Verlet-js - Open source dynamic body physics engine - <AUTHOR> http://subprotocol.com/verlet-js/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN. I recently open sourced a verlet physics engine that I wrote for fun. Four example experiments are in there so far. I have a few other experiment ideas in mind that I hope to get implemented soon. Anyways, it was a blast creating this and thought others might like to look/play with it too.

Cheers

<comment><USER2> Looks great, thanks for sharing. One thing I would suggest is to not worry about rendering the physics on the canvas, threejs is good at what it does and lacks a good physics engine. It's just my opinion, but I think the project would benefit from either making it work with threejs or by not solving the render problem, and just focus on doing great physics, so that people can use the results in their threejs scenes.

Great work though

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really great point. Abstracting it away shouldn't be bad, and it is possible to extend by vec2 implementation to 3d. After I finish my next batch of examples I will venture down this path.

Thank you for the feedback!

<comment><USER3> There is a physics engine for threejs- it's somewhere on their demo page. I'm actually working on a physics engine as well- I'm willing to help you extend it in whatever direction.

A question, Why did you chose Verlet integration? I know it's great for particles but I always had issues trying to do angular mechanics.

<comment><USER2> Are you thinking of Physijs [0], which is made to work well with ThreeJS? Its a wrapper around Ammojs for ThreeJS.

It does look good and integrates well, but to be honest ThreeJS is so mature and battle tested with multiple renderers (canvas, webgl etc) that when building a physics engine, I really think it would be better to spend ones dev time on the physics and not waste* time reimplementing a portion of ThreeJS.

[0]: <http://chandlerprall.github.io/Physijs/>

*Obviously not actually 'wasted' time, hacking is great even just for the sake of it - but I'm sure you know what I mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice project. The spider was a bit unexpected though. I had to jolt back a bit. I then pulled it out of the web and it died. Phew. (:

<comment><USER5> I thought you were joking (about dragging the spider out), but it actually works! Extremely well-done.

<comment><USER6> You drag it slightly off the web and she will hold on for dear life. Verly funny!

<comment><USER7> Amazingly "life-like" behaviour on the spider considering such simple "AI"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should make a benchmarking script to track speed over time. I've written probably 10 different Verlet engines in JavaScript, and the overhead of JavaScript's dynamic nature can be very palpable in the simulations.

For my most recent attempt at something speedy, here's some source code making use of typed arrays and doing away with objects completely. The speed improvement is good, but maybe the maintainability suffers a little (press space to create blob): <https://c9.io/blixt/blob/workspace/index.html>

Note that the particle-line collision is currently inefficient, so it slows down the simulation a lot more than it should.

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome. I love the spider demo, especially -- the way it sticks and everything just feels right, to the point where it's too realistic for comfort. I felt like I was messing with a real spider.

<comment><USER10> I pulled her off, and then felt awful about it. Luckily you can put her back on.

I'm not sure what about it is so effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a similar project named Coffee-Physics [1] by Soulwire.

[1] <https://github.com/soulwire/Coffee-Physics>

<comment><USER12> Also

Box2D JS and Box2Dweb

<http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/>

<https://code.google.com/p/box2dweb/>

Bullet JS

<https://github.com/adambom/bullet.js/>

Cannon.js

<https://github.com/schteppe/cannon.js>

Ammo.js

<https://github.com/kripken/ammo.js/>

Physijs

<http://chandlerprall.github.io/Physijs/>

JigLibJS

<https://github.com/supereggbert/JigLibJS>

<comment><USER13> Interesting list but I wonder how do these libraries fare when used by JS developers? What are their performances and experience with them?

<comment><USER14> Also, a verlet-based physics engine is a very different beast compared to a rigid-body one (a few in the list above are also based on verlet, but not most).

<comment><USER15> Err, I thought verlet was just an integration technique? How does it translate into a "very different beast"?

<comment><USER3> Verlet integration uses an object's change in position at time t to determine the velocity for t+1- it is typically used for particles not full rigid bodies.

<comment><USER14> Verlet is incredibly stable and allows you to update the position of a mass directly (velocity, force, momentum are all implicit), making it very easy to work with if not very accurate. You can't emulate rigid bodies very well (shape matching kinda works), collision response and stacking is a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER15> I guess I'm still having trouble understanding where the complexities arise. I have no difficulty believing that they _do_ arise, but I would like to understand how it happens if you're willing to take the time to explain.

I would think that rigid bodies -- either perfectly rigid or semi-rigid via springs & struts -- would not handle all that differently in verlet since force is explicit (typo on your part?) and a v/p estimate is available from the last position, albeit with a bit more phase lag than usual. Does the phase lag induce nasty oscillations or something?

<comment><USER14> We can make semi-rigid bodies in verlet using strings are shape matching techniques, but the pressure needed to maintain shape necessarily interferes with stacking or any other kind of stable contact. Actually, their was a solution to this in a shape matching paper by Matthias [1] but I was never able to get it to work right.

I've played around a lot with Verlet, it is very powerful in certain cases...especially since you can just update the position of a mass directly (very easy to program, very mouse/touch input friendly). However, a rigid body physics engine is probably better for most game use cases.

[1] <http://www.matthiasmueller.info/realtimephysics/>

<comment><USER15> Cool, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The spider has been extremely well done. Spent a lot of time playing with it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! Thanks for sharing. It's amazing what you can do inside the browser these days.

Any thoughts of integrating it with SVG? SVG is super useful for drawing and manipulating shapes in the browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I have actually not played around with SVG yet. Is it as easy as canvas? I am very new to canvas and found it to be super easy to pick up and run with.

<comment><USER17> I haven't played with canvas yet... it's quite powerful... checkout [http://www.netmagazine.com/features/20-svg-uses-will-make- yo...](http://www.netmagazine.com/features/20-svg-uses-will-make-your-jaw- drop)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I pulled on a circle and it became a bicycle.

That is the best bug ever.

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks really good.

Just for fun, try pulling one of the spider's legs and bring it close to the web! I really like how it clings on to the web.

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome. This kind of well designed personal site mixing tech with demos is very appealing, because if gives you something beautiful, potentially very useful, and chewable.

Anyone knows a good "directory" or collection of such sites?

Another example of that kind of site: <http://worrydream.com/>

</comment><comment><USER21> Hey, I downloaded the zip sourcefile from the github repository but any change on the tree example code (for example commenting out tree1) increases load time tenfold. Has anyone experienced this?

Thanks for any reply.

edit: after I deleted google analytics code, everything went hunky dory. Thanks for this amazing piece of code :)

</comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of another project done in Java Processing. It implements a similar curtain effect except you can tear it to pieces, [http://bluethen.com/wordpress/index.php/processing- apps/curt...](http://bluethen.com/wordpress/index.php/processing- apps/curtain/)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is great, it doesn't seem to have any lag and I can't wait to see this being implemented.

<comment><USER24> I'm diving into it.LOL

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome. Very well done, and very nice looking examples. Simplistic and stylish. Props for the spider!

</comment><comment><USER26> Holy crap, I am blown away by how amazing this is! great work guys and thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am intrigued, this is a lot of work it seems, what inspired you to create this engine?

<comment><AUTHOR> It all started as play coding. The deeper I went the funner it became =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Really great work! Thanks for open-sourcing the project, already love playing with it

</comment><comment><USER29> Very nice work, thanks for sharing

</comment><comment><USER30> that spider example is pretty freaking neat</comment>


Dimensions – Measure everything you see in the browser - <AUTHOR> http://felixniklas.com/dimensions/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome! Such a wonderfully simple idea, and pretty nice execution to boot. I normally rely heavily on Cmd-Shift-4 on OS X for measuring stuff on screen (click, drag, then Esc to cancel before actually taking a screenshot), but I have a feeling this extension will be a pretty significant improvement over my approach. Great work!

For those that don't see a use case: Chrome's dev tools work well for measuring things within the context of the box model, but so much of what I measure on a regular basis isn't captured there. The best example I can think of is measurements relative to some text's baseline—the distance between the bottom baseline of some text and the border of its parent container, including adjustments for line height, padding, and related margins, for instance. This extension would also work for things that aren't even represented in the box model, like the distance between two shapes in a <canvas> element.

One feature suggestion: it'd be great to be able to click or use another keyboard shortcut to set arbitrary anchor points on the page. That way, I could measure the distance between elements that aren't necessarily on the same vertical or horizontal axis. That's one thing that OS X's screenshot utility is great for (though perhaps unintentionally).

<comment><USER3> For everyone who uses Cmd-Shift-4, try Cmd-Cntrl-Shift-4 to accomplish the same thing without risking a 31px by 2px file cluttering your desktop when you don't click Esc on time.

<comment><USER4> Note: this saves the image to your clipboard instead, overwriting anything you've cut/copied.

<comment><USER5> Another great reason to have a clipboard manager.

<comment><USER6> Very true and I can't imagine using any device without a multi-clipboard manager. I'm pretty surprised Windows, OS X, Android, iOS, etc. don't already have them built-in by now or at least optional within the system preferences somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Useful for quick measurements, when you need to measure between several elements at once there's Tape: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tape/jmfleijdbicil...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tape/jmfleijdbicilompnnombcbkcgidbefb)

And if you just want a box that can be dragged around there's Page Ruler: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/page- ruler/jlpkojj...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/page- ruler/jlpkojjdgbllmedoapgfodplfhcbnbpn)

<comment><USER8> I really like tape, been using it for a while now and it's come in handy a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Disclaimer: I'ma co-creator of SnapRuler.

Great job, it's amazing how accurate it is. Getting this tool to be reliable had to be a substantial struggle.

If you find this extension useful, there might be a situation when you need to measure stuff that is not inside your browser. SnapRuler ([http://www.snaprulerapp.com](http://www.snaprulerapp.com)) is an OSX tool that can measure anything you see on screen.

<comment><USER10> Any chance we'll ever see a cross-platform version of it? It looks pretty good, with all the little useful features!

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately not anytime soon, screen recognition mechanisms used in the app rely a lot on OSX foundations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is rely nice, its unfortunate that it doesn't work on gradients though...

One way to fix that would be to pass the screen shot of the page (what I believe it is doing) though a edge detection filter first before measuring between colour thresholds?

<comment><USER12> Yeah being able to set some kind of threshold in the edge detection would be super handy.

It also struggles with textured backgrounds..

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The very interesting thing is that it goes through transparent portions of png backgrounds. Try it in the google logo.

I am very impressed.

<comment><USER14> What? I could not believe what you wrote but you are right, it does go through transparent background.

[http://i.imgur.com/byfmzAJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/byfmzAJ.png)

How did he make it work? I didn't think this would be possible.

Yes, extremely impressed with the tool.

EDIT: Looked at the code. He takes screenshot of the active tab when extension is clicked. And then parses the PNG in measureDistances function when mouse moves.

[https://github.com/mrflix/dimensions/blob/master/extension/d...](https://github.com/mrflix/dimensions/blob/master/extension/dimensions.js#L98)

For a mouse at position X, Y, it tries to find the farthest Top, Bottom, Right, Left points with same color/threshold. This is why it is able to see through 'transparent' Google logo.

[https://github.com/mrflix/dimensions/blob/master/js/worker.j...](https://github.com/mrflix/dimensions/blob/master/js/worker.js#L94)

Great work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Like [http://xscopeapp.com/](http://xscopeapp.com/) but in browser

</comment><comment><USER16> The interactive background/header on the landing page is awesome!

It's beautiful, and does a terrific job displaying the tool's functionality in a playful, interactive way. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER17> Alt+D is my favorite shortcut to focus Chrome omnibox :(

<comment><USER18> Then it is time to learn about Ctrl+L

<comment><USER19> Or F6. I've doubled your productivity!

<comment><USER10> Ctrl+L keeps most of your fingers on the home row. ;-)

<comment><USER20> Only if you have a mutant right pinky finger.

<comment><USER21> Programmers typically swap capslock for ctrl.

So you press capslock (aka ctrl) with left hand and L with right hand -- all fingers on one row.

<comment><USER22> >Programmers typically swap capslock for ctrl

I don't think typically is the right word here. I've certainly done it before, but I'd wager that under (and possibly well under) a quarter of programmers actually have this remapping on their machines. This could be totally wrong, but is based on the people I've worked with and gone to school with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is great, installing now. I too use the cmd+shift+4 method but it's pretty unreliable.

Similarly, one thing I often find myself needing to do is find the hex or RGB value of an element of pixel on the fly. I know there are osx apps that do this but they're usually of the paid variety. Are there any good chrome extensions that can accomplish this?

<comment><USER2> There's actually a little utility called DigitalColor Meter[1] built in to OS X. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.

[1] [http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the- enterprise/dis...](http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the- enterprise/discover-the-digitalcolor-meter-tool-on-your-mac/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is really impressive how it calculates size between letters.

By the way source may be found here [https://github.com/mrflix/dimensions](https://github.com/mrflix/dimensions)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is great! Unforunately, does not work with iframes. A couple sites I'm stuck with are iframe heavy :/

<comment><USER26> I'm sorry. I've been stuck with inception style iframes on a large site. WTF, always frustrating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't work on my machine :(

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of undefined tooltip.js:84

<comment><USER28> Same here. Can't get this to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Would be nice if you add a "copy size to clipboard" function, when click on an element.

<comment><USER30> It could copy to clipboard on click, or Cmd+click.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is super cool. It will compliment another tool I use called screen ruler very nicely!

</comment><comment><USER32> don't know why, but the extension won't work on my retina mbp 13" [http://imgur.com/3NHVDv5](http://imgur.com/3NHVDv5)

on the extension website it works fine :/

<comment><USER33> I developed it on a mbp 13", just not the retina version. Someone reported the bug that it doesn't work when the browser is zoomed. May that be the case for you?

<comment><USER34> Doesn't work on my Retina MBP either, but it works on a connected regular res monitor.

The problem appears to be that it maps 2x pixels to "normal" 1x pixels as output. So all the measurements are scaled up 200%, with the top left corner as the origin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I want one of these that does ems, rems and even vw/vh ...

</comment><comment><USER36> Just testet it on a few pages... I'm sorry. It's not going to work out between the two of us.

I was hoping it was really just doing by pixel testing, but it seems to pick up on html elements too.

Or could it be buggy on my retina fisher price here?

<comment><USER33> It's picking up everything visible, not just images.

<comment><USER36> My problem is that it is picking up invisible elements too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Now I dont't need Crtl+u every time thanks man (Y)

</comment><comment><USER38> Color me impressed.

This is AMAZING.

You have no idea how easier you just made my job!

</comment><comment><USER39> This is a great extension! Very useful.

</comment><comment><USER26> Super handy. Nice work.</comment>


Verified commits: sign your Git commits and avoid impersonation risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.pauldowman.com/posts/signing-git-commits-with-gpg <comment><USER2> That's useful in certain cases but in most cases within an organisation git repos are already (hopefully!) protected by access control.</comment>


New website for Duda I/O - <AUTHOR> http://duda.io

<comment><USER2> Broke, unless it's meant to look like that.... I think not!</comment>


At 'Geek Heaven,' students are skilled in tech, if not talk - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-geeks15-2009may15,0,3660861,full.story

<comment><AUTHOR> Although it seemed like a good idea when I read the headline -- get a bunch of engineering students, cram them into one school, and see what happens -- actually reading the article was disappointing. Their "core" course listing[1] is heavily stacked towards "enterprise" languages and buzzwords. Where I would have expected a heavy emphasis on maths, there is XML, UML, and Java. The "Math" section itself is anemic, and contains the sort of classes that could be found at any community college.

Furthermore, the culture appears to value immaturity and irresponsibility. All-night Warcraft "raids"? Pervasive hygiene issues, to the point where students are proposing mandatory showering? This sounds less and less like a school, and more like a sugar-fueled gaming convention.

[1] <http://www.neumont.edu/education/programs/courses.html>

<comment><USER2>
      * CSC105 Using Modern Operating Systems
      * CSC160 .Net I: Introduction to Windows Forms Development
      * CSC260 .Net II: Introduction to ASP.Net Web Development
      * CSC263 Advanced .Net Programming with C#

These all come from the "Computer Science Core". This is not really a CS program...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I live nearby and the curriculum is very weak. No studying operating systems. No compilers. No proper survey of languages. Algorithms is very weakly taught. But you do get all the certs you want before you finish. They do get some gifted students. Unfortunately those are the students who would be better served in a more challenging environment. The rest get what they want, a more respectable sounding form of a technical certificate.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sure, they get a job when they're 20, but what about ten years down the line when their language/framework-specific training is obsolete?

Also, it's hard to imagine that such narrow training is going to produce creative engineers. Although great schools like MIT may focus on science/tech, they have more than just CS as a major, and a lot of what comes out of these places is interdisciplinary.

<comment><USER5> It's questionable whether the extra work time they get by graduating early will is worth the high tuition anyway, when they could do just as well at a state school or maybe even a community college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems to be a proprietary college with an essentially open admission policy.

[http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j...](http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=4721&profileId=0)

</comment><comment><USER7> I graduated from Neumont in 07... I can tell you the school was VERY different just a couple of years ago. I blame their marketing department going after only highschool kids now.

<comment><USER8> This comment could be upmodded with details. Lots of them. I'll guarantee you one vote per detail.

<comment><USER7> Details? Like what? When I was there, I loved the school. The original founders of the school had a great vision and knew what the industry wanted out of new grads. Sadly, the board of directors wanted to take it a different direction to make a profit sooner.

In the past they constantly brought in companies and literally asked them what technologies they wanted new grads to know.

Almost all the students had jobs lined up months before they graduated. Many even had multiple $60k+ job offers.

I loved the time I spent there. I met many ambitious students and worked on a ton of side projects with them learning technologies that were never taught. The school definitely attracts a wide range of students. From the entrepreneur to the basement WoW addict.

I hope things work out. Its a great concept, and employers are definitely happy with the students Neumont produces.

<comment><USER9> "In the past they constantly brought in companies and literally asked them what technologies they wanted new grads to know."

So it's a trade school then. Lets see how you do 10 years out.

Basically it's compucollege, with a more friendly name. And after seeing that picture (Didn't load for me at first), I won't be hiring from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The picture of Logan with the silly expression is so gratuitous.

</comment><comment><USER11> Was that picture really necessary? Oh, man.</comment>


Document Scanning Made Easy - <AUTHOR> Have you ever struggled with getting a simple scanned document from point A (which is your document scanner) to point B (which is your email or storage location)?
OF COURSE!!!  We all have with USB errors, paper jams, poor image quality or the damned process was just too complicated.
Shouldn't document scanning be just as easy as taking a picture with your smartphone camera and then storing to your picture roll?
If a product were to exist where you could easily scan documents for your business work activities to cloud services, would you find this useful?  Would you be willing to pay a small monthly fee to have access to such functionality even if you didn't use it too often? <comment><USER2> Have a look at [https://www.fileee.com/fileeebox/?lang=en](https://www.fileee.com/fileeebox/?lang=en)

Personally, no. Once a month I have a paper jam but scanning with a $100 HP printer&scanner&fax device works fine and then drag&drop to the cloud (e.g. Dropbox). The hardest part in the process is coming up with a file name and selecting the folder in the file system. If I scanned 10 pages per day I'd probably use a [https://www.getdoxie.com/info/products.html](https://www.getdoxie.com/info/products.html) device.</comment>


The Microsoft Police State: Mass Surveillance, Facial Recognition, Azure Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2020/07/14/microsoft-police-state-mass-surveillance-facial-recognition/ <comment><USER2> This is what the smart city brings you. Mass surveillance. Billions of dollars in spytech. Police militarization. The destruction of privacy and human autonomy. These people play pathetic PR games with their meaningless snarky tweets while collecting paychecks to create the global smart prison that will be our new reality. A thousand eyes watching you at all times, your car, your watch, your phone, your face. Watching and listening. There will be no escape from the suffering. This is what the 5G network promises to escalate. It is a surveillance network first and last, by design.

<comment> dane-pgp > This is what the 5G network promises to escalate.

I thought that this was hyperbole, but a little research has changed my mind:

"4G can support about 4,000 devices per square kilometre, whereas 5G will support around one million." [0]

To give a sense of scale, the most densely populated municipality in the US has a population density of about 20,000 people per square kilometre.

[0] [https://www.raconteur.net/technology/4g-vs-5g-mobile- technol...](https://www.raconteur.net/technology/4g-vs-5g-mobile-technology)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original title was too long. It was:

The Microsoft Police State: Mass Surveillance, Facial Recognition, and the Azure Cloud</comment>


Thunderstone (folklore) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderstone_(folklore) <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the brontotherium ( _thunder beast_ ), a giant prehistoric mammal similar to a rhinoceros, but much larger. The Sioux sometimes found fossilized brontotherium bones after heavy rainstorms. They believed them to be the bones of creatures that ran over the clouds and caused thunder. One of my children's books about prehistoric creatures said the brontotherium was named by a paleontologist who was familiar with the Sioux myth.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing that the myth was only "formally" debunked in 1847 did historians back then not know about the neanderthals or our earlier states and if so, then ancient history has really come a far ways.

This quote also stuck with me

> Michael Mercati tried to prove that the "thunder-stones" were weapons or > implements of early races of men

Makes you wonder what other marvels of history that we've simply misidentified and what information we're still missing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had expected a reference to fulgurite; instead I learned something new. Thanks!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite)</comment>


The Next Generation of .NET – ASP.NET vNext - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/05/12/the-next-generation-of-net-asp-net-vnext.aspx

<comment><USER2> This is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733639), although both posts seem to be pretty substantive. If people feel that this one should be the canonical story, we can change the url of the front page item.</comment>


University of the Arts Rejects Calls to Fire Camille Paglia - <AUTHOR> https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/17/university-arts-rejects-calls-fire-camille-paglia <comment><USER2> about time a college has a spine. now i just wish the rest of the supposed "adults" in the rooms at universities (and some tech companies) could also grow a spine and stop acquiescing to the children

<comment><USER3> While I agree generally and, upon a cursory perusal of the facts of this case, I also agree in this instance, still I much more strongly disagree with your mocking, antagonistic dismissal of an over-broad group that contains many examples of this kind of conflict that are more reasonable. Personally, I think the culture of hate represented by your opinion is perhaps even more damaging than the corresponding culture of hate represented by the worst of the people you're criticizing.

<comment><USER4> Maybe hate is a strong word for the comment, but I agree meeting outrage by outright dismissal is a different side of the same coin

<comment><USER2> i'm outraged people are trying to dismantle our civilization and take away people's first amendment rights. sorry if that's hateful</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Rust for Monitoring 30k API Calls per Minute - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/using-rust-for-monitoring-30k-api-calls-per-minute-ec193u37 <comment><USER2> Just waiting for it to show up on the front page of HN, given it has the magic "Rust" in it.</comment>


Robert Scoble to take 2 months off - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153039676939655&set=vb.501319654&type=2&theater

<comment><USER2> Lets give the guy a break. He's helped a lot of folks, entrepreneurs and others too. Revealing out his own demons and suffering is part of his own therapy so it looks, and let us wish him a solid and prompt recovery and a great time with his family.

</comment><comment><USER3> The bottom of the barrel in this discussion is an embarrassment.

All: Personal swipes are neither civil nor substantive, so they break the Hacker News guidelines twice over. When you're tempted to post them, please don't.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any background to this?

<comment><USER5> "The past few months have been bumpy for tech pundit Robert Scoble. They have included a confession about being sexually abused as a teenager; a diagnosis of cancer; a decision to go to Alcoholics Anonymous; a new best friend who had him wearing a "Hustler" cap (see above) and making videos about "Hustle University"..."

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/robert-scoble-in-recovery- going-...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/robert-scoble-in-recovery-going-dark- on-social-for-two-1682097830)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is the beginning of a pattern. I was once a die hard techie too, addicted to all the new gadgets, spending 10+ hours out of the day in the Valley in front of 5 glowing monitors - but these apps and devices run the same patterns in our brain as drugs and alcohol. Their a vice. I cold turkey dropped drugs, social networks, my smartphone, and more of my gadgets about 9 months ago. Never been happier.

"The problems plain to see, too much technology. Machines to save our lives, machines dehumanize"

</comment><comment><USER7> Best of luck to him - he was one of the judges at the Slash hackathon (Slash- a-thon) last year during SXSW, and he was a really nice guy when I met him.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow I respect him a million times more for having the courage to come out and admit his problems. Good luck on the road of recovery!

</comment><comment><USER9> The death of Google Glass must have made him question his worldview.

</comment><comment><USER10> But before he go, he liked his own farewell post.

<comment><USER11> what is it about that slice of the startup world that they need a scoble?

<comment><USER12> No idea. I've always felt that he's made himself seem important to the success of others.

I personally don't like him or his self-importance but I do wish him best in recovery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> it is sad that he is in AA, this video from him is probably one of the 12 steps he has to go thru

<comment><USER14> It would have been sad if he wasn't in AA, isn't this good?

Accepting your flaws and taking the courage to fix them is difficult and he is doing that, it is really good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So what does he do? Is his skill just speaking? Must be nice. I guess he has a degree in communication or writing.

</comment><comment><USER16> And the world rejoices? I can appreciate taking a break for health. I still have no idea what he does to help RackSpace. He does know how to fill a timeline though.</comment>


Fresco - A Beautiful Responsive Lightbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.frescojs.com <comment><USER2> These things break the web by making it impossible for me to send a link pointing at the lightboxed content to a friend.

<comment> mike-cardwell And there's no reason that this has to be the case either. The JavaScript history API could be used to push unique URLs into the address bar on each image view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No arrow key support and er, why would I pay for a lightbox?

Edit: <http://projects.nickstakenburg.com/tipped/> on other hand is something I will pay for - looks fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Fresco is a beautiful responsive lightbox."

There's nothing beautiful about watermarks or wasting €49.

</comment><comment><USER5> I bought <http://projects.nickstakenburg.com/tipped/> from the same author. Well done and constantly updated, never regretted. Maybe just give it some time.

<comment><USER6> Slightly off topic - since I cancelled my PayPal account they've refused to process any credit card payments using the card that was linked to my PayPal account, which happens to be my only credit card. This means that I'm unable to purchase anything from anyone who uses PayPal as their sole payment option. A bit of hunting on the interwebs shows I'm not the only person this has happened to

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fancybox2 (<http://fancyapps.com/fancybox/>) is also responsive, though the site seems to be unresponsive (ha) at the moment.

Ironic that Fresco's actual page isn't responsive, I thought the overlay was adding huge scroll bars.

Fancybox is also free, does other media (video, etc) & can group content. It's pretty easy to theme if you are not scared of CSS.

<comment><USER8> I just checked your link... Fancybox isn't free for commercial websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or you could download <http://www.jacklmoore.com/colorbox> and set the height and width to a percentage. That has always worked for me. You can choose to put pretty much anything in there, not to mention that it is licensed under the MIT License.

Still great work though, you got my vote, hope you sell a bunch of licenses!

<comment><USER10> I'm colorbox's author, and just wanted to say thanks for the recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not against making money on the web, but seriously who would buy a lightbox in 2012?

<comment><USER12> It's actually quite difficult to find a Lightbox that can be used in production and works across all devices and browsers, supporting more than just images. At least I haven't found one yet, so I will definitely check this out.

<comment><USER13> This script looks terrible on mobile browsers. 50 Euros for this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good: Escape key works to exit.

Missing: Doesn't respond to space / pgdown / left-right arrows.

Missing: Can't drag the image with mouse to flip to next image.

General page design issue: Page has style disabling outline on all anchors, making keyboard navigation (tab / shift tab) navigation downright impossible. Please make sure I can use tab / shift tab to browse the site.

General page design issue: Disabling the style rule 'outline-style:none' does make site usable with keyboard. But only somewhat, because you still can't tab onto the demonstrations.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's beautiful, gorgeous, clean, and elegant. And the little subtle lightened inner outlines on all the images just make them pop out from the black background without being visually intrusive. Very nice. I'm dying to use it on a project.

?) Does it support ajax and iframes?

!) " _the next/prev arrows move underneath my cursor based on the size of the image._ " - You can use the 3rd example on the top row and keep the next/prev arrows outside the image, thus solving the problem.

!) " _No arrow key support and er, why would I pay for a lightbox?_ " - If the author doesn't add it you can use this: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2259690/how-to-get-the- ar...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2259690/how-to-get-the-arrow-keys- on-the-keyboard-to-trigger-navigation-previous-next-p) It's really easy to implement. Also, you should pay because it's a beautiful and elegant solution. Men and Apple fans agree, beautiful things come at a high price, and people do pay it. The price is a tad bit too high though.

The images used in the demo are beautiful but... man, Instagram filters have really taken their toll on video and images. The problem with style is that it eventually gets old.

</comment><comment><USER16>
      "In fact, Fresco in the first truly responsive lightbox.
      Give the demonstrations a try to see what that means,
      make sure to adjust your screen size (or rotate your
      device)."

On OSX Chrome I resized my browser and all it seemed to do was scale the content. It didn't change any layouts or do any "magic"... How is this so special?

<comment><USER17> On my iphone, clicking an image opened as a tiny thumbnail at the top right and I couldn't navigate to the other images. A lightbox that worke on desktop and mobile smoothly would be great. But this doesn't see to be it. (and even better, as others note, handled links and herfs nicely.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand why so few lightbox plugins (and sites with custom ones) do the actual image link properly.

The image should be a link either to a page for that specific image (facebook style) or just to the full sized image itself. That way if the person has js disabled, or middle clicks, or opens in new tab they'll still get the image, but you can intercept a normal click and show the pretty lightbox if they're browsing "normally".

It's not like it's super complex or anything, but everyone goes the "image is only useful for the lightbox" path.

</comment><comment><USER19> When I read "fullscreen zoom" I thought it would maybe use fullscreen APIs... so far I haven't found that. Does anyone know a lightbox that does that well (like Facebook photos)?

</comment><comment><USER20> I was very disappointed that it didn't even preload the images. Watching the spinner most of the time makes for a crappy UX.

</comment><comment><USER21> So beautiful...

<http://ompldr.org/vZmdvOQ>

</comment><comment><USER22> I like the "zoom" example - but it looks like there is more to the picture. Maybe you could include an indicator that shows when you have hit the edge of a page?

<comment><USER23> I looked at the source image and there wasn't any more to the image. Of course, the only reason I checked is because I had the same feeling, so I didn't like the panning. It didn't feel responsive, and I had to move the mouse all the way from the bottom to the top to pan the full image. If they tightened the panning and added a top indicator, it would be much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why don't they do this open source and free. Isn't that something can be cloneable by a good JavaScript developer in a single day? I just don't get it.

<comment><USER25> An entire day of a good Javascript developers time is worth less than $75 to you?

<comment><USER24> Note that this is one-time fee and after that it will be open source. Selling it for 95€ (>170$) for each license is just a way of making too much money out of such an easy thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Fancybox and Fancybox 2 have mousewheel support for navigating backwards and forwards through a set of images which is just fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been looking for something to replace Fancybox for a while, so this looks like a nice option.

</comment><comment><USER28> Too bad it does not work in Android Froyo's browser.

<comment><USER29> In Maxthon on Android 2 it worked quite well but I had to scroll up to the top of the page to find the overlay+image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone else still confused by the word "responsive"? I always expect something with a high degree of interaction, widgets etc., instead of just meaning "resizes how HTML should resize".

<comment><USER31> In the context of web design, responsive means that the webpage adjusts elegantly to different browser form factors and navigation capabilities. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_Web_Design>

<comment><USER30> I'm aware of that. But as I've said, that term still tends to confuse me at first, especially when it's not paired immediately with "web design" or "layout". It's a pretty common word, and this very specific meaning has been around for, what, two years?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I thought modal windows were a solved problem.

</comment><comment><USER33> Might have stole my heart from Fancybox.

</comment><comment><USER34> No keypress changes?

</comment><comment><USER35> No keyboard support?

<comment><USER36> There is keyboard support:

[http://www.frescojs.com/documentation/options#options_keyboa...](http://www.frescojs.com/documentation/options#options_keyboard)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I turned my monitor upside-down and it didn't do anything- is it broken?</comment>


Is it time to Occupy Android? - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/103263839307540915364/posts/RHcuV2AoAtH

<comment><USER2> Self proclaimed Apple fan here. Apple's App Store revenue is a drop in the bucket. I don't think that's the reason iOS5 is on the 3GS. iOS5 is on the 3GS because it's Apple's low end phone and still available for sale. It has to run iOS5 so folks can use their new software incentives to sell the phone itself (i.e. iCloud).

</comment><comment><USER3> Agree with everything with one small nitpick:

 _"Leaked sales figures have it [Kindle Fire] outselling the iPad right now."_

Not technically correct. The 'leaked sales figures' was a supposed internal screen shot showing 250k preorders over the first 5 days. What people did was use the same rate until Nov. 15th to extrapolate the mythical 2.5M preorders. Probably not going to happen.

The original iPad had 300k pre-orders to a market that didn't exist, and the iPad 2 wasn't available as a pre-order, but did sell close to 1M over the opening weekend.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know about the internal structure of Apple vs. Android handset manifacturers, but from the outside, they seem to treat their respective OSes very differently. Apple treats iOS the same as Mac OS: It will run on any compatible device that meets the minimum requirements.

For Android handset makers, they treat Android as the firmware for the device they are making. When they start on the firmware, they take the version of Android that they want, write the HAL, and then add their special stuff plus any carrier related crap they've agreed to. Once you're not selling that device any more, why would you bother to update the firmware? Users (and maybe Google) want to Android to be like iOS, but the handset makers are treating it the same way they treated their old internal phone OSes.</comment>


Entangled diamonds vibrate together - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/entangled-diamonds-vibrate-together-1.9532 <comment><USER2> > _entangled photons of light have been used to transmit information in such a > way that any interception is detectable_

Wrong. Information is not transmitted via the entangled photons. They're used to build up random data, which is guaranteed to correspond between the two endpoints and thus can be used as an encryption key (for a one-time pad, etc). Entanglement can certainly not be used to transmit information.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does not knowing which diamond has the phonon make it quantum entanglement?

<comment><USER2> Because the phonon was initiated by a single photon, which, until observed, cannot be said to have traveled to one diamond or the other. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment> .</comment></comment>


Loudness (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html <comment><USER2> It's not just about volume. Tracks mastered with a ton of compression trick your brain into sounding louder than they really are, which is great for a song or two (or if you want pay people to pay attention to your tv commercial), but for listening to a whole album it wears you out. If you have an album you love but somehow never make it all the way through this is probably why. The perception of full volume gets your lizard brain aroused, which is great if you're in the club, but not if you're in the mood to listen to the first three Led Zeppelin records in a row.

On the other hand, older recordings with more dynamic range might sound thin at low volume, but are much richer at higher volumes (you can hear the individual instruments better and feel the space in the sound). If you try comparing older and newer masterings at a good volume the newer mastering usually sounds kinda mushy.

<comment><USER3> Today if you want dynamic range you have to buy Vinyl or lossless downloads.

[http://dr.loudness- war.info/album/list?artist=Roger+Waters&a...](http://dr.loudness- war.info/album/list?artist=Roger+Waters&album=is+this+the)

[http://dr.loudness- war.info/album/list?artist=Roger%20Waters](http://dr.loudness- war.info/album/list?artist=Roger%20Waters)

<comment><USER4> No, it still depends how it was mastered. You can have crap sounding vinyl and lossless, too.

<comment><USER3> yes you are right you can have very crappy sounding vinyl, your best bet is vinyl but you always do your research.

Unfortunately SACD is dead and even on SACD the CD tracks can be a diferent mastering and very diferent from the SACD track.

<comment><USER3> 39 essential albums for audiophiles

[https://www.stuff.tv/features/39-essential-albums- audiophile...](https://www.stuff.tv/features/39-essential-albums-audiophiles)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For practical listening, I actually prefer modern brickwall mastering techniques to more traditional mastering with a high dynamic range, for one reason: what the author sees as "hijacking the volume control from the listener" I would consider the opposite.

With a high dynamic range, a headphones listener may feel the need to adjust the volume several times in a song to boost the clarity of softer sections or to make louder sections more comfortable to the ears, depending on the listening environment. With a "loud," low dynamic range, however, the listener need only adjust the volume once, as the whole track is roughly the same volume. In other words, the listener is in control of the volume, rather than the engineer.

<comment> xkcd-sucks It's easier to remove dynamic range on playback than to add it back in... don't many stereos have a "loudness" function which brickwalls the audio?

<comment><USER6> The "loudness" switch on stereo amplifiers is for loudness compensation [1], not compression.

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

<comment><USER7> Shouldn't it be called quietness compensation, then? :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty funny to me because I mostly listen to (and produce) electronic music.. and there are pretty much no rules when it comes to electronic music and loudness. Stupidly loud music can actually sound pretty dang good [0][1]. The momentary RMS in some Moody Good tracks can actually hit _above_ 0dBFS.

If you have the right source material, you can brickwall the hell out of tracks and not notice the distortion.. or perhaps the distortion will even add pleasant artifacts. One of the more prominent issues with making things stupid loud is intermodulation distortion, but that really only becomes noticeable when you have pure tones or vocals being mashed into the limiter. If the source material is already distorted (think screechy dubstep synths), then it probably don't matter.

But yeah, when you're dealing with more traditional kinds of music, which often times involves vocals or a lot more subtlety to the timbre of the instruments, brickwalling is probably not the best call. It seems that the Search and Destroy "remaster" sounding terribly distorted was intentional.. but IMO it's not very listenable nor does the distortion really bring the grungy character than I think they were going for. It just sounds bad.

[0] [https://soundcloud.com/moodygood/mtgfyt- vol1](https://soundcloud.com/moodygood/mtgfyt-vol1)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lsX8pUaloY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lsX8pUaloY)

<comment><USER9> I (only half jokingly) think (music like) that Bassnectar track _Into The Sun_ is Lorin Ashton's attempt at hitting The Brown Note when played on a big rig sound system. It's just constant rolling thunder, break down around 2 mins in, followed by more rolling thunder. Sounds like the melody is playing on a different sound system half a kilometer away at the same festival.

Ah, music is weird because even the stuff I _like_ is fun to criticise.

On that note, have you come across Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music?[1] It hasn't been updated in a long time, but still highly amusing.

1\. [http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/](http://techno.org/electronic- music-guide/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Theses mastering techniques have their legitimate use ! Some notes :

* it's a step in musical production where having experience, skills and contact with the artist matters. Not all compressor and limiter are created equal and the default value you use in your media player may not sound as good as what an audio engineer might have done..

* Not everyone have good hardware and a good environment to listen to high dynamic range music like thoses listening to classical music / jazz / Philip Glass, so theses business decision to increase volume for the market made sense at that time I think. Audio engineer simply took profit of having a technically better medium (CD) to make audio sound better (from what I've read theses techniques did not work well on vinyl)

* Loudness wars didn't have an effect on old records since as one can see in this article, we could find the old dynamic ones (and so we actually have the choice of listening to the old untouched record, or the new compressed-for-the-market record, and that is a good thing !)

* Theses music stats (mean RMS, peak RMS, max mean RMS) look at instantaneous dynamic, but a look at the overall dynamic of a song is also very important ! A good article on this topic stating that songs did not lose overall dynamic range that much : ['Dynamic Range' & The Loudness War, 2011] [http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudn...](http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war)

<comment><USER11> Also see SoS's "follow-up" article from 2014: [http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness- war](http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tangential, but for the longest time I couldn't figure out why VLC always played music / DVDs at such low volume. Setting the system volume to max and overdriving VLC's volume slider was the only way I could actually hear the soft parts.

Recently I found out about the volume compressor, which with a single check box does exactly the right thing. I asked myself "why the heck isn't this box checked by default?" I think the answer is with audio purists wanting to stem the loudness war.

When reading about CD mastering maxing out the volume, It seems like it is the right decision. _Most_ people do want the loudest setting, no mess with the EQ, compressors, etc. Only a tiny population wants to preserve the fidelity of the amplitude.

<comment><USER13> Movies generally have a wide dynamic range so that loud action scenes are very loud. You don't want your normal dialogue to be at the same volume as your explosions, unless you're watching at home with the volume down.

<comment><USER14> Much to the chagrin of people like my wife, who, during scenes with just dialog will remark, "I can't hear it, turn it up!" and then when the action starts, "Too loud!" I end up adjusting the volume up and down over and over throughout a 2-1/2 hour film. As much as I appreciate good dynamic range in recordings, I wish my sound system had a "constant loudness" function that I could just engage and put the remote down.

<comment><USER15> That function exists generally in audio, and is called dynamic compression or just compression. I've seen some TVs with that functionality and I know Apple TV can do it, so I would guess you might have that option lurking somewhere in your system. When you turn that on, you're taking a wide dynamic range and squishing it, which essentially just pulls up quieter content, so you have to consider how pure and accurate you like your content playback to be when doing that. Well-crafted films in particular occasionally play with audio level for effect ( _Interstellar_ being a dramatic example of that), so you might subtly suck a bit of air from a director's intention which might matter to you.

If you have a nice 5.1 setup, try boosting your center channel, too. That might help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since Youtube and most streaming services started to automatically balance tracks based on their average perceived loudness (not all of them use the same metric, but the purpose is the same), loudness war is almost dead. If you brickwall your song, it will not be played louder than competition anymore.

<comment><USER17> The algorithms that determine perceptual loudness are very inaccurate, so it's still possible to game them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fortunately many audio providers now have been fighting back against this. For instance YouTube will punish video uploads that are louder than -13 LUFS by attenuating the level. This will provide a somewhat level playing field and encourage people to upload with a reasonable dynamic range.

<comment><USER19> And some others are going full retard. Some streaming services actually add compression to everything…

<comment><USER20> Which ones?

<comment><USER21> Spotify: [http://productionadvice.co.uk/online- loudness/](http://productionadvice.co.uk/online-loudness/)

<comment><USER18> I got 403 Error. Could you post a public link?

<comment><USER21> Sorry, try again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is something I have battled with for a long time, personally I master to make the music sound good, sometimes that is loud (new dance music) sometimes not so much (old African recordings remasters).

Coupled with the data from this page [1] there is no point in going too loud anyways, that's why you have gain / volume control. I'm not sure how I feel about streaming services implementing extra processing tbh. Spotify is the worst culprit adding limiting which can significantly change the sound of a recording.

I just wish other engineers would have more pragmatism in this industry, way too much overcooked and distorted music around.

[1] [http://productionadvice.co.uk/online- loudness/](http://productionadvice.co.uk/online-loudness/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Mastering is in a way comparable to capitalism. You can certainly try and be nice about it but pushing harder will usually get you further, because most people care more about one aspect than all the others aspects combined. In capitalism it is getting a great product for a great price. In mastering, it is loudness.

Loudness is a bastard. There is a reason, why all the pros are usually very, _very_ careful about level matching when doing any sort of audio comparisons. Even when you _know_ that louder can easily fool you into thinking something is better (which most listeners don't), you're still susceptible, if you don't counter act it. Wanna convince a recording artist in the studio it's great? Turn up those big speakers. Instant gratification.

When it comes to music consumption I like to think this is not really a problem: The sound of compression and distortion is the sound of current music and there is nothing inherently bad about it. Older generations will tend to oppose any new musical trend for various reasons, which all end up being subjective. The younger generations that grow up on this new sound do not care about brickwall limiting, because there is nothing to fucking care about.

Music production has been and forever will a mix of mostly people copying other people and flowing with the stylistic currents while adding a little something themselves. Sometimes something radical will happen. Mostly not. If you wanna stay relevant you go with the former and keep reaching for the later. Pretty much the same, as with coding or design.

</comment><comment><USER24> Was there any way we could have prevented the "loudness war"?

<comment><USER25> There is research that shows that on a casual listen, people believe louder music sounds better. Similarly, people tend to find brighter pictures more appealing at a glance, even though both of these can be fatiguing and cause discomfort. That's why stereo stores (in so much as they still exist) crank up the music to very loud volumes and all the TVs at Best Buy are grossly mis- calibrated.

Unfortunately, most musicians are just hoping you will notice their song when it comes up on the radio, pandora, a friends iPhone and so everyone is incentivized to crank their song to the max.

The thing that bums me out is that there were really good records released in the 2000's that are mastered terribly, and we may never hear a better version. It's one thing when a stooges album is fucked up on re-release, I can always grab the original, there may never be another version of "Is This It".

<comment><USER26> I found myself pondering this in relation to the resurgence of LPs.

I wonder if the lower dynamic range of LPs restricts music released on them from being overly loud, and thus not as fatiguing to listen to as more modern formats.

<comment><USER27> Not exactly.

It is technically the case that vinyls have less frequency response (basically a low pass filter) than good (really effectively perfect) reproduction formats like CD. That certainly means that the maximum loudness value is lower, but dynamic range is not required for loudness, gain and frequency response are.

If anything, having less dynamic range would encourage people to make louder records.

<comment><USER22> A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample rate achievable by some sound cards.

<comment><USER27> > A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this > limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample > rate achievable by some sound cards.

The only reason to sample at 96/192k is to make cheaper analog filter hardware. While technically vinyl can reproduce frequencies in excess of 50kHz, it has limits on amplitudes at high (audible) frequencies because of the physics of the needle and groove, especially on less-than-excellent cartridges. Nobody wants to listen to something with that much energy in the highest audible frequencies (16-20kHz) anyway, so it's a moot point.

There is absolutely no point in representing frequencies in excess of 22.05kHz. Truly exceptional (never documented) human ears might technically be capable of faintly hearing 23 or 24kHz tones, but that ability is likely to manifest and deteriorate over the course of (at most) a handful of contiguous years in their life and never return.

There is no difference between discrete signals sampled at 44.1kHz, and continuous signals, that has any bearing on human hearing. In addition, 14 bits is about enough to represent all discernible dynamic range in human hearing, 16 bits is more than enough. Vinyl has considerably less dynamic range than this. Any vinyl on any record player has poor performance for reproducing audible signals when compared to an about-average CD player. LP vinyl is an excellent final form of the phonograph, but a mere intermediate to poor form in all of audio reproduction, especially considering that CD is essentially perfect.

<comment><USER28> > Truly exceptional (never documented) human ears might technically be capable > of faintly hearing 23 or 24kHz tones, but that ability is likely to manifest > and deteriorate over the course of (at most) a handful of contiguous years > in their life and never return.

When I was in my twenties, I could easily identify sounds in the 23-26k range (tested using professional gear more than once). When I was younger it was quite painful to hear as my ears were so sensitive to it (as a young teen, I would wince in pain when a monitor was left on without an input signal even in a room of people yelling noisily at each other). Even now in my late 30s I can still readily hear in the low 20k hz easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm a self-described audioweenie who has a dedicated listening room with a decent setup. It does make me sad that much new music is mastered so loud because information is lost when you "brickwall master". For older music, a lot of audiophiles will seek out original non-remastered releases of music made before the "Loudness Wars" (early 90s and before) where, as I understand it, it was generally considered taboo to have a "digital over" in a mastering. However some "Loud" masterings still sound quite good. It depends a lot on the type of music and how the compression was applied. I mean, someone overdriving a tube guitar amp into soft clipping is essentially compressing the sound in the analogue domain - that's what makes guitars sound so awesome.

I wish to make one main observation about the vinyl resurgence. Vinyl (which I enjoy, mostly for nostalgia because I'm old enough to remember when it was the main format) is on the rise for the wrong reasons. One reason is that it has become trendy - and I have no problem with this, but it's a real thing. Another more frustrating reason is the perception that vinyl masters cannot have the same amount of compression as digital masters, hence the perception is that vinyl version of a modern master will less compressed. Many, many audiophiles believe this. However I can tell you that the vast majority of modern vinyl releases are the same exact mastering as the digital version. The digital tracks have already been "squashed" and that mastering is fed to the cutting head after applying the RIAA curve.

However, the "dynamic range database" (results from a piece of free software that applies an algorithm to digital music and assigns a number related to the ratio between peak and RMS energy in the music) will regularly indicate vinyl versions of music (recorded and digitized by someone on their home setup) with more dynamic range. The problem is that this "extra" dynamic range arises from the inability to reproduce square waves (those flat-topped 0 dBFS regions in the article) in the analogue domain... there are overshoots that "add" peak energy that didn't exist on the squashed digital master. So you have people who think squashed music that has gone through all of the processing that is required to make a vinyl record magically comes out on the other end with more dynamic range, sounding better, when it's added a bunch of additional distortion. It's part of what makes the audio hobby so much.... fun.

</comment><comment><USER30> >but for listening to a whole album it wears you out.

Looking at you, Death Magnetic.....

</comment><comment><USER31> 2007, if Internet Archive is to be believed [https://web.archive.org/web/20070808082932/http://www.chicag...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070808082932/http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html)

<comment><USER32> Thanks, added.</comment></comment>


PyIDM – Python open-source alternative to Internet Download Manager - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pyIDM/PyIDM <comment><USER2> JDownloader2 is an open source alternative and I cannot imagine using anything else (there are too many features). And I'm saying that as a python developer.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's just me, but I find JDownloader2 to be very scammy feeling. It feels like adware software.

However, it truly is the most powerful download manager I've found. Combined with multi part downloads, I can easily max out my internet speed.

<comment><USER4> > I find JDownloader2 to be very scammy feeling. It feels like adware > software.

That's because it's not in fact open source. From Wikipedia:

> Some parts, but not all, of JDownloader are open-source.

> Mid-2012 there were complaints that JDownloader's installer added adware > without the user's consent.[4] The JDownloader installation contains adware > according to several sources, including the developer's own forums.[5][6] > There were further complaints mid-2014.

JD is basically junkware. There's a reason why it doesn't seem to be packaged on any Linux distribution. It's not community-focused OSS in the ordinary sense.

<comment><USER5> Found these:

SVN repo: [https://svn.jdownloader.org/projects/jd](https://svn.jdownloader.org/projects/jd)

there's also mirrors on Github: [https://github.com/mirror/jdownloader](https://github.com/mirror/jdownloader)

I'm not sure which parts are not open-source

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very cool. Cool enough that I think it would be worth giving it a catchier name. It's awkward to recommend "pie eye dee em" to people using spoken language.

<comment><USER7> PyDM would be better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Why another download manager?" section describes it as if there are no other open source download managers.

<comment><USER9> Maybe they don't know of fdm. Found out about xdm last week, time it's open source too

<comment><USER10> FDM = Free Download Manager? I've been using it since undergraduate days (2007 or 2008).

Unfortunately, v5 and newer isn't open source anymore. [https://sourceforge.net/p/freedownload/code/HEAD/tree/](https://sourceforge.net/p/freedownload/code/HEAD/tree/)

<comment><USER9> Okay. There's also a download manager called xdm. Wasn't a typo.. [https://subhra74.github.io/xdm/](https://subhra74.github.io/xdm/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kind of weird how in the 'About' section he forbids you to use this to download porn.

<comment><USER4> I finally realized you meant the license page! Actually, on this page it's clearly stated along with a number of other exceptions to the LGPL v3. This clearly makes the program _not_ open source software under the FSF's definition and I think it would be extremely risky to use even part of this code in your own application.

> videos / streams / contents that are not allowed to be downloaded using this > application are:

> DRM "Digital rights management", protected videos / streams or Copyright > materials.

> Porn videos/streams or any pornography materials.

> Illegal contents.

> Any contents that encourage/promote violence or criminal/illegal behaviours

This program is _NOT_ open source software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Spewmorphic;)

<comment><USER4> Heh. I really like this description. I'm not sure what's the reason for it looking like that.

Back in the days of Windows XP I used a program called "Free Download Manager" that made things significantly faster (due to multiplexing) over dial-up and DSL. And the interface was quite good. Pretty sure it might actually be _harder_ to make a UI look this bad, these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool project, although I was hoping this would be about Intelligent Dance Music..

edit: (I'm not just making a joke, I do a lot of generative music and synthesis in Python and C++..)

<comment><USER14> I was hoping for a replacement for Redhat IdM...

<comment><USER15> Given the title, that would be quite funny, as RH IdM is actually written in Python and also open source :) [0]

[0] [https://github.com/freeipa/freeipa](https://github.com/freeipa/freeipa)

<comment><USER14> Oh I know, I've fought that beast so much for a while. Was just stating my first reaction.

I did get really good at submitting tickets from the redhat support tool cli though hehe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The End Of The Cult Of The Astronaut - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/the-end-of-the-cult-of-the-astronaut/0

<comment><USER2> The space shuttle has been a huge waste of money. AFAIK, not a single significant scientific discovery. Robots/Computers make by far the best astronauts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some interesting tidbits such as the fact the moon landers could land on autopilot (feature never used), autolanding of space shuttle never used etc.</comment>


Will this shit matter in a year? [SLIDES] - <AUTHOR> http://www.talraviv.org/most-shit-wont-matter-in-a-year/ <comment><USER2> This is a solid philosophy for life.

Lately I've been reflecting about the things that really mattered to me professionally. Many things seemed so important just a few years ago and are in the don't-care bucket now.

By focusing on the professional experiences that I still care about years after the fact, I've been optimizing where I spend my time today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's a good point - the filter has definitely changed for me over time as well. The don't-care bucket is filling up, and I like it.</comment></comment>


Interesting Client Tools for Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://developer.sh/posts/kubernetes-client-tools-overview <comment><USER2> Interesting list, would be tons better if there were links to the tools' homepages in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> love k9s</comment>


GitHub Major Service Outage - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/#06DEC2016 <comment><USER2> As a weekend project, I created a service to monitor the status of many services (Github included) in one single page [http://isserviceup.com/](http://isserviceup.com/) . You can register with your Github account and star the services you use to receive notifications through Slack when their status change. It's all free and open source, let me know your thoughts!

p.s. I just posted a Show HN here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117856)

<comment><USER3> You're missing slack status (they're down right now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Got this when pushing a small change:

      remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (6/6), completed with 6 local objects.
      remote: Unexpected system error after push was received.
      remote: These changes may not be reflected on github.com!
      remote: Your unique error code: 13f721d92e29fbb811443a19a44a49e0

<comment><USER5> I also received this message when pushing. Didn't notice at first but I checked the repo and my chart and noticed neither had updated. It was a very spooky moment because I rely very heavily on Github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Trello is down too. I wonder if there's a service they're both using that's the root of it.

<comment><USER7> Running my side project StatusGator, I have a good view of 200 different service status pages and there are about 20 services now showing down or warning notices.

A quick spot check seems most of those are related to GitHub, however. Often times when AWS or Heroku or similar hosting service posts downtime you can see 30% of the services I monitor go down at all once.

<comment><USER8> I just signed up for an account. Looks good!

Some feedback:

\- Great if there was more granularity for some services. Down/warning for all of AWS is not useful. Better if one could scope to region or even better region + service.

\- The distinction between warn/down is not entirely clear. Also, it's not clear if it varies between services.

\- Great with Slack integration!

\- Instead of only selecting by drop-down or search, it would be great with a wall-like page with name + icon/logo, to make it easier to quickly find the service.

\- Good with historic stats, makes it easier to choose between down/warn (to know how 'noisy'i it'll be).

<comment><USER7> Wow, thank you so much for the feedback. I'm often surprised how hard it is to extract honest, actionable feedback from people even with nice personal emails.

Some of these features are already in development!

<comment><USER8> You're welcome!

If you make a wall-like page for selecting services, I'd suggest this layout: [https://www.dropbox.com/enterprise](https://www.dropbox.com/enterprise)

Basically the logo in white against the primary-color of the brand. Very easy to scan and looks clean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how long it will take for changes I merged (using the web ui!) during this outage to propagate to the actual gh-pages website.

</comment><comment><USER10> Where's GitHub hosted these days? Is their Rackspace footprint history?

<comment><USER11> aws + colo iirc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Github.com is down for me, but traversing directly to my own repository works just fine

</comment><comment><USER13> site is up for me, but:

remote: Unexpected system error after push was received. remote: These changes may not be reflected on github.com!

<comment><USER14> Same for me, website works but git pushes do not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Github's status page shows past month uptime, but I would be interested in seeing past year. It seems to me that Github has had a couple of major outages recently. Then again, they stand out more than normal operation.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish they used statuspage.io or at least offered email notifications for the status.

<comment><USER17> If you use Slack, you can subscribe to the Github Status RSS feed from the DM page for slackbot, or even your own username by using:

/feed subscribe [https://status.github.com/messages.rss](https://status.github.com/messages.rss)

I got a "Major service outage" message about 30 minutes ago.

<comment><USER18> i learned this trick as well and now our "hosting-alerts" channel has RSS feeds from github,aws,google,heroku,ubuntu(security list) and quite a few more

statuspage.io sites have rss/atom feeds in the 'subscribe' options as well.

RSS seems to live on here

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ugh no wonder - my pushes haven't been showing up.</comment>


Show HN: Titan - invest like a hedge fund - <AUTHOR> https://www.titanvest.com <comment><USER2> Try reformatting your title as a Show HN, i.e. `Show HN: Titan - invest like a hedge fund`

</comment><comment><USER3> Where is Titan on the spectrum of mostly hands-off investing, like Wealthfront, and Robinhood?

What would you say is your core differentiator?

</comment><comment><USER4> US Only? :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently U.S. only, but hope to change that in the future!

<comment><USER4> How far in the future? Mostly interested in Australia. And maybe Russia</comment></comment></comment>


The universal decay of collective memory and attention - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0474-5 <comment><USER2> Fittingly, this was also posted a day or two ago and got little response: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698855)

<comment><USER3> This is a theory, but I feel that time of posting and accumulation of advantage (initial momentum makes it more noticeable, generating even more momentum) has more to do with a post getting more or less traction than a sort of collective memory decay, at least for this particular example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _In France, it is a dozen years now since a president of the republic, long > since forgotten but at the time still floating on the spectacle 's surface, > naively expressed his delight at "knowing that henceforth we will live in a > world without memory, where images chase each other, like reflections on the > water." Convenient indeed for those in business, and who know how to stay > there. The end of history gives current-day power a pleasant break. Success > is absolutely guaranteed in all of power's undertakings, or at least the > rumor of success._

Debord, 1988

</comment><comment><USER5> In case anyone else was unclear what a biexponential[0] function is, it's a function that is the sum of two exponential values.

[0] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/biexponential](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/biexponential)

<comment><USER6> (from the link) "In specific". Are my grammar sensors malfunctioning? (I can see that it's logically the opposite of "in general", and you can say both "generally" and "specifically", but... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Recency bias is a major factor in performance reviews too, so, as every salesman knows, if you're going to slack off do it at the start of the cycle.

<comment><USER8> This will be a bit of a sidetrack, but I find this interesting. I work for a Danish muniplacity, and we do BI on a lot of things, one of them is various degrees of employee performance, but because we're the public sector, we also do a great deal of research on how these benchmarks are viewed by employees and managers. We have extremely detailed tools for viewing week-to-week performance, progression, regression and changes over the year and we have an entire team dedicated to presenting this data in a way that managers can understand and use it to help their employees do better.

Only our internal research into the effects of this, shows that things haven't really changed that much. If you enter a performance review on a good story about a recent success, that will mean a lot more than your statistical data. This is true even if a success story is only viewed as a success inside your own team, but not necessarily by the organisation. So we're spending all these resources on building BI, that makes it easier for managers to engage their employees, but it's still the old traditional ways that count, and that means recency bias as you call it, is still really important, even when it shouldn't be.

<comment><USER9> Well, you have data to indentify bias when it happens now. You can either use it to "equalize" distortions in judgement, or bring it as argument to abolish them

<comment><USER10> Given that there are less bias and systematic error in the review tools than in managers judgement ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Although they are only breath, words which I command are immortal -- Sappho, ca. 600 BC

<comment><USER12> "But he who thinks that in the written word there is necessarily much which is not serious, and that neither poetry nor prose, spoken or written, is of any great value, if, like the compositions of the rhapsodes, they are only recited in order to be believed, and not with any view to criticism or instruction; and who thinks that even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and perfection and seriousness, and that such principles are a man's own and his legitimate offspring;-being, in the first place, the word which he finds in his own bosom; secondly, the brethren and descendants and relations of his others;-and who cares for them and no others-this is the right sort of man; and you and I, Phaedrus, would pray that we may become like him."

Attributed to Socrates, written down by Plato (in Phaedrus) ca. 360BC. [http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html)

Postmodernist comedy has a surprisingly long history, it appears.

<comment><USER13> What an awful translation. You might get away retaining the longwinded structure of some classic Greek sentences when translating into German. But in English, this just causes pain for your readers.

<comment><USER12> "In after-years he liked to think that he had been in Very Great Danger during the Terrible Flood, but the only danger he had really been in was in the last half-hour of his imprisonment, when Owl, who had just flown up, sat on a branch of his tree to comfort him, and told him a very long story about an aunt who had once laid a seagull's egg by mistake, and the story went on and on, rather like this sentence, until Piglet who was listening out of his window without much hope, went to sleep quietly and naturally, slipping slowly out of the window towards the water until he was only hanging on by his toes, at which moment luckily, a sudden loud squawk from Owl, which was really part of the story, being what his aunt said, woke the Piglet up and just gave him time to jerk himself back into safety and say, "How interesting, and did she?" when—well, you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, The Brain of Pooh (Captain, C. Robin; 1st Mate, P. Bear) coming over the sea to rescue him."

from 'Winnie-the-Pooh', by A.A. Milne. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> An earlier version of the paper that is not behind a paywall:

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5759bc7886db431d658b7...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5759bc7886db431d658b7d33/t/5ad7ae01575d1f7d693e8af9/1524084227435/Universal_Decay_Patterns_in_Human_Collective_Memory+%2810%29.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> I find these premises unconvincing: 'Collective memory and attention are sustained by two channels: oral communication (communicative memory) and the physical recording of information (cultural memory). ' There are other means of sustaining collective memory and attention, such as performative actions, rituals and beliefs (if you can call beliefs channels - I don't have a definition for channels).

If the first sentence is loose like this, I'm not optimistic for the modelling and variable construction for the rest of the work. I'll have a close read of it, but this is a disturbing sign.

</comment><comment><USER16> Even after reading the paper, I find their use of the word "biography" to be a bit strange.

<comment><USER17> It measures if people are interested enough to read somebody's Wikipedia entry:

"Current popularity was measured using the number of pageviews received by the Wikipedia biography [39] of each athlete between J u1y 2016 and June 2017*".

They want to observe the decay of the interest in order to model it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is generational decay. It happens on schedule. We always forget those who come before us when we can. Now it is extremely easy to do.</comment>


Code Browser – A Folding Text Editor - <AUTHOR> http://tibleiz.net/code-browser/index.html <comment><USER2> Interesting--the author developed his own language with LLVM with which to write the editor:

[http://tibleiz.net/copper](http://tibleiz.net/copper)

My first reaction reading about the program was: since code folding (and other crutches intended to aid refactoring[1]) ought to be tightly coupled to the language (or even specific project) you're editing, you'd surely need the ability to write scripts, lest things begin to get clunky. Emacs immediately comes to mind, but inspecting the code revealed that the scripting language made available to the user is also a creation of the author.

I don't now much about how practical it is to develop a DSL using LLVM, but I would be fascinated to know how the process compares to Lisp in terms of productivity. Without having read the source code too carefully, one thing I'd be interested to know is whether or not the language written by the author (Copper) and the editor's scripting language are one and the same (as in Lisp). Is there an interpreter somewhere in the editor source? Or are plugins compiled or interpreted by Copper / LLVM at some point?

Of course, the author may also have his own motivations for choosing LLVM--for example, to learn.

All said, fascinating project!

[1] but hopefully not to merely make unwieldy code-bases navigable. (Yikes!)

<comment><USER2> To answer my own questions about the intended use for "Code Browser", see:

[http://tibleiz.net/code-browser/tips.html](http://tibleiz.net/code- browser/tips.html)

 _Understanding existing source code

Code Browser can help you to understand existing source code.

There is a lot of tools dedicated to program understanding that will do the job better than Code Browser, but if the source code is written in a too obscure language or too old, it can be a cheap alternative.

Here is some tips to make more sense of a flat text file by extracting a structure and reducing its apparent complexity:_

<comment><USER2> Another text editor that treats text as having no grammatical structure (it doesn't even do syntax highlighting), but nevertheless attempts to give the user some really snazzy shortcuts--not keyboard shortcuts, but mouse shortcuts --is Acme[1].

In fact, years ago, I'd contemplated adding text folding to Acme by adding another chord. I don't exactly remember what I had in mind, but one approach that immediately comes to mind now is to have the chord cut the selected text, and then insert in its place a shorter block of predefined text which starts with the name of an rc script to create a file[2] representing a new "fold" containing the cut text, and positioning the cursor immediately after the command. The user would immediately type a name for the fold, and middle click the whole string to execute the script with the name as its argument, thereby creating the fold. Finally, the selected command just executed should be replaced simply with the name of the fold, which should then be selected, so that the user would now be only a right click away from immediately unfolding the text.

I think the reason I never got around to doing it was that it seemed that this kind of feature really begs for acme to follow the names of the synthetic files representing the "folds" as files themselves to be opened (via right click, which always opens a file in acme), but at the same time, not literally open the file, instead unfolding it.

Writing this comment makes me think now that it wouldn't be so hard to get the semantics of the synthetic "folding" filesystem right, so that Acme remains simply a text editor with a few conventions for working with files, with the "fold" synthetic filesystem doing the work to preserve this simple worldview. What actually concerns me more is the kind of code that would require you to fold it! If need to fold a significant amount of code in order to make sense of your source code, perhaps you would be better if if actually reorganized your project's file structure, and not rely on fancy text editor features as a crutch.

[1] [http://acme.cat-v.org/](http://acme.cat-v.org/)

[2] Of course this feature would use a filesystem to manage the code folds! It's a Plan 9 program, after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is very interesting.

I've come to rely on Sublime Text's Cmd+R "Go To Symbol..." [1] (and Cmd+Shift+R "Go To Symbol in Project...") extremely strongly for code navigation. Instead of scrolling up or down to and _searching_ for a func I want, I just Cmd+R and go to it. Lookup, not search. It becomes second nature and so fast that other things become the bottleneck.

However, sometimes I notice its limitation of having just one scope, the top level symbol definitions. I wish there were other scopes accessible, like go to symbols within a function declaration. Or go to packages within my GOPATH (partially addressed by GoSublime's Cmd+.,Cmd+O "Browse Packages" [2]).

Basically, I think that being able to quickly select a scope and navigate to entries within it is very a powerful construct, and this Code Browser seems to address the multiple scopes aspect. That's why I think it's interesting.

[1] [http://virtivia.com:27080/1l2gvqiyrty1g.png](http://virtivia.com:27080/1l2gvqiyrty1g.png)

[2] [http://virtivia.com:27080/15j0bijsr586y.png](http://virtivia.com:27080/15j0bijsr586y.png)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been trying it out. Here are my suggestions for improvement:

There should be a simple mouse way to exit a section (the opposite of double- click to enter a section)... perhaps an X button to click on. Right now you have to hit Alt-Left, Go->Parent_Section or Right-click menu-> parent. You can navigate quickly when a list-view is open, but this would allow it even if there is no list-view.

The editor should remember the last cursor position within each section. So if I exit a section, then re-enter it, the cursor is restored to the last place.

It would be cool if the editor tried to hide the distinction between files within a project and sections. The project could provide the level of hierarchy above the file. I was surprised that there is no project file .cbp for the code-browser source code.

How can I close a project? It does not seem possible. The "add file to project" should allow me to select multiple files.

I know there are links.. but they don't act like sections. I can Alt-Right to follow a link, but I can't then hit Alt-Left to get back. BTW, when I edit a path for a link it should bring up a file browser, not just a text box.

EDIT: thinking more about this: the concept of tabbed file browsing should be replaced with tabbed views. I should be able to have multiple views into several sections of a project, ignoring all file boundaries.

I should be able to have several views on the screen at one time (even if they are in the same file).

<comment><USER2> Storing text in a named file, folding a block of text within a file into a named "fold", and opening multiple views of the same file (with each view potentially being a different subset of that file), are all really just the same idea: that of a hierarchical filesystem. This could easily be achieved by writing a synthetic filesystem for Plan 9, and used with Acme.

The only difference between the semantics in this kind of filesystem is that there are no directories. Rather than associating each file with a directory, we instead want to create the filesystem hierarchy directly out of named subsets of the files themselves.

I might not have been completely clear about it toward the end, but my reply (currently a leaf) to my own thread on this page tries to describe how the mechanics for this might work.

<comment><USER4> Well it does not exactly match filesystem semantics- I mean a directory/file has both content and directory entries, and they are ordered. You would have to define what 'ls' does in this context.

This made me wonder what code-browser did with xml files. It's nothing special, but it could have treated the elements as folds.

<comment><USER2> Yes, good point about the differences in semantics with conventional filesystems.

To the extent that they are similar, though, a synthetic filesystem could try to expose the folds as a Plan 9 filesystem interface. Plan 9 filesystems may or may not act like conventional filesystems, sometimes also require talking to a control file in some special-purpose protocol.

Presumable, one could write a Plan 9 filesystem to handle folds in a way that a text editor can exploit (some small modifications to Acme, mostly related to mouse input--and a few rc scripts to talk to the filesystem--would probably be more than enough). But, by doing things the Plan 9 way, you get more flexibility and interoperability; for example, the ability to control folds (perhaps without even opening the text editor, although this raises the issue of how persistent folds should be) from the other scripts, or just to do things like access the contents of a fold with programs like cp, diff, ftp, etc.

Good point as well about XML, a file format that is crying out to be treated along with the folds in a more unified way.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the OS should already treat any archive-type file as a filesystem automatically. So you can "cd" into a .zip, .tar or .ext4 file (no mount -o loop necessary). Applications have some support for this (MC and emacs in UNIX or Windows Explorer), but it should really be in the OS.

<comment><USER2> That would be very interesting indeed. Even Plan 9 requires you to mount tar files with a special command instead of simply typing "cd file.tar".

The Plan 9 developers were conservative about preserving the semantics of commands like "cd", so that the system did not diverge too greatly from Unix. Instead, the equivalent of double-clicking on a file in Windows Explorer is handled by right clicking on a file in Acme. Acme sends the filename to something called the "Plumber", which then uses rules to decide what to do with the file:

[http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/using_plumbing/](http://plan9.bell- labs.com/wiki/plan9/using_plumbing/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wish there was a mac version.

<comment><USER6> What I thought when I saw "Windows and Linux".

So this is what it feels like, huh?

Looks cool though, gunna give it a whirl on my Windows box.

<comment><USER7> Not long ago all the software one wanted to run[1] was only available on Windows. Then the Internet happened, then[2] the open source movement, then Apple's return from the brink of death. One doesn't need to be very old to know what it feels like.

[1] to a first approximation of "all"

[2] to a first approximation of "then"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One issue with using a tool like this to browse a project which was not already folded: you waste a lot of time just adding folds (akin to "properly" indenting someone else's code). On the other hand, that might not be a bad exercise as you try to comprehend a new project.

<comment><USER2> Folding could be partially automated based on language grammar. It could also try to learn from your own manual folds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> First off, this is a really interesting project. However, I'm trying to get my head around how much this would help me. Has anyone used text folding in production?

<comment><USER9> Isn't this a standard feature in most text editors / IDEs? I use SHIFT+ALT+CMD+ARROW-LEFT (I think that's the one (muscle memory)) every day in Xcode. And Sublime can fold methods etc also.

Am I missing something?

I do like the tree structure it gives you, something I'd really enjoy having for my notes as an overview. Too bad it's not for OSX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Brilliant! When I am dealing with refactoring or modifying existing code, finding my way around is the hardest, most time consuming part. This seems a huge timesaver.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks really cool, but I don't think I'll be using a text editor that isn't built for purely keyboard-powered control.

</comment><comment><USER11> see also jgrasp, which i used a lot in a job where I had to refactor c code that was written as a large soup of several-hundred-line functions.

[http://www.jgrasp.org](http://www.jgrasp.org)

</comment><comment><USER12> On a side note folding in Vim is very flexible with many helper plugins.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pretty cool. Some gripes though:

* How do I teach it new comment syntax?

* How can I change fonts?

</comment><comment><USER14> Why?

<comment><USER15> 'It makes navigation through source code faster and easier.'</comment></comment>


Nominees for the Pwnie Awards 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://pwnies.com/nominations/ <comment><USER2> The key to these "bug bounty" companies is sort of a two pronged approach.

Make money white hat (b2b) And blackhat (inside info i unfortunately cannot expose)</comment>


Our goal is a car free street within 4 blocks of every New Yorker - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/goodnycmayor/status/1241140383461113856 <comment><USER2> > Competent Mayor Bill de Blasio

> @GoodNYCMayor

> ... Pizza is eaten with the hands. It's a parody my friend.

</comment><comment><USER3> Joke, but on the other hand, now would be the time to roll something out.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a parody account, it's not real.</comment>