Composer: NPM-like package management for PHP - <AUTHOR> http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/composer_solves_the_php_code-sharing_problem/

<comment><USER2> I am one of the guys behind <http://pearfarm.org>. I mention it just to show I've thought a lot about this problem.

What's interesting is that we all know something like this _needs_ to happen for the PHP community, but the community isn't stepping up and rallying around one. Maybe being sucked into the Symfony world will help it get traction, but I am not sure, only because history has not been on the side of progress of this issue in the PHP community.

PEARFarm hasn't caught on too much (though we use it extensively in-house).

Composer works almost identically to <http://pearhub.org>, and didn't catch on, either.

Beyond that, there have been more (see phark, etc).=

As for feedback on your idea, my concerns are: 1) Support for legacy PEAR packages doesn't seem to exist. There is a lot of code out there that people already depend on. 2) PHP 5.3 only, while it is the future, still knocks down the addressable market to maybe 1/4 of the PHP world. 3) Does your packaging system support installation of executables? 4) Is there a bundler-style solution? I need to be able to easily install all dependencies in a sandbox. Committing an enormous vendor/ dir is an absurd practice. 5) Does Composer allow the package to not include all files in the git repo?

That said, I would _love_ for there to be a standard, widely-used, useful, easy & practical way to manifest dependencies and install them into a sandbox. I waste way too much time managing this on my own.

<comment><USER3> 1) It does support PEAR, it's listed on <http://packagist.org/about-composer>

2) PHP5.3, well, so be it. The people stuck in the past are usually not the ones willing to take the plunge into such solution anyway. They can join us when they are ready.

3) Not yet, but we do have some plans for that.

4) You shouldn't commit your vendor dir, you should commit the composer.lock file, which allows anyone to re-install exactly the same version of the dependencies anywhere. And yes this is similar to Bundler as far as I understand it.

5) We also have plans for that, see <https://github.com/composer/composer/issues/57> \- but this depends on other features that we need to finish first.

<comment><USER2> 1) Ah ok, didn't see that.

Do you PEAR-install PEAR packages? It's important for when there are executables. We wrote another project called comice to make it easy to create PEAR sandboxes and work with them: <https://github.com/ardell/comice>

2) We will move to 5.3 ourselves soon, I am just telling you the reality. PHP 5.3 broke some BC stuff, making it risky to migrate. I think that's slowed adoption a lot.

3) Not a huge problem that it doesn't install executables, so long as you support legacy PEAR installs with executables (see #1).

4) Cool, I will have to look into that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've looked through this code - I have several such needs for packaging PHP dependencies - and have decided against using it for several reasons:

\- Like most code coming from the Symfony community, it is built Java-style. Not a bad thing, but many things, such as dependency checking or version management, can be done in much simpler ways with less code

\- PHP 5.3 only. Thanks, but no thanks. I know everyone is in a rush to promote 5.3, but I feel as though it can be done in such a way as to gracefully degrade and support older versions of PHP quite easily.

\- Has dependencies on Symfony projects. That is a great way to have other frameworks adopt your tools! I'm sure this is going away, especially if they want framework-wide support.

That said, I'm jealous. I've been working on something similar for a few months in private and this is already on Github. If they can iron out my above issues, I'll be happy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would it matter how Composer itself is built? It is just a tool you use to manage your dependencies and install your project. And all of it comes as a single phar.

      $ wget http://getcomposer.org/composer.phar
      $ php composer.phar install

Done.

<comment><USER2> It matters because if you're still on a 5.2 platform you cannot run composer without having php 5.2 and 5.3 installed side-by-side, which is a pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty nice idea, be good to see if it gets some traction and becomes popular. I suppose the next step is populating it with the most popular packages and trying to get active adoption with developers.

<comment><USER3> It is in the process of being integrated in the Symfony2 framework, which is one of the largest PHP communities. That should dramatically help adoption.

We have some other plans that will help, but nothing sure. Just talking to various people.

Ultimately though, package management is solving a big pain point. If the user experience is good, and it is easy enough for everyone to use, I would dare say that it can not fail. And don't get me wrong, things are not perfect yet on that front, but we are trying hard, and we welcome any feedback we can get.

<comment><USER6> Why are you using JSON, exactly? What's the harm in allowing comments in the package description file?

YAML is much better suited IMO, and it has traction.

<comment><USER7> I actually like having config files as PHP - that way you can not only include comments but hack in logic if you ever have to.

<comment><AUTHOR> We used to do that with Midgard. Just like embedding in logic into your templates, it gives you a lot of flexibility but ultimately ends up with you or your users shooting yourself into the foot.

For reference, here is one of the old, PHP-based config files we have: [http://trac.midgard- project.org/browser/branches/ragnaroek/m...](http://trac.midgard- project.org/browser/branches/ragnaroek/midcom/org.routamc.photostream/config/schemadb_config.inc)

<comment><USER8> Using homogeneous architecture has _tremendous_ advantages over using a patchwork of different formats and languages.

Quick example. If you're using native PHP templates and configs, installing APC gives you instant template and config caching with zero effort. To get the same functionality for other formats you would need to roll our your own caching, introducing bugs and complexity along the way, but, most importantly, reinventing the wheel.

That's just one out of myriad examples.

Also, if you have more than two nested levels of arrays (regardless of the language used) in a giant uber-config file, you are the one who is shooting your users into their feet.

Don't code XML in PHP. Refactor. Use includes (which JSON doesn't have, BTW). Use autoconfig pattern and align your configuration file with classes that use them. Use sensible conventions over configuration. Start the file with return statement instead of magic name:

      <?php
       return array(
         'var' => "val",
       );

Nothing will _ever_ scale if you don't even try to design it in a sensible way.

<comment><USER9> I didn't know that you could return a value from an include like that, that's incredibly handy (and makes me wonder why almost _nobody_ does it that way).

<comment><USER7> I love this strategy, it's great for config. For example in the RocketSled microframework I mentioned earlier[1] you have a config file to instruct the system which class to execute by default in which you just put:

<?php return 'Hello World';

Being able to include a file like that in your project which returns a value has the advantage (in my opinion anyway) of not cluttering up the namespace with lots of defines(), of not requiring any magic naming convention, and of not having to call out to any external functions or edit config files that are part of the core system's version control.

[1]<https://github.com/iaindooley/RocketSled>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks really cool. I've recently been similarly inspired by watching Node.js guys (Substack in particular) and the penchant for very targeted re- usable components.

The strength of PHP is that there's so much code already written that monolithic frameworks are a step backwards, but a good package distribution system is required for this to work.

I recently released a little front controller style microframework that has a default autoloader with a simple way to register your own:

<https://github.com/iaindooley/RocketSled>

and an associated package manager that basically just has a list of github repos and a config file which specifies dependencies:

<https://github.com/iaindooley/RocketPack>

Since I don't want to constrain myself to using only namespaced code or one particular autoload implementation I won't be using Composer just yet (indeed I'm an advocate of a "lazy" namespacing policy) but I look forward to following the project's progress via github.

My goal is to use tools that don't "have an opinion" - that allow me to use whatever is going to get the job done most quickly. Things like coding standards, policies and aesthetics are moot when it comes to delivering code on the day, especially if your code is highly modular and compartmentalised.

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding Substack code, I've made a PHP implementation of the DNode protocol: <https://github.com/bergie/dnode-php>

With this you could actually call Node.js code from your PHP apps.

And yeah, php-dnode is available on Composer :-) <http://packagist.org/packages/dnode/dnode>

<comment><USER7> Oh cool! I was interested in dnode-php, you've already done all the work :)

/me follows

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is neat :)

I spent a lot of years in php, and the lack of a serious code-sharing story was certainly a pain point.

Using JSON (and being strict about it) is a good idea. If people really want to use Yaml, then they can write a composer.yaml, and have a build step that dumps it into composer.json. Courier does this for node projects that want to write their package metadata in coffeescript.

<comment><USER11> I wish the same were available for python. I know there's pip/virtualenv, but they just don't come close to node's npm or ruby's bundler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> git submodules can handle the basics of this decently well.

You can include any git-hosted project pretty easily with `git submodule add`

You can easily switch which commit/branch/version of the project you want to have included. So if you want to be using the latest version of Project X + one special bugfix that you made, just fork the project on GitHub and switch your submodule to point at your latest commit.

`git submodule update --init --recursive` to update all the package/submodules in your project at once.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, how does it compare to PEAR?</comment>


How Covid-19 catapulted Worldometer to prominence - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/05/world/worldometer-coronavirus-mystery/index.html <comment><USER2> 11 days ago, zero comments. HN missed that a top ranked web site cited by governments and obviously also sourced by the world famous John Hopkins Covid-19 statistics is hmm... not to be trusted to say it neutrally. (Search does not bring up any other articles with significantly better popularity either.)</comment>


Show HN: Abusing SQLite3 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mingodad/sqlite3-hashcode-2018 <comment><AUTHOR> Author here if you have any questions let's talk about it.

The main idea was to test if using only the sqlite3 executable and the sql implemented in sqlite3 would be enough to write complete applications.</comment>


Legit: A CLI tool to make Git more accessible - <AUTHOR> https://frostming.github.io/legit/ <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it be enough to add some git aliases for this? Like:

      [alias]
      hist = log --pretty=format:\"%h %ad | %s%d [%an]\" --graph --decorate --date=short
      quick-push = "!f() { git add . && git commit -m \"$1\" && git push; }; f"
      grep-log = log -E -i --grep
      grep-hist = log --pretty=format:\"%h %ad | %s%d [%an]\" --graph --decorate --date=short -E -i --grep

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Quoting the README:

> ## The Concept

> GitHub for Mac is not just a Git client.

> This comment[0] on Hacker News says it best:

>> They haven't re-created the git CLI tool in a GUI, they've created something >> different. They've created a tool that makes Git more accessible. Little >> things like auto-stashing when you switch branches will confuse git >> veterans, but it will make Git much easier to grok for newcomers because of >> the assumptions it makes about your Git workflow. Why not bring this >> innovation back to the command line?

It provides a few interfaces like switch <branch> which switches to specified branch by automatically stashing any changes, or sync [<branch>] which (smartly) synchronizes the given branch. Etc...

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2684483](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2684483)

<comment><USER3> I wish GitHub Desktop would let me spellcheck commit messages, like every other native text field, but nope, Electron.

<comment><USER4> Check out Fork: [https://git-fork.com](https://git-fork.com). Has a bunch of handy features and is a native app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's nice but I prefer people to use the "real" git just so they know how it works and can manage when inevitably something goes wrong.

<comment><USER6> I agree to an extent. The main reason I prefer the "bare" command line tools instead of sugary wrappers like this is for situations when I'm stuck in a fire and don't have my normal tools available to me. Examples include when you need to do work on someone else's machine or more commonly when you are ssh'ed into some cloud infrastructure and you don't have anything but the basic tools available to work (and no permissions to install stuff like this from outside the firewall). This philosophy applies more to knowing your way around bash but also can apply to git as well.

It's probably as not as big of a deal for people who never venture into ops land but if you've ever done any sort of ops related work you know that sometimes you're only given hammers and screwdrivers instead of power tools and expected to make it work.

That said I do see the value in these tools - git is quite an intimidating beast and any tools that help people become more familiar with it can't be a bad thing - so long as they don't eventually become a crutch for the end user to avoid learning about how the base tool works.

<comment><USER5> How is git intimidating? It's one of the most user friendly pieces of CLI applications out there, offers a myriad of ways to "ctrl z" and has proper documentation. Problem is people don't get trained or don't want to learn. They learn "git pull" and "git commit" and then think they know how it works.

<comment><USER7> I honestly can't tell if you're serious.

Some things off the top of my head that are in my opinion not at all trivial for even intermediate git users:

\- How do you fix a typo in the commit message of the second-last commit that you pushed to remote?

\- I accidentally committed something to the wrong branch. What's the best way to uncommit it from that branch and commit it to the right branch?

\- What are the differences between the working tree, directory tree, index, and staging area?

\- How do I "un-add" a file I just staged?

\- I've heard "git reflog" is useful. What is it?

<comment><USER5> If you have had any interaction beyond the basics of git those are trivial to solve.

\- git rebase -i HEAD~2 -- interactive rebase of last 2 commits then read the help you get (use reword on the commit you want to change, needs force push because rewriting history)

\- various ways to do this but easiest is: checkout correct branch, cherry- pick commit you want and then hard reset your faulty branch HEAD~1 (you can also soft reset, keep it staging and then checkout correct branch and commit)

\- these are all terms you should know if you are using git in my opinion because the commands et cetera will assume you know what they mean. I think it comes with every beginners git tutorial?

\- I am pretty sure git status will tell you how to do this by default (which shows staging area)

\- this is also properly documented and something a good git guide will gloss over

Maybe I am biased because I use git on a daily basis but I don't think any of these are hard. Anyone who calls themselves an intermediate git user should be able to answer these questions from the top of their head. If you don't, no problem, you can easily Google them and you will notice that they are very straightforward and simple. I am not even sarcastic, git is very simple software (in terms of usage and help/documentation available).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great! Git is highly unintuitive and I wish it would die in favour of mercurial or some other as-yet undeveloped thing. Those that like the way git works have stockholm syndrome from being abused by it for so many years.

<comment><USER7> This is exactly my own attitude toward git, as well as pandas and matplotlib (python's data-wrangling and de facto plotting libraries). Their APIs are objectively rough, but after years of adapting to their countless quirks and inconsistencies, I've come to love them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems similar in aim to Gitless

[0] [https://gitless.com/](https://gitless.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Newer git (as of 2.23) has a built in "switch" command, which is not compatible with legit switch (the latter does stash/unstash on switch, which the built in does not).

Legit users beware.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's be interesting to hear how this compares to Magit.

<comment><USER12> Looks like legit is a tool for beginners. Magit is industrial strength.

<comment><USER13> > Magit is industrial strength

Is it also Enterprise Compatible and Government approved? Cloud native maybe?

<comment><USER14> Yes it's web scale so even the NSA uses it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It does too much. For example:

> $ git sync > # Stash, Fetch, Auto-Merge/Rebase, Push, and Unstash

Good luck if any of this actions fail. With raw Git you can easily correct the problem and move on. With leGit, you'll be left wondering how screwed the current state of your repo is.

</comment><comment><USER16> The only question is, how do you pronounce it? Like the English "legit", or the French way "le" plus "git"?

</comment><comment><USER17> Blah git sucks. Just learn git.

<comment><USER18> I'd be mad if someone tried to force such software as the way to do things in my workplace. However, thanks people try to build better things even if everyone else thinks they are wasting time. I find trying to come up with something better than git important at the very least from an academic perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> English side ruined, must use French instructions. Le git? What the hell is that?!

<comment><USER7> It's _legit_ , is what it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love the naming.</comment>


Doctors Slow to Adopt Tech Tools That Might Save Patients Money on Drugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/07/05/738283044/doctors-slow-to-adopt-tech-tools-that-might-save-patients-money-on-drugs <comment><USER2> I wonder how burdensome it is to even get the tool fully integrated into the ehr. Like are the doctors not using it because it requires manual input of drugs and insurance? Even then, the doctors aren't necessarily getting paid more for doing this extra work; it's the payer (insurance) company that is primarily benefiting.

To be clear, I am acutely aware of just how hard it is to get this sort of thing working (MS in health Econ, phd in biomedical and clinical informatics). Just keeping track of all the formularies seems like a pain just to to begin with!

<comment><USER3> Well due to the rise of EHR and other tech complexities, many doctors are just joining mega-groups/networks that handle their IT just so they don't have to deal things such as integration. The era of independent doctors is basically coming to a very fast end.

Where I live, there are two competing networks of doctors now that have basically absorbed thousands of doctors in the last 4 years with their signs literally plastered everywhere now.

Yay because arguably it's the only way doctor offices are going to keep up with ever changing tech. Nay because Americans are going to get fucked in the ass even more by uncontrollable healthcare when the doctors networks become cartels.

<comment><USER2> There's a certain chicken or egg among health economists for the role of HITECH requirements resulting in consolidation [1, 2]. On one hand, these HITECH requirements put additional technological reporting, which may be a driver of consolidation (though this was in large part 'paid' for if you adopted early). On the other hand, centralization of IT services can produce economies of scale, especially if you're a small community hospital that has a small community hospital budget (aka narrow). Hell, you even see the trend of inter-UC health hosting the EHR instance for another UC [3].

In either case, the major role of healthcare consolidation has been to keep up with insurance consolidation, which is to keep up with hospital consolidation, and so on [4].

[1]. [https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special- topics/h...](https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special- topics/hitech-act-enforcement-interim-final-rule/index.html)

[2]. [https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20190304.99820...](https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20190304.998205/full/)

[3]. [https://cio.ucop.edu/making-epic-history-ucsd-and-uci- health...](https://cio.ucop.edu/making-epic-history-ucsd-and-uci-health-share- an-electronic-medical-records-system/)

[4]. [https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.22.6....](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.22.6.77)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My experience with such a system has been that it would quote ridiculously high prices for generic medications, so I'd simply tell patients their drug is on the $4 list at WalMart. An information source that's unreliable is worse than no information at all, since it poisons the well for competing systems.

</comment><comment> dfeojm-zlib America is slow to adopt collective, independent negotiating of medical, hospital and prescription charges as happens in insurance, Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare. Med4all would solve this, rather than hunting around for big pharma "sales" and "promotions."

<comment><USER5> The US government is the "single payer" for defense contracts. How has that worked out in terms of cost controls?

<comment><USER6> The NHS in the UK pays much lower prices for most drugs than the insurers do (there are the odd egregious cases where a company take the piss, the interesting thing is that we do actually fine them in a rare case of consequences been applied) because simply put they are negotiating for 65 million consumers in one go, if the NHS price is high enough for them to make a healthy profit per patient it is a no brainer.

The system requires numerous feedback loops and clinical overview (ours is called NICE - National Institute of Clinical Excellence).

Is it perfect, no, few human things are.

Is it massively preferable to the _average_ healthcare situation for Americans - hell yes it is.

I pay for my prescriptions which is £9 per drug per month (whatever the cost to the NHS of that drug is), I take 3 drugs so that should be £27 per month except they considered that case and I buy a NHS Pre-Payment Card which costs me about £10 a month and covers me for any number of medications. [1]

So for £10 a month I get the routine medications I need to make my life not just bearable but enjoyable which allows me to work.

So if costs controls in government are your concern the elect better people with better systems.

Lest anyone think I'm all sunshine and roses on the NHS, it requires drastic reformation (and they really really need to get rid of their 'internal market' way of running) but the idea is as sound now as it was in 51 years ago (almost to the day, it was founded July 5th 1948).

[1] [https://apps.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/ppc- online/patient.do](https://apps.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/ppc-online/patient.do)

<comment><USER7> > Is it massively preferable to the average healthcare situation for Americans > - hell yes it is.

Your _average_ American has employer-paid health insurance, which covers most of their costs. According to the OECD, average out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure in the U.S. is $1,370, versus $629 in the U.K. [https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health- spending.htm](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm). Keep in mind that median household disposable (post-tax) income in the U.S. is $45,000, versus $29,000 in the U.K.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but there are obvious cases which turn these averages into really different personal-stories.

One case is the obvious cost of having a child in America, even with insurance some people pay thousands of dollars.

<comment><USER7> "The american system is bad for the poor or unlucky" is a very different argument than "the american system is bad for the average person."

The difference in median disposable income between the U.S. and the U.K. is stunning: almost $17,000. Even after you factor in things like student loan debt (averaging $220/month for the minority of people who have student loans at all) and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses and premiums (a few thousand a year on average, versus maybe a thousand or so in other OECD countries), the median American household is coming out way ahead.

<comment><USER6> Child mortality rates in the US 5.9 per 1000, In the UK 3.8. [1]

> Two-thirds of people who file for bankruptcy cite medical issues as a key > contributor to their financial downfall. [2]

United Kingdom suicide rate per 100,000 7.5, United States 13.8 [3]

United States Murder Rate per 100,000 5.35, United Kingdom 1.2 [4]

More to life than money I guess, also your $17,000 is accounting for income distribution, at first glance that looks good but while our income distribution is pretty bad, the US is positively Dickensian.

No jingoism intended here, we get a lot wrong and other countries straight up kick our arse (Spain's infant mortality rate is half ours at 2.0 for example amongst major European countries) but that just means we should be looking to improve.

[1] [https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/infant-mortality- rates.htm](https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/infant-mortality-rates.htm)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason- most...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-most- americans-file-for-bankruptcy.html)

[3] [https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/suicide- rates.htm#indicator...](https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/suicide- rates.htm#indicator-chart)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

<comment><USER7> On infant mortality statistics, at least part of the difference is that the US reports that figure rigorously, while other countries do not necessarily do so: [https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/09/infant-mortality- dece...](https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/09/infant-mortality-deceptive- statistic-scott-w-atlas).

As to income distribution: that's the OECD's estimate of the median household. So it's not being skewed up by super-rich households.

As to bankruptcies, less than 0.5% of households file for bankruptcy in a given year.

As to homicide or suicide rate: again, that affects a tiny minority. Meanwhile, the much higher income affects 60-70% of the whole population.

The U.K. is a society where you've lowered the median to lift up the floor. That's one way to do it. And I don't even disagree with you that the US should do more in that regard. But if you support an expanded welfare state (and I do), it's dishonest to sell that policy to people by pretending that the average person is going to be better off. Unless they place a very high value on security (avoiding low probability outcomes like medical bankruptcy) over material comfort, they're going to be worse off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They lost me at "might."

You'd be hard-pressed to find many docs (myself included) who are champing at the bit to adopt an informational resource with knowledge gaps.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand. The article is about a pricing tool. The "might" is that it can't give useful price information for all kinds of insurance. It doesn't seem all that horrific that it might not be able to give useful pricing information for every single patient...?

<comment><USER11> Doctors schedules are already tight as it is and I'm not sure what benefit there is to the doctor to spend the precious extra minutes looking to see whether they might be able to save their patients some money before prescribing a drug.

<comment><USER12> Because by saving the patient that sum of money said patient will maybe have enough funds to come visit said doctor for a second time (or a 3rd, or a 4th), instead of postponing the visit for financial reasons.

In other words, if a doctor prescribes me a $1000 medicine instead of a $500 one, and a visit to said doctor costs $500, I might not visit him a second time because I've already paid $1000 for the medicine and I don't have enough money for my health anymore. Not visiting your doctor when you need it (for whatever reasons) is bad for the patient.

<comment><USER11> That's not a very strong incentive. I'm not really sure that's an incentive at all. Most doctors have more than enough appointments. Their schedules are _overbooked_.

But even if doctors who needed more patient bookings could attract those bookings by saving patients money then logic would follow that doctors who have room in their schedule would consistently use the app from the article. Yet most doctors aren't using it at all.

So even if your premise is correct I think you're greatly overestimating the surplus supply of doctors appointments and underestimating how steep/inelastic the demand curve is for healthcare.

Mostly unrelated, is saying "surplus supply" redundant? I can't decide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Doctors Slow to Use Some Startup's Thing That My New York Party Acquaintance Asked Me To Talk About"

<comment><USER14> What is this in reference to? There's nothing similar in the article.

<comment><USER15> Think...

Puff pieces are a dime a dozen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Doctors slow to..." Implies all doctors. Then the article begins with an emotional story about one patient. Statistical facts don't come from an emotional argument. That's what politicians and marketers do.

What's more likely: that the hardest working, highest average IQ professionals are slow to adopt something that would help them save their patient's lives? Or that the writer of the article is biased and exaggerating things?

<comment><USER17> >the hardest working, highest average IQ professionals are slow to adopt something that would help them save their patient's lives?

This is already the case with checklists, which are proven to save lives but resisted by many doctors: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2090554-not- all-surgeon...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2090554-not-all-surgeons- follow-checklists-that-prevent-bad-mistakes/) . In my limited experience with doctors a non-insignificant proportion seem to care more about their own ego than saving lives (the kind of people who would bring up their own IQ in a discussion).

Medical error is apparently the third largest cause of death in the US ([https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third- leading...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading- cause-of-death-in-america.html)), and surgical checklists have been shown to reduce error rates by 40%: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/jan/14/health](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/jan/14/health). In any other profession it would be completely unacceptable to refuse to use a technique like checklists on the grounds that "I don't make silly mistakes"; imagine if an engineer working on safety-critical equipment said "My code doesn't need any testing because I don't make mistakes".

<comment><USER18> I use checklists extensively, however I'm wondering if mandatory checklists would have the same effect.

I have checklists for holiday packing with different sub checklists for beach, ski, etc vacation.

At work there are checklists for code review that I personally find don't help. Why? I didn't make that checklist myself. It's a checklist basically containing every mistake anyone ever made that could have or should have been caught in review.

This leads to a checklist of hundreds of Well-d'uhs, because a lot of people make many silly mistakes.

I have a personal review checklist with the things I often forget. I think checklists only work if they're full of pertinent information, and for many professions I think that depends on the person using the checklist and whether they're motivated to use it or obliged to.

<comment><USER17> I worked at a company that used mandatory checklists for some operational roles, they definitely cut down on the number of mistakes (at least the mistakes the checklist was crafted to address). It made people more accountable: whereas previously a certain mistake might be human error (unavoidable), if it still happened after the checklist then either somebody didn't fill out the checklist (and could be punished for negligence) or lied by checking a box on checklist without actually doing the thing (and could be severely punished for dishonesty). This motivated people to thoroughly check the things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Walmart, Target and some others have lists of low prices drugs for common conditions.

[https://www.walmart.com/cp/$4-prescriptions/1078664](https://www.walmart.com/cp/$4-prescriptions/1078664)

</comment><comment><USER20> That's because they have no incentive to, and for the most part, neither do their patients.

</comment><comment><USER21> The industry is medieval. I had to get a CT scan in the ER while traveling once and the only way the medical records office could communicate to get the scan was fax or email, and they sent me the images by mailing a CD (in 2018)!

<comment><USER22> What's wrong with using email to communicate with the medical records office?

And as CT scans are private information, why would you assume it would be Ok to make them available through a public server and send them over the internet?

<comment><USER23> I think they typo'd "mail" and wrote "email" unintentionally. Or at least that's the only way their post makes sense to me.

<comment><USER21> yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why would they be fast? It's not their money. The incentive is not there. Meanwhile on the other side switching anything is work. Of course it doesn't get done super quick.</comment>


Vivian Maier's undeveloped film on hold amid legal fight - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-vivian-maier-photos-legal-fight-20140912-story.html

<comment><USER2> I find it ironic that the bit that bothers me the most about this article is the expressed need to be "touched up to remove imperfections"

That's one of the beauties of any analog medium - the imperfections. I'm sad that someone who would curate such a collection would feel the need to remove those imperfections.

<comment><USER3> Whether digital or analogue, it can take a great deal of work to make a print from a negative. Ansel Adams work was largely made in the darkroom process, manipulating the image heavily - and he was fantastic at it.

<comment><USER2> True, but all we have left of this particular artist is the negatives; manipulating them is changing it from their art to the art of the person doing the manipulation.

Not a bad thing in and of itself, but it represents a loss, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Need to be a member to read the article.

<comment><USER5> It also works if you disable javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps creating derivative work could be way to go. Just developing, scanning and retouching images might be enough in some countries.

<comment> vertex-four You need permission to create derivative works.

<comment><USER6> In some countries derivative work is covered by fair use. Also the fact he has negatives could indicate permission (in some countries).

Anyway, I am just trying to help, thanks for down votes. If they hunt some remote cousin in France, re-importing seems legit.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What kind of content/data do you pay for regularly and why? - <AUTHOR> Could be paid newsletters, paywalled content etc. And how do you assess a particular content to be valuable enough to be paid for? <comment><USER2> I subscribe to The Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek.

I also bought a lifetime subscription to an imageboard site that is not supported by advertising (that couldn't be supported by advertising.)

<comment><USER3> Which image board?</comment></comment>


Google IO VC Panel - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPyBQG5cMog&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> Dave McClure comes off pretty poorly in my opinion, everyone else came off very intelligent with excellent points.

EDIT: To back up my point about Dave, he focuses completely on building profits. Its easy to say "Hey Apple makes 7cents on the dollar" but it shows a lack of foresight.

<comment><USER3> Except he didn't say that at all.

I believe pg commented that we're all slaves to Steve Jobs and Dave McClure remarked that 70 cents on the dollar is not a bad wage for slavery. His point was that you can hardly call it slavery when your cut of the profits is significantly bigger than your master's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> pg mentioned in passing that he would not get involved with Android projects. He'd rather fund Chrome projects. Wonder if he would elaborate on that ?

<comment><USER5> I didn't say I'd rather fund Chrome projects, but that it seemed Chrome might do more to protect us from an Apple monopoly on smartphone apps than Android.

The more powerful Chrome lets browser-based apps be, the less developers need to build native apps to do what they want. At the limit of that process, the iPhone and iPad are merely beautiful devices that run browsers. Safari, of course, but if Chrome took the lead in adding features to browsers to let apps do more, Safari would have to follow suit, however grudgingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of those dudes looked at his cell phone while he was talking to the audience. That is just sad.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's Brad Feld. He has a rule that if his wife calls, he picks up the phone no matter what.

I do the same thing with my wife, I think it's reasonable.

<comment><USER6> Is it frequently the case that your immediate attention averts disasters? My own experience is that I rarely avert disasters, especially over the phone. In fact, I don't know of a case where that's happened.

Of course, I don't really begrudge you your rule, but if you were giving a presentation, I don't think I'd show up, unless it were a play about a person who answers his phone a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the rule for two-fold: a. if my wants to talk to me at any time she can - this makes her feel special and b. other people need to know that my relationship with my wife takes precedence over every other relationship.

I agree with you - I probably won't change the outcome of a disaster if I know immediately.

<comment><USER6> That's interesting that it has nothing to do with crisis (that was just my assumption)-- your wife probably appreciates it.

My revulsion (at Mr. Feld, not you) comes not from the importance of his relationship with his wife, but from the implied disrespect to the audience. When I'm speaking to a crowd, or even just talking to some friends, I think that I should focus on doing that-- listening to what they say or telling them what I think. I can't think exactly of how to explain why that kind of focus is valuable to me.

In the context of a wealthy VC talking to aspiring startup folks, I also think it's pretentious. Maybe Mr. Feld is an exception, and this is just his one quirk, but it seems like part of a type of subtle control game that I don't like to be around.

<comment><USER7> I tend to have the opposite reaction. If I see someone putting their family ahead of other things it makes me think that person probably has good character (because the path of least resistance is often _not_ to do that).

Good character counts for a lot in my estimation of people (e.g. when I'm trying to decide whether I would like to work with someone).

<comment><USER6> I agree on the high valuing of good character.

But I don't think Brad Feld was putting just his wife ahead of the audience-- he was putting anyone who dialed his number ahead of the audience. In the video, I believe it turned out to be his aunt calling.

If he had some wife-specific ringtone, or some other way of making it a wife- specific alarm, I'd be 100% on his side, but as it is, I still think it's inconsiderate to the audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is sort of off topic, but check out pg's thighs toward the end of the video, he looks ripped!

Do you like, do bike-marathons or something pg?

Edit: Downvote? Really? I'm not being rude or anything.. I'm just saying; the guys legs look great.</comment>


Newvem calls in Dome9 to harden Amazon cloud workloads - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/cloud/newvem-calls-in-dome9-to-harden-amazon-cloud-workloads/

<comment><USER2> 6.5M LinkedIn passwords hacked. A good reminder to close your internal services' ports - passwords are just not enough.</comment>


Little Known Ways to Think about Discipline - <AUTHOR> http://7goldfish.com/Little%20know%20ways%20to%20think%20about%20dicipline <comment><USER2> Part of the quote from Wikipedia says discipline "is usually understood to be synonymous with self control".

I usually think of self-discipline and self-control as being different sides of the same coin.

I think of self-discipline as "doing the things you should"; like studying, working hard, doing things to accomplish personal goals.

I think of self-control as "not doing things you shouldn't"; like overeating, eating junk food, smoking, indulging in dangerous substances.

Both of them are important to having a productive life.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hypothesis: Habits are the highest-yield form of discipline.

We humans seem to have a sort of behavioral inertia, whether it's showing up at a job, maintaining an MMO addiction, or brushing our teeth. The ideal state is to develop positive habits (writing for an hour every morning, cooking a healthy meal every day after work, practicing the bass every Saturday afternoon), that reflect one's deepest desires. Deviating from existing habits, good or bad, is expensive in terms of willpower (brain glucose); but once a new habit is established, maintaining it becomes the default, and suddenly it requires very little energy.

<comment><USER4> You have an interesting take on the issue. The question then becomes how do you form and stick to habits?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone should mention the Marshmallow Experiment [1].

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

<comment><USER6> Interesting that you should bring that up. I'm the author, and I talk about the Marshmallow experiment a great deal in the next article [http://7goldfish.com/in_defence_of_cognitive_bais](http://7goldfish.com/in_defence_of_cognitive_bais)

<comment><USER7> It is certainly true that increasing bias/approximation error can lead to decreased variance/estimation error, or even to an efficiently solvable problem rather than an inefficiently solvable problem. But somehow I don't think that's what's usually meant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Feh. It's easy to talk about discipline when you've already decided on a (nominally) terminal goal from which the utility of all subgoals can flow. But what the people who speak of "motivation" say is: why should I act for negative expected utility?

Discipline is easy for the motivated.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sharing this to followup to the "screw motivation, you need discipline" post. Here's a quick summary:

* The writer makes a distinction I wouldn't- that discipline is only discipline when it's applied to things you don't enjoy.

* "Discipline is about willpower over base desires". I agree. Could also be framed as short-term vs long-term thinking and planning.

* "Discipline is, in some sense, enslaving ourselves to an ideal or goal. A critical component of this definition is that the setting of the goals, the choosing of our ideals is not part of discipline. " Fairrr enough. Important point that discipline without good goal-setting isn't worth much.

* "If discipline is a reduction of freedom, an intentional choosing of suffering, then why on earth would anyone want to have it? The obvious answer is because it lets you achieve goals. That is to say, it increases the number of possible things you can do. Paradoxically, increasing the number of goals you can achieve is pretty much the definition of increasing optionality, or freedom." Yup.

* "Intentional optionality reduction need not be an act of self-discipline. One person may exercise discipline to not smoke the cigarette, another might throw away the cigarettes. A classical example is "Odysseus tied to the mast"." Classic commitment devices.

* "People who are ruled by their passions and appetites can be ruled just as efficiently by any political system willing to pander to those things, while those who control themselves can't reliably be controlled by anyone else. Thus the Roman government regularly sent Rome's philosophers into exile, failing Chinese dynasties praised Confucius to the skies while doing away with anybody who took his teachings too seriously, and modern America uses every trick in the media's book to marginalize those who remind us that the life of a channel-surfing couch potato might not express the highest potentials of our humanity." thatsdeepman.jpg

* Timescales: "I generally separate discipline & willpower, primarily on the time-axis. Much of what I have read on the subject seems to agree with this approach, describing willpower as a short term thing, deployed over a duration of minutes, or for the hardiest of souls hours, while self-discipline extends over days, or possibly indefinitely. Many disciplines are intended to last indefinitely."

* Interesting thoughts on discipline and empathy: "Working in the "all-is-now" perspective, I come to a very different answer, which is, "They would choose to suffer for the benefit of someone else". In the most frequently described cases, "someone else" is either their own past or future selves, but one can easily imagine acts of self-discipline that are for the benefit of others. One example might be a hungry mother giving food to her child. Another example might be Pheidippides running himself to exhaustion in order to recruit the aid of Sparta for the Battle of Marathon. In this way, discipline and generosity begin to look confusingly similar."

<comment><USER8> In the physical crafts there is another aspect of "enslaving ourselves to an ideal or goal" mostly revolving around safety.

How many decades ago was I taught to never power up a lathe without immediately touching the chuck key in its holder (aka not in the chuck...) or never touch a table saw blade (while changing it or screwing around with adjusting it) without immediately prior touching the metal of its power cable (aka not plugged in)

None of those are taught as in book learning but taught as in a discipline. And look, all these years later, still got all my eyes and fingers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Both this article and the article about discipline and motivation posted yesterday distinguishes discipline from motivation, and then say something about how discipline is about controlling base-emotions, or ignoring them. Both of these articles are wrong, or at least, only come to a superficial understanding of motivation and discipline.

Exerting will power over your base emotions like that is a losing game over the long run. While it is a skill worth learning how to do, it is only a small tool within a larger spectrum of tools when dealing with aspects of your consciousness, mind, and life.

First of all, it's not about controlling your base emotions. Emotions are already there pervasively lurking everywhere, they come and go. They constitute a large portion of your consciousness, and the attempt try to "control" it is something socially conditioned in us, and the conventional way of "controlling" emotions robs us of what emotions brings to the human experience. In an effort to control emotions, you start judging them as good or bad, and react to suppress ro amplify them when they arise. Over time, this kind of self-directed judgmental attitude will ossify your mind, and you become less and less adaptable to changing circumstances and the unexpected.

So the first insight is this: _it 's not about trying to control emotions, it's about not allowing emotions to control you._ You don't allow the feeling of elation and excitement (motivation) control when you actually work on things, and you don't allow the feeling of anxiety (aversions) and ill-will (nerd rage) control when you _don't_ work. When you've stripped away all the reactions to impulses and external factors, all they "I am doing this because X", what you are left with is the pure choice of whether you do something or not.

This might sound like it is nitpicking, since it superficially takes you to the same place as "controlling emotions". The key part is that, by acknowledging your emotions while at the same time, not necessarily allowing them to control you will eventually gain you greater space, and greater freedom of action. Your world will get bigger. Whereas, attempting to control emotions will eventually narrow the options you have (or think you have). Your world will get smaller.

Lastly, by coming from the perspective that you are not controlled by motivations or aversions, then having worked with it, eventually you'll come to be able to use motivations and aversions. When you can discern the difference between wants and needs, that is, something shiny or "cool", and something that feels deeply fulfilling and rewarding, you would be capable of inspiring others to follow your vision. You don't need to throw motivation completely out, you simply don't allow yourself to be controlled by it. Further, by being able to acknowledge your aversions, being in equanimity with them, and still set out to accomplish your goals, you would be able to persist even when time gets rough.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am inclined to believe that discipline has mostly to do with distractions in life. The older generation of people were the most disciplined, and they had less distractions.

Just a quick thought on reading only the headline.</comment>


Hacking Our Nervous Systems - <AUTHOR> http://digg.com/2015/hacking-the-nervous-system

<comment><USER2> "But it's very clear that the human is one entity: mind and body are one. It sounds logical but it's not how we looked at it before. We didn't have the science to agree with what may seem intuitive. Now we have new data and new insights."

This is one of my favourite things about science. People of science aren't afraid of admitting that they are wrong.

<comment><USER3> agreed, definitely why it's one of my favorite disciplines (you can consider science a discipline right?).

I always admire pursuits that strive to be objective, and science is definitely an embodiment of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People have been hacking other people's nervous systems for years. For black- hat examples, consider scams, advertising, and nocebo effects.

</comment><comment><USER5> Once again meditation is the answer!</comment>


Ask HN: Any 1Password Users? - <AUTHOR>

http://agilebits.com/products/1Password/ <comment><USER2> I use 1Password on Windows and iOS, and on Mac when I get one in the near future. It's awesome, and I feel so much better using it than LastPass. First, it works nicer and integrates with sites much better. Then, I feel better keeping my passwords directly in my own control!</comment>


Ask HN: Flask or Django in Terms of Scalability - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Django, if you like a lot of structure and boilerplate, Flask if you want to go minimal. Depends a lot on your use case and expertise though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm good with both in this case it would be more like enterprise app and I'm not sure how can i integrate a front end framework with this such as vue or react</comment></comment>


Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html <comment><USER2> Joel writes this like bloat doesn't exist, and discusses how programs are large because of all the features they have.

Two contrasting examples spring to mind:

\- Outlook 2010 in Exchange mode usually occupies about 50MB of memory, at least for me. Think of all the functionality Outlook 2010 has in those 50MB.

\- An old notebook I used a few years ago had a disk-parking feature, in case of drops. The service application that parks the disk (if my memory serves) would occupy about 200MB of memory. Think of all the functionality this program had. It could stop the disk. It could start it. Fantastic.

That's bloatware. Especially as I had 2GB of RAM at the time.

P.S. Yes, many over-large programs can get swapped. No, swap is not a magic solution, and happily tanks performance.

In summary, I do agree with many of the points Joel makes, but I always hope that programmers at least _think_ about memory implications, if only for a little bit. Some co-workers and I were discussing a small utility we were developing. A very simple, fast structure was suggested. We then took a moment to consider memory, and realized in our expected worst-case workload, the process would require upwards of 64GB of RAM. This is why you need to spend at least a moment thinking about memory! It is cheap, but not infinite, and oh- so-easy to chew through _gobs_.

<comment><USER3> My wife's HP laptop had some software that monitored the "audio mute" key so it could turn the associated LED on and off. That herculean task required a constant 50% of the CPU.

<comment><USER2> To make matters more amusing, this laptop was in all probability dual core, which means the software was pegging one of the cores.

<comment><USER3> I think you are right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The more I read Joel Spolsky, the more I realize how wrong he is. He's like the Thomas Friedman of software. He writes lots of things that sound good, but aren't actually true.

For example:

 _In fact, there are lots of great reasons for bloatware: For one, if programmers don 't have to worry about how large their code is, they can ship it sooner. And that means you get more features, and features make your life better (when you use them) and don't usually hurt (when you don't)._

Every single part of that statement is false. Your programmers _should_ be worrying about how large their code is. If they're not, and your competitors are, then your competition will release a program that does everything your program does, but better and faster. So what if they're a couple months (or even a few years) behind? First mover advantage is relatively short-lived, anyway. Microsoft Word wasn't the first word processor and Microsoft Excel wasn't the first spreadsheet. Google wasn't the first search engine. Facebook wasn't the first social network.

As far as more features being helpful when you use them and harmless when you don't, well, that's inaccurate too. I find it very ironic that he uses Excel as his poster child for this, since the addition of features has absolutely hurt Excel's usability. These days, Excel is a tool that's comparable to vim or emacs. It's very powerful, but it has a ferocious learning curve to match. Moreover, he overlooks the fact that more features mean more bugs. I think the success of various web-based, minimalist tools has shown that users are quite willing to accept fewer features, if the features that are present work flawlessly.

And even the points that were true as of publication (e.g. ever shrinking prices for CPU cycles and RAM) are no longer true today. If you're writing code today, CPU cycles are definitely not free. You get roughly 4 billion cycles per core per second on a desktop, and somewhere between 1 and 2 billion if you're on a mobile device. Memory is slightly less constrained, but it's rare for desktops to ship with more than 8 GB of RAM, and it's unheard for mobile devices to have more than 1 or 2.

So no, I don't think bloatware is a "mental health problem". I think it's a real issue, and one that's only going to get worse as we run into the limits of Moore's Law.

<comment><USER5> _Every single part of that statement is false. Your programmers should be worrying about how large their code is. If they 're not, and your competitors are, then your competition will release a program that does everything your program does, but better and faster. So what if they're a couple months (or even a few years) behind? First mover advantage is relatively short-lived, anyway. Microsoft Word wasn't the first word processor and Microsoft Excel wasn't the first spreadsheet. Google wasn't the first search engine. Facebook wasn't the first social network._

You're equating code size with code quality, which in my opinion is an unqualified assumption. I'd further argue that its not as if programming hours exist in a vacuum, and its not as if one makes a binary choice whether or not to spend time reducing code size; development time is a precious, precious thing. When given the choice between:

\- reducing the size of Microsoft Excel from 15mb to 14mb -- and thus increasing sales by X, where X is the number of people who had hard disk space for 14mb but not 15mb

\- and implementing some sort of stretch goal feature (let's call it PowerPivot v0.0.1), and thus increasing sales by Y, where Y is the number of people who make their spreadsheet software purchase decision based on the presence of that feature

I'm fairly confident X < Y.

<comment><USER4> _You 're equating code size with code quality, which in my opinion is an unqualified assumption._

Unfortunately, most of the software engineering literature disagrees. We know few things in software engineering. One of them is more code == more bugs.

Your comment about X > Y is true, but you're replacing one false binary choice with another. Again, as Apple has demonstrated over and over again with every single one of their products, fewer features, implemented well will outearn products that have more features implemented poorly.

So, I'd argue that the choice isn't between reducing the size of Microsoft Excel from 15MB to 14MB and adding a stretch goal feature. It's between _keeping_ Excel at 14MB (or whatever its old size was), fixing bugs and polishing the hell out of it or _growing_ Excel to 15MB and adding some more buggy half-assed features to fill out the checklist on the back of the box.

<comment><USER6> _Unfortunately, most of the software engineering literature disagrees. We know few things in software engineering. One of them is more code == more bugs._

Quite so. I wish there were more research into the consequences of this. And more teaching of it too, for that matter. It ought to be a much bigger deal than it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" Ohhh. It eats up all your memory. I see. Actually, well, no, it doesn't. Ever since Windows 1.0, in 1987, the operating system only loads pages as they are used. If you have a 15MB executable and you only use code that spans 2MB worth of pages, you will only ever load 2MB from disk to RAM."_

This is such a bullshitty argument. The chance that the pages that you need to load to accomplish a simple task _(say, adding up 20 numbers)_ with a program capable of doing many many things _(say, excel)_ will be comparable to the number of pages that you need to load to perform the task in a far more limited program _(say, `dc`)_ is infinitesimal. In practice, it just isn't going to happen.

Using small programs to accomplish small tasks is what Linus Åkerlund was arguing in that post ([https://web.archive.org/web/20000305231633/http://user.tnine...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000305231633/http://user.tninet.se/~uxm165t/bloatware.html)). Now, there are _very obvious_ reasons why "the UNIX way" is not for everybody, and why monolithic featureful programs have their place, but Joel is delusional if he thinks that Linus is incorrect in practice on the memory usage point.

I bet I can start and close 'dc' several thousand times in the time it takes Excel to start once. Not a fair comparison by any measure, but nevertheless one that Joel invites by attacking Linus' article.

</comment><comment><USER8> I strongly disagree with Joel here. It's true that storage is much cheaper today, but every piece of software I use is downloaded from the internet. Not everyone has 10MBit connections. If you make software, and especially updates, unnecessarily large, you will cut off a percentage of your users.

I'm not saying you should axe features to make the app smaller. But please, if you distribute software, spend a few hours and try to make the download size as small as possible.

<comment><USER9> Note that this was written in 2001 when the statement "every piece of software I use is downloaded from the internet" would have been ridiculous at the time. Not saying your point isn't valid, but just pointing out that its not something that should have been addressed by the article.

<comment><USER7> > _2001 when the statement "every piece of software I use is downloaded from > the internet" would have been ridiculous at the time._

Not for the sort of people that he is arguing against in this post, such as Linus Åkerlund who is arguing for using computers "the UNIX way" with GNU/Linux. Downloading your distro from the internet was very old-hat by 2001.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Joel is probably my favourite tech blogger. That said, some perspective on how old this post is:

2001 - 1993 == 8

2013 - 2001 == 12

</comment><comment><USER11> The 20% thing is interesting, but Microsoft themselves later empirically established through application usage metrics that there is an _ordering_ of features.

That is, some features (eg, italics) are used more than others (eg, macros). Such an ordering can be used to established, with considerable confidence, the "20% that 80% of customers use".

Which is how we got the Ribbon. It was intended to place the most commonly used features front and centre.

<comment><USER7> I remember I once spent a good 10 minutes trying to find "print" in microsoft word, with it's ribbon. I knew I could just hit ctrl-p of course, but I kept at it because I was baffled at how hidden it was. IIRC, I eventually found it in a menu, not in the ribbon, that appeared if you clicked some button on the top left.

I refuse to believe that much design work went into that infernal thing. I am sure somebody _billed_ a lot of design time for it, but were they actually putting thought into it? I doubt it.

<comment><USER12> Office 2010 finally restored the file menu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 15 mb?

I was using Excel on the Macintosh for laboratory analysis as early as 1987. It could run on two 800K floppies. So, 1.6 mb. It had 80% of the functionality I ever used Excel for.

<comment><USER14> The version of Excel mentioned in the article was Excel 5.0 for Windows, that came out in 1993. No one is denying that previous versions were been smaller.

<comment><USER13> The old submission title seemed to indicate that Excel came out in 1993 and was 15 mb. Someone has since corrected the title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think both the article and the comments miss the point. If you take a Linux distro, it is actually bloated, in the sense that it has a lot of useless stuff that take space. However, it's built on a solid, stable architecture which allow bloat management. Same with vim: I have seen vim setups that are complete bloat, with hundreds of plugins, and even plugins managing plugins. But this is managed, manageable, because based on a well defined base.

There is a comment about Django: yes, bloated and managed, because it is based on python, which is the same, a minimal and solid set of orthogonal concepts upon which bloat is easily managed.

</comment><comment><USER16> This really nicely sums up why I use Django for every Python web project I do instead of something like Flask. Django's size doesn't negatively impact me in any way and the fact that it has so many features and a huge number of libraries and docs means I'm less likely to need to do a lot of building when requirements change.

I think this extends to anything that calls itself a microframework -- being small isn't a meaningful feature unless it actually impacts your app.

</comment><comment><USER17> The only real bloat I know are vendor specific programs that come for free with certain hardware. I don't know who writes such shit sotware. From the HP Windows driver suite (not the driver itself but all those useless programs which come along with it; funny enough hplip is the best thing on linux), horrible tools which come with motherboards ("omg make the ui look like it is a spaceship cockpit"), shitty tools from laptop manufacturers for wlan, bluetooth and so on. who the heck writes these!?

Commercial programs are mostly not bloated and don't scatter around the whole system.

</comment><comment><USER18> Also note, this article was published in 2001. If disk storage was cheap then, it's an order of magnitude (or more) cheaper now.

<comment><USER7> It is cheaper, but probably not by as much as you might think since many people are transitioning to SSDs which set us back several years in terms of price and capacity.

My case is extremely non-typical, but my current primary computer has 30 GB of storage, which coincidentally is what my primary computer had about one decade ago (of course this is _much_ faster, in a laptop, and I have I have a very large amount networked storage available to me...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Word processors should load instantaneously. Photoshop should load instantaneously. Windows should load. Instantaneously.

</comment><comment><USER20> Before you comment please note that this article was written in 2001 almost 12 years back.

</comment><comment><USER21> When I was using Word on the Mac in 1992 (version 5? 6?), it even had it's own built in screen saver... I guess in case you didn't want to look at flying toasters or whatever.

<comment><USER12> Ah, Word 5.1 for Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yeah, storage is cheap, let's go wild and add some features that might be useful for a handful of people. Reminds of time when excel had simple flight simulator in it...

</comment><comment><USER23> So it's like excel is getting smaller? Come in please. Sounds like some of that "new math" to me....

</comment><comment><USER24> ... _and then the journalist tries to find the "word count" feature which they need because most journalists have precise word count requirements, and it's not there, because it's in the "80% that nobody uses_...

The solution is not to ship a half-baked "word count" feature by default, that some journalists will like and others won't, but to make sure that the application is thoroughly pluggable.

From there, people can set up entire plugin repositories in which journalists can find dozens of plugins that all specifically apply to journalist situations.

Why not have our cake and eat it too? We'll have a very small core application, while everybody can click and install whatever extensions that apply to their specific situation.

Furthermore, why would non-journalist users have to deal with journalist- specific plugins installed by default? It would just confuse the 80%.

Bloatware is NOT the solution to the "80/20" problem. This is and example of the real solution:

[http://plugins.jquery.com](http://plugins.jquery.com)

<comment><USER25> > Why not have our cake and eat it too? We'll have a very small core > application, while everybody can click and install whatever extensions that > apply to their specific situation.

That's an operating system.</comment></comment>


Polymorphism and Complex Conditionals - <AUTHOR> http://coreylearned.blogspot.com/2010/02/polymorphism-and-complex-conditionals.html

<comment><USER2> An excellent example of why measuring performance is vastly preferable to speculating about it. I often find that what I imagine to be the case and what the measurements tell me are two completely different things.</comment>


Open Rights Group has launched a UK Censorship Monitoring API and Botnet - <AUTHOR> https://www.blocked.org.uk/

<comment><AUTHOR> For the past 8 months we've been working on building a series of probes;

\- Android [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.org.blocked...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.org.blocked.app)

\- Python [https://github.com/openrightsgroup/OrgProbe](https://github.com/openrightsgroup/OrgProbe)

\- Raspberry PI images [https://github.com/openrightsgroup/lepidopter](https://github.com/openrightsgroup/lepidopter))

And an open API to power them: [https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Censorship_Monitoring_...](https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Censorship_Monitoring_Project_API)

This is helping to build a picture of what the UK Governments Internet Blocking/Filtering/Censorship actually looks like.

You can submit URLs to be tested by visiting [https://www.Blocked.org.uk](https://www.Blocked.org.uk) by installing the Android app or by tweeting a URL with the hashtag #IsBlocked

Once we receive a URL it is dispatched to all probes over a period of time where it is checked against a know list of blocking methods.

The results are returned back to the API for public evaluation.

For example: [https://www.blocked.org.uk/results?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.yc...](https://www.blocked.org.uk/results?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)

Please help us build a picture of UK Internet Censorship by adding URLs to be tested, by helping develop new probes (browser extensions, an iPhone client etc etc) or just by spreading the word that [https://Blocked.org.uk](https://Blocked.org.uk) is available.

Please also see [https://www.blocked.org.uk/faq](https://www.blocked.org.uk/faq) which will explain the level of filtering enabled on some of the probes which will explain why some sites may appear blocked even if you, being on the same ISP, can reach said URL.

<comment> mike-cardwell Please consider freeing the data and make it downloadable as a simple CSV. I'd like a list of all of the sites blocked by particular ISPs...

<comment><AUTHOR> Snapshots are made available: [https://www.blocked.org.uk/assets/data/alexa_100k_isp_latest...](https://www.blocked.org.uk/assets/data/alexa_100k_isp_latest_status_2014_06_29.ods)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Wow, I had not expected this. My personal blog (which is about technology) is being blocked by one of the ISPs. I don't host porn nor have I ever, so why is it blocked behind their porn filter? Interesting....

[https://www.blocked.org.uk/results?url=http://lucb1e.com](https://www.blocked.org.uk/results?url=http://lucb1e.com)

Edit: TalkTalk live chat support reports that I am not being blocked. Citation:

> I can confirm that is not blocked by our Adult Filters as your website does > not have any adult content.

So it seems blocked.org.uk has a false-positive...

<comment><USER3> TalkTalk are a completely awful ISP. Not sure what the US equivalent would be, but they're the kind who do promotions of "Broadband for £3/month"-level. You get what you pay for service-wise, but they are also by far the most enthusiastic ISP around when it comes to censorship; they have a spider that follows their users to all URLs they visit to categorise the sites[1] (giving them the nickname StalkStalk), and have been doing this long before the current set of idiots in Parliament forced censorship in (at least since 2011).

I'm in a similar situation, one site I run is blocked both by StalkStalk and BT. No porn, no other 'adult' content; it's deliberately kept PG-13 to use the US ratings.

[1]Check your logs for HuaweiSymantecSpider. It obeys robots.txt though, so a quick "Disallow: /" in robots.txt stops it, although they still grab content from unencrypted pages via DPI.

<comment><USER2> No HuaweiSymantecSpider in my logs in the past 8 months (grepped access.log), but the site is available over both http and https so they might have classified it using DPI (talk about evil...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah I knew something was in the works as Andrews & Arnold were writing about obtaining connections from ISPs to test what was blocked. Great to know what is being censored (if you are not on A&A).

<comment><USER5> "(if you are not on A&A)."

Or if you're on any of the ISPs who do not have filters, including but not limited to A&A.

<comment><USER6> Who are the other ISPs who do not have filters?

<comment><USER7> There is no handy list that I know of.

The big six definitely do have the filters. Some smaller players do too, but a fair few don't. The only people I know for sure are A&A because they put their heads above the parapet and made a stand.

Some simply haven't implemented it because it would be work and they therefore won't until forced to (rather than because of any moral objection) - they'll not make any statement about not doing it as it will look bad if they eventually do.

There may of course be others in A&A's position who haven't done as good a job getting the message out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been checking various websites I go on that are completely fine for kids. It's amazing what's getting blocked. One example according to that website is, TalkTalk blocks "[http://www.writingexcuses.com/"](http://www.writingexcuses.com/") It's a podcast that teaches story writing.

Blocking that is insane!

And the blocked website itself is blocked on two ISPs [https://www.blocked.org.uk/results?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblocked....](https://www.blocked.org.uk/results?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblocked.org.uk)

<comment><USER9> I think TalkTalk is either using a whitelist or an oversensitive keyword filter.

<comment><USER10> My personal website is blocked by Talk Talk apparently. I guess compiler writing must be harmful for children.

<comment><USER11> Here we go. If a lot of harmless or potentially even useful material gets blocked, people who want to use that material will simply opt out or route round the blocking, hence making it pointless.

<comment><USER10> I kind of hope they overreach drastically for exactly that reason. It'll be a lot easier to get the filters dropped entirely if we can attack them with "useful website X is blocked for no good reason" over and over and over again, than if we have to argue using examples that many people would actually have a problem with.

<comment><USER11> OK, so I'll be keeping an eye on personal Web sites put up by teachers (of which there are many, a couple of examples[1], [2], neither blocked to my knowledge) that can be accessed from UKERNA provided College connections but become blocked by domestic connections.

[1] [http://www.hegartymaths.com/](http://www.hegartymaths.com/)

[2] [http://www.themathsteacher.com/](http://www.themathsteacher.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just learned that one of my personal sites is blocked on BT and TalkTalk... there is zero adult or other inappropriate content on it. Time to complain, I guess, but I'm sure they will just go straight to /dev/null :(

<comment><USER12> Have you considered legal action?

<comment><USER3> Nope. It's a medium sized site I don't get any money out of, not linked to any business. I suppose I could theoretically small claims court them, but I'm not sure if I'd win as they can probably piss about with their customers' connections in whatever way they please due to their T&Cs :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sad to see that The Best Page In The Universe ([http://maddox.xmission.com](http://maddox.xmission.com)) seems to be blocked by a non-zero number of larger ISPs.

Obviously all those children need to be protected from harsh reviews of their artwork.</comment>


Start Now: 6 Reasons Why This Economy Is Good For Startups - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/7559/Start-Now-6-Reasons-Why-This-Economy-Is-Good-For-Startups.aspx <comment><USER3> He's not the first person to make this point in the last couple of months, but it bears repeating in case anyone's missing the point.

I think some of the points are poorly timed though:

 _The market is flooded with good people._

I don't think it is. All of the truly good people I know are still gainfully employed or doing well with their own gigs. The economy hasn't hit _that_ hard yet to force good people (and I don't mean "good people" in a virtuous way but a _virtuosic_ way) back into hunting for a job.

Ditto for all the "cheap stuff" the article mentions. Sure, there are some deals to be had now, but try in six months - it'll be nuts!

What _really_ makes the current time good for startups is _not_ the economy, but the _fear_ surrounding the economy. Google's clawing back the 20% time - <USER2> serious source of R&D for them - and many companies are reducing their research, halting the release of new products, etc. Work on that fear. Develop and research while other people aren't.. and you'll be in a really strong position by late 2009 or 2010.

<comment><USER4> Maybe the good people aren't yet forced to look for new jobs yet. But cutbacks like Google's will encourage talented people to seek new opportunities.

<comment><USER3> I'd agree with that. They'll still be looking around their current salary bracket (or higher) though. The economy hasn't "bitten" enough yet for you to get good people at a discounted rate, and it probably won't get to that stage without some further significant crises.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: length of "vacation" between leaving job and starting own company - <AUTHOR>

I've just left my daytime job to start my own company and have consciously decided to take a break to recoup/recover before starting the new adventure. How long did you take, did you feel like you should have taken longer/less and why? Thanks! <comment><USER2> A pause between 2 jobs should be at least 2 weeks IMHO. But for your own company, I'd say you should start right away? Aren't you excited? Can't you stop yourself from thinking of it all day long?

You could go for a trip while working as you are now free.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whatever time you decide, I'd recommend you pick a "start date" for your own company, and stick to it. That morning, get up early, shower and dress sharply, and report to your new "office" at 9am. Maybe not literally, but try to get into the mindset of productivity and dedication to your new job. Especially after a week or three off, it would be very easy to ease into it lazily and half-heartedly. But if you are starting your own company, you'll want to hit the groudn running, with momentum and acceleration.

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you need to recoup/recover from? This is your dream (or I assume it is) - so I don't really understand why you need to take a break. You've crossed a major line - celebrate by rocking the #$(&* out of your new opportunity. I took no time - I couldn't wait. Too excited to work on the 1,234,567 things that needed to get done!

Or take a vacation if you want to. You're the effing boss now - ain't nobody telling you what to do anymore.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just took a one year trip. I think it helped me to get a lot of perspective on my life, this might be interesting to you or not.

I was on the verge of starting my own business but I back tracked as I saw it in a different light, I gained new perspective on it.

I spent one year in South America learning Spanish, studying yoga and mediation in Thailand and India, learning bit of Chinese, learning to run and running a 10k and getting fit. Getting a real low paying job in America selling fireworks. ect...

Now I am back at the full time gig and getting shipped off to Puerto Rico to build a solar farm, something that would have never been on the table if I didn't take the time.

two weeks seems so laughable to me.

I spent 12 days in a silent meditation retreat, that is almost two weeks there.

One way to look at life is through the lens of time, we all have x amount of time, we get to choose how to use it. Everybody is given time, rich people and poor people all have this x amount it's a great equalizer.

My year abroad cost about $17,000, that is an incredible deal.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to hear more about this. Have you written about it in a blog post or somewhere?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd say 4 weeks is perfect. Take your family, friends, {girl,boy}friend and enjoy the most. The time you will spend now you won't get it after you get into the Startup race.

</comment><comment><USER8> It depends what you can afford and are willing to lose. If you have a lot of money the bank take as much time as you want. How long is it going to take to get this adventure profitable. If it's a service business and your doing the work and you already have a client that's one thing. If you have a business idea and no proof of revenue I would get to work rgith away.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've never taken more than a day/weekend between jobs. I've been in the workforce for 10 years, 4 jobs, 1 and 2 overlapped by a week, 2 and 3 overlapped by 3 months, and I took a weekend off between 3 and 4. Work is a reality that you can't avoid, and if you're not excited to get started at your next job then why even switch jobs.

<comment><USER10> Work to live, don't live to work

<comment><USER9> I guess, I mean, I love software development and even if I were at home I would be doing it. Also, if I were leaving my day job to start my own business and I... wanted time off before doing it, I would be very concerned I was making a bad decision.

Anyhow, I've been fortunate to have jobs with awesome PTO. With 20+ days of PTO I didn't see the necessity of going a few weeks without a paycheck.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I made this website, thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.addekt.com/ <comment><USER2> Wow, another web directory? :) A HN curated website-directory is a nice idea though.

Which kind of feedback do you want to have?

* SSL missing (It's free today -> letsencrypt)

* Your URL structure looks half-baked /index.php/category/social/ (remove the index.php to have clean URIs)

* The website is way too bloated with scripts and external files. Merge them, remove some effects/plugins or improve initial website load by utilizing HTTP2.

* Impressum missing

I stop here because it would get to detailed. You might want to implement a feedback widget like STOMT: [https://github.com/stomt/stomt-javascript- sdk](https://github.com/stomt/stomt-javascript-sdk) That way you can collect feedback and improve the website over time together with a community.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't really see the need of those buggy effects. It really bogs down performance. You can easily tell us the info that you want through a more lightweight design. Just look at Hacker News website and how simple and awesome it is. There isn't really a need for bloated effects in my opinion.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm secretly hoping for the HN community to take use of this opportunity and share our knowledge of the best websites out there among each other via this website, especially in the 'technology' category.</comment>


A pandemic of power grabs: Autocrats see opportunity in disaster - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/04/23/autocrats-see-opportunity-in-disaster <comment> el-salvador My country is on that list.

The president/government is using Twitter to:

* Order military lockdowns in cities

* Defect blame to all political oponents

* Threaten to shutdown the largest bank and mobile phone operator

* Bot networks that attack any dissenting view

* A government official publicly using the twitter api to identify tweets from the oppositon

* Order the military and police to use letal force if someone does not comply.

We've had somewhat working separation of powers.

It is terrible to see my country turning into an autocratic rule, and how the government is misusing Twitter to make that happen :/

<comment><USER2> > * Order military lockdowns in cities

Using the military was normalized be previous governments from the left and the right. Nothing new in using them for security purposes. And lockdowns are being performed worldwide, so from a local perspective nothing abnormal in using the military for lockdown purposes.

> * Defect blame to all political opponents

Which blame? Keeping derelict infrastructure such as the potable water plant that didn't receive a repair for 30 years hoping that it will break down in order to pass laws to privatize access to water? A non-existing health care system for the most Salvadorans? On and on...

> * Threaten to shutdown the largest bank and mobile phone operator

The president used his power to keep these and other corporations in check since these were ignoring the orders of not seizing the stipend provided by the gov to the poorest. At least one bank was seizing this in "fees" and debt collection. As for the mobile company, there were people reporting that one company was cutting service to people for non-payment even though these have been prohibited by the gov to do so for a few months therefore illegal.

> * Bot networks that attack any dissenting view

This is a tired argument that has been shown to be false time and time again. The popularity of the president, Nayib Bukele, is such that 98% of the population have a positive image of the president and 97% approve his handling of the current virus crisis. There is enough people that approve his actions that anyone emotionally invested in the opposite cannot handle the reaction of others specially when any comments that they bring are at best uninformed, at worst lies. I know, these are high numbers; he's that good.

> * A government official publicly using the twitter api to identify tweets > from the opposition

So, the gov is investigating public information about posts with unverifiable data aimed to discredit and possible incite violence against the president's family. What's wrong with that?

> * Order the military and police to use lethal force if someone does not > comply.

Comply to what? To break lockdown? Nope. Use lethal force when engaged with violent life-threatening forces, which in El Salvador are gangs backed by drug cartels, corrupt business man, and prominent politicians from left and right protected by immunity because they are currently serving. Yes, that's right, current serving politicians from both left and right have been recorded providing funds to these gangs.

> We've had somewhat working separation of powers.

What? I guess you're talking about the president stating that he will use his constitutional powers to enforce any measure deemed necessary to protect lives. This is an argument used by his discredited opponents because they still control the judicial and legislative bodies. Before Bukele, the presidency danced to the same sick music that has kept this little country poor where both left and right were attached to the hip.

> It is terrible to see my country turning into an autocratic rule, and how > the government is misusing Twitter to make that happen :/

It brings hope to see a small country that has been ruled by a primitive dishonest bi-partisan mafia to have at last a glimmer of hope for a better future in this time of incertitude.

[1] Survery result in Spanish PDF

[https://www.cidgallup.com/uploads/publication/publication_fi...](https://www.cidgallup.com/uploads/publication/publication_files/publication_1587421944000.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein discusses this phenomenon more with regards to economic policies.

<comment><USER4> [https://youtu.be/B3B5qt6gsxY](https://youtu.be/B3B5qt6gsxY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's been an ongoing, mostly successful, effort by the United States media to associate words like "liberty" and "freedom" with "white supremacy". This has paved the way to a mostly supportive public now that the U.S. government is taking advantage of this (relatively mild) pandemic to completely re-wire the structure of government here.</comment>


OLPC v3 concept: $75 flexible tablet - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/22/tablet-computer-negroponte-technology-cio-network-olpc.html

<comment><USER2> _"We don't necessarily need to build it," Negroponte told Forbes. "We just need to threaten to build it."_

...provided we don't reveal the emptiness of our threats in -- for example -- a Forbes interview.

<comment><USER3> Joking aside, it is an interesting approach to spending non profit dollars. Exerting pressure on the market.

A market opportunity to create the best cheap educational PC is more robust then a single company/non-profit with that at its goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it safe to blame the existence of netbooks on OLPC? I wasn't following along in detail but I got the impression of a certain amount of causality there.

<comment><USER2> That's a fair conclusion, although supporting evidence is hard to locate. My best effort: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=728044>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> People keep forgetting that keyboardless computers suck for ergonomics. Keyboardless screens such as the iPhone are brilliant if you use them for only seconds at a time, and only enter the occasional txt msg or URL.

Try writing even a modestly nontrivial Python program in them, and the hunt and peck of a touchscreen keyboard becomes real tedious real fast, not to mention the error rate due to relative lack of tactile and visual feedback. Hell, even joystick-style game controls become dodgy and frustrating on an iPhone.

In short, a keyboardless tablet is great for Twitter and ebook reading, but its value for the sort of deeply interactive learning machine the OLPC is supposed to be is a bit less certain.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've always thought that the best rationale for the OLPC was that it could be used for development by the people that bought them. Can you really write software without a physical keyboard?

<comment><USER7> STELLA? Lego ROBOLAB?

...Piet? :)

<comment><USER6> Haha Touche.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to see a real low-cost open hardware item that isn't vapor. Even if it's just at the level of a graphing calculator. Start with cheap and extensible and work up from there.

<comment><USER9> Did you look at Cherrypal? They made one for $99 and are also selling it at their online store (cherrypal.com). I think it's called the African Bing(?)

Found it on HN recently. The specs are pretty impressive for $99 but I haven't tried it though. Only looked at images :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cherry Pal is in theory shipping a $99 7" netbook now:

<http://www.cherrypal.com/products.php>

Also, the Gecko Surboard keyboard computer will in theory retail for $99:

[http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/NorhTec-Gecko- Surfbo...](http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/NorhTec-Gecko-Surfboard/)

<comment><USER11> I lump those along with the concepts: until someone (engadget is a good bet) has held it and taken photos, it's a fiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a disappointment... I was waiting for the XO2 to come out in a year (<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-2>), but from the article, it sounds like it's been abandoned.

I think the XO2 is a better form factor in terms of usability than the XO3 shown here.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're still working on short-term stuff also. Rwanda is investing about $300m in providing laptops for about 1.3m children: [http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast- africa/displaystor...](http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast- africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15022648)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"Sure, if I were a commercial entity coming to you for investment, and I'd made the projections I had in the past, you wouldn't invest again," he says. "But we're not a commercial operation. If we only achieve half of what we're setting out to do, it could have very big consequences."_

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything in the article about the tablet being "flexible." The photo at the top make it look rigid to me.

Of course, if it's all a dream, then I suppose we can call it whatever we want...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I kind of inferred that from the talk of replacing glass with plastic and so forth, and also my prior knowledge about v2.0, slated for delivery next year: [http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/20/olpc-laptop-microsoft- tech-...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/20/olpc-laptop-microsoft-tech- personal-cx_ag_0520olpc.html)

<comment><USER15> _v2.0, slated for delivery next year_

Ha! It's no less fictional than this most recent press release of poorly- considered renders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll believe it when I see it...

I think there is a market for a net-tablet (for lack of a better name), but I don't trust the OLPC people to deliver it. And definitely not for $75.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, one's reach should exceed one's grasp, I suppose. I thought the original OLPC was pretty unlikely too, but they got half-way there, plus we now have a wide range of cheap netbooks available. This is imagined for 2012; with all the buzz this year over flexible screens and circuitry, that doesn't seem so far-fetched.

<comment><USER17> They're asking for an _8 GHz processor_ , for crying out loud. And they want it to run on one watt of power. Including the display. Optimism is one thing, but these specifications are nothing short of delusional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I loved the concept of OLPC, but it missed one very vital component: programming instruction. You can't have a digital revolution in 3rd world countries by just handing out tools. You need to also provide instruction in how to use the tools</comment>


This Cities: Skylines build recreates the honeycomb Detroit that could have been - <AUTHOR> https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/12/20/this-cities-skylines-build-recreates-the-honeycomb-detroit-that-could-have-been/ <comment><USER2> that's really neat. triangular blocks are disorienting compared to rectagular ones, but diagonal roads (in addition to orthogonal ones) make transportation more efficient. ring roads (beijing, for example, has a bunch) help efficiency too.

<comment><USER3> In terms of traffic flow, it seems like the triangles would be a detrimental thing.

<comment><USER4> Depends on whether or not you use roundabouts. Roundabouts are no worse with six (or eight) way intersections than four, but six way traffic lights don't work, and even four way traffic lights are problematic.

Cities: Skylines. To a certain extent, real life physics need not apply. There's an excellent series on YouTube of a player optimizing cities built by others. Almost all of it comes down to building more roundabouts and optimizing weird lane management specific to Cities: Skylines' weird AI and lack of car crashes.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR5G_Kc9r-JDza2Bzd2GI...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR5G_Kc9r-JDza2Bzd2GIA01_jVyHhhXw)</comment></comment></comment>


Kurento WebRTC Media Server 6.7: Moving Forward - <AUTHOR> https://www.kurento.org/blog/kurento-67-moving-forward <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, we are happy to officially announce the new release 6.7 of Kurento, the WebRTC Media Server!

It has been available for some days in our repos, but now that version 6.7.1 has been fully published (including not only Kurento Media Server packages for Ubuntu, but also Java API artifacts and a full documentation overhaul), it's time to make it official!

Here is an archived copy of the blog post, in case it goes down due to a traffic spike: [http://archive.is/qpRSJ](http://archive.is/qpRSJ)

Regards, the Kurento team.</comment>


Post your message on the Ethereum blockchain, forever - <AUTHOR> TLDR; if you want to publicly announce your love for your SO, your hate for capitalism, your plan for world domination or your frustration with installing arch linux, you can do it here. A website will display your message for all the world to see, if only you pay more than the guy before you
https://putyourfuckingtextonthefuckingblockchain.com/
Hi guys, so for the last couple of months days I've been working on an Ethereum smart contract thingy. It's a small little project and I'd like to hear your opinion.
The idea is roughly as follows.
I like money.
So I created a smart contract which stores your message forever on the blockchain (in the form of a string) if you make a transaction which has a higher value than the previous one.
I also made a website which displays the latest string in a super large font and bolded letters for all the world to see. There is a javascript script running on it which enables you to instantly pay and submit your message (using metamask). There is another script running which displays the message on the actual blockchain.
I'm a super noob at solidity and I welcome all feedback! It's all open source and available for you to scrutiny.
I posted this to reddit as well (ethereum) ! I hope more and more small cool projects will be built on ethereum and I'd like to hear your opinion! <comment><AUTHOR> There's also a twitter bot associated, where you can see all the past messages: [https://twitter.com/textblockchain](https://twitter.com/textblockchain)</comment>