

Edit: I should note that this gift _totally_ pacified me...but probably cost Valve virtually nothing. To this day I still don't know if my steam controller experience on OSX is actually up to par with Windows/Steam users (beta client release notes feature OSX controller fixes frequently) because, who cares, I'm getting Half Life 3 free! OTOH there's just a handful of OSX Steam users relative to Windows, and even fewer who were early adopters of Steam software...I probably saw 5 other users in the same boat talk about the gift on Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER15> I bet they had thought, let's turn up caching to the max so we don't get performance problems over Christmas.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is an extremely serious breach of privacy. I hope there is massive legal fallout for Valve. You simply can't get away with leaking that kind of sensitive information. In the end I am guessing the blame will be shifted onto the group that was DDOSing steam earlier today instead of Valve running a configuration where this type of breach was possible.

<comment><USER17> > In the end I am guessing the blame will be shifted onto the group that was > DDOSing steam earlier today instead of Valve running a configuration where > this type of breach was possible.

I doubt it. The "fail-state" for their website should be to just not work, vs expose other people's credentials. If it was proven that the attackers were able to change server configs, that'd be one thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me when one norwegian was a victim of a cache error in the yearly release of tax information. Everyone that logged in got his page until they shut it down.

Although this steam error is a bit different with everyone getting random users, it seems likely that it is along the same lines. Over stressed servers maybe?

[http://www.tu.no/it/2012/03/23/altinn-feilen-er- funnet](http://www.tu.no/it/2012/03/23/altinn-feilen-er-funnet) (Norwegian)

</comment><comment><USER19> Can anyone confirm, was it possible for someone to view data of a specific, chosen account or were people just being logged into random accounts.

In other words, could an attacker exploit this bug to "dox" a specific target?

<comment><USER20> It was random. According to SteamDB[1] it was a caching issue that ended up sending random pages to the wrong people.

Possible explanation from unknown source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/3y7le9/im_logged_in_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/3y7le9/im_logged_in_as_someone_random_on_steam/cyb88ym)

[1]: [https://twitter.com/SteamDB/status/680490823226671104](https://twitter.com/SteamDB/status/680490823226671104)

<comment><USER19> Thanks. Based on that information any privacy-conscious users should simply not use Steam or the Steam website until the bug is fixed. By not using Steam, their pages won't end up in cache and will not be leaked to others.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but there's other bugs that do let you do that (pull peoples account info). I've found a plenty of exploitable vulnerabilities on steam but stopped reporting them after their support told me to go post "suggestions" on their forums instead.

<comment><USER22> Email firstname.lastname@example.com; I've reported loads of things there (some serious, some pretty trivial), and they're actually very good about responding to things these days. Steam Support is totally useless, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just tried it out after reading this, it's pretty crazy. I am clearly logged in with my own credentials, but if I go to "Account Details", I see the details of another user, which sometimes changes.

As indicated in article, if I click on "Purchase History" or the link below, I sometimes see other user's data as well.

</comment><comment><USER24> Update on the article indicates they shut the site down.

I was also confused when I started getting random pages in other languages, definitely stopped me from buying a game today.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the kind of bug (assuming it's not a security breach) that would warrant a shutdown.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not so long ago you could reset anyone's account password by just entering an empty reset token.

I don't know what to think of steam. Is that what happens when an important piece of software is coded by game developers? Or when a company doesn't have a bug bounty?

<comment><USER6> Context behind reset-anyone's-password: [http://kotaku.com/steam-accounts- hijacked-following-security...](http://kotaku.com/steam-accounts-hijacked- following-security-lapse-1720288836)

Additionally, Steam was vulnerable to Heartbleed for a brief period of time: [http://www.pcinvasion.com/steam-has-security- vulnerability-d...](http://www.pcinvasion.com/steam-has-security- vulnerability-do-not-use-until-fixed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Absolute silence from VALVe during a massive data breach, superb handling of the situation!

<comment><USER27> Someone upstream linked a moderator's quick notification that it's not someone having compromised their servers, and presumably we'll see some level of post- mortem after the fact.

After the security issue a while ago where they forced everyone to change their passwords, I'm honestly not going to be concerned about their quiet until a while after things are back to normal.

<comment><USER6> Note that data breach != "someone hacked us"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised to see unanimus hate for the steam client on here. I've never had any problems with steam. Downloads are fast, the client is easy to use and not "slow and clunky" the voice chat works well, the new community features for games are great. Actually my only complaint is that there's no 'unsubscribe all' button on steam workshop.

Is my experience entirely unique or is everyone remembering the old crappy steam client from 2004 (which was before I used steam)?

Edit: Or, more likely, some third option in which case I'd like to hear your thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER29> [http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/45860425443147...](http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/458604254431478327/)

\---

Account information incorrect We've gotten reports that people sometimes see other people's account information on the account page. Valve has been made aware of this and are working on a fix.

Some frequently asked questions: \- No, Steam is not hacked

\- Creditcard info and phone numbers are, as required by law, censored and not visible to users

\---

Wow, steam as always with the killer customer support.

<comment><USER6> It should be noted that this is from a moderator, and is not a _official PR response_.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> TheVerge:

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/25/10665814/valve-steam- holi...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/25/10665814/valve-steam-holiday-sale- security- problems?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter)

</comment><comment><USER30> >Valve has issued a statement regarding today's issues.

>"Steam is back up and running without any known issues," a Valve spokesperson told GameSpot. "As a result of a configuration change earlier today, a caching issue allowed some users to randomly see pages generated for other users for a period of less than an hour. This issue has since been resolved. We believe no unauthorized actions were allowed on accounts beyond the viewing of cached page information and no additional action is required by users."

[http://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-issue-allowing- access...](http://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-issue-allowing-access-to- other-users-account/1100-6433371/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Very bad Christmas present for Valve it seems. Which is sad since I picked up Age of Empires and now can't login to get it on my system.

</comment><comment><USER32> Huh, I saw all the games in my cart disappear, I wonder if someone else mysteriously ended up with a cart full of games.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well at 3:15 PST there is some progress, now I can get to the store site again but it complains of too many failed logins. I wonder how long that will take to clear up.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how many new accounts GOG will get out of this?

<comment><USER33> gog is great, but they don't have most newer games (although they get more everyday). Humble Bundle store does on the otherhand have most recent non-DRM games found on steam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If no one at Valve choosing to work on Steam platform. I volunteer to work on it!

</comment><comment><USER35> They've been complacent for too long on polishing up the non-Windows and mobile clients. Their recent push to use the mobile app as an authenticator and the bugs surrounding that is a good example. I'm not at all surprised an issue like this has happened.</comment>


Are We Giving Google More Than We Get?  - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/telecom/internet/are-we-giving-google-more-than-we-get?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE+Spectrum%29 <comment><USER2> Think about the combined seconds, minutes and hours Googles Technologies that they are offering for "free" have saved everyone you know. In my instance its probably a lifetime. What they have done with their technology is giving us solutions to stay productive in a world of information overflow, giving us time back where we want it and allowing usw to discover the world from our livingrooms. Street View is a magnificient tool and its potential is just beginning to unravel.

Giving Google information about my habits and my social life will in the end be used to save me and other people time and money.

On the contrary we have facebook which is mostly just a service where you can happily burn away your life... i'd go as far as arguing that the amount of time people waste on facebook is a social problem that will rise ever more damaging to peoples life.

As one-sided my perspective seems to be, it is the only conclusion i can reach when comparing the impacts of facebook and google on peoples lives and on society as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER3> Values that people put on things are fundamentally different. Google values that which we give to it more than we value it, and we value what we get from Google more than what we give, or we wouldn't transact with them in the first place. Phrasing the argument in some sort of absolute value terms is failing at the outset.

A better question would be to ask if people undervalue their privacy, but then, if you phrase it that way, it becomes clear Google isn't the only organization taking advantage of that or even particularly special (there are others with almost as much data as Google, just less visible), and walking up to someone and telling them _your personal valuation for X is wrong_ is a tricky thing to do. Not impossible, but tricky.

</comment><comment><USER4> I see this argument/question come up all the time in a variety of different contexts. Inevitably it boils down to some form of "this company/site/person is taking away my privacy!" Typically this stems from the belief that a particular practice deployed at a company like Google forces you to give away information about yourself to use it, thus breaking off pieces of your "privacy".

But let me clear something up. You have no privacy if you use the internet. Not one ounce. There are numerous companies that have data warehouses of information on every single person that has ever filled out a form on the web. I'll actually go as far as to say I believe some of this information comes from brick and mortar sources... even Doctor's office or grocery stores, for instance.

How do I know this? I worked in the affiliate networking industry for a few years and one of the tidbits I discovered is a company called Targus (<http://www.targusinfo.com/>). For $0.50-$0.75 you can lookup anyone's information via API. This includes things like name, age, location, phone, employer (I think), salary etc... As a developer we were implementing this for our clients and one of the developers opted to look himself up. The children count returned 2.5. He does have two kids and at the time his wife was 6 months pregnant.

The bottom line is your privacy was most likely stolen a long, long time ago and any feeling of giving it up is really just an insignificant personal emotion.

<comment><USER5> "You have no privacy if you use the internet. Not one ounce"

Absolutely. And knowing this, the value of my "privacy" is a very low value, especially when compared to what Google provides me to improve my life and/or minimize my time spent online at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't image this post will be popular here but the most critical "thing" that we are giving Google is "power" (in terms of depandance, and giving up and transferring control).

For example, online businesses are now completely dependent on Google services via Paid and Organic search traffic.

Since Google brings in about 95-99% of your (search) visitors, what would happen if tomorrow...

A) Your AdWords account becomes "permanently suspended"?

B) Your website is dropped from the index.

C) Your website's Analytics data is sold to a competitor, or is used by Google internally to further some other business of theirs at your expense.

I've seen the first two happen to people who were not spammers, they simply tripped up some filter (Google's error).

One was selling a product/service that interfaced with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Someone at Google decided they where selling "free" items (an AdWords violation).

The other had his content taken by a content farm, Google dropped him from the index.

And contacting Google was met with this response...

      "I do understand your point of view and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but unfortunately we cannot provide any further assistance in this matter."

(direct quote from my correspondence.)

A few years back there was also some talk about how employees where encouraged to use "free" AdWords credits to set up their own businesses. Imagine getting $1 million worth of credits to compete with some other AdWords customer? [http://www.googlelady.com/23/outrage-over-google- employees-a...](http://www.googlelady.com/23/outrage-over-google-employees- and-adwords-accounts/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Each transaction? No. In the aggregate? Yes.

</comment><comment><USER8> This debate focuses on search and ignores their other services that are mostly paid for by the search business, also maintenance and uptime are being ignored, all of which nullifies the initial question.

These studies can't possible be accurate as their subject is a service that keeps evolving and gets optimized all the time.

Also these studies are usually commissioned and paid for by 'interested' parties.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google is God. Someone lynch these heretics.</comment>


How to build an antigravity device - <AUTHOR> https://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/how-to-build-an-anti-gravity-device/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, that was a super disappointing reveal.

"However, we would expect the centrifuge to gain mass (and hence generate an increasing gravitational field) as fluid spins up to relativistic speeds. Hello warp drive! Oh, and you're welcome."

Congrats, E=mc², you've collected a large amount of energy in a small area and created a gravitational field. You've now reached the space travel and anti- gravity technology of a small rock.

<comment><USER3> Yes to me it doesn't any more realistic than Bob Lazar's story that he quotes, just more convoluted.

My understanding of a warp drive (Alcubierre drive) is that it contracts space in front of the ship while expanding space behind it. I don't understand how increasing a gravitational field locally is meant to achieve any of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to tell whether some of the comments are serious, trolling, or the product of deranged Markov Chains.

<comment><USER5> my money is on markov chains, no human is _that_ bad at grammar

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you guys are overlooking the most obvious flaw, in that a "superferrofluid" should be impossible to manufacture, as a "ferrofluid" by definition must have some amount of intermolecular bonding, where as a "superfluid" cannot have any at all.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's what I was about to write: a " _superconducting ferro-superfluid_ " is, as I understand it, an oxymoronic self-contradiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What would be cool is a circulating superfluid, say inside a hollow torus, that could be made frictional on command at a chosen spot on the interior surface of the torus. Imagine holding the torus like a steering wheel. Inside, the superfluid is rapidly circulating. Say when a laser zaps a region where fluid and container touch, the superfluid becomes slightly frictional in that spot. One would feel the steering wheel yank in the direction of flow. So long as energy could be added back to the superfluid to accelerate its circulation, it could be extracted again and again with laser zaps to do work. (How many ways can a superfluid circulate inside a hollow torus?)

<comment><USER9> Why would it be cool?

We can do something like that already with current flowing in a circle in a superconductor. Resistance corresponds to friction. In the worst case you get a quench and all of the stored angular momentum results in a torque that breaks your machine.

<comment><USER8> Because it would do work in a novel way. It could be used to levitate a spaceship, for example.

<comment><USER9> No, it wouldn't. It would cause a torque as the momentum from the fluid is transferred to the torus. It would not cause a lift. There's no overall momentum change.

It's basically a gyroscope, albeit with quantized vorticies.

An external magnetic field could be used to levitate an object. But that's not novel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do you need a superfluid? It sounds like all you need is disc in a vacuum that you suspend/rotate like the armature of a motor.

Until, of course, it gets nowhere near the speed of light because the limiting factor to spinning something fast isn't friction, it's the required centripetal force to keep it in one piece.

And assuming you could solve that by making the spinning thing out of unobtanium, you're still not doing anything to break conservation of momentum.

<comment><USER6> But is that not why he is using a fluid? A fluid does not have intermolecular bonds that need to overcome the centripetal force, so it shouldn't be a problem?

<comment><USER10> It still has inertia, and as you point out it has the added disadvantage of having no internal structure to help hold it in place.

Put a plate in the center of a turntable and pour some water into it. Now rotate the turntable, slowly accelerating. What happens to the water?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> a superfluid flows with zero viscosity, that means if we were to put it into some kind of centrifuge and spin it, it would not slow down due to friction. If it never slows down due to friction, in theory, that implies we should be able to accelerate a superfluid to the speed of light.

ah ah ah ah nope.

<comment><USER6> Could you explain why not?

It doesn't sound right to me either, but I have a hard time explaining to myself why it wouldn't maintain it's velocity.

<comment><USER9> The first problem I thought of is that as the speed goes up, the centripetal force causes the pressure to increase. At some point there will be a transition from liquid to solid. Eg, for ⁴He, and if I read the phase diagram correctly, that's at 25 bar.

I searched for "rotating superfluid helium" and found [http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2018/feb/07/unexpec...](http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2018/feb/07/unexpected- friction-found-in-superfluid-helium-3) , which is a summary of [https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.01...](https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.014527) . It says that there is friction, perhaps caused by "quasiparticles that become trapped within the cores of vortexes. As the vortexes accelerate, the quasiparticles gain energy, which they can then dissipate to their surroundings in the form of friction."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> so, I didn't quite get the connection between element 115 and superferrofluids/the warpdrive theory...is element 115 a superferrofluid? or did that first part of the article have nothing to do with the rest of it?

<comment><USER6> The latter. He was just citing another conspiracy theory of how to create a gravity engine / warp drive that had become more relevant with the actual discovery of E115.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sorry, but this article is not even as convincing as Bob Lazar himself. I love that guy. One of the biggest and most genuine-sounding charlatans in the UFO community, but a hell of a lot of fun to listen to.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the issue with very high speed centrifuges is much more about the high centrifugal force than it is about friction.</comment>


Show HN: Team newsletter instead of sharing links on Slack - <AUTHOR> http://app.itemsy.com <comment><USER2> I do like to share links @ work, so sounds like I'm the target audience. But this is a near empty landing page, asking for my e-mail with almost no information about what the product is or how it works.

It would be nice to get _a little_ more information. Screenshots, descriptions, pricing ... anything. Why would I want to just blindly sign up for something based on one sentence & 3 bullet points?

<comment><USER3> I perfectly agree with this. Frankly, _who knows if the page is a phishing page targeted to HN users?_

I never want to blindly sign up for anything when there is absolutely no information/demo in the first page.

<comment><USER4> Does it ask your HN (or any other) credentials? How would it be a phishing attack then?

<comment><USER5> First step of sign up requires an email. Second sep verifies the email is active. Third asks you to set a password. They could be harvesting credentials and reverting on password reuse.

<comment><USER6> Isn't reasonable to expect that a tool made to send you email newsletters requires you to give them and verify your email address?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Our goal was simple: we wanted to share interesting links without constantly being distracted by messages or Slack notifications.

Itemsy is a free, shared bookmarking tool. All you have to do is:

1\. Create an account at app.itemsy.com

2\. Create a new private channel for your company

3\. Invite your colleagues

4\. Add interesting links to the channel (via the web app or by emailing it to email@example.com with the name of your channel in the title)

As a result, you and your colleagues receive a daily newsletter with all the links to read, e.g. while commuting. You can also browse them all via the web app.

If you have a habit of sharing interesting reads within your team, we'd love for you to try it out!

<comment><AUTHOR> Frequently Asked Questions:

1\. What happens when someone follows my public profile?

They receive a daily newsletter with all the links you share on your public profile.

2\. What are private channels?

You and friends or teammates you invite contribute links and receive the newsletter.

3\. What happens when I invite someone to a private channel?

They receive an email notification. They need to log in to the web app and accept the invitation in order to be able to contribute to the channel and receive the newsletter.

4\. When are newsletters sent out?

Channel admin can adjust it in newsletter settings (daily, by default).

<comment><USER7> Needing an account to read articles is a bit much, IMO. Unless I'm misunderstanding something.

I dont want to make people sign up for something new just to read my shitty links

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For this kind of thing Zotero[1] is a better solution. Moreover, it can be self-hosted and open source[2]. They even have a web browser extension (Chrome and Firefox), and a rich set of various plugins [3].

[1] [https://zotero.org/](https://zotero.org/)

[2] [https://github.com/zotero](https://github.com/zotero)

[3] [https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins](https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins)

</comment><comment><USER9> Actually I'm doing something similar [1] - but beside sharing links, tiomsu.com allows sharing (markdown) notes as well. There is YT video with brief overview [2].

1\. [https://tiomsu.com](https://tiomsu.com)

2\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx7Ai- PhvAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx7Ai-PhvAM)

<comment><USER10> This looks interesting, but I have to say the screenshots that only show outlines and no real content make it really difficult to get a feel for what the product actually does. I had to watch the video to get a better understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sounds like something that should be built into Slack. Some heuristics could be applied to whether or not a message is really indeed important, and only notify me if that's the case.

</comment><comment><USER12> It'd be nice to have a bot listening to a channel and doing that work too. Maybe as a secondary method of data acquisition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion! At the moment, there are 3 ways to add links to Itemsy:

(1) publish links via web app

(2) add to personal #myitems channel via

\- Chrome/Firefox extension (see itemsy.com) \- email to firstname.lastname@example.com

Which one sounds best to you at the moment?

<comment><USER12> The browser extension.

I've noticed there are 3 types of people when it comes to sharing interesting things on Slack work channels: 1) hates the distraction and would love a summary by email (me), 2) is fine with Slack and 3) doesn't really care and doesn't want to be involved.

The less work 1 and 3 have, the better. I think I'm proposing a slack-email brdige now. Things are getting out of hand :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So is this designed to mine / crowd source "organic" user data in reading habits and trends for people who can't keep up with the speed of slack, or store articles and reminders to read them on their own?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's gonna be the latter. It's something we initially set up for ourselves because we really enjoyed the idea of receiving a daily newsletter of stuff to read rather than constant notifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a very nice experience and concept! Nice Job!</comment>


The Coming Robot Crime Wave - <AUTHOR> http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/2010/0910/W_CO_RobotCrimeWave.pdf

<comment><USER2> "Many household security robots are designed for simple Internet operation, which makes them insecure. Will your humble Roomba vacuum cleaner be used to transmit naked videos of you?"

Does Roomba make a 'bot with either wifi or a camera? I can't imagine why they would (okay, maybe wifi.) I understand the Author's intent to make the threat "real," but this is a poor example.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any high quality non-Apple laptops for development work? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Here are a number of Ask HN threads from a month ago for similar questions:

"Ask HN: MacBook Pro replacement?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846121)

"Ask HN: Disappointed by the new Macbook, what alternatives do we have?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12835094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12835094)

"Ask HN: What laptop to choose now?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12834510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12834510)

"Ask HN: What do I do now that Apple Macs suck?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12822913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12822913)

You might find some useful suggestions there as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently picked up a refurbished Dell Precision with the Xeon processor and 32GB RAM for $1500. Coming from PCs that had 16GB RAM but would always get near the limit, the added memory is amazing. Don't rule out last year's hardware, it still performs exceptionally.

<comment><USER4> Do you run linux or win? if linux: any issues with drivers?

<comment><USER3> I haven't had it long, so I have only ran Windows on it. The Linux subsystem actually does everything I need it to, so I'm a happy camper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Probably going to get down voted for this, but why not just use ssh or putty and use Vim. You can use any crappy old laptop.

<comment><USER6> If the Internet is always on and reliable, that sounds brilliant. Trouble is, that's not always the case, especially in more rural areas, or on the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> System76 makes some pretty sweet Linux compatible dev laptops (movable workstations) : [https://system76.com/laptops](https://system76.com/laptops)

</comment><comment><USER8> you can order Dell Precision Series 5000 (which is business version of XPS) with ubuntu preinstalled.

I ordered Dell XPS 15" 6mo ago and very happy with it; before knowing about Precision

[http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd)

</comment><comment><USER9> Linus uses the Dell XPS 13, or so I hear. I like mine. The devel version has Ubuntu preinstalled.

</comment><comment><USER10> Dell Latitudes and Lenovo Thinkpads

</comment><comment><USER11> Surface Pro 4 and SurfaceBook

<comment><USER12> SurfaceBook all the GD way. High dpi, i7, discrete/integrated video and the ability to switch between them per application, tons of RAM, up to 1TB SSD.. touchscreen, the pen is amazing, the screen weighs SO LITTLE when detached considering it holds everything except discrete GPU and extra battery (in the keyboard).. magnetic charger.

You need this laptop. You just never knew how bad until you own one.

<comment><USER13> I couldn't wait for the Macbook Pro to be announced, so I bought a Surfacebook a few months ago, and I have to say that it is the best laptop I have ever owned. It's lightning fast, great for dev, and not a terrible gaming machine either if you fork out for the top specs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Using Asus ROG series laptop (32GB, 2 HD slots, 17'' model) with Linux Mint. Very satisfied.

</comment><comment><USER15> SurfaceBook or a Thinkpad would be my vote.

</comment><comment><USER16> xps series is great</comment>


Ray Dalio Sounds a New Alarm on Capitalism's Flaws, Warns of Revolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-04/dalio-sounds-new-alarm-on-capitalist-flaws-warns-of-revolution <comment><USER2> The problem was the money printing by the Federal Reserve. The money went into stocks, bonds and banks, creating an enormous wealth gap. People like Dalio saw huge wealth gains while the average Joe who doesnt own stocks/assests lost out enormously. Similarly democracy always ends in who can promise the most free stuff. Never, are big government programs ever scaled back they always get bigger and more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some good thoughts in the actual essay:

> I think that most capitalists don't know how to divide the economic pie well > and most socialists don't know how to grow it well, yet we are now at a > juncture in which either a) people of different ideological inclinations > will work together to skillfully re-engineer the system so that the pie is > both divided and grown well or b) we will have great conflict and some form > of revolution that will hurt most everyone and will shrink the pie.

I think that this is both true and well put.

> Though there are bright spots in the American education system such as our > few great universities, the US population as a whole scores very poorly > relative to the rest of the developed world in standardized tests for a > given education level. More specifically: Looking at the most respected > (PISA) test scores, the US is currently around the bottom 15th percentile of > the developed world. As shown below, the US scores lower than virtually all > developed countries other than Italy and Greece. That stands in the way of > many people having adequate living standards and of US competitiveness.

That one I find rather shocking. How and why is the US educational system failing so badly? I know that over the last few decades, we've tried approach after approach (No Child Left Behind, etc.), but... have they _all_ been counterproductive? Destructive, even?

> Comparing the high school graduation rates of Connecticut school districts > to child poverty rates shows a tight relationship across the state: a 1% > higher child poverty rate equates to about 1% lower graduation rates.

Or is that paragraph the answer to my previous questions?

> Not surprisingly, Americans have much less confidence in public schools > today than they have had at any point over the last five decades.

Not surprising, actually.

</comment><comment><USER4> Someone please post a link to the Ray Dalio essay. Thanks!

<comment><USER5> [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs- refo...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-ray- dalio/?published=t)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dalio is an interesting guy.

His advice about an 'All Weather Portfolio' differs radically from most investment advice.

I like some of his YouTube videos, he tries to share good ideas.</comment>


Show HN: Display JSON and GraphQL Services with Vue and HTML (No JavaScript) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dataformsjs.com/examples/countries-no-spa-vue.htm <comment><AUTHOR> If you would like to view the source of the HTML page directly go here:

[https://github.com/dataformsjs/dataformsjs/blob/master/examp...](https://github.com/dataformsjs/dataformsjs/blob/master/examples/countries- no-spa-vue.htm)

And for a more advanced demo (full SPA) try this version:

[https://www.dataformsjs.com/examples/places-demo- vue.htm](https://www.dataformsjs.com/examples/places-demo-vue.htm)</comment>


Show HN: Zero-configiration systemd containers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seletskiy/hastur <comment><USER2> So wake-on-lan is supported? This should enable easy scaling of network based containers like load balancers, proxies, etc. I recommend looking at the work they're doing at Pantheon as an example of the power of systemd containers.

</comment><comment><USER3> *configuration

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I feel myself so stupid right now. >_<

<comment><USER3> We all make mistakes like that sometimes :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> cool!</comment>


Ask HN: Typical Higher Ed % discount for SaaS offering? - <AUTHOR>

Our SaaS company has been asked to provide a quote for a college. They've (understandably) stated that they hope that we have a higher ed discount. Any thoughts on roughly what % discount is typical/appropriate? <comment><USER2> Exactly the same discount they would offer you as a student I would have thought...</comment>


Roku's active accounts grew 47% to 20.8M;streaming hours surged 56% - <AUTHOR> https://news.alphastreet.com/roku-reports-narrower-net-loss-in-first-quarter/ <comment><USER2> Roku is the Switzerland of streaming platforms, in the sense that they're neutral.

For example, Amazon and Google have been at war, Google pulled YouTube off of the Amazon Fire Stick, and Amazon refused to stock Google's Chromecast hardware or let a cast occur from the Prime video/music apps. Vudu (Walmart) is also at war with Amazon, therefore doesn't offer the Vudu app on Amazon's Fire Stick.

Roku has remained largely out of it, since they have fewer horses in this race. While Roku sells ads and hardware, they don't really compete for streaming space or within retail sales. So you wind up with Vudu, Amazon Prime, and Chromecast all available side by side on a Roku.

Roku does need to be careful though, they've been trying to offer paid on- demand content and other streaming services, if they're successful they might make themselves a competitor which could cause the above to leave.

<comment><USER3> There is something going on between Amazon and Google. Both are on AppleTV even though Apple is a competitor. I don't know why Amazon and Google can't play nice.

<comment><USER4> Amazon and Google compete for the same customers for tv boxes and voice response boxes; Apple had products in that space, but they appeal to a different group; nobody is going to buy an Apple TV or a homepod unless they're already in the Apple world, buy people in the Apple world are desirable customers, so it's important to have your content there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have mixed feelings about Roku. I have two Roku TVs and two Roku sticks and my next TV will be a Roku TV. But mostly because it is the best streaming platform that is built into TVs. But that's not saying much. The interface is slower than my AppleTVs - even my 3rd Gen ones and I hate the ads that take up half the home screen.

On the other hand, I love the private listening and the interface is still better than every other TV just for stuff like changing settings and inputs.

</comment><comment><USER5> This could be because Roku has more 3rd party apps than the competition. My cable tv provider, Charter Spectrum, has a decent app where I can access live and on-demand tv shows & movies w/o a cablebox and while traveling. That app is available[1] in the Apple & Google Play stores in addition to Samsung TVs and Rokus. For some reason they did not release a version to Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV. Does anyone by chance know why?

[1] [https://www.spectrum.net/support/tv/spectrum-tv- app/](https://www.spectrum.net/support/tv/spectrum-tv-app/)</comment>


On Motorcycles and Startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startups-downs/c80dd37d8333

<comment><USER2> Interesting post, but unfortunately just motorcycle riders will understand it.

PS. I'm a motorcycle rider :)</comment>


Radiohead Erase Internet Presence - <AUTHOR> http://pitchfork.com/news/65175-radiohead-erase-internet-presence/ <comment><USER2> Pretty interesting experiment by Radiohead. Kinda bored with their music but I'll be curious to see how this plays out. Should start conversation and the value of always being connected online.

<comment><USER3> Or perhaps is a temper tantrum that manifested in infosuicide.

<comment><USER4> Did you even read the article? They slowly faded their website. That takes calculated implementation.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: DailySmile – How was your day? - <AUTHOR> http://dailysmile.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, today I launched this small project/experiment called DailySmile.

Essentially DailySmile is your anonymous diary. You can share with the world how was your day without worrying about your identity. Speak about your feelings, your daily concerns, your deepest fears and desires, speak about anything you want.

I would love to have some feedback about this project.

And feel free to spread the word about DailySmile.

Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: Great books for teenager age 15 - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to supplement my nephew's education with books to expand his mind into other subjects. Public school is not cutting it.  Do you have recommendations for books that inspired or helped you during the teenage period of your life?  So far I have had him read Thinking as a Science by Hazlitt. How to win friends and Influence People by Carnegie. Also started him on the online inventwithpython.com programming book. <comment><USER2> Let him explore his own interests. The most important is that he gets into the habit of reading and enjoys the experience that books provide, so it doesn't matter if he reads sci-fi, fantasy, philosophy, science books. You can of course recommend him some books, genre or author, but it should be his decision wether to read them or not. You could recommend him some divulgation books like "A brief history of Time" by Stephen Hawking, "Parallel Universes" by Michio Kaku, or "The Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan, they're all quite enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER3> If he likes the Terry Pratchett books then the 3 "Science of Discworld" books are surprisingly good (in both science and story) when I was half expecting something along the lines of a cut-away diagrams of space ships that you might find in a Science of Star Wars book from Dorling Kindersley.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> i am 16 years old so i think that the main thing is not to shove anything down his throat. if you do that, he will intrinsically hate that thing, most of the time. and just have him read, think, be intellectual. and the rest has to come from him

</comment><comment><USER5> _Economics in One Lesson_ by the same Hazlitt is also a good one. Of course it all depends on his interests.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had him read the lesson, and the chapter on the broken window fallacy. He likes business books</comment></comment>


First look: Snapdragon 835 VR Developer Kit headset - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/first-look-qualcomm-snapdragon-835-vr-developer-kit-headset <comment><USER2> I think it's amazing that they are pushing this tech out without waiting for it to be in a shipped device.

I think that the non-gloved hand tracking is amazing(as an entry level device) although for me I'd defiantly want haptic feedback gloves.(Ed:at home)

While I don't own a hmd,I do have friends that do and have tried a few times.

I cannot explain how excited I am for things like this(specifically the wireless hand tracking), as while gaming is great(I am a huge gamer), I can see how I could use this for training and apprentices.

Example: I have been a chef for a long time, if I want to portion a filet of beef, i could almost do it with my eyes closed.

But, if I want to show someone, it takes quite a few sides for them to begin to understand why I'm doing what. There are many cuts I make because I know what is underneath, and I can get a feel for the filet due to experience.

If I were to try and show that to them, I would have to stop before every cut and rotate the meat and try to show why, and sometimes it's impossible until after the cut. This is what I currently do.

If they had the option to review what I had done with full freedom of rotation?(yes I figure the camera requirement would be high, but I have taught so many people, just doing it once with 30+ cameras would be worth it), it would decrease my training time by a lot.

Also consider portioning. If I'm portioning waygu, 15 grams off is BAD(I aim for 5 grams at my level). I can do that, but I'd never let an apprentice touch it. Meat isn't the same thickness throughout the cut.

BUT if they could practice with hand tracking? They would learn without costing me a fortune. Just training hours(which for portioning it would be about 100 units of waygu, will be cheaper compared to a slip which could cost you 30-50 grams on a 150gram portion).

As a techie and a chef, I am super excited about these sorts of things.

Edit:fixed fomatting, spelling mistakes and better explanations.

<comment><USER3> In a similar vein, can someone build a machine that teaches people how to ski or snowboard? The balancing is the key, so the simulator can't just be goggles on your eyes, it needs to make you feel gravity, sliding, falling sideways, recovering... Any ideas?

<comment><USER4> As an avid snowboarder, I think we are a long way from building a machine to teach someone to do this. It's quite a bit more complicated than just balance - edge control IMHO was the hardest thing to learn.

I'm not suggesting it's impossible to create a machine to do so, but I would put it on the same difficulty level as building haptic gloves. (Creating haptic "boots" with separate platforms maybe?)

<comment><USER5> CASI instructor turned AR/VR developer here and I'll second this - balance is only a part of the equation. The model used to train instructors includes in brief;

\- Flexion / extension of the legs \- Forward / aft pressure \- Subtle steering movement with the knees \- Fine control over the angles formed by both knees and ankles

All of the above vary depending what point of a given turn you're currently in and need to be coordinated in a fairly intricate fashion to get perfect pencil lines and turn "properly". I'll leave properly in quotes there because YMMV and you don't need these techniques to snowboard; having spent 3 months full time learning and using them I can say they make a big difference to how far you can push yourself though.

A significant proportion of the sensation also comes from the inertia that you carry whilst on an edge, the resistance from which would be near impossible to convey without doing it for real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a demo of foveated rendering in case anyone isn't familiar with it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKR8tM28NnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKR8tM28NnQ)

It should really help to reduce the GPU requirements for super high-res VR screens.

<comment><USER7> I was struggling to understand the meaning of the world 'Foveated', thinking it was Field-of-View-something-something, but the Fovea is actually the back part of your eyeball:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've done the block demo (or a block demo) on an Oculus with LeapMotion and it is truly amazing. It made those generally well liked Vive controllers feel downright clunky. Of course there'll be situations where buttons and feedback are appropriate, but even in its early form, Leap Motion (after the Orion update) was quick, accurate, and enough to convince me that hand tracking is an essential part of VR. It's so immersive and really feels like it's your hands in there.

<comment><USER9> > Leap Motion (after the Orion update) was quick, accurate (...)

but not stable. 10% of the time one hand goes away, gets out of range.. It's really good, but not enough for mass -or even eventual- consumption, imho.

<comment><USER10> Orion must have had a bit of a placebo effect or something. When I first installed it, I had a sense "this is better!" But after trying to write applications with it and use it more frequently, I found I was hitting the same old problems, just as often as before.

Let's also not forget that Orion came out a little over a year ago now. Still in beta. Still pretty janky. I just don't have a lot of confidence that Leap will clean up their issues and make a better product.

There is another device, Occipital Structure Sensor ([https://structure.io/](https://structure.io/)), that I'm keen to try out. It's _essentially_ a micro Kinect you can strap your face. Supposedly enables room-scale, inside-out tracking and pass-through AR on smartphones. They support desktop devices, but frankly, if I'm on desktop, I want an OpenVR- based system. For mobile devices, the company officially only supports iOS, which is complete balls. However, I have heard tale that some people from parts unknown have gotten it to work on Android using the now-ancient OpenNI 2 ([https://github.com/occipital/OpenNI2](https://github.com/occipital/OpenNI2)).

There's an additional problem with all of these devices, though: they only face front and they aren't able to track the body's full range of motion. It's severely limiting for what you can do.

<comment><USER11> The structure sensor is okay but it still has far too much latency to be acceptable. So far the only convincing inside out tracking I've seen has been the Hololens and even that isn't quite perfect.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I frequently tell people that the Hololens is amazing from a technology standpoint, hot garbage from an actual usefulness one. For my purposes, the Vive is the only system that does a thing that is usefully different enoug from standard WIMP systems--and does it well enough--to bother putting up with its respective defects.

But if we consider what the "holy grail" of MR might be--an unobtrusive device that conforms to the user rather than force contrivances on them--that foretold device is more likely to be in the HoloLens' lineage than the Rift or Vive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love the idea of a prototype-ish headset with work in progress stuff the industry is working on. Inside out tracking, eye tracking, finger tracking, etc. They should make it super modular and very interoperable in the software so that third parties can integrate their own stuff, like haptics, individually tracked modules, extra cameras, depth cameras, FIR cameras.

Reminds me of the earlier Oculus headsets when it was more engineer friendly.

Because as an industry we are still in the exploration phase, let's keep experimenting with everything and see what works and what doesn't.

<comment><USER13> there was a video on here a few days ago of Gabe talking about Valves VR strategy.

he kept reiterating how important it was for them to keep their ecosystem open because it helps their chances to succeed either on the software or hardware side of things.

now there may have been some lip service, but he did seem to genuinely believe that all VR developers working independently has a greater chance chance to hurt actors in the industry more than help.

<comment><USER14> Valve is in a uniquely comfortable situation: they don't have to win VR, they only need to avoid losing. They can be open to cooperation because cooperating with them implies accepting that a huge chunk of monetization is already spoken for.

<comment><USER13> yes, Valve does have an advantage- which might suggest other companies could not copy their playbook.

but, i think the point we can generalize is that in an underdeveloped space that requires a lot of innovation, any company creating a walled garden is putting themselves at an explicit _disadvantage_ by not contributing to the landscape at large.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this. I think there is definitely room in the VR space (no pun intended), for variants of headsets and hardware. In the same way we have laptops for portable workers, and high end towers for dedicated gamers, right down to just smartphones and tablets for those people who don't actually need a 'computer - we will hopefully have different VR equipment for different use purposes. The more well-heeled among us might even invest in a few headsets, each for a different requirement.

As much as I was woefully underwhelmed by Ready Player One - the haptic VR suits are definitely something I'd like to see developed.

</comment><comment><USER15> Foveated rendering is going to be the most significant step towards making mobile VR viable, so this is very good news.

I'm curious as to how they will handle eye tracking. I hope it uses capacitive lenses that can track your pupil bulges instead of unweildly and power hungry internal cameras + CV processing.

This is what contrast-preserving foveated rendering looks like in VR: [https://youtu.be/lNX0wCdD2LA?t=63](https://youtu.be/lNX0wCdD2LA?t=63)

</comment><comment><USER16> Remember: if you're hopping for any kind of open environment then you should probably be running in the opposite direction of Qualcomm.

</comment><comment><USER17> For those wanting something like this you can expect Samsung to announce a wireless version of their GearVR headset soon.

<comment><USER18> Isn't the Gear VR already wireless?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How can I get my hands on one of these? Do they want $$ or is it invite only? Can I apply?

<comment><USER18> It was for sale [here], but it looks like it's sold out now.

([https://store.thundercomm.com/en/svrproducts](https://store.thundercomm.com/en/svrproducts))

EDIT: That's ^ the old version. New one with the 835 is coming out in Q2. Dev signup is here: [https://developer.qualcomm.com/](https://developer.qualcomm.com/)</comment></comment>


Cloudflare Brings Its 22.214.171.124 DNS Service to Android & iOS Mobile Devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cloudflare-brings-its-1111-dns-service-to-android-and-ios-mobile-devices/ <comment><USER2> I work at Cloudflare, but regardless think this is awesome for security. Being more resilient to coffee shop type attacks and other DNS issues is great. It's a really user friendly and simple step in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using the free and open source DNSCloak app [1] on iOS for encrypted DNS (DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS) to 220.127.116.11.

As with this app, it also sets up a VPN profile (and the icon always shows up on the status bar). It's also setup with the "Connect On Demand" option so that anytime the device connects to a network, no connections will go through until this gets activated (this is also called "Always On VPN" or "VPN Kill Switch", to prevent traffic leakage). I couldn't find such an option in the Cloudflare app.

[1]: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-dnscrypt-doh- client...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-dnscrypt-doh- client/id1330471557)

<comment><USER4> On my Android 8.1 device, the "always on" and "no connection without vpn" options are in the VPN section of the Android settings app.

<comment><USER3> It's the same case with iOS too, where this setting is in Settings->VPN->{VPN Profile}. But it looks like these two apps I've tried provide it within the app as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use DNS66 for ad blocking, and set the custom DNS server in it as well.

<comment><USER6> Does it support dnscrypt or DoH in the free version yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why android app requires access to microphone, photos and multimedia files?

<comment><USER8> They mentionned it in the article, this is required and only used by the third-party bug-reporting service (instabug)

<comment><USER9> Exactly. The Microphone access is only required when you want to report a bug or send feedback with a voice memo attached.

Instabug cofounder here.

<comment><USER10> So you're trying to train people to accept microphone access for apps that don't need it on the off-chance a user submits a bug report with a voice memo? I strongly recommend for the entire security ecosystem of mobile users that you don't do this, that's pretty awful. If you get your way for this "feature" then malicious apps will be able to use the exact same excuse.

<comment><USER3> I'm also concerned with such permissions and getting users accustomed to granting them for any and every app that asks for them (users don't need to be made more complacent than they are).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On iOS it requires installing a VPN profile. My understanding from their FAQ is that it is to allow DNS proxying in iOS but it's not clear to me if that's all it does. Up to this day, seeing the VPN logo in my status bar has always meant my traffic was forwarded to a VPN server which meant it couldn't be snooped on by my ISP. Is it also the case here?

<comment><USER12> VPN profiles in iOS can be used for network-level configuration: despite the label, that doesn't have to mean just a VPN tunnel.

In this case, the profile is ONLY configuring DNS: there is no VPN tunnel being created. The "VPN icon" in the status bar just indicates the profile is active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not really certain of how to react to this since [a] I can configure Wireguard on my phone to use any DNS server (usually my remote Pi-Hole+DoH but can be 126.96.36.199) and [b] wonder if non-tech folks will install this app and grasp the difference between _encrypted DNS queries vs. encrypted traffic + DNS queries_ \-- the latter being a better option requiring an actual VPN tunnel.

I understand that using a loopback VPN is the only way to do this kind of DNS enforcement on non-rooted phones, which happen to be the majority.

But I think Cloudflare would be better off promoting privacy by either offering a complete VPN service or partnering with the likes of Mullvad/Azire/ProtonVPN etc. to ensure DoH by default (which most end users of those services tweak anyway if they can).

<comment><USER14> I haven't used Wireguard, but on iOS does it properly persist DNS settings across wifi network changes? IIRC this was Cloudflare's technical rationale for wrapping their DNS nameservers inside a VPN profile, at least on iOS.

I'm currently running the 188.8.131.52 profile on top of my normal VPN service profile and it appears that both profiles are working correctly in iOS Settings FWIW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So I've set this up on my iPhone and many websites now give this error:

"Origin DNS error

What happened? You've requested a page on a website (archive.is) that is on the Cloudflare network. Cloudflare is currently unable to resolve your requested domain (archive.is)."

Are there some restrictions that prevent CF DNS from resolving CF hosted sites?

<comment><USER16> There are probably more issues. Plenty of websites might not work with Cloudflare's DNS, since there is some noticeable amount of abuse towards DNS coming from their network. I've seen crap like a flood of "msn.com" queries coming from different Cloudflare IPs. That would be a reason enough to firewall anything coming from them to port 53.

<comment><USER15> Is there an app like 1^4 where you can simply set the DNS server of your choice in IOS? It would be awesome to have I could point it to my PiHole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "[This app] will generate a VPN profile, which will automatically reroute the DNS traffic through the app so that it utilizes the 22.214.171.124 DNS servers."

Does this mean I won't be able to use a real VPN? If so this is rather bad for security.

Why the hell would I use this over just setting the DNS server?

<comment><USER3> I don't know which platform you're using. On iOS, the end user cannot setup a DNS server for mobile data connections. Doing it via such an app and a VPN profile is the only way out (AFAIK). Any DNS settings in Settings.app can be done (and will work) only for WiFi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been using 18.104.22.168 as dns last week through blokada (adblocker available of f-droid, highly recommended), and do feel al my requests are faster, which speed things up significantly (albeit subjectively)

</comment><comment><USER19> Will this be available only in the US? Doesn't show up in the AT store (Apple App Store) yet or is it still rolling out in the other stores?

Edit: Looks like it works if I use the direct link, it's just not findable via the search yet

<comment><USER20> Here is the link: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1-1-1-1-faster- internet/id14...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1-1-1-1-faster- internet/id1423538627?mt=8)

Can you not access it?

<comment><USER19> See my edit, with the direct link it works. Through the search on iOS it doesn't show up yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish there was a similar Dns service to block ads. Not via an app but via android pie Dns settings.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is the service encrypted though? (DNScurve or something)

</comment><comment><USER23> Does it use DoH?

<comment><USER24> Yes, it uses either DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This strikes me as the most pointless excuse for an app - if you are technically inclined enough to understand why using Cloudflare's DNS in place of your cellphone service provider's could be beneficial, you are probably also very much capable of typing "184.108.40.206" in the network preferences on your phone...

EDIT: I stand very much corrected, at least with regard to iOS and mobile carriers - I wrongly assumed DNS settings were exposed for the mobile connection the same way it is for WiFi, where it can be very easily manually overridden. As someone who doesn't use an Android phone I'm even more surprised from comments below that Android doesn't even allow this for WiFi via the stock settings app.

That this would also allow you to set cloudflare's DNS globally for all WiFi connections on iOS rather than the current Settings app's per-network basis is also an interesting advantage.

<comment><USER26> If you're on a network you control, sure you could setup your DHCP to broadcast the DNS addresses.

However, I don't see how you could set this for mobile networks or networks you have no control over, since both Android and iOS don't let you override the DNS address assigned.

Edit: I guess you can override your DNS on iOS when on wifi? I know I can't change it on my Android.

<comment><USER27> WiFi on android: if you set a static IP then you can also change DNS. Has to be done for every network you connect to though.

Mobile data (and wifi) on android: use VPN and choose your DNS (openvpn+pi- hole on a cheap VPS works great)</comment></comment></comment>


Netflix Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://netflix.github.com/ <comment><USER2> I love Netflix ... with the brief exception of splitting shipping and streaming accounts, they've shown a corporate culture of innovation and still kept things "fun". It's rare that a big company embraces openness this way.

Thank you Netflix

</comment><comment><USER3> Ugh. I hate these websites where you have to hover over things to get at any useful information.

<comment><USER4> You'd probably like this interface better: <https://github.com/netflix>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cute, but this interface is terrible.

<comment><USER4> For the ubernerd, we have this too: <https://github.com/netflix>

<comment><USER6> for what it's worth, 3 of the 9 top level comments are distaste for the layout. i realize you'll be hard pressed to create a landing page that satisfies everybody, but this is a pretty textbook poor experience. very concretely: the only content that's actually surfaced (repository name and movie poster) is useless.

i won't give any advice here. i'm sure netflix has a more informed design and experience team than HN. my only intent in responding was hoping to bring to light the severity of the issue: why make a custom landing page at all if you're going to redirect half the audience to something more functional?

edit: upon refresh, the page refuses to load and it can't get the data from the Github API. none of the repositories are listed under "our repositories", and the console error is _Uncaught TypeError: Object # <Object> has no method 'forEach' commits.js:50_. this looks to be because the Github API is not returning any repositories, and instead returns this error: _"message": "API Rate Limit Exceeded for [my client IP]"_

edit 2: also, depending on window browser size, there are other javascript errors. i can't tell if these actually manifest problematically since the first issue is already preventing any content from loading: _Error: Invalid negative value for <rect> attribute height="-33" netflix.github.com:274_

<comment><USER7> We were getting throttled by Github. We're now caching the content and this shouldn't happen anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was really hoping for something that would give you access to their streaming service so you could write your very own player, stupid me.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. Associating "Netflix" with "opensource" is kind of ironic considering they still haven't been able to deliver any workable streaming solution for the free OS.

<comment><USER10> What does _the free OS_ mean?

<comment><USER11> Netflix only functions on desktop operating systems with Silverlight, a Microsoft plugin for some browsers that only is supported on modern OS X versions and Windows. Additionally, there is a native Android and iOS version. People who want to watch it on Linux, are forced to something extremely impractical like emulate Android - it is a closed system.

<comment><USER4> This proposal is really important to cross platform vendor agnostic support:

[http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- medi...](http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- media/encrypted-media.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You can see a better list of the available repositories here: <https://github.com/Netflix/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Support chrome/firefox/whatever on Linux and I will be impressed. Open source is great, in this case though, being cross platform is better.

<comment><USER4> This proposal is really important to cross platform vendor agnostic support:

[http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- medi...](http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- media/encrypted-media.html)

<comment><USER5> Why not release a standalone Linux app, a la Android/iOS/Boxee/Roku/etc? Seems that would be possible.

Honestly I'd prefer it to using my browser anyway.

<comment><USER14> Yes! I would really like to subscribe to Netflix, but the lack of Linux support is stopping me. It would be nice to have a web client, but a native client would be a blessing for those of us that find web clients to decrease performance system wide.

<comment><USER13> It is strange to me that we should need a native client for performance reasons. There are numerous html5 games that have "native" feels. I understand the security concerns with exposing lower level access like OpenGl to the web and I understand why on browsers (both mobile and desktop) some hardware is not allowed to be accessed directly (and with good reason) but it is frustrating that performance is still the major driving force between native and web considering the obvious cross-platform-ness of web based approaches...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Most corporations would NEVER do this. Hats off to Netflix for taking a bold step forward.

BTW, Linux is an edge case (< 1%, let alone << of 1% of paying traffic for Netflix!), and companies have to prioritize their resources.

</comment><comment><USER16> I actually think the interface is a cool and creative use of their app's interface.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, almost all of them are written in Java (2 in Scala, 1 in Groovy, 1 in shell).

<comment><USER4> We're mostly a Java company, but certainly not only a Java company.

We have a core of folks who use Python (like me), we just haven't open sourced any of it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI - we've added a list view for those that prefer that.

</comment><comment><USER18> New Arrested Development coming soon too.

</comment><comment><USER19> I will forever have a bitter taste towards Netflix in regards to their deceptive/dishonest marketing tactics.

<comment><USER20> Explain please.

<comment><USER19> I didn't want Netflix service, though since I was gifted a month I thought I'd try it. Had to put my credit card details in for a free month I was gifted. First had to signup for the free trial month, putting in my credit card at that point. The gift month wasn't added. After 2 or 3 phone calls to Netflix support, and over an hour later the second month was added.

I had asked and was promised that I would be getting an email letting me know 1 week before that the renewal period was approaching. No email ever came of course.

Might seem small, but doing these kinds of tactics on a large scale, with tens of millions of users - they know the recurring rate will be higher, and many people will keep getting billed without remembering or realizing, even if it's for 3+ months. It's dishonest.

There are other minute details I've not written out because I don't care to put the energy into it.

<comment><USER20> That's not marketing. That's poor customer service.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


VentureBeat: The Y Combinator List - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2007/08/16/the-y-combinator-list/

<comment><USER2> All the "but there are a lot of competitors" caveats got tiresome.

Just go ahead and say "they haven't done enough to stand out" or "it doesn't have much you couldn't get any number of other places" or even "there's not enough new here." I assume that's what those comments really mean.

<comment><USER3> _"... The question is, will the innovation demonstrated be enough to attract users? ..."_

Thats where the markets come in. Markets efficiently decide the wheat from the chaff, good from the bad. The beaut thing about the yc approach is that minimal capital will be expended. Live or die, the development, marketing, launch and uptake is efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My winners are Anywhere.fm and Dropbox. The minute anywhere goes mobile they will truly change the way we listen to music or anything audio. If you think about it one day people will laugh about the Ipod. I never really grasp the concept of putting all your songs in a box. It is like carrying all your savings in a briefcase rather than a debit card. Anywhere will soon ( i hope) start streaming your tunes using edge, gprs or wifi enabled phones. wacth out Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't get anywhere.fm. Isn't this what mp3.com tried to do and got sued out of existense for? I.e., you verified what CD's you owned with them and then you could listen to the CD anywhere.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER6> The difference is that with anywhere.fm you upload your actual music files, instead of them playing back a single copy to everyone. So if anywhere.fm is illegal, the iPod would be too.

<comment><USER5> But they are storing a copy of your files. Wouldn't copyright law forbid any copying as such? Like I couldn't put a copy of a song I had on my friends computer even if I said "only play this when I'm here". Or is that example not analogous?

(I'm sure this is a dumb question, I don't know much about copyright law.)

<comment><USER5> Hmm, on second thought, they are only storing the file for you. So I guess if they were illegal, then online backup apps would also be illegal.

So I guess as long as they keep everyones' files seperate they would be ok.

So does that imply that if two people have the same file, they still have to store it two times? And still have to do the upload twice?

<comment><USER7> The difference with online backups is that it's dedicated to music. No one wants to share their online backup account, but they might share or even sell their Anywhere.fm account. The legit use for the service is probably legally safe, but things can get gray quickly.

They should definitely requite all new uploads and store entirely separate copies of everyone's music. Doing optimization based on a file's checksum, like you'd do for a straight backup service, would be harder to explain to a judge.

They should very quickly implement a mechanism for locking accounts that get too many logins from different IP ranges in a short period of time. It shouldn't be too difficult to make it annoying for naughty users without impacting legit users. Staying on top of abuse and not letting their site get overrun like Veoh is key.

<comment><USER8> The difference with a backup hard drive is that it's dedicated to music. No one wants to share their backup hard drive, but they might share or even sell their MP3 player. The legit use for the MP3 player is probably legally safe, but things can get gray quickly.

Since this particular MP3 player can only hold MP3s, not arbitrary files, they should be required to implement a self distruct feature, even though a device that could store MP3s _and_ files shouldn't need one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that this latest group includes a photo-editing service: won't it compete with a similar company (slipshot, IIRC) which was funded earlier?

<comment><USER10> snipshot

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yay dropbox. But when are you guys launching?</comment>


How to Disable Image Smoothing in Modern Web Browsers - <AUTHOR> http://nullsleep.tumblr.com/post/16417178705/how-to-disable-image-smoothing-in-modern-web-browsers <comment><USER2> This is essential for pixel art and any images that need pixel-perfect rendering, but photographic images still ought to be interpolated because they look like crap at the pixel level anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, my testing shows this does not appear to work with <canvas>. Sad news for retro game developers :-(</comment>