Apple Slashes MacBook Prices by up to $200 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100456846

<comment><USER2> This is a fairly yawn-inducing story.

Congratulations, Apple, the most profitable company in the computing sector, announced an 11% discount on a high end laptop.

Should we have an article when Dell bumps fifty bucks off an Inspiron laptop, too?

<comment><USER3> Not earth-shattering news, but significant considering Apple's steadfast resistance to price drops historically. Apple has very rarely dropped prices on anything, choosing always to replace it with a newer model at the same price.

Apple moving something away from a long-standing pricepoint is, IMO, noteworthy.

Though in this case, perhaps inevitable - the retina pricepoint was never sustainable.

<comment><USER4> When was the last time Apple actually dropped prices on an existing model (perhaps with speedbump) rather than e.g. introducing a new one that happens to be cheaper?

Maybe I'm forgetting, but I think the last time may have been the original iPhone, which went from $600 to $400 and angered a lot of early purchasers.

<comment><USER5> On June 11, 2012, Apple lowered the price of the base model Mac Pro, from $2899 to $2499. It increased the RAM from 3GB to 6Gb, but that was all.

[http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac- pro-...](http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-quad- core-3.2-mid-2010-nehalem-specs.html)

<comment><USER4> Duh, I should have thought of the Mac Pro. That last "bump" was notoriously bad, but I didn't realize the price had dropped too.

Any others?

<comment><USER5> None as recent, but here's one more:

On October 14, 2008, Apple lowered the price of the base model MacBook, from $1099 to $999. It upgraded the Combo Drive to a SuperDrive, but that was all.

[http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook-...](http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook- core-2-duo-2.1-white-13-early-2008-penryn-specs.html)

So yeah, it's pretty rare for Apple to lower prices on existing Mac models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was inevitable, regardless of how Mac sales are doing. The classic MacBook Pro design has no place in 2014's lineup, and you've got to get a $1700 laptop to a $1200 price point somehow.

<comment><USER7> If they do phase out the non-retina MBPs, that means none of Apple's laptops will have ethernet ports. On a "pro" machine, for the sake of shaving off a millimeter or two.

High-resolution displays are great, but Apple's fetish for thinness is causing some unfortunate side effects.

<comment><USER8> Another side effect is the lack of Kensington lock slots on the Retina and Airs.

<comment><USER9> This really bothered me when I found out. I was in a coffee ship working and was forced to pack up my back every time I needed to use the bathroom. The two solutions out there, one from kensington and the macbracket, are poor substitutes for having a kensington slot.

<comment><USER10> Maybe your usage has outgrown camping out in coffee shops...

<comment><USER9> huh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Apple also missed Wall Street's revenue forecast for the third straight quarter..."

Maybe Wall Street has no idea what they're talking about. Record revenue? Not good enough. Apple needs to work on managing expectations better.

<comment><USER12> What makes people think that Apple gives a damn about Wall St.?

<comment><USER13> Because 68% institutional ownership and <0% inside ownership means that they are owned by Wall St, literally and figuratively.

<http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=AAPL+Major+Holders>

<comment><USER14> And are these estimates coming from the major holders? No, they are coming from brokers and analysts. "Wall Street" is several different things, and conflating them in this case does nobody any good.

If and when Al Gore holds a press conference and tells Tim Cook what he wants Apple to do, we can talk about the shareholders running the company. But some snot-nosed analyst writing a research report estimating sales or material costs or whatever is not the same thing as owning the company and directing its activities.

<comment><USER13> > _And are these estimates coming from the major holders? No, they are coming > from brokers and analysts._

That is correct, and if the OP had asked a different question, then that would be a good answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Slashes?" ...

That's only 6% of what my MacBook Pro (Retina, 16GB, SSD) cost (after the educational discount was applied). When I read "slashes, I'm thinking at least a 20-30% price reduction!

<comment><USER5> At the Apple Store for Education, the base model retina MacBook Pro was priced at $1599. As of today, that model costs $1399. That's a 13% price reduction.

[http://store.apple.com/us- hed/browse/home/shop_mac/family/ma...](http://store.apple.com/us- hed/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anyone spell out the differences between the mac book air 13 inch (assuming I max the cpu and hd) and mac book pro retina 13 difference?

<comment><USER17> MacBook Air: thinner, lighter, comes with a 1440x900 workspace.

MacBook Pro: retina resolution display with IPS, faster processor (uses standard mobile Intel processors rather than low-power processors). It comes with a 1280x800 workspace by default, but since it's a retina display you can make the workspace larger without losing too much detail.

The MacBook Air is great for mobility if you need the absolute thinnest and lightest. The MacBook Pro's IPS display is going to have much better viewing angles and the processor speed will be marginally better. If I were purchasing, I would go for the MacBook Pro. It comes with 8GB of RAM by default (I'd have to add $100 for that with the Air), I like IPS displays, and I don't think I'd mind the scaling for a larger workspace (since things like text don't see degradation). The drop in price means that the price difference is $200 (assuming 8GB of RAM in each).

<comment><USER18> Macbook pro retina resolution is 2560x1600

<comment><USER19> That's the panel's native resolution. The (default) effective resolution is only 1280x800 though, just with much more detail. You can configure it of course.

In other words, the Macbook Air's 1400x900 will have smaller UI element rendering and more desktop "workspace" than the out-of-box experience with 13" MBPr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> MBA-style?

That doesn't seem like a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can you say Samsung?

If I had any money I'd be short on Apple stock.

Google Nexus ($350) and Samsung Series laptops (max $1,500 for 17") are Apple killers on the rise.

For similarly spec'd hardware, Apple is quite expensive. I guess you do get OS X and iTunes...wait, there should be a price reduction just for enduring their presence ;-)

Sold my spinning beach ball iMac and bought a PC again. Sure Windows blows, I know, but what can you do? I mean it's not like there's an alternative to the corporate OS box...or wait, what's this I see here, something called Linux: Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu,...maybe I'll give Linux a shot.

Apple isn't much different than M$ when it comes down to it, highly restrictive, although the bling factor is pretty high, nice looking gear.

<comment><USER21> Ahhh, karma accrued and lost, the perils of taking a contra-Apple stance.

Sorry, ditching Apple's BSD for a "real" Linux distro ranks as the 2nd best developer decision I have ever made (the 1st being switching from Windows to Apple).

To put in perspective, just picked up a Dell Precision Series M4700: 3840QM K2000 2GB graphics 16GB (could go 32GB if I ever need it) 256GB SSD 256GB mSata bluetooth, webcam, backlit, etc. $1,700

Comparable MBP would be at least $3K, no? Picked up a pair of Skullcandy Aviators, Google Nexus phone, North Face laptop bag and I still have a grand to go before I get to MBP price tag.

Shit, guess I'll use the remaining grand to get my flight to France, spring surf season just about to begin ;-0

<comment><USER5> You're so right. With Dell, you get twice the computer for half the price:

Dell Precision Series M4700

 _Height: 1.29" to 1.44" / Width: 14.80" / Depth: 10.08" / "Target Starting weight": 6.33 lbs_

Apple MacBook Pro 15"

 _Height: 0.71" / Width: 14.13" / Depth: 9.73" / Weight: 4.46 lbs_

<comment><USER22> I disagree here: It is cheaper, but you can't sell it 2-3 years later for anything other than a couple hundred bucks.

You can CL a used MBP for a considerable portion of it's purchase price 2-4 years later.

If you're unwilling to sell your old MBP, the Dell may very well be a better deal.

<comment><USER5> Please reread my post. There was a joke in there somewhere.

<comment><USER22> I missed, I was aiming at your parent</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chromebooks just became more lucrative for small and medium businesses - <AUTHOR> http://www.themukt.com/2014/10/09/chromebook-vs-windows-businesses/ <comment><USER2> This seems to be a very biased article to me, almost like advertising.

"Chromebooks are certainly perfect devices for small and medium businesses ..." I guess that depends on what perfect is for one.

"They don't need to deal with overly complicated technologies with limited shelf life, or uncertain future (Microsoft can't even decide the UI of its operating system), and expensive upgrades."

If Microsoft Windows future is uncertain, then what is Chromebooks future? And where are the arguments?

"What is the cost of running a Windows machine, per user? Go figure it out keeping in mind the cost of all the components you may need – OS licence, office suite, anti-viruses, custom applications and what not."

Windows OS license for small laptops is free. You can use Google Docs or every other web service with Windows as well. There are very affordable Windows Laptops like the HP Stream for $299. I also wonder what custom application you would need for Windows that otherwise is only available on a Chromebook?

Don't get me wrong, i think Chromebooks can be great devices. But this article doesn't really reflect reality.</comment>


Redact Secure Messenger App Challenge - £10,000 prize to intercept a message - <AUTHOR> http://www.moderndayturing.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Saw this in the Guardian[1], their app[2] looks really interesting. Anyone here know a little about how they could make the remote redaction work? Obviously you could just take a screenshot before the sender retracts the message?

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/30/redact- app-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/30/redact-app-secure- messenger) [2] <http://www.redactapp.com/></comment>


Apple vs Google vs Facebook and the slow death of the web - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/9338963/welcome-to-hell-apple-vs-google-vs-facebook-and-the-slow-death-of-the-web <comment><USER3> Ever since iOS became ascendant I've been scared of a future like this - <USER2> the bulk of internet use is funneled through a small number of gatekeepers, doing an end run around the leveling power of the web. It's hard to put into words, but it's the fear that the "internet as we know it" \- chaotic and untamed, or more importantly unruled - will evolve into something akin to TV before cable: more interactive, but still essentially a content delivery system for four or five corporations. That is, a thing that our grandkids will be free to consume, but not to create or improve.

It's funny - if a TV network had ever tried to sell people TVs that only played that network's shows it would have flopped, but iOS has proven that the principle can work if the experience is good enough, or the alternatives poor enough. I suppose it's all inevitable, and maybe some think what I'm worried about is already here, but I sure hope not.

<comment><USER4> The 'leveling' power of the web is an illusion. The web is controlled by those who have the resources to develop and distribute web browsers, which is a tiny elite at this point.

The leveling power was never about the web - it was inherent to the Internet and open source. What we needed was a true open-source app platform that was a community property the way Linux was. If we had that, it wouldn't matter what Apple did.

Unfortunately Google killed that dream with Android.

<comment><USER3> > The 'leveling' power of the web is an illusion. The web is controlled by > those who .. develop and distribute web browsers

I mean the leveling power of open content exchange, not the current technical particulars. If browser wars mess up HTML badly enough the world can invent a better system, or at least it could have. But once everyone gets their internet though walled-garden devices, that ship has sailed.

<comment><USER5> Apple has built in VPN and Tor support so at some point you have to wonder if Apple haters are suffering a type of Stockholm syndrome.

<comment><USER3> I don't think "Stockholm Syndrome" means what you think it means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Highly ironic that Gruber is complaining about blocking its website ads on the grounds that they're not annoying like other websites. Same with plenty of other Apple bloggers.

Guess what: adblocking because some ads are obtrusive is like killing a fly with a cannon. Or more like killing a fly with a nuclear bomb. No adblocker maker is going to start whitelisting every single non-obstrusive ad network. They're going to block most of them. Most users will not make the effort of whitelisting their favorite websites either, they'll just see some adblocking app on the Top list in the App Store, download it and forget about it.

Bigger websites will get smarter about ads. Probably more "sponsored" stories and similar things that you can't block. Smaller websites are going to have a harder time tho. All because some people can't understand that if you don't like obtrusive ads the best thing to do is to stop visiting sites with obtrusive ads.

<comment><USER7> I don't believe Gruber is complaining about The Deck being blocked, rather arguing that some ad networks are "more equal than others" (which I believe is true BTW).

It matters little financially though, Gruber's main revenue source is not the puny little square at the bottom left corner of Daringfireball.net anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am actually with Apple on this one, and really think Apple is doing the right thing. No, we have started on wrong footing about content should be free* thanks to Napsterization of web, we discriminate digital goods and physical goods. Now, with ads, we get junk websites or good content websites turn into junk as soon as monetization starts. We have to some how find a way to make people pay for the content they consume, advertising can stay for those who can tolerate and those of us, who cannot - I am tired of Car Ads on my kids youtube channel, I will pay.

The web will be OK, the real hell is the media like The Verge, serving mega- pages with marginal content and click-baity.. ratty tatty articles.

<comment><USER9> you didn't read the article? The ads by iAd (= Apple) are unblockable ( like facebook ads). They just do the "ad blocker" to piss of Google and third parties... ( as usual)

<comment><USER10> iAd's and not used on the web at all, they are only for in app ads.

<comment><USER11> Which is entirely the point. To make money, companies are going to have to move away from the open web to closed app environments.

Like the article says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My take on what the Verge is saying:

Web sites that rely on advertising will die or move to Facebook and native apps.

What percentage of Hacker News links rely on advertising? 90%?

<comment><USER13> Considering linking to pay-walled content is forbidden on HN, I'd say 100%.

<comment><USER14> > Considering linking to pay-walled content is forbidden on HN

What?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While the article makes interesting points, I feel that it is only relevant to big media and expensive content.

The other side of the web is small businesses and individuals making money with their own web sites for customer support, maintaining a consulting business (I have used my web site for 20 years for this purpose), selling their products, sharing their creative works, etc. I would argue that this side of the web is huge and is still ripe for Google style revenue generaton.

I don't underestimate the effect of mobile app use though, and I don't like raising the bar for individuals and small businesses having to spend money to create apps. This is a shame since the web is better in my opinion. When I do engage in productivity killing activities like Twitter and Facebook, I use the web versions of the sites on my phone. I do this partly to support the web as a universal platform and partly because I resent the access permissions so many apps require on my devices.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm torn on whether this will make things worse or better. I can see sites starting to adopt in-content ads more aggressively, which will be more difficult to block. Like the sponsored links at the bottom of news articles. I find those much more annoying than a simple banner ad that's in the sidebar.

</comment><comment><USER17> The author's take on ad blockers is quite alarmist. There are plenty of obvious solutions and counter-arguments:

* Is it fair that you collect and sell data on your users without telling them exactly what that data is? Do you think they'd continue patronizing your site if they knew up front?

* Create a mobile app for your content and enforce its usage

* Bring ads on premise. Back in the 90s we all hosted and sold our own ads.

* Pivot. The world only needs so many BuzzFeeds.

<comment><USER18> > Create a mobile app for your content and enforce its usage

Shortly after Nilay took over at The Verge the mobile app was killed off. Likely to drive mobile traffic where they can display, rather invasive, ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> People are talking about this as if there are two options here: ads pay for the internet or the internet drops behind paywalls.

There's another option: we go back to using non-monetized or minimally- monetized services. Frankly, those are _better_. I don't care about giant media websites aimed at providing oversimplified, sanitized content for the lowest common denominator of people. I don't care about social media or snappy web interfaces that put a layer of varnish on crap. I care about quality information, and people who are knowledgeable and care about a topic will share information on that topic even if they don't make much money for it. People running blogs or small informational services will still do that. Services like PBS/NPR will still be funded by government and donations. Bloggers who are knowledgeable enough will still be able to sell books. Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. can all go bankrupt and I don't care. Sites can go back to being straight unstyled HTML with no CSS and I'm fine with that. Web 2.0 is completely worthless to me. Ads AND paywalls can go to hell.

Sheldon Brown's website is _still_ the best resource about bikes on the internet. The worst degradation it has experienced is the apologies for politically incorrect content that its current maintainer has added due to pressure from people on social media.

</comment><comment><USER20> "you wouldn't steal a car..."

what a difference in tone and attitude the tech media has for the movie/tv studios (snickers and shrugs of indifference) and for themselves (plaintive appeals to the reader's benevolence) when they both have issues with making money on their content.

</comment><comment><USER21> Web seems to be doing OK. If a few of the sort of websites that rely on ads go out of business, it may even get better.

</comment><comment><USER22> The article is wrong. The author thinks this is about a war between the big 3. It's not. There's no insidious plot to pull the rug out from under google. Apple isn't trying to push their ad platform. Ads right now are just a shitty user experience. You can try to construct whatever narrative you want, but the simplest explanation fits; ads are shit, mobile browsing is shit because of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just block iOS for everything, Apple didn't see that one coming.

<comment><USER23> I'm reasonably sure that would hurt the websites more than it would hurt Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "TAKING MONEY AND ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE WEB MEANS THAT WEB INNOVATION WILL SLOW TO A CRAWL"

This is the sort of messaging I would expect from a journalist who has a stake in the online-advertisement game. Does anyone really buy this argument?

I enjoy this Apple-Google death spiral as a spectator, and I hope it will drive more websites to subscription-based, freemium models, instead of playing friends with global spy regimes that incentive advertisement platforms to extract every detail of your internet browsing in order to "serve you better ads", aka, develop behavior profiles of consumers in order to find the "terrorist", and definitely not aggregating the behaviors of individuals in order to create a huge information disparity that becomes a vector of population control. Yes, that poorly placed Google AdSense blurb is trying to take over the world.

Advertisements suck, and they're only getting worse, and more subversive, and the intent of the platform creators is only becoming further aligned with these spy regimes.

<comment><USER25> i think you missed the point.

Apple is not killing the ads, its killing ads in the browser. Content producers are just going to leave the web and do native apps with ads. On iOS, those ads are controlled by Apple. It's genious.

It's just a shame that the web is a casualty.

<comment><USER26> > On iOS, those ads are controlled by Apple.

I don't think that is true. My understanding is that Apple has certain policies about user tracking. It does not force ads to use iAd or take a cut from ad revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So walled gardens and "owning" the users are all fine and dandy until they suffocate you.

No one challenged apple either legally or technologically and everyone tried to emulate them. Enjoy your brave new world.</comment>


Working remote and got cabin fever? - <AUTHOR> http://hi.remotetogether.com/ <comment><USER2> This might make a good "Show HN".

Is there a story behind it's development?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! Good call.

Below is kind of "my story" in a way. I'm going to put up a medium article with the full thing. :)

[http://hi.remotetogether.com/t/remotetogether-why- now/20](http://hi.remotetogether.com/t/remotetogether-why-now/20)</comment></comment>


'If We Had Glass' Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://www.ifwehadglass.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not from Google. This is only a hackathon to come up with ideas to enter in the #ifihadglass hackathon. There is no official affiliation.

The website was not optimized for mobile; because of the time limitations (contest just announced, ending in a week) everything had to be put together quite quickly.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't work properly in firefox, either. Not optimizing for mobile is fine. Yeah, it'd be nice, but it is an "extra" thing. having content cutting off in a major desktop browser on a large (1920x1200) screen? No excuse.

edit: Doesn't work in opera either, but it's not as bad.

<comment><USER3> Plenty of excuse, Google announced this merely a day ago, the hackathon is on Saturday.

Extremely limited amount of time + demand for applicants, I think it's ok to overlook a few things here and there on the website :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This site is so goddamn weird, it might as well have been a parody site, if I didn't know it was an unofficial hackathon.

<comment><USER5> It seems that they are trying pretty hard _not_ to make that clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >If chosen, you will not purchase a ticket of $1500 plus tax.

That's some strange wording. Could you clarify what it means?

<comment><USER7> I presume it's a parody of Google saying "Hey, if you 'win' the chance to get a set of Google Glasses, you still need to pay $1500 + tax to get a pair".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It sounds like a joke: Using Google+ or Twitter, tell us what you would do if you could brainstorm ideas for Glass ... Google+ applicants will likely be ignored.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The site should be back up. We were using <https://www.site44.com/> , had to upgrade with increased load. (site44 is pretty awesome btw)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like people really aren't understanding this.

The site is a parody of google's own "If I had glass" site that launched yesterday: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5249820>

They are looking for applicants to work together in a hackathon type enviornment to come up with ideas for the actual "if I had glass" applications. Pretty smart IMO...

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused. Firstly, the text in the header is not readable on mobile because it's the exact same colour as his jacket. Second, are they flying the winners to SF? Third, is the $1500 implying that you get a Google Glass for free? Fourth, is this a Google event or a 3rd party? It looks like an official Google site. Unclear. This was after one readthrough on my phone. Maybe I missed a FAQ link...

<comment><USER10> It's an unofficial brainstorming session, where all you get to do is brainstorm with others about how to best apply for Google's contest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a repeating error in the first paragraph.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is extremely weird..I am speechless..

</comment><comment><USER13> What an oddly specific parody.

</comment><comment><USER14> What a joke

</comment><comment><USER15> the site went down.</comment>


4D Toys: how objects bounce and roll in 4D – paper accepted to SIGGRAPH 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://marctenbosch.com/news/2020/05/siggraph-2020-technical-paper-n-dimensional-rigid-body-dynamics/ <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see how it would look with the 4D scenes properly projected instead of cross-sectioned. I mean that is how we get 3D scenes on our puny 2D displays; we don't generally do the sort of cross-sections for 3D like they show in the flat-land example except in some specialized applications. Of course cross-section is still valid method of visualization.

I don't know enough about higher dimensional graphics to be able to say if you would be able to do projection directly from 4D->2D (as our displays still are 2D), or if it is better to go 4D->3D->2D.

Bit disappointing that the video spends a lot discussing general 4D stuff and less about the dynamics part which is the actual subject.

Here is video of one of the other visualization systems referred in the paper which if I interpret it correctly does projection with depth of field [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT5YCs84jJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT5YCs84jJU)

<comment><USER3> Well, we get 3D scenes/projections on a 2D screen by being in a 3D world/context and looking at a 2D screen. With that I mean to say that I think (not sure) a 2D image of a 3D projection can only _feel_ 3D if you're in a 3D world.

This also means such a thing should be possible for living in a 2D space and then projecting a 2D world on a 1D screen.

If you're going to play with 3D projections of 4D objects, then in order for it to really feel 4D we need to live in a 4D world. In that sense, this is quite similar to living in a 2D world while seeing a 3D projection. That's way more trippy.

To recap:

Feel 3D: 3D context -> 3D projection -> 2D screen

Feel 2D: 2D context -> 2D projection -> 1D screen

Feel 4D: 4D context -> 4D projection -> 3D screen

What we can do for 4D: 3D context -> 4D projection -> 3D screen

Compare issue with 3D: 2D context -> 3D projection -> 2D screen

I hope this makes sense (and I hope I have it right).

Man, this is tough to write about. I'm not sure if I fully understood all the nuances of your comment.

<comment><USER4> Makes me wonder if the human brain if born into a 4D world would be able to function, or if fundamentally it is impossible for the brain to process a 4D word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am genuinely surprised for a long time that I've not seen 4D monsters in films. It has been so obvious to me there's potential there.

It would of course be a flat 2D projection of a 3D slice through a 4D creature, so it would look like a smoothly morphing between different creatures, and in and out of existence so we've sort of had morphing for a long while (since Willow, C. 1985) but... there's potential.

In case I missed it, any films actually done that?

<comment><USER6> Annihilation (2018)

Spoiler, obviously: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBsJgceM0KI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBsJgceM0KI) \- if you haven't seen it cannot recommend it highly enough, just wait and watch the whole thing.

<comment><USER7> Perfect music for that scene.

One thing Annihilation did for me was really get me to the point mentally where I could start to appreciate just how mindblowing it is to encounter such different life like in the movie. By the time the end of the movie came around, I could really get a grip on how horrifying the "choreographed" scene would be, or encountering a floating mandelbrot set, c'mon. That is pure terror.

And that's not an easy perspective to hold on to in a world that barrages me with so many sci-fi/fantasy movies and ideas.

<comment><USER8> if you like those sounds you may like Burial, of which it immediately reminded me

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v27jdRub2GQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v27jdRub2GQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does one model 4D gravity? Consider the 3D to 2D analogy. If the 2D person lived on a planet, that would be a circle. Then 2 planets orbiting each other would appear to the 2D person as two line segments oscilating up and down (because the 2D person cannot see the entire circle, just the edge view). Based on the velocity of oscillation and the separation of the line segments, a 2D newton could come up with an analogous law of gravition with an inverse square relation. But if two 3d planets were orbiting transversely through the 2D plane of our inhabitants, the 2D person would see two separate line segments growing and shrinking although the line segments could maintain a constant distance of separation. The velocity of growing and shrinking would be changing even though their separation was constant. Extending this analogy to our universe makes me wonder if our calculation that the universe is expanding is just an illusion. Rather, at astronomical distances, our universe could be traversing 4 dimensions. And what we perceive as an accelerating expansion of the universe is just motion into the 4th dimension. And if we could travel into that dimension, we might be able to get to places that appear far away but are actually not. Though it sounds far fetched, it also might explain the stuff that is postulated to happen at the quantum scale- where quantum fluctuations are postulated to occur. The only thing we would need to be able to do is to 'coordinate' the fluctuations of lots of adjacent voxels of space. And then we could wander through 4D space.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you like this, then checkout the presentation on Geometric Algebra from 2019 SIGGRAPH: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX4H_ctggYo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX4H_ctggYo)

You can then play around with objects in 3D, 4D, and beyond:

[https://enkimute.github.io/ganja.js/examples/coffeeshop.html...](https://enkimute.github.io/ganja.js/examples/coffeeshop.html#qcga3d_points_and_more)

<comment><USER11> This amazing, thanks for the pointer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Marc is amazing. Can't wait for his masterpiece game to be finally completed! [http://miegakure.com](http://miegakure.com)

If you really want to enjoy 4D Toys in the meantime download his tablet game: [http://4dtoys.com](http://4dtoys.com)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, the title does not make it justice: I only went to look at it in an idle moment after lunch. Much better to transcribe the beginning of the video:

 _4D Toys is a toy box filled with 4-dimensional toys._

 _By 4-dimensional I mean that they exist in a world with 4 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time, instead of 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time._

 _It turns out that the rules of how objects bounce, slide and roll around can be generalized to higher dimensions, and this unique toy lets you experience what that would look like._

<comment><USER14> Ok, let's take the title from the video instead. Thanks for pointing this out! Sometimes the best work hides behind dry or modest language.

It's easy enough, albeit annoying, to brush away the inflated mediocre. It's so much harder to locate the unseen gems.

Edit: ah, I see - the video is from 2017, and there was a thread back then too: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14471931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14471931). I guess we'll make an ugly hybrid of the titles.

<comment><USER15> Thank you this is still much better than the useless original title

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bivectors are an elegant choice for dealing with rotations be cause they are isomorphic to skew-symmetric matrices, which are the Lie algebra of the special orthogonal group SO(n). The Lie group SO(n) is also known as n-dimensional rotation matrices.

In general, using Lie groups for this sort of thing is great. Things like time-derivatives become very natural in any dimension.

<comment><USER17> Correct me if I'm wrong - I'm just trying to make sure I understand the generality of your statement. 3-bivectors are commonly referred to as the "axis angle" representation, and have an obvious embedding as the lie algebra to the lie group of rotation quaternions. [x,y,z] -> 0+xi+yj+zk -exp-> rotator quaternion.

Does such a thing exist at higher dimensions? I vaguely recall something about having complex numbers for 2D rotation, quaternions for 3D rotation, and octonions for (I'm guessing) 4D rotation, but I'm curious if the loss of associativity with octonions screws with this relationship somehow.

<comment> h-cobordism > Does such a thing exist at higher dimensions?

Yes, everything in your first paragraph extends to any number of dimensions (replacing "quaternion" with "rotor").

> I vaguely recall something about having complex numbers for 2D rotation, > quaternions for 3D rotation, and octonions for (I'm guessing) 4D rotation

Bivectors and rotors faithfully represent rotations in any number of dimensions. The octonion product can't, because as you said, it's not associative, but rotations obviously have to compose associatively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you find this interesting, you'll really love the short book "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions." It's a deep dive into what a dimension really is, intuitively, and also satirical commentary about Victorian society.

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/201/201-h/201-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/201/201-h/201-h.htm)

</comment><comment><USER19> The comparison to children playing with blocks makes me wonder: If you spent long enough playing with these 4D toys, would you develop a deeper intuition for the 4th dimensional shape of the objects?

<comment><USER20> I've played with some programs I made to explore 4D objects, and, yes, you do gain some intuition.

Interestingly, I was told one of George Boole's daughters got lessons from a guy on 4D objects by using colored wooden blocks. She really picked it up, and later in life mathematicians would consult her about intersections of 4D polytopes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This would make for a really fun video game. Think about a 4D shooter in the vein of Portal.

I imagine that after awhile the human brain would learn to recognize patterns in 4D spatial reasoning.

<comment><USER22> I've been working towards making something like a 4D Descent, but I keep getting sidetracked by problems like 4D physics, collision detection, and mainly how to model interesting 4D objects.

What Marc's done with Miegakure, from what's publicly visible, is pretty incredible. I have no idea how he's managed to seemingly create a coherent 4D world while only being able to view a slice of it at a time. I guess it's a bit like using ed instead of a modern text editor.

<comment><USER23> Ditto. My solution so far has been to simply ignore the problem of modelling interesting objects--the only objects are components of the environment made of simple geometric shapes, and the game challenges are all related to navigation. I've been fiddling off-and-on with procedurally generating some 4D creatures for a sequel game (e.g., by using a genetic algorithm to evolve 4D shapes that can walk), but that's a _long_ way off.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I've mostly ignored it so far as well. I did get Dual Contouring working on 4D signed distance fields, but the resulting meshes are kind of janky. My thoughts are to eventually get boolean operations working on arbitrary tetrahedral meshes and do some CSG, or create a Blender-style 4D mesh editor.

Another game idea is The Incredible Machine in 4D, but it would be so hard to play, and even harder to design the puzzles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I love 4D graphics.

Many years ago, in my freshman year of college, I wanted to create a 4d space game, and spent about a year grinding out an OpenGL rendering engine. I taught myself the requisite mathematics and realized that my conception of hyperspace as operative in my game, was fundamentally wrong. So I moved on. Still have the code laying around, although I lost the Linux port I ginned up at one point. Really should polish it and release it. :)

<comment><USER22> I'm curious, in what way was your conception wrong? Sounds like it could still be interesting.

<comment><USER24> my initial thought was that hyperspace would allow a _shortening_ of the distance traveled from point P0(x,y,z,q) to P1(x,y,z,q). Since I was _really_ into space combat games at the time... that would have been really cool!

However, - and this is obvious when you work through it - when you use Euclidean distance ([https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Distance.html](https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Distance.html) \- see the General equation), the distance travelled increases, thus obviating a key part of my game, which was to "jump" through hyperspace to shorten the trip. I didn't care to rewrite math enough to make the game work out, and since I'd spent so much time learning math, graphics,and larger-scale program design, I was burnt out. It was a great experience.

One day I might return to the notion, but it'll be around the hyper- dimensionality experience, not as a combat game. I don't like the slice mode of 4D games qua the OP, I far prefer projections from 4D as a way to understand the 4D realm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'll ask any physicists out there. A 4th spatial dimension probably doesn't exist, right?

Even if we couldn't perceive shapes across a 4th dimension, we would still perceive things moving through the 4th dimension like we see in 4D toys. In reality we don't ever see anything like this (spatially anyway). Is that correct?

<comment><USER26> If there were 4 spatial dimensions + 1 time dimension we would end up in an unstable universe.

Ehrenfest (1917/1920) studied the hydrogen in n dimensions and concluded for n> 3 that neither classical atoms nor planetary orbits can be stable, because the inverse square law of electrostatic and gravity becomes an inverse cube law. When n > 3 there are no stable orbits to the two body problem: an incoming light body attracted by a heavy one would either escape to infinity or get sucked into collision.

For n = 3 we get stable elliptic orbits or non-bound parabolic and hyperbolic orbits.

Collision only occurs when the lighter body heads directly towards the heavy body within 2R (R being the heavier body's radius), ie. the impact parameter is zero [2]

[1] [https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.19203660503](https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.19203660503)

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

edit: grammar

<comment><USER27> Hooray! We disproved string theory!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There was an indie game that had 4D puzzles (as in actual 3D + time), and the person/team behind the game developed a framework and map editor to work with those properly...

I cannot recall the name, but it looked awesomely complex!

<comment><USER29> Was the game Miegakure [0]? It has the same author as this paper/post, and pretty much seems to be the premiere 4D game. The parent link says that the research shown here was developed for Miegakure, so it might be the game you're thinking of.

[0] - [https://miegakure.com/](https://miegakure.com/)

<comment><USER30> probably not, because they are describing a 3+1 game where there are substantial time-manipulation puzzles.

Wish people wouldn't call "game with time manipulation mechanics" "4d" though.

I do remember there was a game which was like, an rts, but with time manipulation bits.

Ah, but that didn't really feature 3d movement, so probably not what they are thinking of?

I also remember a 4d spaceship shooter game..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has there been any attempts to visualize and project 4D objects to 3D space so that we could "grasp" them better? E.g. using colours, shadows, etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> 3-manifolds have some pretty great descriptions to [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/a-few- of...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/a-few-of-my- favorite-spaces-the-three-torus/)

Bill Thurstons Three-Dimensional Geometry and Topology is a great read

</comment><comment><USER33> SIGGRAPH 2020 in July is all online because Washington DC is keeping their convention center as a makeshift hospital through the summer. I have not seen revised registration fees for this conference yet and hope they are reduced. I attend approximately every other year and its on the pricey side.

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh yeah this is old. I think this is the same guy making Miegakure @ [https://miegakure.com/](https://miegakure.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> A related thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14471931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14471931)

</comment><comment><USER35> I would like to see the 4th dimension projected into 3d and not just a slide, same as you could project the 3d into 2d, by showing further objects smaller and closer objects bigger.

<comment><USER36> You can absolutely do this (and it would be quite interesting to try with a VR headset, e.g.!); the idea is a special case of the _projective transform_ [0] in 4 dimensions. It may make for a cool demo.

\-----

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

<comment><USER37> Absolutely this should be in VR and I'm a little bit surprised it isn't tbh

edit: [1] [https://4dtoys.com](https://4dtoys.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Check out my geometric algebra implementation in Julia language at [https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl](https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl)

</comment><comment><USER39> The most surprising aspect of this is that it's a solo paper accepted for a major conference!

</comment><comment><USER40> This is super interesting but hurting my brain. A person in 3D can see 3D, 2D and 1D. But a person in 2D can only see 1D. How can a person living in 2D world see 2D things like Circles.

<comment><USER41> What we (3D beings) see is a 2D projection of the world around us, 2D beings would indeed see a 1D projection of their 2D world (e.g. we only really see a circle when looking at a sphere). Just as we use depth perception to differentiate 3D objects from 2D ones, 2D beings would also be able to discern a circle from a line in a 2D world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is an awesome accomplishment. I remember seeing this work when it first came online years back — pretty mind-blowing, especially some of the transitions between [dimensions] in his flagship game.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you liked that video check this other one by Carl Sagan:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0WjV6MmCyM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0WjV6MmCyM)

</comment><comment><USER44> Awesome! Would be cool to see the extension in non-flat spaces as well, like geometry with a low "speed of light". Clifford algebras can handle that too.

</comment><comment><USER45> Wonder if there is somewhere a list or some document of "interesting" 4d shapes? For example klein bottle, which is the only one I know of.

<comment><USER46> That's a complicated question you're asking. It belongs to differential geometry, which I specialised in 15 years ago.

So, you're looking for interesting 4 dimensional manifolds. Problem is, there are many of those. Too many to count, iirc.

Contrast this with the 3 dimensional manifolds, of which there are only eight (and simple compositions of these eight).

Now, unfortunately, the Klein bottle is a 2 dimensional manifold (it's surface is the manifold, and that is locally isomorphic to a R^2). It's interesting because it does not have an embedding into 3d space, unlike most other 2d manifolds, so you need to embed it into R^4. I don't know if there is a list of these.

I can look up more details and give more pointers if there is interest.

Interesting side note: the Klein bottle was originally called "kleinsche Fläche" (Klein surface). When saying this German word with an English voice it'll sound like "Kleinsche Flasche" which translates to "Klein bottle".

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> That's really cool!

</comment><comment><USER48> Why do these n-dimension demos always have the little 2d man seeing the world as if he could fly away from his 2d plane and see it from above? In that example where narrator says the 2d man would be intrigued about the circle floating, he would actually only see a line moving up and down. The ball crossing the plane would be just a line stretching and shrinking. If he lived in a 2d world, what he could actually see would be /pretty/ limited.

<comment><USER49> He would be able to see a circle the same way you can see a sphere. Do you feel like you can only see discs, not spheres?

<comment><USER50> How different would a 2d square look projected onto a 1d view, vs a circle?

<comment><USER51> If you rotate a square, then the length will oscillate. A circle will remain fixed (but presumably would have surface detail to clue you in that it's rotating.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Bitbanter, an anonymous bitcoin-reddit-McSweeneys mashup. - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitbanter.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> OP and Chief Bitbanterer here. For more background on the site, click on 'pi' in the header (I hope it's a mildly entertaining read). Some other details below:

1) Built with Meteor (using Coinbase API for bitcoin transfers). Loved it, especially as a noobish web developer, but not without its challenges. Some examples: no server-side URL routing/static page model in the official packages, had some trouble with HTTP calls/callbacks, and I sincerely hope no one ever sees the horrible mess that is my home-spun single-application Twitter OAuth implementation. Most of these issues will probably resolve themselves as Meteor/I grow.

2) The lofty goal behind Bitbanter: reduce barriers between (potentially anonymous) satirists and consumers while forgoing the traditional data collection/ad model. Besides the data a user voluntarily submits, zero data collection goes on (even bitcoin amounts come straight from the blockchain). I'm not 100% opposed to Big Data, but to me there's a strong philosophical argument for unbundling content from advertising and trying something "pure."

3) The less lofty goal behind Bitbanter: I love making people laugh, and wanted a place to showcase and scale my satire. But blogs are boring, so I made this instead.

4) Yes, I'm aware that at scale there are some huge problems with the way articles are promoted (e.g. spam, someone with big pockets could push an article to the top and my whole anti-bundling-ads argument goes to shit). Still thinking through those issues, but figured they wouldn't matter as long as the site was tiny.

5) I know bitcoin elicits mixed feelings, but man, it's cool. Without bitcoin, it would have been much, much more difficult (I think impossible, but I have a small mind) to build a platform where people can post things anonymously and get value from others seamlessly (another example: reddit's bitcoin tipper bot). Even if this f(l)ails, I'm pretty excited about bitcoin's future. If nothing else, I hope my experiment gets the HN gears turning. There are more nascent bitcoin ideas on Earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy...and I'd love to see them.</comment>


A PHP framework with zero configuration - <AUTHOR> https://nessphp.github.io <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting.

I think you need a more technical description for your landing page. It's intended for developers, not executives. I left without a clear understanding of the scope of Ness PHP in my development process.

But you've got me hooked. Just add an examples page and a separate examples section to your landing page and I'm sold.</comment>


Summer of Design: "Design for Hackers," week by week - <AUTHOR> http://summerofdesign.com/

<comment><USER2> I really like these week by week courses that are coming out. I have a lot of things I want to learn, so the cadence and content size of the weekly chunks is perfect. I'm looking forward to this one. I'd love to hear what other courses people have come across around different subjects.</comment>


Silicon Valley CEO Pleads 'No Contest' to Abusing His Wife - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/17/silicon-valley-ceo-pleads-no-contest-to-abusing-his-wife-and-is-offered-a-deal-for-less-than-30-days-in-jail.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl <comment><USER2> Reading this made me want to throw up. Absolutely horrible.

But then while listening to the video, I realized the recording sounded a lot like what I would hear when my parents beat my siblings/myself as kids for doing something wrong.

This made me wonder:

Is hitting your kids any less morally despicable than hitting your spouse?

Why does such a large section of society think it's OK to hit your kids and not your spouse?

Curious to hear what other people think.

<comment><USER3> My dad spanked me with a wooden stick. I think it was good for me.

<comment><USER4> Why is this downvoted?

I know a number of people (at least 5 off the top of my head) who are genuinely thankful for being physically punished as children and claim they are better people for it.

This is a legitimate claim.

edit: for clarity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Santa Clara District Attorney simply doesn't get it. I saw a domestic violence case first hand - the husband was arrested, got out on bail, but the DA never filed charges and simply dropped the case because it didn't involve _severe damage_. For the DA to file charges, they'd have to see a hand or leg broken badly. What they don't understand is the enormous mental pain these women, especially from Asian countries, go through. It's just sad.

</comment><comment><USER6> I first would like to say this is a horrible way to treat anybody and hope that Neha Rastogi gets all the support she needs to deal with this situation.

That being said, does even the spousal abuse have to be related to software in Silicon Valley? Just listening to the video was so surreal. Lots of spouses fight over things but what a "bug" is or is not? It's just crazy that _this_ is what came out of Silicon Valley.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why the heck does this guy think abuse is OK? I mean, what possible thought process could he have, that ends with "...and _that 's_ why I should hit my wife today!"

I'm not trying to justify the guy's actions. I'm just trying to figure out how he justifies his actions to himself. I want to gain insight into why this kind of thing happens, maybe that will give some clues about how to detect or prevent it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why did you remove the last part of the title? ("and Is Offered a Deal for Less Than 30 Days in Jail")

<comment><USER9> That extra text would have exceeded the 80-character limit for HN article titles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The link is malware to my iPhone. Locks me into a full screen ad for winning something, then breaks the back button. Had to close the page.

</comment><comment><USER9> Discussion from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14136167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14136167)

</comment><comment><USER11> How is the threatened murder not discussed in court?

</comment><comment><USER12> Disgusting. People defending his actions with culture and religion are even more so.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wife beating is considered acceptable in certain traditions, as long as you don't hit her in the face.

<comment><USER2> Murdering people is considered acceptable by Islamic extremists, as long as they are non-believers.

<comment><USER14> Pizza is considered acceptable in some gyms, as long as its keto friendly and covered in chicken breast.</comment></comment></comment>


Chelsea Manning gets 14 days in solitary confinement for suicide attempt - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/23/chelsea-manning-solitary-confinement-suicide-attempt <comment><USER2> 8th amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment. This isn't so unusual anymore, though, so it's only cruel. I guess that's ok...?

</comment><comment><USER3> Beatings will continue until morale improves.

</comment><comment><USER4> This treatment is horrific. Solitary confinement is well known to cause severe depression and suicidal ideation.

<comment><USER5> For some, yes, but others have killed cellmates in order to be alone.

FWIW, I'd be terrified to share a cell. I certainly would not sleep well, and that would take a toll on me. The fear of injury or even death (see above) would prevent proper rest. Lack of sleep eventually causes hallucination and other severe mental problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Welcome to America.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not enjoying prison? Let us show you what you're missing!

</comment><comment><USER8> Commenters seems to not understand why solitary confinement is a standard action for suicide risks.

It's not about punishment (though Manning was also found with contraband in this case).

It's about the safety of the individual, and order for the rest of the inmates.

The inmate lives in a tightly controlled environment, and nobody sees a body swinging in the next cell over.

<comment><AUTHOR> _A 2004 study in Californian prisons found that 73% of suicides in incarceration happened in isolation cells, where less than 10% of the prison population of the state was being held. Separate research in New York City concluded that prisoners in solitary were seven times more likely to harm themselves than those in the general prison population.

_ For people with pre-existing mental vulnerabilities, solitary confinement can be close to torturous Ron Hornberg, National Alliance on Mental Illness "It is pretty well established that solitary confinement has a very detrimental effect on a person's mental health and for people with pre- existing mental vulnerabilities it can be close to torturous," said Ron Hornberg of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the nation's largest grassroots mental health advocacy group.*

 _"It's a sure-fire way to worsen symptoms."_

Experts decry solitary confinement for Chelsea Manning after suicide attempt

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/24/chelsea- mann...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/24/chelsea-manning- suicide-attempt-solitary-confinement-health-experts)

<comment><USER8> How would you recommend keeping someone under observation? With 100 other inmates?

<comment><USER6> This person shouldn't even be in jail.

<comment><USER8> Ah...I disagree, but that explains the other comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


VMware previews Project Bonneville, a Docker runtime that works with vSphere - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/22/vmware-previews-project-bonneville-a-docker-runtime-that-works-with-vsphere/

<comment><USER2> How is this different from Hyper?</comment>


Error Correcting Parser with Edit Distances - <AUTHOR> http://languagengine.co/blog/error-correction-with-edit-distances/

<comment><AUTHOR> Another post in my series on parsing malformed input. I think of all the ways of doing this, this approach works best, especially because you can pre- compute a lot of it.</comment>


I quit my software job and drove around Africa for three years. Album of photos - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/sfczb7P <comment><USER2> Great stuff! Hope to read the book soon Grec! This really made me happy :) was meant to travel through a few African countries but wasted the past 8 weeks, on interviews, doing stupid technical tests, just wasting time of my life that I'll never get back because of some pretentious people. And could've travelled instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is what i call white mid life crisis. I dont know what it is. Self importance? sell all your stuff and head into one of the most dangerous continents on earth. i come from a third world country like this and I would never dream of doing this kinda crazy shit. No thanks, I'll stay in my beautiful first world country. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _this is what i call white mid life crisis._

In fairness I was 27 when I quit to drive from Alaska to Argentina, and I was 33 when I quit to drive around Africa.

Not sure you could call either of those midlife.

> _I 'll stay in my beautiful first world country. Thanks._

It's really great to hear you're living the life you want to live. I'm very happy for you.

> _I would never dream of doing this kinda crazy shit_

We all seek different things in this life, and it doesn't do anyone any good to criticize the choices of others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely love your photojournals Dan, thanks for sharing with us. Be safe, but stay adventurous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you're very welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> sweeeet! Thank you for sharing!!!

I want to do this with a boat tho...</comment>


Ask HN: Do you've access to customers data in the company where you work? - <AUTHOR> I've heard most companies do not trust their developers with the customers' data. I am wondering if this is the standard practice or what? <comment><USER2> Yes, it is standard, having access would also be illegal in the EU.</comment>


UK Government: Climate change scientists broke the law hiding data - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7004936.ece

<comment><USER2> I am glad this is breaking out slowly but surely and the C02 saga will probably be the greatest scientific scandal of our time. I have been following the story for as far as I remember as I had an interest in Ice Ages. This article <http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf> is very good at debunking some of the myths. You can play with a model online with this <http://cs.clark.edu/~mac/physlets/GEBM/ebm.htm#tiptop> and you can download a more sophisticated program <http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/> from Goddard, or you can write your own Clojure one, like the one we had yesterday here at HN.

There is no doubt that an increase in CO2 will increase temperatures. However, this is only part of a model. C02 can get absorbed by the Oceans and other earth mechanisms and balance out. If you follow the Palaeoclimate literature (ice cores in Antartica) the rise in temperature gave a rise to C02 and not the other way round.

You can look how the famous hockey stick curve looks if plotted against historical times (it looks more like a series of hills).

Serious variations in temperature (on a global level) are caused mostly by sunspot activity. I am sure other HN posters can add 100's more argument to these.

However, as humans there is no doubt that we are destroying our environment. As such I am very much for better policies in this respect but certainly NOT for trading carbon credits and fattening fat cats further.

<comment><USER3> > or you can write your own Clojure one, like the one we had yesterday here at > HN.

The Clojure one we had yesterday that

1\. looked only at data during the "hockey-stick handle" period;

2\. found, in his very first graph, a steady increase in temperatures over that period whose magnitude (>2 degrees C) was greater than that in the usual "hockey-stick" graph (~ 0.7 degrees C);

3\. plotted a bunch more graphs in ways that would inevitably make changes of ~0.7 degrees invisible (look at the last one -- range from -20 to 80 degrees on the y-axis);

3\. claimed to have shown by all this that the hockey-stick is not real?

That one?

> CO2 can get absorbed by the Oceans and other earth mechanisms and balance > out.

Perhaps it can, but since it's possible to measure CO2 levels and they are in fact increasing that's not actually happening.

<comment><USER2> Just have a look at fig 4 at the paper I quoted above <http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf> You will see the 'hills' I mentioned above.

I am not actually suggesting inaction I support any measures that will lower human impact on the planet, however, I am supporting _good_ science and policies that do not have the word _TAX_ in them.

<comment><USER3> How do you know that the best policies do not involve taxation? (If it's because you take it as an axiom that _no_ good policy involves taxation, then the fact that you don't want taxation in this particular case is perfectly uninformative.)

<comment><USER2> It's because in general I believe tax money is not utilized effectively and their impact on demand is minimal. Non-tax policies could have similar effects. For example the government could impose a ban on _manufacturing_ SUV vehicles or improve the public transport system. Increasing the age at which one could get a driver's license in the USA would probably reduce petrol consumption by a few percent (as more families have more than one car).

What evidence do you have that the money received in tax would not purchase goods and services that would increase emissions?

I never made an axiom that _no_ good policy involves taxation. It was your assumption. The least you could have done was to ask me to clarify my position.

<comment><USER3> > What evidence do you have that the money received in tax would not purchase > goods and services that would increase emissions?

Eh? Where did I say or imply that it wouldn't? I asked why you're so sure that taxation couldn't be part of the best policy. I didn't say I'm sure that it should be. I don't know what the best policy is.

(In any case, surely what's relevant is not whether any tax revenue would go to purchasing things that increase emissions, but whether the _net_ effect would be an increase in emissions.)

> I never made an axiom. [...] It was your assumption.

You might want to remind yourself of the meaning of the word "if".

> The least you could have done was to ask me to clarify my position.

Curiously, that _is_ exactly what I did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only conclusion that I 've been able to draw from this mess is: climate science has been seriously compromised :(

I just cant decide who can be trusted as a source for accurate and unbiased information/opinion.

<comment><USER5> "The only conclusion that I 've been able to draw from this mess is: climate science has been seriously compromised"

Really? I'll give you a more plausible conclusion: that the scientists in question got tired of responding to repeated Freedom of Information requests from people whose only interest was to disseminate distortions of their findings.

<comment><USER6> _requests from people whose only interest was to disseminate distortions_

How do you know the intent of those asking for information? It seems to me that there are plenty of people here on HN that would just like to try their own hand at models. Who gets to decided when a request merits a response?

 _the scientists in question got tired of responding to repeated Freedom of Information requests_

The one who pays the piper calls the tunes. If you're going to build your business (yes, research and universities are businesses) on public funding, then you've got to be prepared to have your customers -- the public -- ask about what you're doing. It seems to me that they ought to have at least an intern dedicated to maintaining a public web site where everything is made available. Then no annoyance to the researchers would occur.

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that they _couldn't_ make everything available, because some of their data came from sources with confidentiality conditions attached. See, e.g., [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427393.600-battle- fo...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427393.600-battle-for-climate- data-approaches-tipping-point.html) (note: "New Scientist" is less than perfectly reliable, but I have no reason to think they're wrong on this particular point).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Global warming is the new swine flu.

<comment><USER8> The article talks about climate change. You might want to learn the difference between climate change and global warming before you dismiss it with a one- liner.

<comment><USER7> Regardless of the verbal purity and political correctness the point from the OP is: someone was trying to force the conclusion than the climate is warming more than it is.

Isn't that clear?

<comment><USER8> Verbal purity? They are two totally different concepts. This isn't about making sure you use the right term, it's making sure you understand the difference between the two.

And yes it was clear. I think anyone reading the article should come to that conclusion. Your comparison was shallow and silly and I called you on it.

<comment><USER8> I always thought that global warming was a subset of climate change. The fact that the title of the article included climate change made me puzzled as to why global warming was used.

<comment><USER7> Because I'm commenting article content, not the title. Of course the global warming is the subset of a climate change -- the subset most relevant in the article.

<comment><USER8> And like I said before, your comment was poor. You said it was the new swine flu when it's been around far longer. It was disingenuous and apparently calling you on it is a no no; so be it.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I bet you would say it's poor also if I said it differently, "global warming is overhyped" or whatever, probably because you just don't agree with it.

Speaking of poorness of comments, I guess in this matter you can rely on how they are upvoted. No offense, just see for yourself..

<comment><USER8> I don't agree with it, but that's not the issue. Your comment wasn't worthwhile. You're arguing ad hominem and haven't even backed up your silly point still and it's four or five comments later.

Flipping it over on me doesn't change the fact that your comment was poor. There are also obvious counterarguments to your point that popularity means you're right but I don't need to go into them.

<comment><USER7> No. I didn't do any ad hominem until now:

Dear Mr Brain Police, I did back up my point in another subthread. You were busy here with proving how silly I am so you haven't noticed.

Again, please digest a feedback you're receiving (votes!) and rethink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Global warming != Climate change

1.) Global warming increases average temperatures.

2.) Climate change might turn the weather to extremes, which implies greater temperature _variance_ locally.

Now the pattern I see is: people are trying to focus on 1.), disprove it, then (falsly) claim that 2.) would also be wrong!

This is not the case. 1.) does NOT relate to 2.) in any way!

The climate change IS happening, this does not change by disproving 1.)

<comment><USER10> The problem is that nobody care whether the "climate is changing". Change is the only constant. The question is whether it is bad and whether we can do something about it. Neither has been very well established in my mind. If in fact our CO2 contribution's effect is far smaller than the IPCC and environmentalists claim, then natural variation is the dominant factor and even completely giving up industrialization entirely next year may not have a very large effect. This means that it is a lot harder to affect the climate than we have been telling ourselves. And climate changes have been happening continuously for billions of years, so it's not at all obvious that they are _a priori_ bad for anything other than human agriculture. (Which is itself bad, but something we can deal with, and broadly speaking is our problem rather than the ecosystem's problem.)

If environmentalists think they can turn on a dime after _thirty years_ of "anthropogenic global warming -> disaster", they are in for a well-deserved beating in the court of general opinion. Falling back to "The climate is changing" is basically an admission that we have no clue, and more than that, where we thought human effects dominated it, it doesn't seem to. You can't just turn around and apply panic over AGW to panic over "climate change"; it is neither rational nor human-irrational.

If you want to panic over something environmental, how about overfishing, plastic pollution in the pacific, fertilizer runoff, or something else that isn't "debatable" but actually, factually exists? In addition to the fact that it's a bad idea to try to "salvage" climate change as an issue, _it isn't even necessary_. There are _real_ problems. Unless you personally are driven by using environmentalism as an excuse to destroy democracy and transfer wealth to the poor, if you are really driven by concern for the environment, _you don't need to "win" this issue_. Trying to build your political case on a lie can only be actively harmful in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At this point we don't need climate science -- we just need to observe the ice at poles and the dead coral reefs.

<comment><USER12> > we just need to observe the ice at poles

It's currently increasing at both.... The polar bear populations are increasing too.

> the dead coral reefs

Runoff from deforestation is killing most of them.

There's some effect from increased disolved CO2, but it goes both ways. (Some creatures/plants benefit, others have problems, and still others don't seem to care.)

<comment><USER13> Ice is and polar bear populations are increasing? I have only read evidence to the contrary. Please provide a citation so I don't think you just made this up.

<comment><USER12> <http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?a=153>

You can look up the polar bears yourself. You'll find that the population now is about 4-5x the population in the 60s. It may be decreasing slightly in the past few years, but that's in the noise compared to the recent increases. There's no reason to suspect temp change has had an effect comparable to direct intervention by humans.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for sharing the article. In looking at the data, one notices a clear cyclic pattern but also a subtle general upward trend in temperature and downward trend in ice cover (i.e. the temperature lows are higher and the highs are higher) over time. But I'm no climate scientist.

With respect to the polar bears, I searched around and found many articles which state that the population in the 60's had been diminished because of hunting and that, currently, the plurality of polar bear populations are in decline because of climate change. The one article I found that supports your argument was from Fox News (no bias there ;-)).

<comment><USER12> > With respect to the polar bears, I searched around and found many articles > which state that the population in the 60's had been diminished because of > hunting and that, currently, the plurality of polar bear populations are in > decline because of climate change.

I note that you didn't mention the relative sizes of these changes, the former being >4x while the latter is close to the margin of error.

Then again, doing so doesn't fit your beliefs.

<comment><USER13> First of all, the "margin of error" theory comes from you and not the articles you told me to search out myself. And the hunting definitely adds some perspective to the ">4x increase" so it's worth mentioning. I'm surprised you didn't mention it to begin with.

I'm not looking to do battle here. In fact, I thought I was being humorous and polite. Moreover, I'm happy to see that the polar bear situation is not as dire as I thought. I've adjusted the thermostat in my apartment accordingly.

<comment><USER12> > And the hunting definitely adds some perspective to the ">4x increase" so > it's worth mentioning. I'm surprised you didn't mention it to begin with.

I did. Hunting is part of "direct intervention by humans". Habitat is another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Every victory for AGW denial is a long term loss for all mankind.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, screw the science, I _know_ I'm right.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, screw down-votes, I know right from wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


Getting feedback for Android app from within the app - <AUTHOR>

Getting a feedback on Android Market is tough, isn't it. I don't have any strong statistical proof to state it, but don't you find it difficult to review an app? How many times where you using an app, found it interesting but didn't bother to post a review, just because you had to close the app and open Android Market? I know I never gave a review because of this.
I made an app, MyCycle (it has nothing to do with the female biological cycle, had I known that google will relate it to this I would have named it differently), which isn't very popular. But I didn't get any useful reviews. Here is a suggestion to Android Market, "Why not allow apps to submit feedback through some API??? Is it that difficult to make a Android Market API?". I don't see a reason why Google has not done it yet. Well, for the time being I just created a website of my own, http://www.droidfeedback.com
In case you also feel the same, here are some simple steps you need to get started:
1. Login to www.droidfeedback.com
2. Register your app
3. Add some questions, you want to ask your users
4. For your app, download the jar on the website, or grab the code from googlecode link given.
Setting up the feedback form is simple, and I feel it is an easy step towards getting some useful feedback.
If you don't like the website, I sincerely apologize. This is my first web programming experience and I am no designer. I would be moving all the website code on github soon, so anyone interested in making it look good is welcome.
Have fun!
You can contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Here's how I do it. After a couple weeks of use I explicitly ask my users to rate the app after they open it, providing a button that jumps directly to the app on the market. This has worked really well. Checking that users have been activity using the app for a while weeds out most of the negatives

<comment><AUTHOR> yes this is good if the app is going well. But think about apps, which don't get too many users, even users who use it once and feel something to report about it, don't do it because they have to go on the Android Market. If you want to see how easy the process can be, download the MyCycle app from Android market, click the Feedback button. The questions you see on the feedback page can be changed anytime through a website, I don't need to give an update for the app. What I suggest may not be very intuitive at first, but if you see it once you will realize how much more beneficial it can be.

MyCycle app may not be of any use for you, you can uninstall it after seeing this feature, but its a good demo I feel :)</comment></comment>


The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial - <AUTHOR> https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/ <comment><AUTHOR> Embedded in this article was a kind of uncomfortable clarity:

> _There lies the terrifying structural boundary of our times — the API. > Today, you're either above the API or below the API. You either tell robots > what to do, or are told by robots what to do._</comment>


GCC should warn about 2^16 and 2^32 and 2^64 - <AUTHOR> https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=90885 <comment><USER3> For those who aren't C/C++ programmers, the issue here is people using ^ to mean power where it means XOR in C/C++.

<comment><USER4> I am not a C programmer but my opinion with any language is don't try to catch mistakes like this in the compiler. Instead leave to configurable and competing linters for people who want to catch possible mistakes like this. Anyone caught by this mistake probably hasn't tested their program adequately. Any mistake induced by the wrong constant number should be easy to weed out with unit testing.

<comment><USER5> Not including a linter in the earlier C compilers are one of the hughe mistakes of that area. Compilers absolutely should have linters, they are very valuable tools. Think about all the common security mistakes in your average C application that could have been avoided over the years with a linter.

I'm pretty sure Dennis Ritchie at some point himself said that not including a linter was a mistake, but I cannot find a quote of this with a quick search.

<comment><USER6> Back in the day most people actually ignored the few warnings compilers would give them, i do not think that having a linter would be used much (and AFAIK there were some).

<comment><USER7> "Back in the day?" Check out your system's log file for a scary collection of horror shows. Or compile most packages these days.

In defense: configuring a package that is compiled by lots of people on lots of machines with lots of versions of various compilers requires a lot of attention to warning flags and such. If you aren't starting out a package from a blank buffer it's very hard to get this right.

But I am frequently shocked by the number of compiler warnings I get from code downloaded from public repos and compiled in precisely the environments it's been documented to have been tested on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a good idea to me, since there's evidence that programmers are making this mistake, and the proposal is to add a warning only for the expressions that are most likely to be mistakes, that is 2^{decimal integer literal} and maybe also 10^{decimal integer literal}. There are many constructs that are well-defined in C, but where it is helpful to have warnings: use of = in condition expressions, implicit fallthrough in switch statements, misleading indentation, unsafe multiple statement macros, and so on. Programming in C is hard enough that every bit of compiler support is valuable.

<comment><USER9> The power vs xor mistake is no doubt a common one, but I take issue with the 2^8, 2^16, 2^32 examples that got singled out because they are also common bitmasks. Should FLAG_BIT1 ^ FLAG_BIT3 really be a warning?

XOR may be rarely used, but 2^8 is not only one of the most common accidental XORs, it's also probably one of the more common legitimate uses of it.

<comment><USER10> > Should FLAG_BIT1 ^ FLAG_BIT3 really be a warning?

Nope, the warning would be for literal numbers in the source. IMO anyone who doesn't define constants for the flag bits deserves the warning.

<comment><USER9> So 2^8 is a warning, but 2^BITS_IN_BYTE is not? I don't think whether or not the preprocessor helped in making the expression is a good heuristic for whether or not it is a mistake.

<comment><USER8> A warning heuristic needs to have a low false positive rate; a low false negative rate is nice but is not necessary. The purpose of a warning is to detect some common errors without inconveniencing too many correct programs. If some other errors go undetected then that is a shame but at least it is no worse than the current situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently found several instances of hand-crafted for loops in our Python code with:

      j = 0
      while condition():
        ++j

In Python, there is no "increment" operator, so `++j` is parsed as two unary plus operators: it's a no-op.

<comment><USER12> I recently found the following bug in some python code at work

      x = 12 //10

What they where apparently trying to do was to change the value of x while commenting out the old value for reference. Except in python // is integer division and not comments so x was set to 1 instead of 12.

<comment><USER13> This is silly. One of my personal stupid mistakes in Python is forgetting to delete a trailing comma. The resulting code is still valid, because a trailing comma produces a tuple.

        a = b,

<comment><USER12> Or accidentally forgetting a comma like in

      a = ["long", "list" "of", "strings]

which become

      a = ["long", "listof", "strings"]

due to automatic string concatenation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an example of why you shouldn't use blanket warning options like -Wall in combination with -Werror. Otherwise your program might fail to compile just because the dev randomly thought of some new things to warn about.

<comment><USER15> We use -Wall and -Wextra, and fixed basically all our warnings. Now everyone writes virtually warning-free code (that is, any warning is fixed before committing). And I don't feel limited in what I can do.

We could roll -Werror for most packages (I think we have a few packages, e.g. 3rd party libs, which emit warnings), but only use error=format and error=format-extra-args.

To be fair, we disable these warnings (-Wno-...): unknown-pragmas, long-long, register, unused-command-line-argument.

<comment><USER16> I just keep my codebase warning free and check it in CI. No need for -Werror on package level, users don't need to deal with random breakage from a false- positive warning.

<comment><USER15> If you don't control the build env (e.g. FOSS work), then of course relying on -Werror might yield unnecessary trouble.

<comment><USER17> You never completely control your build env. You are always relying on 3rd parties for some extent.

That may not look relevant in short periods of time, but there are large odds that somebody will be biten by your choice of using -Werror 5 or 10 years down the road.

<comment><USER15> I would not sign that claim as a general truth. It's true under some assumptions, but then, well, just disable -Werror in 5 to 10 years? It's not like THAT is a breaking change.

OTOH 5 to 10 years is a good way to accumulate plenty of warnings (assuming a lack of development discipline), which at some point makes it easy to miss that one critical warning that should really be fixed. Maybe I should mention the worst case for an error in the code I write is "people die" (static analysis of safety critical stuff), so that's a good motivation to have no warnings ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My perl script to scan C/C++ source code for common programming typos can check for this particular case since 1999.

see [https://www.cpan.org/authors/id/T/TY/TYPO/typo-2.46.pl](https://www.cpan.org/authors/id/T/TY/TYPO/typo-2.46.pl)

      // START: Mon Jun 17 14:49:53 2019
      C:\src\test\test.c (1): using ^ on a number 37: short#maxshort=2^16;
      C:\src\test\test.c (2): using ^ on a number 37: int#maxint=2^32;
      C:\src\test\test.c (3): using ^ on a number 37: long#maxlong=2^64;

Link to the 1999 Perl Conference paper for the script:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090729104734/http://www.geocit...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090729104734/http://www.geocities.com/typopl/)

</comment><comment><USER19> It would be nice, but I can see it's not easy to come up with a warning heuristic that doesn't give a bunch of false positives. Sure, 2^16 is "obviously" wrong, but how about SOMETHING ^ XOR_KEY with #define SOMETHING and #define XOR_KEY 16?

<comment><USER20> They discuss that in the thread. Consensus seems to be to warn when seeing "2 ^ (certain base-10 literals)".

It's uncommon to use base 10 when bit-twiddling with the XOR operator - <USER2> this makes sense.

Of course, it would be better if C-family languages didn't use ^ for XOR in the first place.

<comment><USER21> >Of course, it would be better if C-family languages didn't use ^ for XOR in the first place.

I think at the time they were created there simply wasn't an ambiguity in anybody's mind. POW is a relatively complex operation, I don't think anybody expected it as a builtin operator (much like SQRT and friends). Arguably so is DIV but I suppose that's too convenient not to have.

XOR on the other hand is something you really want to be a builtin operator in a low level, bit-twiddling language like C, so getting a dedicated operator makes sense. I'm not sure if an other sigil would've made more sense, after all ASCII lacks ⊕.

<comment><USER22> Algol 68 and Fortran both had __. In fact, COBOL 60 even supported __so not sure why anyone would not expect it as builtin for C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From the HN submission title it wasn't obvious that the issue is people misunderstanding that the ^ operator isn't the exponential operator but the XOR operator. Clicking through made it clear.

Warning about constant subexpressions where the LHS and RHS of ^ are constant literals makes a lot of sense to me, but if the LHS is a constant expression but not a constant literal, then not so much. Also, warning about this will cause some false positives where macro expansions are involved -- probably not a good thing.

</comment><comment> ainar-g Dominik Honnef's staticcheck tool for the Go programming language will probably warn about these as well[1].

[1]: [https://github.com/dominikh/go- tools/issues/516](https://github.com/dominikh/go-tools/issues/516).

</comment><comment><USER24> What if I try to make a pipe with '|' or redirect the result with '>'? Should there be a warning for that?

I find it amusing that people really do that though.

<comment><USER25> Some people switch programming languages often. Exponentiation operators are common, both caret and double star are used. It does not seem amusing (surprising?) to me.

On the other hand, piping and redirection are relatively uncommon outside of the shell. There is certainly a clearer mental distinction for me between "I am in shell" and "I am not in shell" than "I should double star".

<comment><USER24> C doesn't have double star either (in fact double star means double dereferencing).

YMMV or course, but distinction between a low-level language like C, and a higher-level one that can support exponentiation, matrix multiplication, thread spawning etc. as a first-class language construct is as clear to me as the difference between shell and non-shell.

<comment><USER26> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe double star as an infix operator would be interpreted as multiplication of a dereference:

      X ** Y

would be parsed as

      X * (*Y)

<comment><USER27> ...but it's unlikely to be accidentally used as an exponent, since you can't dereference a number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> GCC should understand the expression grammars of no fewer than a dozen other languages and warn you when something could syntactically be an expression from another language, but with a different meaning.

GCC should also change your diaper, burp you, and issue random diagnostics like

      foo.c:32: warning: did you test this yet?

</comment><comment><USER28> GCC has gotten too bloated. It could benefit from compile time CONFIG_ options to remove all the fluff, such as superfluous diagnostics.

If for whatever reason I have to include GCC in an embedded this sort of "misleading indentation" and "suggest parentheses" nonsense just wastes precious flash space.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't think it would not be simple or a good idea to warn because these are perfectly valid expressions and it would lead to a flood of warnings if compilers started to display "Did you really mean that?" for an ever growing list of expressions (which is what it would become).

Better to leave this to code analysis tools.

Edit:

2^32 uses the ^ operator exactly as intended, and has perfectly legitimate uses, especially when dealing with registers of HW peripherals.

It's not the same as warning on "if (a=b)" as someone replied.

From a language perspective, 2^32 is exactly the same as 2+32.

<comment><USER30> It's a warning not an error. Moreover, it is very hard to come up with a legitimate usecase of 2^32 as an expression. People who use it to set bit flags will use &, and for bit flags, octal or hex notation is probably better.

<comment><USER29> > It's a warning not an error.

Many build environments are set to treat all warnings as errors.

The point is that 2^32 is a perfectly compliant C expression that is neither misleading nor ambiguous, and that also won't create any variable overflow. It uses ^ exactly as intended. Why should the compiler complain? Why should I get a warning/error when following the spec to the letter?

<comment><USER31> Plenty of valid expressions generate warnings. A frequent gotcha is `=` in boolean contexts. Warnings are justified, and can normally be avoided with a little bit more lexical work (e.g. an extra set of parentheses). The upside is large and the downside is miniscule.

<comment><USER32> Isn't that pretty much the definition of a warning? An expression that is technically valid, but probably a mistake. If something wasn't a valid expression, it would be a compiler error, not a warning.

<comment><USER33> Usually, yes. C is weird because undefined behavior is illegal, can sometimes be detected statically, and yet will not produce an error. So sometimes you get warnings for invalid yet error-free code. It's a strange language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Terrible idea. If a programmer is so unfamiliar with C/C++ to believe ^ is pow(), she/he will create a lot of other problems regardless. Without to mention the kind of bugs created by such incorrect usage would be simple to spot most of the cases.

<comment><USER32> Wait... so your point is that since "bad programmers" do this, there shouldn't be a warning for it? That is among the silliest thing I ever heard. Especially since there's a trivial way to get rid of the warning: just write "18" instead of "2^16", if you REALLY intended the xor.

Also: it's incredibly naive to think that "bad programmers" are the only ones that would make a mistake like this. I'm very familiar with all C/C++ operators and know perfectly well that the caret represents xor, but I could easily imagine myself slipping and writing 2^16 instead of 1 << 16, because that's how the rest of the world writes exponentials.

Let he/she who has never written a typo and had the compiler save them cast the first stone.

<comment><USER35> > Wait... so your point is that since "bad programmers" do this, there > shouldn't be a warning for it? That is among the silliest thing I ever > heard.

In all honesty while I don't agree with this particular instance, the reasoning isn't ridiculous. If we assume it's true that it'd only affect bad programmers, then you probably wouldn't want to add it, since it'd increase the false positive risk and/or otherwise potentially get in the way of everyone else. (Kind of like how you wouldn't make cars start honking when they're turned on as a means of protecting against bad drivers, even thought that might well save lives.) Some tools just need to assume some base level of expertise to be effective.

<comment><USER33> You snuck in a second premise to the argument: that it will increase the false positive risk. And if we accept that premise, we don't need the other one.

Bad programmers are the ones who need the most help from our tools. Saying there's no need for a warning because only bad programmers will benefit is like saying there's no need for crossing guards because only stupid children get killed crossing the street.

<comment><USER36> I think you just helped me understand where the objection comes from. The people against this warning seem to feel infantilized by these type of warnings, much in the way you're comparing it to crossing guards for children. My view, and I guess the view of people arguing for these kind of warnings see them like seatbelts: a mild annoyance that is very much worth it.

<comment><USER33> Sounds about right. I don't really get it myself. As a professional C and C++ programmer, every mistake is punished severely by the computer and I want all the help I can get in avoiding them. Warnings aren't annoying, what's annoying are one-in-a-thousand crashes that only happen on someone else's computer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Teams Up with Law Enforcement to Deploy Face Recognition Technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclunc.org/blog/amazon-teams-law-enforcement-deploy-dangerous-new-face-recognition-technology <comment><USER2> wonder if ACLU and/or EFF employees supporters are in the system.</comment>


Cards Against Humanity: Why Our Super Bowl Ad Failed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@CardsAgainstHumanity/why-our-super-bowl-ad-failed-2af66e6a976c#.7tg5yolw8 <comment><USER2> This is a good bit of advertising in an article satirically commenting on how a lot of companies spend too much money on just a creative Super Bowl ad. Especially without actually mentioning the product or showing any benefits to its use, but rather just being a creative outlet for an Ad Agency, and for spending a lot of money on licensing music and getting celebrities on camera.

</comment><comment><USER3> "While we succeeded creatively, the advertisement showed a disappointing return on investment ($0), and we are now going out of business."

So cards against humanity is going bankrupt because of a failed Super Bowl ad? This whole article reads like a joke, I can't believe they were this inept...

<comment><USER4> it's hard to tell if it's satire or not.

<comment><USER5> Really? How is it hard to tell? It's obviously a joke.

<comment><USER6> Coming from the company that crowdfunded $100k to purportedly dig a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere [1][2], it's about equally outlandish.

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/28/cards- aga...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/28/cards-against- humanity-hole)

[2]: [https://holidayhole.com/](https://holidayhole.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13576921](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13576921)</comment>


The Essence of XML - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse544/04sp/papers/xml-essence.pdf <comment><USER2> "So the essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard,and it does not solve the problem well."</comment>


Spectrum mangagement: property rights, markets, and the Commons - <AUTHOR> http://assets.wharton.upenn.edu/~faulhabe/SPECTRUM_MANAGEMENTv51.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> This paper dates from 2003 but the issues remain and the analysis still applies.</comment>


Technical Debt is Soul-crushing - <AUTHOR> https://codeahoy.com/2020/01/25/technical-debt/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone else hate that term "technical debt"? It reminds me of "codependent" and "codependency" \-- which, every time I hear them, I have to think through what it is exactly that they mean. I've decided that in the case of "codependency" a much more intuitive term would be "enabling behavior".

What is an intuitive replacement for "technical debt"? I think "slapdash code" would convey the notion more effectively.</comment>


Which Business Tools Made Me Part Man, Part Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.leanmarketing.ca/which-tools-made-me-part-man-part-machine/

<comment><USER2> Getting clients to produce content has been one of the most difficult tasks for me, but having them make a video and then transcribing that is genius.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried to do much video? Def an acquired taste. It seems though, and I am sure Matt would agree..once you get the hang of it, the uses are limitless.</comment></comment>