PG&E wildfire state bill blasted as bailout by some, deemed vital by others - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/17/pge-wildfire-state-bill-blasted-as-bailout-by-some-deemed-vital-by-others/ <comment><AUTHOR> Favorite quote:

      Complicating matters, PG&E employs (new bill author Assemblymember) Quirk's son.

Witness the magic that is CA Democrats' "gut and amend" process for yourselves (red type is the original bill contents):

[http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVersionsCompareC...](http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVersionsCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB33)

<comment><USER2> So this was a bill about plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and they just re- wrote the whole thing to be about wildfires? What's the point?

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming it's a bargaining chip that lawmakers can use. E.g., it you vote for this thing I care about, you can rewrite my bill (that probably wasn't going anywhere anyways) for your own ends. Maybe someone with more insight in to state politics could weigh in...

<comment><USER2> Right. But why not just make it a different bill?

<comment><USER4> If you're looking for fast legislation, you have to 'gut' an existing bill because the CA constitution requires a 30 day wait after you introduce a bill (with an exception for budget bills).

<comment><AUTHOR>
      CA constitution requires a 30 day wait

Where do you see that in the CA Constitution?

Either house can have _rules_ about that, but such rules are routinely waived by the Democrat leadership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My mother in law lost her home in the Butte Fire that was also a result of negligence on the part of PG&E. They don't deserve a bailout of any kind.

<comment><USER6> My cousins lost their home too.

Insurance doesn't replace 50 years of memories.

<comment><USER5> Sorry to hear it. We had our wedding there and we're glad it was well documented, but it was devastating all the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > However, AB 33 could potentially mean that PG&E customers are on the hook to > repay the secured bonds.

Aren't customers on the hook regardless? PG&E gets it's money from customers, which would imply that customers are paying would be the ones to pay down the debt. Maybe they mean customers are a captive audience, and rates could be raised to cover the costs of the debt without impacting PG&E's profits.

<comment><USER8> That's part of the pointlessness of allowing private monopolies. All profits go to stockholders normal losses from things like gross inefficiency are replaced with price hikes.

But a drastic expense can cause bankruptcy, taking ownership from the stockholders and cause a resale bellow book value to new risk takers that now factor in this kind of risk, pressure the new management to avoid it repeating, and are more or less happy with current rates given their lower investment.

Watch them cast that as an injustice that our corporate social net needs to prevent instead of the correct result.

Giving them a sweet bond deal essentially gives them the opportunity to turn it into longterm price hikes and reward current shareholders for owning a fire hazard (or really not claw back that reward by killing the stock price as it has already been paid out in years of higher dividends due to lower safety costs.)

<comment><USER9> This is good analysis. Not to say that the "correct result" is the best result - we'd find a way (laws) to force profits to prevent fairly likely disasterous events from happening in the first place. In a competitive marketplace with enforcement of the spirit of those laws that would mean companies try to innovate and drive down the costs of implementing those changes. It would also mean that competition woult keep a lid on profits from becoming too great, creating motivation for companies to simply pursue the most profitable thing. As a natural market (essentially infrastructure) monopoly, things are different.

If infrastructure/natural monopolies are run by the state, that is a decent solution so long as people are elected into power that understand they're making decisions to maximize the benefit of the citizens.

What is needed is tighter enforcement or a framework which incentivizes entities for innovating ways to improve services to their customers and minimize societial impact. While bankruptcy and the bond market is a decent check on that behavior, those who enacted those policies and made more profit with them enriched themselves and simply had the clock run out on their corner cutting not causing external damage (externalities on society). It doesn't prevent that behavior but it does prevent it from continuing.. for some time until the new board looks for ways to further their return on investment. Which eventually leads to the similar damaging behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PG&E is a breathtaking example of regulatory capture by business. This was most apparent after the San Bruno pipeline explosion, in which PG&Es undocumented and unmaintained gas pipelines killed eight people. The original penalty the California Public Utilities Commission approved was zero dollars. Then it came out that various CPUC members were very cozy with PG&E, working with them in secret to shop the case around to a friendly judge. There's various corruption investigations still ongoing. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion#S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion#State_of_California)

</comment><comment><USER11> What's our expectation on wildfires starting versus the damage they cause? We can obviously do better to control fires started by malfunctioning power equipment, but there's natural risks (lightning) as well as other human risks. Should we plan for wildfires and take the precautions to protect buildings or sue whoever happened to start the fire this time? I guess we can have this conversation after we get what we believe is the low hanging fruit of these power lines.

<comment><USER3> If I start a fire I am responsible for either stopping it or paying the damages. I live in an apartment. If I create a cooking fire that damages my neighbors' apartments, I will be liable for the damage (well my renters insurance will be). The standard should be no different if a massive corporation started a fire.

<comment><USER11> Well, if you don't have enough money, then what's the plan? Besides, who pays for lightening?

What I'm trying to get at is that this feels like a brittle strategy for something that is as easy to start as a fire. The Chicago fire is an example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ianal, but this honestly seems odd to me.

I'm assuming in this case all the issues are with transmission, which is afaik mostly regulated by FERC and CAISO in this case, but California's weird for these sort of things so who knows. Mostly you go through FERC, sort out what transmission work you want to do, do the work and get rate recovery from your customers. That's sort of the system I've been familiar with.

But this sort of uncompensated liability just doesn't track very well. It sounds nice in a 'stick it to the man' sort of way, but doesn't fit with how transmission regulation works in the US.

If this were a government operated utility, there's no question ratepayers would be the ultimate people dealing with potential liabilities of affected parties. California's stance is that the liability is consistent between a government and non-government utility, so why isn't the recovery mechanism?

It sounds bad, but imo the proper answer is that PG&E should be able to seek recovery for equipment attributable losses not caused by negligence. Whatever form that takes, bonds, rate increases, that's sort of a secondary issue.

However, I would probably not trust whatever bill Quirk has put forth, Captain Conflict of Interest doesn't sound very trustworthy.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand the outrage.

PG&E is a public utility. That it is not officially an arm of the government is a mere technicality. It has two potential sources of income - ratepayers, and taxpayers. Where do you think the money is going to come from?

<comment><USER14> > PG&E is a public utility.

No, it's a publicly regulated private utility.

> That it is not officially an arm of the government is a mere technicality.

No, it's not.

> It has two potential sources of income - ratepayers, and taxpayers. Where do > you think the money is going to come from?

It should come from ratepayers, because significant portions of the state are served by different (sometimes actually public, e.g., SMUD) utilities instead of PG&E.

And I say that as a PG&E ratepayer.

<comment><USER15> I'm a PG&E ratepayer as well. I disagree that we should pay for it. PG&E is a publicly-traded utility. The shareholders should pay for it through reduced dividends. They're ultimately responsible for PG&E's management, who is responsible for the failed process that led to their culpability in the wildfires.

If PG&E doesn't have enough cash on hand, they should be forced to borrow it. If that wipes out dividends for investors for years to come, so be it.

<comment><USER16> The Forum program on NPR this week at one point covered this. The ceo of the company said on the last earnings call that this would not bankrupt them. I dont recall if they had cash, or just had secured financing for the repayment amount, but they can cover at least this fire okay.

<comment><USER15> Then what's going on here? Why is AB33 a thing? Just greed?

<comment><USER17> It's a systemic imperative of capitalism to externalize the costs of extracting profits from society onto society itself. Governments are incentivized to facilitate this because they have long been captured by and dependent on capital for continued support and existence. If there is a path for increasing profits by offloading costs onto the public, it will be pursued to the maximum extent.

But yeah, most of us who wind up shouldering the public burden of externalized costs to maximize private profit would call it greed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thoughts on our new startup? - <AUTHOR> https://cloud306.com/blog/ Thanks! <comment><USER2> I like the idea, you should have a reseller accounts. a reseller could sell a single instance and the customer has their own dashboard.</comment>


Ask HN: What books or blogs do you suggest to manage a team of techies - <AUTHOR>

I recently took a position of team lead, managing a team of 8 tech people. I managed projects not people before. Could you suggest any books or blogs on how to manage tech teams. <comment><USER2> Rands. At the very least, his blog: <http://randsinrepose.com>. But, his book - Managing Humans - is great as well: <http://www.managinghumans.com>.

<comment><USER3> I read Managing Humans twice, both before starting to manage a team, and after having managed a team for a year. The book was great both times, but the second time, when I had more experience, it was insanely better. Suddenly, _everything_ talked about in the book made sense - I had real-life people and situations straight out of the book, and I could understand exactly what Rands was saying.

My advice - read the book. It's amazingly accurate. Then read it again once you have experience; you'll be able to appreciate it a whole lot more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should read _Drive,_ by Dan Pink.

It's not a management book, per se, but it's great for gaining undersanding into _why_ people work and what truly motivates them.

EDIT: His talk at the TED conference:

<http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> The Mythical Man Month — it's a fairly popular read, and it's topic lies somewhere between managing projects and managing people and focuses on the "human element" of software engineering: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month>

</comment><comment><USER6> Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

<comment><USER7> I've heard that in the late 80s Microsoft had a policy of handing out copies of _Peopleware_ to every new manager. And then asking them enough questions about it to ensure they actually read it.

Microsoft no longer does this. It shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gerald Weinberg's _The Psychology of Computer Programming_ is a classic, well worth reading. Also second the recommendations for _The Mythical Man Month_ and _Peopleware_

<comment><USER9> His _Becoming a Technical Leader_ (<http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/btl.html>) is directly addressed at this issue.

I _think_ its good, but it's been so long since I was at this stage and read it (late '80s) I'm not 100% sure.

That said, I've not regretted one bit reading every apropos book Weinberg had written through the '90s (which is about when I stopped reading these sorts of books).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For me Paul Graham's essay are real worth inspiration and teachings. I just follow his essay more than any other readings. I prefer to explore you his essays, can give you a nice insight. [http://www.purchase.com/blog/fundraising/3-tips-for- startup-...](http://www.purchase.com/blog/fundraising/3-tips-for-startup- founders) this is here his essays you can find. <http://paulgraham.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://joelonsoftware.com/>

Scroll down, check out the articles in the "Reading Lists" column.

</comment><comment><USER12> Christina Wodtke's Blueprints for the web <http://amzn.to/cTDimh> is about information architecture, but is full of tangential wisdom about managing web teams. I learnt more this book than from other books that are actually about managing teams.

</comment><comment><USER13> you manage products, you lead people.

<comment><USER14> You lead -good- people. You manage the rest.

<comment><USER15> If your people aren't good, you're not managing them well. Blame yourself, not the people you're responsible for.</comment></comment></comment>


Chronic Stress Helps Cancer Spread in Mice - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160301/ncomms10634/full/ncomms10634.html <comment><USER2> This just verifies a long standing popular idea that bad life and continuous emotional distress causes cancer.

We could see more evidence about this.

Divorce/family infighting chronic sadness (not depression) / work excessive anxiety and work unstable conditions should be seen as cancer causing factors.

These factors also maintain cancerous smoking or drinking addictions and limit daily exercise.</comment>


The Brilliant Plodder - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/04/23/charles-darwin-brilliant-plodder/ <comment><USER2> This is talking about the "plodding" nature of the science done by Charles Darwin and his meticulous care to have experimental support for his theories. (not just the one in Origin of Species)</comment>


Cleaning Station - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaning_station <comment><USER2> The section about false cleaner fish is even more intriguing.</comment>


Employee ID badge monitors you at work – except in bathroom - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/09/07/this-employee-badge-knows-not-only-where-you-are-but-whether-you-are-talking-to-your-co-workers/ <comment><USER2> >"Within three or four years, every single ID badge is going to have these sensors," predicted Ben Waber, chief executive of Humanyze, a Boston-based employee analytics company.

>Those concerned about their privacy might be alarmed by the arrival of such badges. But Humanyze says it doesn't record the content of what people say, just how they say it. And the boss doesn't get to look at individuals' personal data. It is also up to the employee to decide whether they want to participate.

Employees can choose whether they would like to participate, but it will be in every ID badge in 3-4 years?

I'm not really well informed about the science of speech analysis, but I'm going to assume raw audio is recorded at some stage, and since the device is the size of a credit card, I'll also assume it's not being processed on the device.

I don't see how this could possibly be as anonymized as they claim. You're also painting a target for rival enterprises or states who would like to carry out espionage against you, which seems like a legitimate concern in the financial industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> You're on company time, why not just have a huge physical neck collar, with a chain, to ensure your paid time is spent productively at your desk. 9-5 you're a company resource after all

<comment><USER4> I always thought the necktie bore a striking resemblance to a noose.

<comment><USER5> I've thought this for a long time as well. Always seemed silly to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The beacons tracking your movements are omitted from bathroom locations, to > give you some privacy.

Oh why even bother. Just do it in the bathroom as well. I like how it tracks everything and then throws that little -- but look, we are concerned for your privacy, we are not creepy at all.

> If you don't give people choice, if you don't aggregate instead of showing > individual data,

Yes, let's aggregate data in some obscure way, while hand waving about "anonymizing" stuff. People will totally buy that, and trust us.

> Their bodies swiftly respond to stressful situations and relax when calm > returns, leaving them primed for the next challenge,"

Lovely.

-"Steve, I think that patch froze the kernel".

-"Sorry, I am doing my daily hyperventilating and then calming down thing, to get my stats up for upcoming reviews. Ask the intern to restart everything. I'll be there in 30 min".

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand how anyone can say something like "It is also up to the employee to decide whether they want to participate." with a straight face. All historical evidence points to the fact that people will be "encouraged" to the point where this becomes mandatory.

<comment><USER8> I totally understand how they can say it. They are being machiavellian and know that saying that is a form of propaganda that allows them to slide in something unsavory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Engineers who help create stuff like this are assholes. How could you see this being used for good in any way?

<comment><USER10> _Engineers who help create stuff like this are assholes._

Asshole is s pretty strong word. There's a somewhat different explanation; it posits that engineers are ignorant rather than evil. Cory Doctorow said it better than I ever could:

       Engineers are all basically high-functioning
       autistics who have no idea how normal people
       do stuff.

I got a lot of flack last time I posted that quip; I'll grant that it isn't strictly accurate in a medical sense. But it gets the point across. Engineers simply don't think the same way that muggles think, and in addition they're unable or unwilling to view the world from that different perspective.

<comment><USER11> No, they are definitely assholes. Additionally, dismissing engineers as "high functioning autistics" or "ignorant" is cheap stereotyping.

Thinking in a less than common way isn't an excuse or reason for doing something evil. To suggest it shows a lack of understanding of engineers, people with autism, and how things are designed and used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd turn my notice in immediately. We are people not machines. This would not encourage good culture. In fact, it would sink moral.

</comment><comment><USER13> In ways, this is interesting. This is analyzing one's performance skill based on their behavior and physical clues. There should most definitely be a correlation, and I personally believe that one's mental state is most crucial indication for productivity at a deskjob. At the moment, it's demoralizing since there are very few known solutions to improve those that are naturally not talented in that department (including me). But, as more research in those areas happen, this might become a standard. It's kind of like if you are an athlete, you show your condition via your scores/times. To improve, you practice and workout. As a deskjob, you show your condition via new mental checking technology, and to improve you do things that come out of these research

<comment><USER14> You have the athlete judged by results, and the knowledge worker by some kind of proprietary algorithm that attempts to derive mental state from somatic clues. These are in no way parallel cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember the PARC smart badge system, had a similar sort of push back. Sure there were "good" things like quick attendance count at meetings and an easy to use "where is Bob?" sort of service, but on balance it was a net negative on the employee.

<comment><USER16> I've never been at a single company that took attendance at meetings. If you have to take attendance at a meeting, it is probably a worthless meeting.

<comment><USER15> Generally in the notes of a meeting there is a list of attendees, that helps someone reading the notes to understand who was present and should presumably already be aware of the subject matter, and who wasn't and may need background on the meeting if the subject came up.

<comment><USER16> I'm guessing you are talking about small meetings and not 20+ person meetings where it would be hard to tell who needed catching up from a long list of attendees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> NOPE.

Quitting the second someone asks me to wear one. End of story.

<comment><USER18> The second anyone in the office is asked to wear one, voluntarily or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> They're pushing that it's mainly for the benefit of the employee, not the employer. Or at least they're trying to make it seem that way.

If so, why not just make it a consumer-targeted product? Something only the badge holder can view data for?

<comment><USER18> > In an interview with The Washington Post, Waber said one financial services > client plans to use the badges to increase productivity.

Not even out the gate and it's already about monitoring.

<comment><USER14> Take a look at their website. It's all about monitoring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Companies that do this should stop saying 'employees' and use 'meat robots'.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is certainly one way to run a business. But I'd rather work for a company that trusts me enough that they don't need to micromanage me.

</comment><comment><USER22> Er, this is basically just a puff piece for a startup. Why are people reading it like it indicates the world is moving in a particular direction? There's no more reason this idea is going to succeed than any other. In fact it seems kind of doomed to fail.

<comment><USER14> Because it's fucking creepy, that's why. Excuse my language, but I find no less profane adjective to suffice.

And 'puff piece' doesn't seem to me to suffice, either. This isn't TechCrunch or PR Newswire; this is the Washington Post. And the article's pretty laudatory, too, with privacy concerns dismissed out of hand - politely, to be sure, but dismissed out of hand nonetheless. Granted, it's still something of a stretch to say 'this is the way the world is going'. But it's a lot less so than it might be, and that's creepy in itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Despite the claim that data will be aggregated and opt-in collection, it doesn't change the fact that the next company to produce something similar will offer any of those features. So the privacy concerns are very valid. Not least of all because most people take their employee badge home! I don't even see how it will be legitimately helpful to a manager to see how people speak in aggregate. And no doubt people will game the system, etc, etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> It sounds like I will have to charge my ID. Nope.

<comment><USER25> Haha! Hadn't thought of that. It's officially dead guys.

<comment><USER26> Once every bunch of years if they use latest low power electronics and a good battery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wet dream for insecure control-freak managers

</comment><comment><USER26> Your efficiency has dropped 10%, so we're cutting your wage.

As measured by time spent at the desk?

</comment><comment><USER28> Had these inventors concentrated on providing value to the employee, they would not get so much privacy concerns.

Instead they focused on the corporate overlord to make it mainstream.

Are they aiming for as many enemies as possible?</comment>


Remember Cuil? Now It's a Real-Time Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/08/21/cuil-real-time/ <comment><USER2> Cuil raised 33 million in VC money, I doubt they're going to give up easily. Roughly a year ago they had spent about 25% of that, I figure they have at least another 8 to 12 months worth of operating capital if their burn rate did not change dramatically.

If this does not get them out of the doldrums it will probably fizzle out.</comment>


Democrats Endorse Nuclear Energy in Platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48-years-democrats-endorse-nuclear-energy-in-platform/#821955c58293 <comment><USER2> Of course they do; it makes money for their corporate donors.

<comment><USER3> I just want to see good old Hanoi Jane's reaction given her movement pretty much ended nuclear in the US.

Her stance is one that sticks in my mind as to why Celebrities should not set out to be influencers. Most know too little but have too much sway.

<comment><USER4> > Her stance is one that sticks in my mind as to why Celebrities should not > set out to be influencers.

I fear that the climate of social justice that forefronts slogans, conformist language, shibboleth, woke terms, etc. effectively creates a script for signalling virtue.

The danger, of course, being that psychopaths and actors have an easy script to follow to bask in the praise they get from virtue signalling.

It's a one-way ticket to domination that shuts out opposition.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure that most people are actually interested in seeing real social justice. The trouble is politics is so impalatable that (as in a lot of music) you need a song-and-dance show to get people's interest.

I'm sure that many of us would like to see more justice and less politics. But, real world ... As for opposition to justice: that's not what the constitution recommends.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What if MH370 was hacked - <AUTHOR>

How probable do u think that the plane was, hacked like malicious code that took over. Just wanting to know ur views about it <comment><USER2> Then the pilots would have take over manual controls. Current autopilots are quite dumb and just follow sequential programs point to point. No way to hack a plane for hours, even if the pilots displays fake information, you´ll have control asking you where are you going.

It´s not possible yet, at least not how you would hack a personal computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the planes have some thing called as fly by wire, which runs a embedded linux os, which basically takes force control from the pilot if it detects anything unusual. This thing could be hacked if one has the right knowledge to do it.

<comment><USER2> Fly by wire is controlled by a computer, but the autopilot is controlled by another one and the FMC is another different one. All of the can only be loaded with new software locally via cable, and they are very limited computers, most of them are microcontrollers running custom software and when an OS is required they use a custom one that´s real time. ([http://archive.adaic.com/projects/atwork/boeing.html](http://archive.adaic.com/projects/atwork/boeing.html)).

It´s possible to create a custom software and charge it to the airplane? very difficult but possible. It´s possible to take over the control and fly it where you want to, without the pilots having a chance? no.

Maybe in the next generation airplanes once more complex computers are used.

The most probable outcome is that the computer you have hacked will stop communicating with other systems or it´s own sensors and will crash (the computer not the airplane).</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft is building its own SIM card for Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/7/10734648/microsoft-sim-card-cellular-data <comment><USER2> I wish if most surface devices came with the option for 4G/LTE. Heck even a GPS sensor would come in handy when mapping. Not sure why but MS chooses to ignore having these basic features even on their expensive line of Surface products.

That said, does anyone know any universal 3G/4G/LTE dongle? Almost everything I found is made exclusive to a specific carrier. How come cheap tablets come with a universal data capability and yet no usb dongles?

<comment><USER3> Honest question, why do you need another separate dongle just for 3G/4G/LTE when you can simply use your phone's hotspot option and use the network there?

<comment><USER2> Because it drains your phone's battery rather quickly and when travelling finding a charging port can be difficult. Also for networks like T-mobile, you have a separate data cap (much lower ~ 500mb) when using the hotspot option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How can the manufacturers cooperate with the carriers all over the world? Conflict of interest is huge. In a lot of countries, governments own the carriers or the market is oligopoly. Can they make carriers agree with it?

<comment><USER5> roaming agreements? set up a virtual carrier somewhere, and then basically pay other carriers for traffic your customers produce on their networks? Stuff like that has been commonplance in the GSM world since, well, forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do you need any special cards for such things? Even laptops today can come with LTE modems / SIM readers, and all you need a SIM card from your mobile provider to use it.

<comment><USER7> It's not a special card in that way -- your regular mobile provider SIM still works just as always.

The Microsoft "special" sim card is presumably a standard multi-MVNO sim card with (presumably) some nice app for buying service. Similar to Apple SIM or Google Fi.

It's nice to have for people who and aren't carrying around SIM cards to swap around. (Maybe they don't know what a SIM card is, or maybe they haven't had time to burn 2 hours in a mobile provider shop to get one). They can buy a device, turn it on, and the app walks them through buying data automatically so everything "just works".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this exactly what Apple tried to do with iPads but AT&T put a kibosh on it?

<comment><USER9> This is the program you are referring to: [https://www.apple.com/ipad/apple- sim/](https://www.apple.com/ipad/apple-sim/)

AT&T will lock your physical SIM if you ever use their service, but with anyone else you can jump from provider to provider on the same device at will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Url changed from [http://gizmodo.com/microsofts-making-its-own-sim-card-to- pro...](http://gizmodo.com/microsofts-making-its-own-sim-card-to-provide- contract-1751764725), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER11> would this be a nice way to lock someone into a carrier, nah MS would never ever think of ever doing such a thing?

<comment><USER12> I don't think we need Microsoft to lock us into a carrier, we're happy to do it in exchange for this year's iteration of the iPhone, Galaxy or whatever.</comment></comment>


How do you handle/deal with stress? - <AUTHOR> I am currently in graduate school working on my Masters in Computer Science. There are times when i get really stressed/overwhelmed with academic work.<p>I wanted to gauge, what techniques/methods do people in this community use to manage stress? <comment><USER2> You are just at the beginning of your career - there will be more situations that will make you thinking "there was nothing to be stressed about at uni".

There are a few easy techniques that can help. One of them is always to think long perspective (ideally your whole life) - usually problems fade when you put them in longer perspective, you then realise you will definitely work it out since there is such long life before you. In my case this always motivates me to go extra mile, put extra hour to get the work done.

Thinking long perspective also helps you to organise your life and set your goals. People who set their goals are often successful at realising them, it's astonishing how few actually write their goals down :-) Long perspective gives you feeling of security, that you do have a course set and you know where you are going. There are many ways of achieving goals.

Another one is to imagine you failing and realising consequences. More often than less consequences are always manageable so there is nothing to be stressed about - either way you will find your way through :-)

Good luck with your uni!

</comment><comment><USER3> For people in our field, stress is absolutely the worst enemy. Personally, between work and my own business, 2-3 big projects and countless small projects there are little to no time to relax.

I work out regularly and this really helps for me. Blasting music while lifting heavy works wonders. We usually have a pen and paper roleplaying evening every Sunday, that helps too.

As long as I get one day to rest every week, I'm happy. It does help a lot.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't manage it. Stress and pressure are my worst enemies.

I usually take walks, listen to good music.

<comment><USER5> I want to say the same thing. There have been long discussions with my therapist on this topic, and it is still one of the things I struggle with the most. Leaving aside where the stress comes from, I also take what you might call an external approach.

I try to move.

The shortest path to changing my emotional state, I find, is to change my environment. I remember university being very high-key almost all the time, and seeking out low-key environments was difficult. I hit the trails. I try to limit my exposure to other people, and focus on keeping my own footprint small. It is easier for me to meditate, or just to process my thoughts, when my body is engaged in motion through my surroundings and I am using most of my senses.

If nature is unavailable or unappealing, then use something to change your information diet instead. Music is a good suggestion. I like instrumentals when I can't get outside. Even if I'm only changing my environment virtually, through a video game, play helps.

Whatever I do, it's about trying to change my mental context so that I'm not ruminating on the thing causing the stress. This doesn't mean running away from stressors... only that one needs to choose different stimuli, or lack thereof, from time to time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I go jogging outside by the creek. That works, really, really well for me when I'm stressed.

</comment><comment><USER7> Things like regular exercise, meditation, a relaxing hobby that help with stress management will help a lot however the best way is to find someone to talk with that understands what you're doing and can help offer an alternate perspective.

</comment><comment><USER8> Try a kick-boxing class. Noting like getting some good cardio and gaining strength while taking out your frustration on a punching pad/bag :)

<comment><USER9> In a similar vein, if striking isn't your thing, or you want to complement your standing game with some ground fighting I highly recommend Brazilian Jujitsu.

I'm nearly two years in, and it's been great for relieving stress. I still suck, but I've learned so much, and it's helped me to appreciate what it's like to be at the beginning of something and to be seemingly terrible at it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why not to work at Google? - <AUTHOR> I think it's mostly self explanatory. For a software Engineer role.
It would be hard to resist because of their selectivity (Under 1% resume/hire rate), gaining read access to their code base, resume boost and talented colleagues. Any one of these things on their own, with the exception of the first one, are huge.
There are so many blog posts on applying to Google, almost none on why not to. <comment><USER2> Basically, they just suck less than most other big tech companies. That's all. And that's a pretty low bar in my opinion.

1) They have tens of thousands of programmers. They're not all The Best of The Best at this point. Sure, the average is high, but there's plenty of dopes and assholes too.

2) It's a big company and their productivity is pretty low. They have more programmers and money than almost all startups combined, yet their output of amazing products is quite small.

3) There's bureaucratic bullshit. Sure, less than the average, but far more than a small company. You have to work roughly business hours, sit in a cube, report regularly to a boss, have meetings, etc.

4) Their technology stack may be cool, but you really have no choice. You have to use the tools they chose 10 years ago if you want to release anything. Java, C++, and Perforce? No thanks.

5) Their projects are failures unless they're huge. There's not much room for controversial projects or anything that starts off small. YouTube or Twitter couldn't have happened inside Google.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you worked at a big company before? Do you prefer that over working with a start up? I think that might be one of the biggest things to think about.</comment>


Ask YC: Internet Startup or Big Powerhouse for a summer internship? - <AUTHOR> Hello YC! I'm a current UC Berkeley computer science student in my junior year (and loving it), and I've been mulling around this question in my mind for the last couple of weeks: Should I spend my summer at a small (30 people) startup or at a reasonably big (1000 people) CS/Art company? I have an offer from each of these categories, the pay is the same, and i'm pretty sure both would be a great working environment. What I'm left to decide is which one to take, especially considering the experience and education I would get in each sphere.<p>I really can't decide, so I'm hoping for some opinions from the hackers here at YC news. Which would you choose? <comment><USER2> If you have never worked for a major corporation, I would suggest taking the job at the major corporation. You will have gained real-world experience and the drive to never work for a major corporation ever again.

I recommend working for a major corporation at the early part of your career because you will learn that inside a major corporation you are nothing but a cog in the machine. If you are happy doing that type of work then life for you is set. If you are not happy doing that type of work, then you now have the adult-equivalent of "don't touch that!" branded into your soul.

In essence, the only way to know what type of person you are, start-up or big corporation, is to test the waters at a big corporation. The other way around doesn't work in my opinion because you need a stable environment in which to formulate a decision, and a startup would simply have to many unknowns to formulate the decision properly.

<comment><USER3> _You will have gained real-world experience and the drive to never work for a major corporation ever again._

True, but it seems rather extreme to spend a whole summer to learn that, especially at this stage in his life.

I suggest working for the smaller company, because you'll probably have more scope for trying new things, and thus learn more.

<comment><USER4> I guess I kind of feel like this is asking, "Should I play rugby or do synchronized swimming this summer?" I mean, sure, they're both sports, but they're completely different games.

I feel like the things I learned in a big and small companies are largely orthogonal and it's hard to say which is more valuable without knowing what the original poster is hoping to use that experience for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you go with a Big Powerhouse in a vertical silo, you may learn enough about the business to create a startup. My first startup was based on my 12-month experience at an established software company, where I learned the market and built a better mousetrap that competed with their software.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have never interned in a startup environment, but I can provide some insight into what it's like to work for a corporation. I participated in my school's coop program, which allow me to work at IBM for ~9 months in programming/design. Working in a corporation is everything you expect: very slow, process-oriented, very little responsibility. Doesn't matter how hard you drive your manager for work, it's unlikely you will get anything substantial unless you take the initiative yourself. I can't say I learned a lot in terms of hard technical skills (you will learn much more in school), but I have learned some very valuable soft skills -- how to coordinate work with others (it's surprisingly difficult when you are only coding a small piece of work that belongs to something much larger), how to present in front of senior managers, etc. One of the most valuable lesson I learned is to comment your code, I remember back in school, my professors tried to drive that concept into our heads, but I always thought, why do I need to comment when I know the code by heart? Nothing makes you realize the importance of comment until when you try to debug someone else's code, and the genius name variables after his children (serious, no joke).

There are valuable lessons to be learned in a huge corporation. They are procedures, how to coordinate work, how bureaucracy works, and the most important lesson I learned is -- I dislike it and I will never want to program in a big corporation environment.

From what I have heard and read, you will learn much more in a start up environment. You may not just do programming or design, but you have the opportunity to get involved with marketing, advertising, etc. But at the same time, you won't see the picture of what makes corporations successful at what they do. If I have to do it all over again, I would probably intern at a start up because there are more learning opportunities. Corporations are very silo- ed, every department operates on its own and it's very hard for interns to touch any other pieces of work. (e.g. if you are a programming intern, chances are you won't have a chance to do marketing as well).

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER7> I think in the right sort of corporate environment, a bit of initiative can give you a lot of opportunities the less-motivated might not have (or want). You also can learn how to work in a team, and probably have better hours than your startup counterparts, giving you more time to work on outside projects-- such as your own startup--or in general to just have a life, meet people and pursue hobbies.

I like having some distance between me and management when I'm working as an employee, because then it doesn't grate on my nerves that I'm not working on my own startup while watching someone else run theirs, with the knowledge that they're using me to make their own dreams come true. I'd rather not see that, and in a large organization you don't have to because they're somewhere else, in a different building perhaps, or political appointees, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a junior at the University of Washington, and I was faced with similar decisions last summer and this summer. Last summer, I went with the Big Powerhouse, and I was pretty disappointed. It wasn't challenging, I wasn't working on interesting stuff, and I wasn't really learning anything. This summer, I'm going with the Internet Startup, and all indications seem to be that it will be a much better time.

Then again, my Big Powerhouse was Microsoft, so that may have had something to do with it. Even so, you can look at it in terms of the affect you'll have on the company as a whole. If you're in the Big Powerhouse, you're doing 1/1000th of the work. If you're in the Internet Startup, you're doing 1/30th. This means you'll be working on more important (and thus probably more interesting) stuff.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you want to learn lessons, work at the big company.

If you want to learn skills, work at the small company.

<comment><USER10> Part of the reason this is true is because a big company can afford to make bigger mistakes without going under, so they are a really great place to observe systemic errors that you can identify and learn to avoid.

Some examples - indecisive culture, personal perception coloring risk assessment, acceptance of poor performance. These are fundamental problems that you get when you gather humans into groups and knowing how to beat them is critical. In a big company you can see them all while a small company hides them better out of necessity.

One other thing to consider is that because big companies are able to take bigger risks they are a good place to get a jump in responsibility early. We have interns handling projects that would break a startup if they went off track.

<comment><USER11> Au contraire! You should be able to get more responsibility at a startup.

Startups don't have room to pay you to work on something that's not mission- critical. Big companies do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Last summer I did an internship at, ummm, Steve Jobs's current venture. It wasn't a good fit for me, but that had nothing to do with the size of the company. The position simply wasn't a good match for my skills and experience. I was offered a full-time job as a result of the internship, but since it wasn't a good match, I turned it down.

That said, my feelings about the internship had little to do with the size of the company. The perks of a big-company internship were great, and you can meet a lot of other interesting hackers through a larger internship program. Also, all my previous jobs were at much smaller companies, so it was great to experience life at a large tech company first-hand. Life at the large company wasn't really any different than life at smaller companies.

I would suggest picking the job that interests you the most, based on the team or the project you'd be working on, and the quality of the individuals you'd be working with. The most important aspect of an internship should be the work you do. That will be the most important factor in how much you like it, and that's what you can show off in future job interviews. Plus, internships often lead to full-time jobs, and you won't want to make that decision solely based on the reputation or size of the company.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is the big company a "brand name", i.e. something that the general computing public has heard of? If so, I'd definitely go big-company: it's an additional credential on your resume that can open doors for future internships or employment.

Otherwise, it depends a lot on the companies involved and your specific situation. I agree with other posters that you should, at some point, _try_ a big company and see if it's right for you before jumping into startups. OTOH, you'll learn many more skills at a startup, and will probably have a more exciting time. If you plan to do hobby or open-source programming, a startup is also more likely to improve your chops.

Something else to consider: at a startup, you'll often have access to the full existing source code repository, and the tree will be small enough that you can understand most of it. At a big company, you'll probably be silo'd into a single project with its own repository, or worse, use no source control at all. Some of my best programming lessons have come from reading other people's source code; I got lots of that when I worked for startups, and very little interning for large companies.

</comment><comment><USER14> Personally, I would go with the startup. If I can, I never want to work at a stereotypical, large corporation. On the other hand, if I did go to the large company in your situation, it might give me that much more drive to getting my first product launched as I would have experienced cubicle-land, office politics, and all of the other things that people complain so much about.

</comment><comment><USER15> Based on the multiple articles I have read (PG, Marc Andreessen), these are the factors I use in making a decision:

1\. Personal value of a particular experience

2\. Market for the product being built

3\. The people at the company, ideally there are lots of smart people you can learn from

4\. The product being built

5\. Compensation (Salary + stock + benefits)

Personally, I would pick the startup. If all goes well, I would work a few hours through the fall and spring as well.

good luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone that replied. My friend made a great comment today when he pointed out that, for the most part, people go to work at startups so that they can get in on the ground floor - pull those extra hours and accept less pay because hopefully you will be able to build the company out into a moneymaking venture. As an intern, those reasons are absent, since you're leaving shortly after you start with no stock or any other "i was there first"goodies anyways.

On the other hand, the web startup is probably more along the lines of what I would like to be doing long term, and one of the founders is already assuming a mentorship position - he called me a couple of times, and rather than trying to push his side, he's giving me some guidance and opinions on how to approach this kind of decision. This is, naturally, great for a student like me.

Still undecided, but i'll probably make up my mind throughout the night. Thank you for the candid discussion everyone!

</comment><comment><USER16> If you want to learn about technology then work at the smaller company. If you want to learn about business processes then work at the larger company. However, you'd learn more from the smaller company if it only had 7-10 people. Furthermore, you can learn about technology in your own time. Therefore, I'd recommend working in the larger company.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am in a similar situation, so I can't offer you any opinion from experience, but I'll share the reasoning I used in making my decision:

A large company can afford to hire you as an investment. Most lower-year students can't offer a whole lot to a company, but to BigCo it's like buying options in you as a future full-time employee. (Not that you are not obligated to keep going on full time, but many students will) I've heard many stories of people spending their summers at the big companies, getting paid well, but working on things that never saw the light of day.

A small company, on the other hand, can't afford to do that. Any work you do will have to be important to the company.

</comment><comment><USER18> _"... Should I spend my summer at a small (30 people) startup or at a reasonably big (1000 people) CS/Art company? ..."_

Internship hey.

It's not real work. If you go to SoftCo it might be a chance to improve an existing product niche like Flemlord suggests. But if you try a startup (30's a lot & I'd call this big) you might just see how hard you really have to work and learn something new as well.

If it was me I'd pick the one that gives you the _"best payoff"_ for working up-wind in the future.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> two responses, two opinions - probably very much in the gist of my question! good point on both of those though!

A little bit of background - I've already worked at Yahoo! for a year, so I have an idea of cubicle-land as kingnothing puts it. I do want to point out that the big company in question is not at all the typical big company. Without making it _too_ obvious, its one of Steve Jobs' previous ventures...

<comment><USER19> A few years ago, when I was a Cal undergrad, I turned down an internship at the larger company you're referring to. More specifically, I already accepted another offer by the time they called me back. I work a few blocks away from there now, and when I walk by the campus, I sometimes still wonder whether I'd be in an entirely different branch of the industry if timing on that phone call had worked out just a little bit differently.

As others have mentioned, the company's size is far less important than the quality of the people you will be working with directly. This site has a decidedly strong bias towards do-it-yourself, but to me, the point of an internship is to acquaint yourself with people who are a few years further down their career path than you. They've been in your shoes and can help guide you. Try to figure out which boss or coworker will be a better mentor. You'll have plenty of opportunities to strike out on your own after you graduate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would surely depend on what your longer term goals are. Do you want to set up your own start up? if so, go for the start up option. Being in a smaller company also exposes you to a wider area of activities, which can also be a great advantage, especially if you hope to one day start up your own thing.

</comment><comment><USER21> My big company internship was really boring and I mostly just read sites like Hacker News a lot. Make sure the match is right and that they actually need an intern. Sometimes they just hire you because you want to be hired and you end up doing mostly nothing.

Thats just my 2 cents though.

</comment><comment><USER22> Go startup if you're ambitious, you'll learn much more (more work too)

The big powerhouse will be a nice line on your resume, but most of the time, nothing more.

<comment><USER23> I think that really depends on the internship. In most cases, it is false that working for a big company will be "nothing more" than a nice line on your resume. I've interned at both startups and big corporations, and learned an enormous amount at both kinds of companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seems like the big company can lend you some perspective that might be handy later on. :-)

</comment><comment><USER25> startup. it will allow you to express yourself more, be yourself, enjoy a more relaxed and motivated environment. I work at a major corporation that was more of a startup when I joined and I prefer it the way it was years ago.</comment>


Beyond Locks and Messages: The Future of Concurrent Programming - <AUTHOR> http://bartoszmilewski.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/beyond-locks-and-messages-the-future-of-concurrent-programming/

<comment><USER2> Interesting that he's so gung-ho about STM when the Microsoft paper sounds so pessimistic: [http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/2010/01/03/ABriefRetros...](http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/2010/01/03/ABriefRetrospectiveOnTransactionalMemory.aspx)

The more I read about these new approaches to concurrency the more I suspect that there's going to be no free lunch. Concurrent programs are going to require careful, bottom-up design with concurrency in mind and concurrent design is going to remain a difficult thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> For me, this article introduces some useful terminology in relation to concurrency that I had not read about before. I am thinking about "SPMD, Single Program Multiple Data" and data-driven vs control-driven parallelism.

As an Erlang user and forum/chat hang-around, I frequently see people come in with a problem that is very data-driven. Large matrix inversions, AI back- tracking, then dismiss Erlang as academic hot-air because spawning an Erlang process per element and taking care of calculation results was too much work and no speedup. Obviously they were having data-driven problems and Erlang is made for control-driven problems.

I would love to find well-written and succinct articles on the difference between these two kinds of problem domains to refer people to. I find that it is very difficult to describe this well myself.

<comment><USER4> I'm still not sure I understand the difference between data- and control- driven parallelism, primarily because I don't have a concrete example of the latter. Also, he distinguishes between threads and tasks, but I'm not really sure what the difference is... are the latter simply not preemptable?

<comment><USER3> The goal, the scarce resource one optimize for, tend to be different. (To use the language from [http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/know- your-s...](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/know-your- scarcity/), posted here earlier ).

Control-driven concurrency tends to be io-bound if being bound at all, and the major issue tends to be dealing with the complexity of the rules. I.e. if- that-happens then-start-that-thing which-tells-that-system and-then-continues- with-that-task which-notices-the-registered-plugins. These rules should not block for other concurrent but independent sessions. Scalability tends to be an issue here. A relevant scalability example for Erlang would be a telecom system where each machine-added make you able to handle X number of more subscribers.

Data-driven concurrency tends to be more about making use of the concurrency available in the current hardware generation to speed up very cpu-bound computations. Using more threads than cores available just mean more context- switches and less performance. These are problems that likely also want to make use of SIMD instructions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> obligatory acm piece: "Software Transactional Memory: Why Is It Only a Research Toy?" [ <http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1454466> ]

</comment><comment><USER6> Message passing doesn't have to be hard to reason about at all. Each Erlang process is just that: a process that receives inputs and sends outputs. This is its "interface". Why would reasoning about this be any harder than reasoning about e.g. a REST service your application depends on?

The advantage, at least with Erlang is that the system can do things under the hood to make this as efficient as possible. Today, Erlang might actually run all the processes in one thread of execution and basically just share the data between threads. It can do this since the data is read only. Later on, when we have too many cores for this to be the fastest way anymore, it can do something else without a change to your code.

STM is still locking under the hood and when we're talking hundreds of cores, that little bit of locking is going to end up putting all your threads into a nice wait queue.

Further, the _real_ reason that manual thread management is untenable is the same reason that manual memory management is untenable: composability. You can't compose functions arbitrarily when you every function has it's own expectations about who owns the data and you can't compose functions when you don't know what locking they have. I'm not sure STM solves this completely. Does it ensure that one transaction block can't depend on another in a way that causes an unresolvable deadlock? If I write a massive framework, do I need to worry about how many layers of isolation blocks I'm building up? I know they say this is supported, but what if it's 20 layers deep and the layers cross compilation boundaries?

Message passing, on the other hand (like unix processes) doesn't have these composability concerns (though personally I think futures probably have the most potential since they're the most high level).

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't quite understand what these three big companies did that was beyond what Haskell already offers their sparks and STM implementations.

I am all for inventing new stuff but perhaps they would have been better served by contributing to Haskell anything that they invented that was novel.</comment>


Charles Darwin: Genius or Plodder? - <AUTHOR> http://www.genetics.org/content/183/3/773 <comment><USER2> > He was not particularly fast in his thinking nor was he mathematically > gifted.

May I suggest that, the media tends to declare someone a genius if his work cannot be understood by laymen. Physicists like Einstein are declared true geniuses because the mathematics they use look mysterious and magical. But anyone can understand Darwin's prose. Personally, I think they are all human and by defining them as genius we deify them.

<comment><USER3> > _the media tends to declare someone a genius if his work cannot be > understood by laymen_

That's not particularly true. I don't think there is a single mathematician whose papers are understandable to laypeople (by laypeople, I mean the average person, who remembers some but not all of highschool math). What's really going on here is that Einstein made a tremendous contribution to a tower that was already quite tall, while Darwin's contribution was to the ground floor where everybody could get on. The maths analogy to Darwin would be one of the inventors of Algebra - evolution is taught to children right along with the _foundations_ of math and physics.

<comment><USER4> Not always understandable by Einstein itself, he got helped by his mathematician friends, like Levi Civita

<comment><USER2> True. And also he got mathematical help from Marcel Grossmann. Poincare too was doing work on the theory of relativity.

Also one of the selling points of relativity in the early days was the difficulty of its math. I think it was Eddington who said that "only three people understood General Relativity."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not all the sciences have many really -famous- people.

Geology has developed a great deal in the past 2 centuries; not many geologists are "stars". How many people can name those among the most influential geologists?

Apart from Darwin, who most people wouldn't think of as a geologist! And yet ... [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta- stones/darwin-g...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta- stones/darwin-geologist-first-and-last/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not "Genius AND plodder".

Not everything has to happen at high speed.

<comment><USER7> I want Genius and Plodder on my gravestone

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Certain people have an exceptional ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas. Now imagine if someone didn't have that same mental quickness, or struggles to turn parallel thought process into serial form. Now assume that work was not quantitative but more qualitative in nature. Seems obviously that these people are all around us but it will be difficult to identify them as a genius before their ideas are accepted. Maybe MRIs will help us better uncover all of the various geniuses of the world so that we can take them a little more seriously. Entrepreneurship is interesting in this regard because it's another way to potentially keep score.

</comment><comment><USER9> Evolution seems obvious today. But so do a lot of things that we've grown up with.

<comment><USER10> I understand the evidence and the virtually iron clad case for evolution and so I know it happens and it is how we got here. Nevertheless, it remains extremely non-obvious to me if I try to actually comprehend how it could actually have happened.

Imagine some human male, just old enough to be capable of fathering a child.

Now imagine standing next to him his father, from when his father was just old enough to be capable of fathering children.

Next to him, put his father, at that age, and so on. Go back to their earliest male direct paternal ancestor for which it still makes sense to say it is male (so a little ways past a billion years ago, when sexual reproduction appeared).

Visualize that long line of organisms, each fathered by the one before it, and father to the one after it. The only apparent differences between each organism in that line and its father or child, even under a detailed internal examination, are either very very minor or are cosmetic or size differences.

Yet if you take two organisms far apart in the line, you get massive differences. On one end you have a human, and a good distance down the line you've got something that swims around in the ocean, and differs drastically from the human. Different number of heart chambers, something other than lungs for breathing, and more.

Now go somewhere between those two, where you can find something that lives on land, but uses four legs, not two legs and two arms.

It is not at all obvious how this is possible, because remember, to get from that thing in the water to that thing on four legs, and from that thing on four legs to us, the changes from father to son every step of the way have to essentially be continuous.

Intuitively, that would seem to mean that between the four legged ancestor and the two leg two arm ancestors there had to be many generations where the individuals had two limbs that were somewhere between legs and arms. They would be not as good at four legged things as "normal" four legged animals, and not as good at arm things as "normal" armed animals. Similar argument for every other aspect the differs significantly between them. And yet, despite those disadvantages, everyone in line managed to make it at least long enough to successfully reproduce [1].

It just seems that so many low probability sequential things had to happened for this to work that I don't find it obvious that it is is possible, even taking into account that this possible evolution space was being explored by a huge number of organisms in parallel and taking into account that our end of the line is not special from an understanding evolution viewpoint--it just seems special to use because it is _our_ end.

It's essentially for me like geometry theorems in higher dimensional spaces. I can understand their proofs and know they are true, but cannot find them obvious the way 2D and 3D geometry can be.

[1] Which is kind of sobering, since I do not have kids, meaning that I dropped the ball and ended a direct line of father/son descent going back over a billion years.

<comment><USER11> I think this is a great point that, for some reason, I can't recall ever seeing thoroughly addressed. (To be fair, I don't work in the life sciences, so cmiiw).

I definitely believe in evolution, but wonder if maybe something is missing, especially when it comes to the sort of cross-species changes you're discussing.

<comment><USER9> I understand your point, but the difficulty comprehending the continuous change of species into species over billions a years is really something humans have difficulty when it comes to anything that has such a slow rate of change.

For example, it's very hard to imagine the grand canyon being carved out from water eroding the earth every time it floods little by little. But you can intuitively still get how that works. And I think the basic idea of natural selection is pretty intuitive. Whatever can't survive doesn't reproduce. You can imagine how that simple rule (of course it's more complicated than that) could lead to life to spread out, and adapt to many different niches and take all sorts of forms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Human or mammal?

<comment><USER13> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

<comment><USER12> Genius or Plodder?</comment></comment></comment>


US Army has built a device to keep your hands warm without gloves - sahin-boydas https://www.newscientist.com/article/2229741-us-army-has-built-a-device-to-keep-your-hands-warm-without-gloves/ <comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Glov...](https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Gloves)

</comment><comment><USER2> Paywalled.

They had something similar at TechCrunch Disrupt: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di3fPj0pUbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di3fPj0pUbQ)</comment>


Wing – A dead-simple, responsive, CSS framework - <AUTHOR> http://usewing.ml <comment><USER2> So many of these CSS frameworks claiming to be "dead-simple" and "responsive".

From the first page of [https://www.google.com/search?q=minimal+css+framework](https://www.google.com/search?q=minimal+css+framework), we have Milligram, Pure, Base, MinimalCSS, Bulm, and Skeleton. There's even a GitHub project which catalogs this: [https://github.com/neiesc/ListOfMinimalistFrameworks#framewo...](https://github.com/neiesc/ListOfMinimalistFrameworks#framework- for-css)

So my question would be: what sets Wing apart and why should I use it compared to all other grid-ready, responsive, minimal frameworks out there?

<comment><USER3> I am curious as well. The page looks very similar to skeleton's homepage.

What does this offer that other frameworks don't?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mousing over "check it out" makes the center div jump up and blur momentarily. The same effect is more pronounced when mousing away from it as the button fades back to its default.

Apparently my skills for debugging live CSS could use improvement since I can't find whatever's changing to cause the effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's weird...

Can you give more details? What do you mean by the center div?

Thanks for the feedback :)

<comment><USER5> I'm experiencing the same thing. by the center div, I think he means the big text in the center where "WING" is. When you hover over it, it sort of twitches a little bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On my Nexus 5X mobile the page scrolls also horizontally, revealing a white space.

<comment><USER7> I think that's not a problem with the framework, but the CDN link in a box that should instead be scrolling unto itself. Still worth a GitHub issue to get fixed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I will try it out :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Be sure to send me a link :)</comment></comment>


A screaming-fast PC changed my life. It will change yours, too - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2266726/

<comment><USER2> " _But it's probably not the processor that accounts for most of the speed increase I've seen in my machine. The main help, I think, comes from the hard drive._ "

He's totally right about using an SSD as the boot disk, I can't overstate how much of a difference it makes, more than RAM, CPU or anything else. I've been using one for a while and it made my secondhand 3-4 year old macbook pro go from _barely usable for design work_ to _screaming top of the line_.

I'm probably going to switch to a hybrid drive soon though, like the 500GB Momentus XT that comes with a 4GB SSD glued on. The big drawbacks of using a pure SSD as a boot disk are that you'll either 1) run out of space on the SSD and/or 2) forced to keep the data on a slower separate drive, assuming that you're going with a moderately priced one and not spending a gazillion dollars for one of the big ones with a lot of capacity. #2 might not matter to the OP because he said he upgraded his rig just for the web browsing, but designers like me routinely load up and work with large files, so I still get the beach ball every time Fireworks tries to open a file or save it. This is where I differ from the OP and the Jeff Atwood article he linked to: _I'd rather put all of my data on just as fast a disk as the one with the OS and apps_. The slowdown in opening large files is super annoying after you've gotten used to the near instant times for booting the OS and starting up apps.

If I had one of the newer MBPs that came with a SATA interface for the optical drive (instead of IDE like mine), I'd seriously consider splurging and going with Stammy's dual RAID SSD setup:

[http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-apple-macbook-pro- raid-0-arr...](http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-apple-macbook-pro-raid-0-array- with-2-intel-x25-m-ssds)

Even though I can't use it for RAID, I'm still going to swap out the optical drive for an older IDE-compatible MCE optibay with a generic 500GB drive just for backups with time machine and super duper. That way I can ditch the pocket drive I've been carrying around this whole year and leave it at home for nightly backups.

<comment><USER3> Not to knock the SSD, but I actually don't understand why it should help significantly in the use case that the author was primarily talking about: large numbers of tabs open in your browser. My instinct there would be that more and faster RAM, and then to a lesser extent CPU cycles would be what's important. Unless it turns out that you've got so many tabs open, and you're cycling through them enough that you're going to swap and your swap partition is on the SSD. But then, again, it seems like more RAM is at least as good a solution as an SSD.

Can someone explain to me why an SSD should be a big win for web browsing?

<comment><USER4> Conventional drive: on the order of 800 IO ops per second.

Good SSD: on the order of 20,000 IO ops per second.

Now consider a hard page fault or disk access (browser cache, whatever) and reverse the above numbers:

Conventional drive: ~1 ms / disk access

Good SSD: 50 microseconds / disk access

That adds up quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Processor is hardly worth paying for top of the line.

I bought the new 15" MBP that was released this year with 2.4Ghz i5, and put 8GB plus an Intel X-25 SSD in there. Compared to my 2009 MBP w/ 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB and HDD, it's a bigger speed difference than I've ever gotten in any upgrade ever. Definitely worth paying 40x for the drive space.

It's not that the top speed is faster... it's just that the beach ball is _gone_. It's always responsive. I can be running test suites for a couple Rails apps, watching an HD movie, and browser testing IE6/7/8 in 3 Parallels VMs and it's always snappy. I'm totally spoiled for computers with the OS on an HD. Using my wife's new MacBook for 30 seconds starts to make my blood pressure rise.

<comment><USER6> You'll notice the difference in CPU power if you ever do any video transcoding. By my measurements, my i7 920 was around 3x faster than my Q6600.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I purposefully use an outdated (3-5 years off the top of the line) machine to ensure my web applications run well on anybody using a similarly outdated configuration. I've considered upgrading and using a VM to emulate this, but I'm not quite sure it'd have the same effect. I've found that what I have is "good enough" to work on, but "not good enough" to run overly demanding javascript and DOM riddled pages without noticing.

<comment><USER8> Actually, you will have a more accurate effect because most web servers are VMs. Also, the ability to do snapshots/rollbacks/clones should _not_ be underestimated. Upgrading from a dell E630 (T8100 2GB) to an E6410 (i7 8GB) and buying a technet subscription has _doubled_ my productivity as a web developer (not an exaggeration).

<comment><USER7> How does a much faster computer _double_ your productivity? Other than booting up programs, I'm rarely blocked by my computer being slow. The development I do is mainly text editing with a browser to view results.

I could see this being different if I had to wait for things to compile, though. But still, _double_ is a pretty large claim.

<comment><USER9> How much time, focus, and motivation is lost due to slowdowns, though? Some days, they certainly seem to take rather large tolls.

The little things matter.

<comment><USER7> Little things certainly matter, but only a little. In my experience, the most limiting factor in productivity is motivation and being healthy. These things are orders of magnitude more beneficial, and rarely effected by, my machine's speed. For the work I do (web development), the bottlenecks are _very rarely_ the machine itself. At worst, I need to restart Firefox once a day, which make take up to a minute as I eat a banana.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ya know what helps a _lot_?

Reinstalling the OS (edit: from scratch. ie, format the drive + install). I make a point to do so at least once per year. OSX has aged _significantly_ more gracefully than Windows, despite having several times as many files (approached 3 million near the end), but a two-year-old install (I slacked) is _nothing_ like a fresh one. Especially noticeable: Spotlight actually finds what I'm looking for in less than a second again (vs upwards of a minute or more).

It also highlights the differences between the OSes: OSX handles loads and loads of applications at the same time with significantly less slowdown and zero waiting on the UI. Windows launches and handles a single application _much_ more quickly, but it's not uncommon to wait a significant amount of time for a single click to register if I launch a couple large ones at once. Just today I've had to sit for a couple minutes because a large compile+launch decided to happen at the same time as a browser crash and an application auto- updating. Win 7 utterly stopped responding, except for my mouse cursor's movement.

edit: to all repliers suggesting Linux: yes it does, if you consider reinstalling to be "reinstalling from scratch", which was what I had meant (though not stated, apologies). Every OS slows with extensions + libraries + millions of files + hundreds of compiled applications, and I'm likely a bit of an edge case anyway. I pretty easily install 1000+ applications per year for experimenting, many of which add extra cruft that no uninstaller removes completely.

<comment><USER6> Windows has historically been pretty poor at handling concurrent I/O to the same device. I've seen circa 200M/sec sequential disk throughput fall to 10M/sec or so simply by trying to run another operation concurrently. The I/O scheduler seems heavily weighted for latency rather than throughput.

<comment><USER10> Maybe they optimize for latency because NTFS still fragments really badly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What this guy doesn't realize is that all the extra speed he's enjoying is probably mostly a function of his new computer having a brand new Windows 7 install on it, that hasn't been crufted up by all the various crap that eventually gets installed on it and slows everything down. If he had just reformatted and installed a fresh Windows install on his old machine, he'd be enjoying virtually the same "speed boost."

</comment><comment><USER12> What will help even more is becoming a bit more organized. Having 200 tabs open simultaneously sounds like a lot of lost effort to me. Learn to use bookmarks, history and especially the smart bookmark & history search available in the address bars of Firefox and Chrome, and you won't need to upgrade the PC just to support messiness.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Will I ever outgrow my speed demon of a computer? At this point it's hard for me to see how. Even at my peak usage, my processor never goes above 10 percent capacity, and most of the time I'm using just 1 or 2 percent. I'm confident this rig will last me at least five years, and probably more."

The SSD in the machine will probably need to be replaced.

It would be nice to know how much ram he had in the new vs old machine. I bet the SSD + more RAM was probably where most of the performance gain came from. He might have seen similar performance gain by just upgrading those two components.

<comment><USER14> Yes, I think for browser-heavy computing (the author mentioned opening hundreds of tabs) a ton of ram and a fast ssd cache are doing a a lot more than a fast cpu (and indeed, the author reports the cpu is usually operating at 1 or 2 %). CPUs today are so fast and cache-sensitive that hard drives basically amount to off-site backup. Unless you have a lot of ram, they'll just starve and idle in I/O for most end-user types of compute loads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I find interesting is that the best programmers among my friends usually have very outdated systems. They can do anything with a computer and can afford top of the line stuff, and still have over 5 year old hardware.

I was like that too and then got a fairly high end laptop with a fast 7200 rpm harddrive and 4 gigs of RAM which made the concept of "swaptime" when booting up my programming environment or compiling or doing both programming, music and graphics - a mere memory.

I've never been more creative.

<comment><USER16> My 3 year old MacBook Pro with an SSD runs circles around my girlfriend's 2 month old version with a 7200 RPM drive.

Ditch the 7200RPM, get an SSD.

It is that big a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A screaming-fast PC changed my life. I now play 3D games all day long.

<comment><USER9> Like a Rubiks cube?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> not a good use of money just so you can have 200 browser tabs open -- you can only look at one at a time anyway, for example. It's a bit like noticing your house is overflowing with a trash and deciding that the solution is to buy 50 large trash cans, placing several in each room of your house. rather than, you now, create less trash in the first place and/or take it out more frequently. :)

<comment><USER19> Even worse, the author claims that faster work with 200 opened tabs _changed his life_. How?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The same thing happened to me when I bought a new laptop. I realized how terribly slow was my previous one. I also changed my priorities. Now I value bigger ram and CPU performance instead of Graphics performance. Maybe that's because now I have a constantly running VM with linux in background and don't play games anymore.</comment>


Apple Bug Reporter updated for the first time since 1875 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/06/01/bugreporter-reskinned <comment><USER2> Pithy one-liner but from Marco Ament so pls upvote everybody!

<comment><USER3> Also add a "thank you Apple" for the effort.</comment></comment>


20 brilliant add-ons for your text-editor - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/career-change-coder/27-brilliant-add-ons-for-your-text-editor-guaranteed-some-are-new-17dec280666f <comment><USER2> I love this! Can we fix the ipynb extension, plz?</comment>


Replex: A Scalable, Highly Available Multi-Index Data Store [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~mfreed/docs/replex-atc16.pdf <comment><USER2> The idea of organizing replicas differently to effect secondary indexing is old, it is used in some commercial data warehouse products as I recall. The reason you don't see it used very often in practice is that it tends to scale- out poorly, particularly if the workload is mixed.

Spatial decomposition to effect secondary indexing (HyperDex kinda sorta does that) performs relatively poorly at smaller scales, as would be expected in theory, but in very large scale-out systems the selectivity increases and converges at the limit on what you would expect if every dimension was indexed, minus the high overhead and poor performance of secondary indexing at that scale.

The performance crossover point between secondary indexing and spatial decomposition is somewhere within a couple orders of magnitude of a terabyte of data in my experience, depending on the data and workload. It is difficult to measure these effects across unrelated implementations because orthogonal storage engine characteristics tend to dominate measured performance. If you measure it in-memory on large clusters in a pure way (remove the unrelated database-y stuff), the scaling and efficiency curves are much more obvious.

<comment><USER3> > Spatial decomposition

Would like to learn more about this. Do you have recommended links?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is a short summary of the paper. [http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/07/replex-scalable- hig...](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/07/replex-scalable-highly- available-multi.html)</comment>


Tamper Protection Prevents Malware from Disabling Microsoft Defender AV - <AUTHOR> https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/10/15/tamper-protection-microsoft-defender/ <comment><AUTHOR> The way I read this is all of the cloud data submission to Microsoft will be turned on and users will be unable to turn it off on Home Edition now.

Good outcome for security, bad for privacy.

"When the feature is turned on, it prevents malware from disabling virus and threat protection, real-time and cloud-delivered protection, turning off behavior monitoring and removing security intelligence updates."</comment>


SpoonRocket doing $1 dinner in SF Next Monday and Tuesday - <AUTHOR> https://www.spoonrocket.com/launchparty

<comment><AUTHOR> Not affiliated in any way, just saw this on Twitter and thought it was pretty awesome.</comment>


It is your moral obligation to use Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://0x46.net/thoughts/2019/04/09/use-firefox/ <comment><USER2> It's too late. Firefox already has compatibility issues with sites I use heavily. There's a much better chance I'd use the new Chromium based Edge than Firefox at this point. And with it's usage share dropping...if moral superiority is the only thing Firefox has going for it, it's a sinking ship. Having more contributors/users of Chromium/Blink seems to be a better path towards a less Google-dominated browser landscape at this point.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a list of those sites? I use Firefox as my only browser and I honestly haven't had to use chrome for anything beyond debugging web stuff on chrome.

I'm sure Mozilla would be very interested in fixing any issues there are.

However, most of the issues seem to be hard-coding to Chrome's nonstandard quirks, which is really a sad state of affairs. Do we really want a more cross platform IE? Because that's what we're getting if everyone jumps to chrome- based browsers.

<comment><USER2> Biggest issue for me is Twitch, HBO Now, and to a lesser extent YouTube although I've noticed issues with any site streaming video. Even on a gigabit connection and a new $2k desktop, Firefox buffers or the video just goes black and I have to refresh the page to watch for another 10-15 minutes before it happens again. Chrome never does this. I can't be the only person that's had this experience.

I know I also had issues with JavaScript on some sites causing tabs to freeze that wasn't an issue in Chrome as well, but it's been long enough (6+ months) I have no idea what those sites even are now.

<comment><USER4> I remember having some similar issues with old versions. But a couple of versions after their major redesign they are all gone.

There was an issue with Youtube last year and they blamed Youtube for it, but that is fixed now too.

You can give the latest version a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm just using firefox because it's the better browser. it's got better plugins, better settings and better performance (except in cases of google frameworks like angular, but come on, a webframework that "just so happens" to perform better on the vendors browser.."

</comment><comment><USER6> Although I also despair the lack of choice in web browsers nowadays (not to mention certain coworkers of mine who try to spin "standardization" on Chrome/Chromium as a good thing), I wouldn't go so far as to claim there's some moral component to one's choice of browser. While I have strong feelings about this, I can't judge people who choose the path of least resistance when picking the software they use. Sometimes you want stuff to just work. People's priorities are their own and not everyone has the luxury of being able to be different because of their views. Some people just need to get things done.

</comment><comment><USER7> I kind of agree. We can't let a single corporation drive some almost- universally-used thing like a web browser. I mean, look what an oligopolistic market did to US car manufacturers. Stifled innovation, downgraded product, the entire industry almost went under in the mid-to-late 70s.

Look at what happened when Microsoft attained near-universal presence with IE 6. Their innovation stopped, security went straight down the toilet. Of course, at that point, Microsoft also lost their edge and began losing mindshare and dominance in emerging technologies, but that's a bit beside this point.

</comment><comment><USER8> No mention of Safari here (or Epiphany on Linux). The latest version of Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.1 is pretty good at fingerprint protection.

</comment><comment><USER9> Morals aside, I agree with the points made regarding key Firefox fumbles at times when Chrome was making significant inroads. Of course there are many other mistakes Firefox/Mozilla made that people have also commented on here. Over the years I saw these mistakes take place and lamented about them often. I'm just not sure that even if all these mistakes were avoided Chrome wouldn't still dominate the market, especially in the mobile space - Platform bundling is a powerful thing! As we know, even a poorly performing browser (like IE) can get a large market share when it's the default for the masses. I see a lot of non-technical Windows 10 users browsing away in Edge these days because it's there and seemingly as a bonus it works well enough for them.

I personally would like to use Firefox exclusively, but I often deal with equipment that demands Chrome whether it really needs to or not. This is especially common when it comes to IP video applications.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there any reason why you should use Firefox over Safari in this case then? How are we defining the "moral superiority" of web browsers here because it all seems to bit iffy to me. Why not use NetSurf if we're really talking, something that's actually open source and not only in name like Mozilla does with Firefox.

<comment> chupa-chups Safari doesn't support disabling click tracking anymore:

[https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/Safari-link- tracking.htm...](https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/Safari-link- tracking.html)

Firefox does this (as well TOR and brave)

<comment><USER11> But Safari ITP is wrecking havoc on the ad-tech industry right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree. I have tried Chromium at times, but the weight of Google hegemony always sends me back.

HOWEVER! I run it in a VM on a Qubes host, with UMatrix add-on and a Google Analytics blocker. It has no access to a GPU. It crashes, sometimes, hundreds of times a day. (Most usually this is a tab crashing, but frequently enough the whole thing goes.) Nothing else on the machine is even slightly unstable. At the moment, 66 is entirely unable to bring up a Google Maps tab for more than a half-second; it draws the map, then BOOM.

Frequently it can bring up a page, but then crashes at the first hint of scrolling.

Looking back, this seems to have started sometime around 60 or 61, and got really bad around 63 or 64. I really would like to see an end to its crashing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great browser. It has really been improved over the last months.

I think that extension portability is needed in order to compete with the chromium family.

Why firefox? It is the next major browser (after chrome) in desktop. Promoving the use of another may lead to the parity in the very long term.

<comment><USER14> What is needed in extension portability? You can use Firefox Sync to sync extensions between devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Actual paying users would be better than millions of users that just want to complain. At this point with so much immorality online, what browser you use is just a matter of taste.

<comment><USER16> I was a paying user (at least a donated to them) before they started breaking extensions, putting tracking in, putting DRM in, rewriting things in rust and working on crap like webasm that will make the web even more user hostile.

At this point paying them to literally do nothing all do would give me a better return on investment than the direction they're heading.

<comment><USER15> I would not at all balk at paying for software that works and doesn't churn everything every 2 years. That was the main appeal to me of MacOS. There is a threshold of crappy changes to abandonment and Microsoft crossed it and Apple just mismanaged it.

Firefox doesn't bother me so much that I hate it yet. But I got to wonder if the only voices that matter were the users that actually paid for it, I would imagine the paying users would be mostly happy. That seems to be the case for commercial software that offers free beer wares on the side like Unity3D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> lol firefox. i wouldnt hate the guys if they had stuck to their guns on DRM and didnt kick the guy because he made a religious donation.

<comment><USER6> Calling it a "religious" donation is pretty reductive IMHO.

<comment><USER3> It was still none of their business what he uses his personal funds for. From what I could tell, he kept his personal views very separate from his professional work.

However, it's water under the bridge and Mozilla is fine. I don't think that fiasco contributed in any meaningful way to Firefox's loss of market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> FF was also behind in using auto update the software without user interaction. That was a big change from user's perspective (who didn't much care that a certain service was also always running behind the scenes).

<comment><USER19> That was a plus from my point of view. I don't _want_ my machine getting independent opinions about how to manage itself; it's my machine, after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "With every year it is more likely that one day you will not be able to create a website using the technologies of your choosing and you will not be able to make it behave as you see fit. Others will make those decisions for you."

This is already how it is for almost everyone and it's... fine? I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't even be bothered to keep up with emerging web standards, let alone make any decisions about them.

<comment><USER21> Fortunately you still have the option of not keeping up with modern web standards and just writing some html 3.2 into a text file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll use it when they bring back RSS functionality, make it possible for me to configure its UI like I could before, and stop tracking me by default. I'm sick of updates stealing functionality from me, and I'll use qutebrowser or something similar until Firefox is no longer run by people intent on destroying the software.

</comment><comment><USER23> The most important advantage of Firefox for me is being able to run extensions on mobile

</comment><comment><USER24> Poor title. The content doesn't try to defend it unless you accept "the web as it is now/has been is morally right" as a truism.

</comment><comment><USER25> If it's a moral obligation, can I mention a problem on a forum without being asked for my bug report or my patch?

Or am I both morally obligated to use the software and either open tickets for any issue I mention or fix those problems myself?

<comment><USER3> You're not morally obligated to open bug reports, just encouraged. That's the way things get fixed with Firefox, and if you want that, then learning how to do it is a big help.

If you don't want to, feel free to ignore that recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> No, thanks.

I don't like being told what my moral obligation is. I'll figure that out for myself, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER27> Make GPU acceleration work, 1080p YouTube videos play under Linux and I'll consider it.

<comment><USER28> I've been playing 1080p (and higher, like 1440p) Youtube videos on Linux without issues.

<comment><USER27> If you have the CPU power to waste then maybe yeah, it plays, but it's not possible with my hardware.

<comment><USER28> My video is definitely hardware (GPU) accelerated. If you don't have working hardware acceleration in Firefox for videos/WebGL, there's something wrong with your setup, it's not a FF problem.

I and many others in this thread have no issue with this in FF.

<comment><USER27> "It works on my machine", really?!

There's nothing wrong with my setup, there are numerous issues open on FF Issue tracker about this s __*.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is Mozilla Corporation's leadership moral obligation to resign for their privacy scandals and mismanagement of Firefox.

<comment><USER30> > their privacy scandals and mismanagement of Firefox

Explain further? Haven't heard of these

<comment><USER31> Here's a good start (the Pocket integration debacle): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876016)

<comment><USER32> Personally, I wouldn't consider it Mozilla Corporation's moral obligation to resign over including an add-on by default, that can be disabled.

<comment><USER31> I agree that there isn't/wasn't a need for them to resign.

Just wanted to provide some historical context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chupa-chups No it is not. Why?

\- Browser fingerprinting protection? Nope

\- No ads on start page? Nope

\- Https everywhere? Nope

\- Ad block? Nope

If you want to support firefox, download TOR browser.

Else, use brave. But please don't support further degradation of privacy in the web.

<comment> chupa-chups I'd like to correct myself: the new nightly build from Firefox _supports_ browser fingerprinting protection:

[https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/04/09/protectio...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/04/09/protections- against-fingerprinting-and-cryptocurrency-mining-available-in-firefox-nightly- and-beta/)

And thanks for downvoting the original comment despite valid concerns and a link to the TOR browser.

<comment><USER30> > No ads on start page? Nope

You can set your own startpage

> Ad block? Nope

You can easily add an extension for ad block.</comment></comment></comment>


Dev-corner: Bart K. explains (and rants about) C/C++ pointers - <AUTHOR> http://freegamer.blogspot.com/2011/03/dev-corner-bart-k-explains-and-rants.html

<comment><USER2> Compare with the Object Pascal syntax:

variable = ^Integer ( declaration )

...

variable2 := variable^ ( dereference )

To me, the vagarity of C variable/pointer syntax has always looked insane in comparison, though I will give it the benefit of being sometimes more powerful.

(HN can't do Pascal comments correctly.)</comment>