Topics deleted from StackOverflow - <AUTHOR> http://www.stackprinter.com/deleted

<comment><USER2> I started contributing to the Literature Stack Exchange when it launched last year - which quickly became _not fun_. Most of the decent questions were closed as off topic, answer quality declined because the remaining questions were too narrow, new users were put off by the attitude of mods.

It was explained to me, in detail, that this was to preserve the focus and quality of the site.

So I left. It says a lot that 6 months later I am still the #6 user by all- time karma.

The few trickle of questions they have left deal mostly with trivia.

I think SO/SE's moderation policy has gone a step too far. Once it lightly highlighted quality. Now it stamps on most questions.

<comment><USER3> I think there may be a space for a friendlier version of Stack Exchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The mods on the StackOverflow sites seem to be trigger-happy deleting and locking posts. Most of my major upvoted answers are on threads now closed as off-topic - so this tells me that the StackOverflows have changed to be a place that I'm not welcome at anymore.

<comment><USER5> The rise of the "opinions are not wanted here" attitude on SO is disappointing - I understand the motive but they may be kicking out the baby with the bath water.

<comment><USER6> Stack Overflow has a vigorous moderating policy. That's usually a good thing. It helps form a community, and keeps stuff out.

The problem comes with a huge site like SO, because there are so many "not welcome here" topics which get closed, with no suggestions about where to put those questions, and without great explanations about why those topics aren't welcome.

It's not as thoroughly toxic as some[1] aspects of wikipedia are, but it's not pleasant for some people.

[1] for various values of some, including "all" for a few users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, some of these questions actually seem pretty reasonable - like this one: <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-c>

Any ideas why they were closed so early?

<comment><USER8> Disclaimer: Stack Exchange moderator(mind you, on one of the other sites, not SO).

The main reason this was closed is because determining what or what does not constitute a hidden feature is highly subjective. Depending on the audience, some features that are considered common knowledge could be considered hidden features. We generally want to focus on the domain of questions that have solid, objective answers, or rather, that solve a clear problem that people have, whereas this question is more focused on trivia.

Furthermore, "List of <X>" questions, as we dub them, generally aren't well- suited for the Stack Exchange format, especially when the question is as popular as this one. Note that navigating the list without OP's quick-link breakdown is a pain because of the way that each individual's answer is separated.

<comment><USER9> I can accept that questions of this type are a little messy, but there's absolutely no need to apply real-world metaphors of messiness to the web. We don't need to clean these things up. They're fine just sitting there. We're not running out of bits.

I'm sure there's some personally type that experiences a deep need to organize and delete (and it's probably over-represented in the SO community), but that's all this is. I find it highly unlikely that deleting these posts is having any effect on the quality of new questions asked.

<comment><USER10> This isn't about running out of bits. The primary reason for creating Stack Overflow was to increase the signal/noise ratio for programming information on the Web. If we don't reduce the noise, then search engines have a harder time trying to find the signal. So in this sense, the metaphor of messiness does apply to the Web.

Also, this particular post is locked, not deleted. Google will still find it.

<comment><USER11> > If we don't reduce the noise, then search engines have a harder time trying > to find the signal.

Let the search engines figure that out! It's their job!

Is there _any_ evidence whatsoever that deleting/closing questions like these make SO a better place and improves the rate with which people can find answers through search engines?

I suspect there's none.

<comment><USER10> > Let the search engines figure that out! It's their job!

Ummm... right. You go ahead and keep posting noise to your site and let the search engines figure it out. Let us know how that works.

<comment><USER12> Search engines tend to place Wikipedia high for almost every relevant query. This happens despite the amount of useless crap on Wikipedia. Hell, how often is Yahoo Answers on the first page of results. "Noise" won't stop you from getting listed if you've got enough page rank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I posted this idea elsewhere, but I think it is worth considering, so I'll repost it here.

What about a series of "Stack Exhume" sites where the "deleted" information gets moved to? (Trash can?) Even though they are "noise" when trying to find specific answers to concrete questions, they are still interesting information in their own right, in much the same way queries are interesting.

</comment><comment><USER14> Strange suggestion: Mods should be required to view and consider search engine traffic when locking or deleting topics.

I've noticed lately that a Google search brings me to SO as the top result, but then the post itself is locked and marked off-topic or (the one I find more puzzling sometimes) "not a real question." If it's not a real question, why does it have a real answer which seems to answer my own question? Can't we just edit the question to make more sense, if it wasn't clear to the mod?

I'm not saying that locking or deleting posts isn't appropriate. But crippling or removing SO questions that appear high for particular search queries seems like a silly way to run a website, unless the question and answers really wouldn't be helpful to the incoming search traffic. (In which case, better to not show up at all than to appear but be unhelpful or incorrect.)

<comment><USER10> We do look at number of views and links to a post before deleting it. That's why a lot of questions that aren't really on-topic for Stack Overflow are simply locked instead of deleted. We're trying to clean up the site without breaking the rest of the Internet in the process.

> Can't we just edit the question to make more sense, if it wasn't clear to > the mod?

Yes, of course. Anyone can suggest an edit to a question, whether it's open or closed. If you find a question and its answers helpful, go ahead and edit it. Flag it for a moderator to consider reopening when you're done.

Also, if you found a Stack Overflow question through a Google search, then it's not deleted. Deleted content isn't visible to search engines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here is another deleted question archive that's not over its quota: [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/124850/unofficial- st...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/124850/unofficial-stack- overflow-deleted-question-archive-now-available)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, it's much better looking than the one I posted.

I wonder if I should have posted a Google cache link instead of the original, to prevent exceeding their quota.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was excited to see this and find some damn good content (tm) I contributed to stackoverflow that was deleted by the over-exuberant moderators there. Please stackoverflow moderators, you're killing a great site. Stop. Just stop.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice. Thanks for sharing. Looks like hacker news crashed your site.

</comment><comment><USER18> 'Over Quota

This application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.'

Pity.

</comment><comment><USER19> Site could use search, especially if it expands

<comment><USER20> It has search.

It also searches for similar questions when you enter the title to a question.

You can also use google (e.g. google.com/search?q=site:stackoverflow.com variables) which is what the founders had in mind.</comment></comment>


Decentralized-Cloud IPFS file transfer - <AUTHOR> https://decentralized.cloud/ <comment><USER2> Without the uploader hosting the file, how quickly will the files be available? You almost have to run an IPFS node locally to guarantee availability long-term?</comment>


Ask HN: What work environment helps you produce your best work?  - <AUTHOR> This industry seems to put a lot more emphasis on work environment than others. I obviously have my own opinions as to what my ideal work environment would be, but I'd be interested in getting other people's opinion as to what kind of environment helps people produce their best work.<p>Edit: spelling <comment><USER2> My ideal work environment would be small co-located teams of 3-4 really smart people. The team should be colocated together with easy access to Product people and should consist of design, frontend, and backend developers.

The reality is I have only been in this situation once in a 10 year career and it only lasted 6 months. Most of the time I've had to contend with the following:

1) Not really hiring the best developers you can find.

2) A noisy "open office" environment.

3) Product people are unreachable and don't clearly define work well enough for the team to just go at it.

So these days I've started working with distributed teams. It eliminates many of the problems, but introduces new ones (like communication issues, tendencies for bad situations to seem worse than they are, managers with trust issues, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> Thats a really big question. There are a lot of factors that go into the definition of environment, so as i am short on time - Ill focus on that which is before me:

Big monitor, large and clean work surface, snappy machine and a great mouse!

Honestly, the biggest thing that reduces my productivity instantly is no mouse or a crappy mouse.

I use 24/27 inch monitors at work and at home - but honestly, I am beginning to think that a single 30 inch is best (I have dual 24's at home and a single 24 at work) - I prefer a single larger screen over two...

</comment><comment><USER4> Something where I'm surrounded by other people actually doing work. Anything but working from home.

</comment><comment><USER5> Office with a door, and without a phone/line. Good chair, nice monitor(s), and trackball. A/C, clean carpets. A plant, and a rubber duck/action figure for debugging. A window if possible.

</comment><comment><USER6> Trust of, and trust in collegues

An environment supportive of trying new things and accepting the inevitable failures

An environment measuring results in a week not a day, and delivery over months

It's cloudy to me, this perfect environment.

</comment><comment><USER7> Natural light, standing desk, large monitors, fast machines, clean whiteboards, and a cultural acceptance that wearing headphones is effectively a "do not disturb" sign.

</comment><comment> benji-york I seem to do my best in total silence or listening to instrumental music that I know well. Sitting on my porch with a slight breeze blowing is a nice enhancement.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      Quite(not even classical music).
      Near windows.
      Cool Temp (65-70 deg fr).
      Big Screen and smooth mouse/keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER9> Silence and no interruptions

</comment><comment><USER10> for me (introvert): silence. minimal distractions. low light.</comment>


Kitematic: one click upgrade from dorm room to Docker - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kitematic.com/post/113424158914/our-one-click-upgrade-from-dorm-room-to-docker

<comment><USER2> Why no Linux release?</comment>


How Facebook connections mirror old empires   - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/03/daily-chart-12 <comment><AUTHOR> why are north korea and russia illustrated as being so well connected?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you interview testers? - <AUTHOR> We're hiring a semi-technical software tester. Not an SDET; they'll be expected to do a fair amount of manual testing, but also debug code with a decent level of understanding do a little ad-hoc automation.<p>Have you hired for a position like this? If so, how did you interview them? I'm particularly interested in the type of skills tests you gave.<p>(I get that a lot of companies frown upon manual testing or don't have positions like this. That's fair, but it's not the tack we're taking right now.) <comment><USER2> Beyond skills, look for team-fit. Will this individual be accretive to the larger organization? Probe for motivation-- What are their personal/professional goals?

Justin Gunggol of QASymphony put together a solid list of tester interview questions > [https://www.qasymphony.com/blog/20-best-software-tester- inte...](https://www.qasymphony.com/blog/20-best-software-tester-interview- questions/)</comment>


Google Moderator launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-moderator-launches/ <comment><USER2> (am I allowed to say I touched some of the code involved? Because I did. And I'm really happy it launched.)

<comment><USER3> Does Google use this internally for their company-wide ask-Larry-and-Sergei meetings?

<comment><USER4> Yes, every Friday at TGIF people can submit questions using it, or they can just ask them in person at the event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone who is anyone happens to read this:

We need a search function / question 'checker'. For instance, there was a question, "When can I use Google Moderator for my site?" So I submitted: "When can I use Google Moderator?" It was accepted and put in the question queue. Instead, it should say, "Your question looks like this question, would you like to vote it up?" or something like that.

<comment><USER2> I'll let them know.

And in general, I'm sure there are enough Googlers wandering around on the internet that if you post something, someone will eventually pass it on if its good ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Very simple but very effective too.

Is there an open source alternative for it out there? One we can install and theme on our sites?

</comment><comment><USER7> wow those questions they have for McCain are awful, they might as well have been asked by Shepard Smith!

</comment><comment><USER8> It's like... a meta-poll system?

<comment><USER4> It's not really a polling system. It's a system for ranking user submitted entries.

Google uses it internally every Friday at their TGIF to prioritize what questions Larry and Sergey should answer first (in addition to the ones asked in person). All week long people submit questions or concerns and Googlers vote on them to determine if they are relevant or not. It could be used for other things too though... really anything that needs ranking. Ideas could be ranked, or you could pose a question and have the answers ranked. I'm sure there are other novel uses as well. It's a pretty general system.

<comment><USER8> Ah, thanks. Anyway with meta-poll system I was meaning something similar to that (a poll on polls, but I see it's rather a ranking on questions).</comment></comment></comment>


GitHub moving away from 'master' and 'slave' branch names amid racial tensions - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/github-replacing-software-code-terms-master-slave-2020-6 <comment><USER2> But we can still pay for GitHub using MasterCard.

So yeah. Until that is banned, I'm not believing this genuinely reflects anyone's actual belief besides trying to score cheap PR points during the BLM riots.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope, as part of the movement to clean the language of touchy usage, the word "slave" also gets dropped from English and other languages since it derives from "Slavic" people who, during the Roman times, were captured and used for unpaid labour.

Please do not refer to the practice of abusing people and forcing them to work as "slavery" either.

I am exaggerating a bit, but the point stands: master might have a bad connotation when it comes to enslavement, but the term has and has had other meanings prior to being used in that manner.

Since this discussion went so far as to touch on black- and whitelists, I wonder if we are to stop from black symbolizing darkness (you know, night) and ill, and white from symbolizing light (day) and good.

<comment><USER4> you have to wonder, where does this end?

<comment><USER5> In the words of John Oliver, "somewhere". It ends somewhere. You don't do nothing because you don't know exactly where it might end.

Should we remove confederate statues from places of honor? Where does it end?

I'm not all for word policing, but if some words I am using are making people feel bad, I don't see any problem in trying to change those words. As long as removing these words is coming out of mutual respect and not from laws that are infringing on our rights of free speech.

Which is the case here. I don't think anyone is forcing anyone to remove words like master and slave.

<comment><USER3> But it is true that the word "slave" makes me feel bad about my Slavic ancestors being enslaved, and it makes me feel even worse that the name of their tribe has become to be used for such egregious practices. Not enough for me to complain at several language standards bodies, though, and I do understand the history of it. Just like Slavic people calling Germans "mutes" (Nemci) is offensive too, but as neighbours, they either met people who used "words" (slovo) or were unintelligible (nem meaning mute).

And I get your argument (yes, I am free to fight for the abolishment of the word "slave" in languages where it's derived from the root Slav), but "forcing" here is indeed happening through somewhat modern means: public, online, armchair shaming and harrasment. If you do not see that, you are dishonest imho.

As a case in point, you come with an argument how the word "master" (which is what the OP was about) is "making people feel bad" (I blame all those MScs too), but are you offended by it? Or at least heard from someone directly who is? Read an actual piece where someone describes it is so? If you do, please let me know that's the case, since otherwise I can only assume your goal is to shame me into appearing as if I have no empathy. If none of these, _who_ are you arguing for?

<comment><USER5> Yes, I have had that discussion with someone that didn't like the use of the term. It has come up a few times when I have explained our infrastructure to her regarding master/slave architectures also the term 'master bedroom', because it sounds a bit too much like where the plantation master stays. That doesn't mean she is severely offended, she just doesn't like it and she isn't particularly sensitive to things like that normally, but it has come up several times before.

The more you learn about our American history of slavery and oppression, little things like that are just kind of a little dig and reminder of that terrible history and the fact that some of it still remains.

I definitely am aware of the armchair shaming that goes on. But I highly doubt that cases like the naming of the master branch would receive anything more than a few tweets. People are just trying to make any easy change they can to show they are -for- the movement. Because honestly, it's a difficult problem to address.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CSS builder for shadows, backgrounds, and borders - <AUTHOR> http://layerstyles.org

<comment><USER2> As someone who makes a living selling layer styles[1], I have to say this is very cool, but also slightly worrying ;) I've been trying to figure out how long the market for Photoshop addons will last, as CSS and other technologies advance to the point where everything can be done in the browser. Clearly, we're getting closer.

[1] <http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/>

<comment><USER3> Making a living via Photoshop layers? can you elaborate a little? are we talking supplemental income or a significant/all of your income doing this?

Amazing never the less!

<comment><USER2> You might be interested in this article I wrote:

<http://photoshoplayerstyles.com/blog/my-first-100-sales>

At the moment, it's paying most of my bills while I work on something much bigger ;)

<comment><USER4> I always love reading things like this. It's always good to keep in mind that it doesn't take an earth-shattering idea to make a living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, some stunning work there - the attention to Photoshop details is great (check out the gradient editor in the background tab). Keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER3> It took me a little while to see the CSS Code link on the bottom left.. but that's probably because I was so busy messing around with the tool. Great work! keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks great. I did find a couple little bugs. One annoying, one not so much:

1) The annoying one - When backspacing over values in entry fields (such as opacity, or distance), backspacing over all the characters causes NaN to appear in the field. Sometimes you have to fight with the input field a bit to allow you to re-enter text. (Usually shift+home+the key you want to hit will work)

2) If you enter a ridiculous value such as 500 for percentage then the slider behaves strangely. Not annoying as it pretty quickly snaps back to where it should be.

I love the site, so please do not take these two critiques as a slight against it.

<comment><USER7> no offense taken. thanks for the observation! also don't mind to fill out bug reports on github <https://github.com/mrflix/LayerStyles/issues> or directly push fixes

<comment><USER6> Oh, nice. I didn't catch the link to github previously. (That seems to be a theme for me tonight.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone tested this on any IE versions? I'm wondering about graceful degradation, but don't have a VM available at the moment.

<comment><USER7> Internet Explorer is not supported. There's a feature detection running at the start page which blocks off browsers who don't support all feature. No released IE supports background gradient's - so they are all blocked. IE 10 will support them, and by the speed browsers iterate nowadays (thanks to Chrome starting that trend) I have hopes that it's release won't take too long.

<comment><USER9> CSS3 Pie (<http://css3pie.com/>) adds linear gradient support to all versions of IE. Still not 100%, but it's enough for a lot of people.

<comment><USER10> I have never managed to use css3pie without it totally messing up all my other CSS.

<comment><USER9> I've used it on one site and it worked fine there, but admittedly that's a tiny sample size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is awesome. But please left align the toolbar and right align the element being edited. Can't wait to see this progress.

<comment><USER7> high priority in the todo!

<comment><USER12> It would be awesome if it could add several shadows/backgrounds.

Really nice tool, good job!

<comment><USER7> hah - and thats gonna be the next BIG thing! Was just too much work for the first release :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Next step: ability to create an entire web page of these elements and get the markup as a file. Bye, bye Photoshop!

</comment><comment><USER10> Very Nice!

Props should also go to <http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor/> who have been doing things like this in the past.

That site also generates the IE fallbacks as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> I visited in Opera, which is not supported. But I was very pleased that the site didn't just block me for not being an approved browser, but actually tested for the existence of a feature. Bravo!

<comment><USER7> props to modernizr.js for making it so easy

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tools like this will force web designers to step up their game, because their magical css powers aren't so magical anymore. I welcome the development.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is great!

Though i'd contest the assertion that it uses my 'favourite graphics editor', my 'graphics editor' would be more appropriate ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> The beginning of something huge. Everybody thought of it but nobody executed — until now. Huge kudos to you Dale.

</comment><comment><USER18> Beautifully done. This is one of those times you kick yourself for not thinking of it first :)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is amazing. It's like they took InDesign's effects palette and put it in my browser.

</comment><comment><USER20> great job. Please make more tools.

</comment><comment><USER21> Definitely the future of HTML/CSS tools.

</comment><comment><USER22> this is some cool shit

</comment><comment><USER23> gr8 job! this is going to be a really handy tool.</comment>


Chiquita Bananas intimidated farmers with AK47s, death squads - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Aiding_and_abetting_a_terrorist_organization <comment><USER2> Wow I guess I gotta stop eating bananas now :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Unless you find alternative brands that are not Chiquita :)</comment></comment>


How to become a millionaire in 5 years? - <AUTHOR>

I set a goal to become a millionaire in 5 years.I am one month away from becoming 18 so by the age of 23 I want to have 1M$/year.I can code and read about startups,personal development....so you have any advice on how to do it ? <comment><USER2> Start by being a multimillionaire.... /sarcasm

Drop the time limit. The added pressure could easily lead you to walk away from lucrative projects that are not "fast" enough.

Find something people want, build it, figure out a way to monetize, and then scale up with increases in demand.

Alternatively, make flashy interesting things that investors are willing to throw money at (Your age helps you here), pay yourself well while hiring solid talent, and have a fast exit strategy like aqui-hire. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Either way, a solid accountant, as well as a solid personal grasp of accounting, will be a lifesaver.

</comment><comment><USER3> Come up with a good idea and develop, it's that easy.

I say easy, but coming up with a good idea is easier said than done. Find a market that's missing something. Something people will use. Do some research, plan your project and work like hell. Startups aren't easy. It takes a lot of dedication..

</comment><comment><USER4> Make something people want and are willing to pay for it.</comment>


10 things I wish I knew before launching my last product - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@onlinewizard/10-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-launching-my-last-product-30d6f3e0f763 <comment><USER2> very brief

<comment><USER3> and insightful.</comment></comment>


The three legacies of Darwin - <AUTHOR> http://www.tni.org/article/three-legacies-darwin <comment><AUTHOR> I particularly liked the penultimate paragraph, I will quote here:

"But the natural sciences rightly forewarn us that there are limits to this process – the law of entropy, while the dominant discourse of mainstream and conventional economics from Harvard to Cambridge to Beijing University to Delhi University has no theoretical notion of limits and is therefore the most dangerous of all social science disciplines when it comes to thinking about ways to live in harmony with our environment. It is not for nothing that one of the earliest and most thoughtful and ecologically sensitive of economists, Kenneth Boulding, way back in the 1950s said, that to believe in unlimited growth in a finite world one had to be either a fool or an economist!"</comment>


Ask HN: The Future of Go-Lang? - <AUTHOR> Would you start a new project in Go? It seems the hype train has died on it (which isn't itself a bad thing), but would you consider it?<p>I'm thinking of starting a new project with it. It needs relatively high throughput (~20k transactions a second) but unsure if Go is a good choice. I like the simple syntax, low memory footprint and easy threading/routines. <comment><USER2> Golang is here to stay. Look at the most significant projects out there, many are written in Go. It's a great language which I use daily and will continue to do so.

What other choices are you considering?

</comment><comment><USER3> The answer really depends on the nature of these transactions. For example if you can achieve the desired throughput with one thread that could change your decision.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes. It is the language of Kubernetes.

And Kubernetes is the new OS.</comment>


Sorry, Ruby – I think I've fallen for Go - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@voxxit/sorry-ruby-i-think-i-ve-fallen-for-go-2e92ce1b356 <comment><USER2> I've written a lot of Ruby, wrote C and Java a long time ago, and have dabbled in Go.

Like Python and Perl, what really makes Ruby fun is the library ecosystem. The libraries seem written to remove coding drudgery. When I look at Go, I see Java. The language and libraries require a lot of boilerplate to do simple things, e.g., parse a JSON file or a simple HTTP GET. Some of this is due to static typing, but it's still overly complex. Maybe the 3rd party Go libraries will evolve given enough time.

As a language, Go just seems like a step backward from Ruby or Python. I categorize it as a language for people who like to write code for code's sake. It does seem like a better Java or C.

I do love gofmt, and obviously the speed, but the killer features are built in cross compilation and the simplicity of deploying a Go app with Docker. Docker becomes a very slim container to hold your app -- think 1M (Scratch base) or 6 MB (Alpine) containers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I have been writing some really tiny Docker images with static Go binaries for a while now. It's great! If you can get Docker baked into an Amazon AMI, for instance, you can easily bypass the need for things like upstart using `docker run --restart`.

I feel as though you may want to look into the library ecosystem a bit more. The awesome-go repo is seriously invaluable. [https://github.com/avelino/awesome-go](https://github.com/avelino/awesome-go)</comment></comment>


Antique BeOS Content by Scot Hacker (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/ <comment><USER2> Funny how he talks about TiVo well before the advent of GPLv3, but as a victim:

> From the stance of a commercial vendor creating a commercial product, the > open source world holds other barbs. For example, if components of your > system link against libraries that fall under the GPL, you may be forced to > release your own system -- or parts of it -- back to the community as open > source software. In other words, building a proprietary solution on top of > Linux may mean being required to expose the company jewels to the > competition. Witness TiVo, who manufacture a time-shifting hardware/software > solution for television consumers. Because TiVo is based on Linux, the > company's modifications to the kernel are available for anyone to download > -- any competitor can emerge at any time, packaging up and selling a variant > of Tivo's hard work.

One could almost forgive him to say something like that in 99, but the ones who are still repeating the exact same reasoning today should probably think twice...

<comment><USER3> That's just an argumentum ad misericordiam (appeal to pity, sob story). These modifications to the Linux kernel weren't even the core of the TiVo product, and the TiVo product was an end user solution consisting of hardware, software, and support (so a full stack, like an Apple TV or an Nvidia Shield). He's also ignoring the _patent_ argument, and the fact that the Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2 or later (EDIT: I stand corrected; licensed under GPLv2. That doesn't change the point though).

His argument wasn't rare back in those days though (we're talking about a time where Microsoft was still dominant and actively hampering the FOSS movement), and it was an argument for BSD license as well.

The way companies have worked around GPLv2 _and_ GPLv3 is Web 2.0/3.0: HTTP(S) and HTML/JS being proprietary software, though the source is readable, and the entire stack behind it (ie. akin to LAMP) which generates the data having the ability to be part of a closed source or proprietary ecosystem. They furthermore locked it down with things like paywalls, apps (instead of website or PWA which might give the users some power back). In such a world, how can us mere mortal users even verify things like GDPR?

The FSF foresaw this, btw, and IIRC (at the very least free software advocates foresaw it) considered having the GPLv3 apply on protocols like HTTP(S). That didn't fly though, and resulted in obvious backfire as well because it went against the business model of many for profits...

<comment><USER4> > ...the fact that the Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2 or later.

Actually Linux is licenced only under GPLv2:

> The only one of any note that I'd like to point out directly is the > clarification in the COPYING file, making it clear that it's only _that_ > particular version of the GPL that is valid for the kernel.

> ...

> Why? There's been some discussions of a GPL v3 which would limit licensing > to certain "well-behaved" parties, and I'm not sure I'd agree with such > restrictions - and the GPL itself allows for "any version" so I wanted to > make this part unambigious as far as my personal code is concerned.

Source: [http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0009.1/0096.html](http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0009.1/0096.html)

<comment><USER5> Here is an excellent video of Linus talking about why he specifically chose the GPLv2 and how he felt betrayed when the FSF released GPLv3:

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting mention on the BeOS-based IPAD prototype in 1999:

> Be has quietly been planning their own version of the perfect low-cost, > easy-to-use, dedicated media device. Be's IPAD (Internet Personal Access > Device)* > [...] > * According to hints dropped in a recent newsletter, Be > may be casting about for a catchier moniker than "IPAD."

[http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/07-IPAD/](http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/07-IPAD/)

</comment><comment><USER7> The last article is a bit depressing.

But also a good read for millenials and such who have a hard time understanding why some of us older guys really dislike Microsoft.

[http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/](http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/)

<comment><USER8> > have a hard time understanding why some of us older guys really dislike > Microsoft

There's lots of recent reasons to really hate Microsoft now.

\- Forcing Windows 10 on users.

\- Forcing telemetry on people and making it almost impossible to disable.

\- Saying they <3 Linux, but refusing to port their actual good products (MSO, or Visual Studio) to Linux. So that they can keep their vendor lock-in.

\- Not adhering to their own standards, to make it difficult for Office documents to inter-operate with other office suites.

\- Windows 10 switched to a rolling release model, which is nice. But the updates are forced, so that fucks you over as a user, because you can never be sure if your system is stable.

edit:formatting

<comment><USER9> > Windows 10 switched to a rolling release model, which is nice.

I disagree. Not only are constant changes destabilizing to the user, they're destabilizing to developers too. I really don't get why so many people (Linux Desktop users especially, so maybe they're all webdevs?) love them so much. Once I have a system set up for my workflow, I don't want it to go and screw it up by changing things unnecessarily.

<comment><USER8> Those are the problems with rolling release on Windows, because they are forced.

On Linux you can choose to never update ever, if that's what you think is best. You are fully in control.

As for why I like rolling release:

\- It's much nicer never having to update your "whole" OS. It takes a long time, and you need to do backups in case the upgrade fucks things up.

\- I like having up-to-date software

\- Your workflow doesn't change like you say it does. I've been using rolling release OS's for the last 3 years, and my workflow hasn't changed since I started. If there's an update to a package with breaking changes, and you don't want to deal with it, then just don't upgrade that package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love these quotes from the "BeOS Heads for the Mainstream" article of April, 1999:

"Other important languages, such as perl, have also been ported and are fully functional."

"Thus, BeOS applications are currently scriptable from both bash and Python."

18 years ago. Perl and Python.

<comment><USER10> If you wanted to learn bash scripting, there is some fun stuff in here:

[http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/24-scripting_the_bfs/](http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/24-scripting_the_bfs/)

$ ThisCity=$(catattr META:city "$This Person" | cut -f3 -d:)

The value of $ThisCity is now "Munster Hamlet" whenever the script is passing over the file "Walter Mitty."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hope the hobbyist interest in Haiku will grow over time.

<comment><USER12> Eventually the beta will ship (probably this quarter) and there will be a few folk trying it out in earnest. Since the browser mostly works, I expect it to be rather popular as such things go...

<comment><USER13> "probably this quarter" could have been written any time in the last five years and been just as likely to come true.

<comment><USER12> Let's BePositive :)

<comment><USER14> webpositive :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember reading most of these and buying the BeOS CD (which I still have). It was fun for a while, but I ended up moving to the Mac full-time.

Funny how the 4:3 video windows look dated these days.

<comment><USER15> Huh. I'm pining for 4:3 screen for a development laptop. My main use case is coding, not watching movies :)

<comment><USER7> 16:10 screen tilted is really nice for text / coding

<comment><USER16> I find doing that to my laptop makes typing more difficult.

<comment><USER7> Just a matter of adjusting your typing habits, and finding a laptop with 16:10 screen :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was heavily in to BeOS. I read Scott's BeOS Bible cover to cover. I had most of the other books (The BeOS API gude, Advanced topics, Programming the BeOS, Practical Filesystem Design) and also had a BeBox (a 66MHz model) and a PowerMac 9500/180MP (Dual processor) to run the OS on. I had a lot of fun. I advocated PowerPC back when the trend was towards Intel and I still mess about with the OS occasionaly ( [https://github.com/memsom/mwobdec](https://github.com/memsom/mwobdec) .)

I had a BeIA device and had a few versions of BeIA running on various other devices. It was pretty much just BeOS without the Tracker desktop and with a slightly different file system. Take a look at Wikipedia ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeIA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeIA) \- I wrote a lot of the BeIA info back in the day on there, especially the stuff about the CFS and exe compression.) The DT-300 Webpad I had was nothing really like an iPad (it was running a Geode from NationalSemi and booted from a compact flash card.) But you can see where the tech was heading.

</comment><comment><USER18> In addition to the BeOS Bible, Scot Hacker also created the BeOS Tip Server, which was a great resource at the time. He also wrote a book for O'Reilly on MP3 (MP3: The Definitive Guide) that I found very useful. And he created RipEnc, a BeOS/Bash shell script to rip CDs to MP3 while making use of BeOS metadata.

After I left BeOS behind, I haven't heard his name very often, but I still appreciate his advocacy for BeOS.

<comment><USER19> I still have his _The BeOS Bible_ on my bookshelf. I don't know why, really. (For context, I also have _Inside Windows 2000_ and _Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach_ , all of which are pretty dated.)

<comment><USER12> Me too. It was a nice enough read, but it sticks out between Singh's book on OS X and Cutler's NT magnum opus...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember reading about BeOS and seeing demos during 2000-2001, but I always wondered a few things.

One item of curiosity was how they were able to so efficiently handle media with such a light footprint? What were the trade-offs? For devices like tablets, it seems like it would be a godsend.

Also, did any of the innovations make their way into things we use today? Palm bought their tech, but did any of the media tech make it out? Or is it just an artifact from an earlier age with not much applicability to modern day needs?

<comment><USER21> I worked at Be for almost a year, and used BeOS for a couple of years before that. I am not an expert, but I can mention a couple of things.

The biggest one was: freedom from backward compatibility. You can't comprehend how much cruft you are drowning in, in your typical OS, until you are free from it. Coming to BeOS from Windows, as I did, it felt like 2,000 pounds was lifted off my shoulders.

BeOS was free to fully embrace some modern technologies that had been bolted on to older operating systems as an afterthought. The biggest one was multi- threading. Having spent years on earlier operating systems, I can say that all of them have a stunted idea of multi-threading, compared to BeOS. Typically, you are forced to run your user interface in your main thread, and you have to run background tasks in background threads, and invent ways to communicate between the two.

Contrast BeOS: every single window runs in its own thread. Think about that for a minute: If you write a BeOS app that has two or more windows, surprise, your app is multi-threaded. Whether you like it or not! A lot of programmers, coming from older operating systems, very much did _not_ like it. Personally, I came to embrace this as BeOS' greatest strength. Communicating between windows was pretty natural: just drop events into each other's event queues, which were of course thread-safe.

Unfortunately, the early architects of the system made their own set of poor decisions that led to a new round of cruft. The worst of these was tying themselves to the ABI of a particular C++ compiler. GCC version 2.9x, I think. In the last year of Be's existence, we were really feeling the pain of this. The compiler we were shackled to was many years out of date. If we switched to a modern compiler, it would have a different ABI, and all older software that couldn't be recompiled would have been instantly broken. Nonetheless, there was a vocal minority of engineers inside Be who argued for doing just that. We weren't focused on external users at that point, just internet appliances, so we could have gotten away with it. But we were all BeOS users ourselves, so we would have lost a lot of useful apps that way.

<comment><USER20> _This_ comment is such a perfect example of the reasons I come to read the comments here on HN. Thank you for the info.

Could there not have been a compromise for those devs who didn't want ABI compatibility? For instance with Apples handling of Mac OS apps and then carbon and then cocoa?

Meaning, some sort of optional emulation layer? Of course, the system architecture may be so different as to make it impossible, OR the business decisions needed at the time couldn't afford a middle layer.

Either way, this was one of my favorite comments on here, so thank you :)

<comment><USER21> I suppose it would have been possible to build some kind of API shim that would allow for two or more ABIs. Alas, the technical details of how to make that work are above my pay grade. I can say that it never came up in the heated debates I heard inside Be. Possibly because that would have meant the base OS would have been a lot larger, and we were targeting resource- constrained internet appliances at the time.

You could get a much fuller answer by exploring how Haiku handles this. I haven't paid much attention to that OS in quite awhile, but I think they did indeed succeed in keeping a set of backward compatibility libs, for older software, and also built a new set of libs for recently-compiled software.

<comment><USER17> BeIA was quite clever. The OS compressed the binaries by using a one way (?) process to pull out common code segments in to a common dictionary. The OS then read that code somehow in to memory when the apps started. You could run the OS uncrushed, but it took up a lot more space. One could fit the entire OS on a 16MB CF card in crushed format. (YES, MB not GB!!)

The crushed apps have a magic symbol CEL instead of ELF in the file header.

The file system was also compressed. It was called CFS, rather than BFS (BeFS) and a lot of stuff like attributes and metadata was very broken in the pre 1.0 builds I saw.

<comment><USER21> I had completely forgotten about that "crushed" business, but you just reminded me.

If I am remembering correctly, we used uncrushed binaries and a non-crushing kernel while developing on our own PCs. (We used plain-vanilla garden-variety Intel PCs to develop on. Very few developers needed to interact with the actual BeIA devices.) The crushing part didn't happen until somebody on the build team was building the final binaries to go onto the BeIA devices.

Sometimes, the crushed build process wouldn't work! It was super finicky. That would prevent a test build from going out when it was supposed to, and the testers would have to twiddle their thumbs for awhile.

Other than that, I can't tell you much about it. I was a lowly application engineer. I didn't have to get into all the picky details about how the kernel interacted with apps.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, the tools I had were picky. The size of the OS partition was very specific - it had to fit on to a multiple of a CF card I think. There was some kind of hard limit of about 32MB or something like that. I know I had it all running on an old Compaq PC at one point, but the bootloader would only boot if it was the only OS on the drive, so that was a bit of a pain in practice. I probably still have the OS images somewhere.

I also know that the OS was a bit quirky in so much as some of the R5 API's were missing, or closer to the R4.0 ones at least. The File System was definitely flaky.

I started to write this app to do PalmOS style handwriting input for the DT-300, but I ended up selling it on to finance some other project before I finished it. [https://github.com/memsom/ratcowsoftopensource/tree/master/B...](https://github.com/memsom/ratcowsoftopensource/tree/master/BeOS/strokeit_src)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone who enjoys this should also take a look at this:

the Be Newsletter archive : [https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy- docs/benewsletter/](https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/)

I read these all back in the day. They are an amazing time capsule for the BeOS and what was going on at Be during the mid - late 90's and early Noughtiess.

</comment><comment><USER22> Submission typo: seems like the page title has it spelled "Scot", not "Scott".

<comment><USER21> Nope, not a typo. That's how Scot Hacker spells his name.

<comment><USER23> lloeki was referring to the submission's title here on HN. The submission spelled the name as Scott, and it's been corrected _after_ lloeki's posted.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Straw Poll – a basic, real-time polling app, for thumbing up or down - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mjhea0/straw-poll <comment><USER2> There is already something called Straw Poll:

[http://www.strawpoll.me/](http://www.strawpoll.me/)</comment>


What Makes a Good Reactive System? - <AUTHOR> https://www.pzuraq.com/thinking-with-autotracking-what-makes-a-good-reactive-system/ <comment><USER2> This is good stuff! I like how it's not just about a single reactivity system, but ... Even Elm!</comment>


Ask HN: Ruby or Python for a Startup? - <AUTHOR>

Howdee fellow hackers,
I'm currently in the process of assembling a development team for my newly born venture, and would like to raise a question: if you were in my shoes, which would you pick as the "base" language for the team: Python or Ruby?
A little bit of background to fundament that (seemingly naive) question:
- The only techie on the company today is myself. I'm familiar with both languages and have no preference of one over the other at all
- The products we'll be working on are not just web based: although there will be one or two web sites (which can be handled with either django or rails), most of the code will be on services (e.g. interfacing with bluetooth, gps and other hardware devices, background jobs, etc). I'm not mentioning C since I'm leaning to those scripting languages due to better testability, less code, etc)
- I'm aware that python currently has a better support for such things (ruby's bluetooth libs, for instance, are quite half-baked so far). Although my general feeling is that Ruby (now backed up as being 'the scape pod' for Java) will probably evolve rather quickly from this moment on (yes? no?)
- It is equally hard to find experienced programmers on any of those two languages around here (actually the only experienced ones you can find here work in php). The learning curves are quite similar too, IMO
If possible, I'd like to hear opinions on those matters.
Thanks in advance! :-) <comment><USER2> Go for the library support. I chose python because of existing functionality I needed now. Writing it from scratch would have been very time consuming.

As for non-web services, Python has some good GUI tools and some workable ways to make windows apps.

It also didn't hurt that google is behind python. The speedups targeted seem attainable. <http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/>

As for finding engineers who are good at ruby or python, it's pretty slim pickings for either.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you care enough about library maturity to mention it in your question, and Python has the more mature libraries for your application, then you don't have a real question. Use Python.

Any Python developer can write solid Ruby within 3-4 days. Any Ruby developer can write solid Python within 3-4 days.

</comment><comment><USER4> Since you will be interfacing with bluetooth, gps, etc, do you for see needing to write stuff in C at a later point for greater control or performance? Is it worth considering how well Python or Ruby can work with bits written in C? I know Python handles this well, but I don't know Ruby enough to answer that.

Also, I don't even know if this is a worthwhile thing to consider with your project.

<comment><USER3> Ruby and Python are both fine at bit-level data handling. I've written kernel debuggers in both. Python ctypes used to be much better than what was available on Ruby, but I've found that not to be a major distinction in 2009.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know you are asking about ruby and python, but I don't think their strengths lie in interfacing with bluetooth, gps hardware devices, and running background jobs. You might want to look at some more industry standard languages.

<comment><USER3> Python and Ruby both work fine for bare metal systems programming. Plenty of bare-metal systems programming projects have been executed on both.

I'm a Ruby advocate, but if "being like everyone else in industry" is one of your decision axes, Python is a more conventional choice for low-level programming (at least, outside of security).

The "industry standard language" choice you're alluding to is C, which is a terrible choice for a primary language in 2009.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> python has a better designed interpreter. it has a big sugar daddy behind it (google). it all depends on what you are into.depending on which you might consider some forgotten languages like earlang and lisp and simply use python as a glue language.</comment>


X-37B plane can stay in space for years, power source? - <AUTHOR>

"The spacecraft are able to stay in orbit for months by using a solar array to generate power."
http://news.yahoo.com/secretive-x-37b-military-space-plane-could-land-132030466.html
Why are the ground crew wearing protective gear if it just solar power? Seems like a radioactive power source with that type of protection.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> It is extremely likely it is the hypergolic fuel used for the on-orbit manoeuvring rockets. Hypergolic fuel is really nasty stuff.

It is likely the same rocket fuel (maybe the same rockets) as used by the space shuttle (OMS).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Orbital_Maneuveri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Orbital_Maneuvering_System)

See also:

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Discovery#Decommi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Discovery#Decommissioning_and_display)

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergolic_propellant#Disadvant...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergolic_propellant#Disadvantages)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's chemical protective gear designed to protect the ground crew against hydrazine or similarly hazardous vapors .

They were first developed in the 1960s for the Titan missiles, which use the chemically nasty (but room temperature) nitrogen tetroxide and Aerozine 50. See [http://books.google.com/books?id=MdTZFu1fZ4AC&pg=PA186&lpg=P...](http://books.google.com/books?id=MdTZFu1fZ4AC&pg=PA186&lpg=PA186&dq=SCAPE+suits+%28Self- contained+atmospheric+protective+ensemble&source=bl&ots=qDQRlf_LXV&sig=7joCcfETaLVBPiNywk6yTG9p9uI&hl=sv&sa=X&ei=J7A6VLylGsXMyAOvpILwAg&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=SCAPE%20suits%20%28Self- contained%20atmospheric%20protective%20ensemble&f=false) for some of the history.

Here you can see the suits in use at the end of the Space Shuttle STS-1 mission: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gYc...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gYcqvMGla24#t=1323) along with explanation by both the news and NASA commentators.

[http://www.xcor.com/blog/category/thrusters/](http://www.xcor.com/blog/category/thrusters/) and [http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering/Clean_Sp...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering/Clean_Space/Considering_hydrazine- free_satellite_propulsion) are pictures of people in similar suits, in order to fuel spacecraft. I picked those to give commentary about how hazardous hydrazine is, and that there's a push to use alternative fuels.

</comment><comment><USER4> Months are not a particularly long duration for spacecraft, and solar arrays are not at all unusual as power sources for spacecraft in the inner solar system.

Some data on satellite lifetimes:

* [http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Operations/GOES/status.html](http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Operations/GOES/status.html)

* [http://noaasis.noaa.gov/NOAASIS/ml/life_expectancy.html](http://noaasis.noaa.gov/NOAASIS/ml/life_expectancy.html)

* [http://noaasis.noaa.gov/NOAASIS/pubs/life%20expectancy.pdf](http://noaasis.noaa.gov/NOAASIS/pubs/life%20expectancy.pdf) (2009)

As for the protective equipment being used in that Yahoo photo, that's probably due to the use of hypergolic fuel:

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergolic_propellant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergolic_propellant)

Notice nearly-identical protective equipment being used in the Wikipedia entry.

As for protective equipment for radioisotope thermoelectric generators, here's an example from Cassini:

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_gen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator)

This being the Internet, there's far more information on related topics available:

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_\(satellite\))

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._RecSat_Big_Picture.jp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._RecSat_Big_Picture.jpg)

Hmmm. Wonder what other and far more familiar satellite that KH-11 Kennan looks like.

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HST-SM4.jpeg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HST-SM4.jpeg)

</comment><comment><USER5> Clickable url

[http://news.yahoo.com/secretive-x-37b-military-space- plane-c...](http://news.yahoo.com/secretive-x-37b-military-space-plane-could- land-132030466.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> The protective equipment is probably for fuel or oxidizer leaks.

This page: [http://www.airforce- technology.com/projects/boeing-x37/](http://www.airforce- technology.com/projects/boeing-x37/)

says that the vehicle uses either hydrazine or nitrogen tetroxide.

Aside from the main engine, reaction thrusters could foul the surrounding fuselage with nasty chemicals.

<comment><AUTHOR> It states at the end: "The X-37 is powered by a single Rocketdyne AR2-3 rocket engine, manufactured by Pratt & Whitney. Each engine can produce a maximum of 29.341kN thrust and uses solar power and lithium-ion batteries instead of the traditional fuel cell system."

But earlier states: "Fuelled with military fuel JP-8 and hydrogen peroxide, the Rocketdyne engine of the X-37 is designed to run for nine months. The engine installed in the aircraft currently uses hypergolic nitrogen tetroxide or hydrazine."

Odd, no?

<comment><USER7> What exactly do you consider odd? As others have replied, hydrazine has a long history for RCS systems in spacecraft, and kerosene + oxidizer mixtures have long been used for propulsion engines. The only technology here that isn't entirely orthodox is the lithium battery, but that's just an evolutionary upgrade from NiCads. Apparently the range safety guys finally decided that it was ok for an unmanned craft to fly with lithium.

<comment><AUTHOR> Says it is powered by a single engine, but states it powered by hydrazine. Later on contradicts, and says it is powered by lithium ion batteries. Which is it?

<comment><USER8> Both. A more accurate statement would be that it is propelled to stable orbit by a single rocket. The plane's systems are powered by lithium ion batteries, which are recharged by a solar array.

You appear to want something secretive to be uncovered here, but I'm afraid that the use of this protective gear is not the smoking gun you think it is.

Also, it wouldn't be all that strange for there to be a nuclear device on board. Nuclear power is regularly used in satellites. The reactors are not the same as the ones used in terrestrial nuclear power plants though. A satellite typically uses a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.

<comment><AUTHOR> "You appear to want something secretive to be uncovered here"

Not exactly, just wanted to know more. I know satellites and spacecraft in the past have used nuclear/radioactive energy:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens)

<comment><USER3> The way you're self-educating is very similar to the strategy used by those who wish to imply that there is something being deliberately withheld. You might want to change your form of autodidacticism in order to draw a larger distinction between the two.

For example, consider the two statements "Seems like a radioactive power source with that type of protection." and "Odd, no?" They imply that you know enough to make a reasonably confident statement about 1) the different types of clothing used for different hazmat situations and what's appropriate for space operations, and 2) that you understand enough about space power systems to judge what's odd.

You received many responses pointing out that these are standard chemical hazmat suits for this sort of task, with decades of examples and pointers to multiple space agencies, and not similar to what's used for space-based radionuclear power sources.

That should have been a pointer that you don't have enough knowledge to be able to say if something is "odd", as regards spacecraft. Your default assumption should be that nothing is odd, and that it's your lack of understanding which is the source of confusion. Resolve that first before looking outside for the point of confusion. Eg, "Thanks for the comments. I don't know much about spacecraft. Could you also help me understand why ... ?"

You could even have done so in your original question. There was no need to add "Seems like a radioactive power source with that type of protection."

While on the other hand, those who believe (perhaps correctly, perhaps falsely) that they've uncovered something secret will use that sort of phrasing to imply that something is secret, even though they don't have the ability to outright say that something is secretive without taking the large chance that doing so will reveal their lack of actual knowledge on the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> the guy who took this picture gave a talk 30c3 he takes pictures of military instantiations Seeing The Secret State: Six Landscapes

[http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5604_-_en_-_...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5604_-_en_- _saal_1_-_201312282300_-_seeing_the_secret_state_six_landscapes_- _trevor_paglen.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that was really informative. The green X-Files uniform patch for the X-37 program is very ominous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess the fuel could be poisoning (that was case for some soviet military rockets). Other option is just caution not to introduce dust particles etc...

</comment><comment><USER11> Exact same suits being worn here...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine#mediaviewer/File:Hype...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine#mediaviewer/File:Hypergolic_Fuel_for_MESSENGER.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER12> It is simply an MMH or UDMH propellant onboard, which is carcinogenic.

</comment><comment><USER13> Apparently this thing can fly 500 miles high which is space, maybe it's related to that?

[http://www.space.com/25275-x37b-space- plane.html](http://www.space.com/25275-x37b-space-plane.html)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space#Boundary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space#Boundary)</comment>


A Harvard Professor Doubles Down: If You Take Epstein's Money, Do It in Secret - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/lessig-epstein-ito-mit.html <comment><USER2> Lessig's original essay: [https://medium.com/@lessig/on-joi-and- mit-3cb422fe5ae7](https://medium.com/@lessig/on-joi-and-mit-3cb422fe5ae7)

Lessig's response to the NYT article: [https://medium.com/@lessig/on-the- careful-reading-of-the-new...](https://medium.com/@lessig/on-the-careful- reading-of-the-new-york-times-editors-8f543418c1df)

Suffice it to say that he disagrees with the characterization in the NYT article: "Whatever else my essay from a week ago was doing, it was not my trying to "defend soliciting donations from the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein." It happens sometimes, maybe not a lot, but here the editor at the Times took truth and rendered it as completely false."</comment>


Web Developer Walrus - <AUTHOR> http://www.quickmeme.com/Web-Developer-Walrus/

<comment><USER2> I believe we've all inherited or authored a codebase like this at some point.

What's odd is that there seems to be no way to avoid other than someone becoming the "bad cop".</comment>


GitHub is down - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/messages? <comment><USER2> [https://twitter.com/githubstatus](https://twitter.com/githubstatus)

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like they've just updated the status

<comment><USER3> And updated again. Status nominal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do they usually go in detail about what happened after they figure things out?

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's worth blogging about, then, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 20 minutes to respond is pretty good, even if it was a simple error.</comment>


The Architecture of Evil (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-architecture-of-evil <comment><USER2> Among the many victims of WW2, architecture must be counted as one of the most devastating.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll start caring about condemning Albert Speer the first time I see a "long form" exploring the moral culpability of, say, Valerian Kuybyshev.

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

<comment><USER4> Historical condemnation is a mercurial thing.</comment></comment>


Fables of the Reconstruction - <AUTHOR> http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/12/fables-of-the-reconstruction.html <comment><USER2> Very clear article. So clear you can actually draw additional points from it (not called out by the author). One of the problems of using regression on time series is the model is much better at modeling a grand mean than getting the variation right. So if you take an recent upward trend of something you are measuring and then use regression to get data for past points you don't know- you are likely to predict a fairly flat past, almost no matter what the nature of the original data. You need to (at the very least) cross validate by holding out a large contiguous interval of the past where you know the temperature and the proxies to see if the model tracks.

<comment><USER2> I have translated the procedures from OpenOffice to R (didn't bother bounding the date-range where the fitting is done, so I get worse fit and bit more variation; you can only replicate so many mistakes before you feel dirty): [http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2009/12/cru-graph-yet- again-w...](http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2009/12/cru-graph-yet-again- with-r/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating stuff. I'm not a professional statistician, but I was mostly able to follow along. Here are the two most interesting statements from the piece to me:

> Foul play is assumed and the hunt is on for a culprit; a natural suspect is > man made CO2, which has increased coincidental with temperatures. It's a > small part of overall global greenhouse gases (5.5% if you don't include > water vapor, 0.3% if you do), but maybe -- just maybe -- the atmosphere is > in a delicate, wobbly, equilibrium balance.

It never occurred to me that human-produced carbon-dioxide was such a small percent of the greenhouse gases.

Then there was this:

> But a funny thing happened on the way to Copenhagen: a couple of Canadian > researchers, McIntyre and McKitrick, found that when they ran simulations of > "red noise" random principle components data into Mann's reconstruction > model, 99% of the time it produced the same hockey stick pattern. They > attributed this to Mann's method / time frame for selecting of principle > components.

That's just a wow. Incredibly damning of that model, and that model was one of the biggest calls to urgency in the field. I'm happy this sort of information is coming out and being thought about.

</comment><comment><USER4> > It's a small part of overall global greenhouse gases (5.5% if you don't > include water vapor, 0.3% if you do), but maybe -- just maybe -- the > atmosphere is in a delicate, wobbly, equilibrium balance.

Considering what we know of CO2 levels and temperature in the geologic past, we're far away from any potential tipping point.

</comment><comment><USER5> damn it. everytime i hear about the hockey stick i first think of an actual hockey stick. i guess i'm not as familiar with the greenhouse debate as i thought i was. or maybe it's just that time of year. i make my own underwater hockey sticks, and have wanted to give a go at the frozenwater kind now that the ponds are about to freeze...</comment>


Ask HN: Scientists of HN – how, why, and when did you decide to leave academia? - <AUTHOR>

In particular, how much do you miss unrestricted work on fundamental science? <comment><USER2> >how . . . did you decide

I like to build laboratories, working in an institution would not be as rewarding to me unless I build it myself or it reflects my vision.

>why . . . did you decide

so I could do better practical (paying) work, including better fundamental science (far-future payoff) than was allowed in established academic or industrial institutions.

>when did you decide

ASAP.

Independent and self-funded, I did not miss as much unrestricted work than I would have in academic or industrial labs which are much more restricted.

I consider myself fortunate that I did serve large industrial outfits which were able to pay the bills for so long using only 1 percent of my technical abilities.

Don't try this at home.

</comment><comment><USER3> I left academia in '06 or '07\. However, I still do unrestricted work on fundamental science in my 20% time.

</comment><comment><USER4> I work at an industrial lab so haven't technically left academia. What "unrestricted work on fundamental science do you speak of"? Apart from a few groups at MSR, I don't believe this happens much in industrial labs these days. I do miss my grad school days in case you are wondering :p</comment>


The New MacBook Pros Mark the End of Upgradeable Apple Computers - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/new-macbook-pros-mark-the-end-of-upgradeable-apple-computers <comment><USER2> They're consumer machines anyway. Some folks dropped extra cash in order to make their Macs future proof to realise just now that they cannot upgrade to macOS Sierra even though their hardware still runs perfectly fine.

<comment><USER3> My absolutely boring, "cannot complain of seven year ride", anecdata:

\- Late 2009 white plastic MacBook, 320 GB HD, 4 GB RAM, cost 1000 euros, came with OS 10.5 or so.

Earlier this year tossed in 200 euros worth of RAM (8GB) and SSD (500 GB), because Safari was gagging a bit on too many tabs of modern web. Has been updated to the latest macOS at every release, Sierra included, no problem.

\- 2008 or so vintage HP-tx laptop, 320 GB HD, 4 GB RAM, cost 700 or so euros on sale in 2009, came with Windows Vista.

Installed Windows 7 pro (BizSpark gift), upgraded to Windows 10 pro, with no problems (except Windows updates being painful in general ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't the only upgradeable MBP an older edition that they were still selling?

<comment><USER5> MacBook Pro 13-inch, Mid 2012, non-Retina

Model Identifier: MacBookPro9,2

US version

Model No: A1278

Order No: MD101LL/A (2.5 GHz), MD102LL/A (2.9 GHz)

Initial Price: $1,199 (2.5 GHz) $1,499 (2.9 GHz)

It was only old because they let it get that way.

Mine: (2) 960 GiB SSDs, 16 GiB RAM, Sugru'ed FireWire port and optical slot.

The processor and screen are old, but they're not critical to what I use it for. New ones lack MagSafe and force you to pay for Apple upgrades and more accessories to haul around to do what was previously possible.

Anyhow, it's the last Apple computer I'll likely ever buy, until they get their products back to something people actually use as opposed to a Bentley for a Sunday drive.

<comment><USER6> The real world throughput of the internal SSD on the new MacBook Pros at 3GB/s will be 6 times faster than SATA III. Additionally you could duct tape four of those Crucial SSDs to the lid and connect them with a single USB3 hub and get the same performance as SATA III — and it would be smaller and weigh less.

I expect that will even be a likely third party snap on product given the upgrade in what the new ports make possible.

<comment><USER7> > throughput of the internal SSD on the new MacBook Pros at 3GB/s will be 6 > times faster than SATA III

Yep, really want to see Anandtech's take on it. It's going to blur the line between memory and storage - at those speeds frequent writing to the swap file probably won't matter. A few people might have to eat their words when the reviews are out.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if they really "blur the line". Speed wise, the new SSDs are coming closer and closer to RAM, but latency wise they're still miles off.

There's still a lot to be done before SSDs can truly rival with memory.

<comment><USER7> > I'm not sure if they really "blur the line".

But isn't this the ultimate idea behind NVMe? By using PCIe in parallel it gets to the point where you can rely on nonvolatile memory to be more of a system workhorse than merely a storage system. Apple seems to have an idea of where they want to go - just look at the last two iPhones, the 6s and 7. They've had around 1/2 to 3/4 the amount of RAM of other flagship devices while having stupid-fast storage and in real-world tests they outperform their competitors for load times and responsiveness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how are they going to survive if they keep earning bad reputation in developer community this way.

<comment><USER10> The problem is nobody else comes close to what Apple has on offer. I'm in the market for a new computer for dev work and I'm going to have to dongle up and get one of these new Macbook Pros.

<comment><USER9> Check out this thread to know about better manufacturer.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12845081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12845081)</comment></comment></comment>


Torresian crows have learned how to make a meal of cane toads - <AUTHOR> http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2018/01/can-crows-eat-cane-toads?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AG%20Newsletter%2030/01/2018&utm_term=list_australiangeographic_newsletter <comment><USER3> Crows are a constant source of amazement. The last couple of years, we have watched our local population take up the practice of crushing walnuts under moving carwheels. I know this trick is performed with high levels of sophistication in many parts of the world - nevertheless, it has been fascinating to see this new behavior take hold and spread among the many, many crows in the region. It's hard not to fancy a pair of disapproving corvid eyes boring into you whenever you've let your instinct take over and have swerved.

Actually, I'm getting more and more into the habit of _not_ swerving. For everyone else, absolutely, but not really for the crows. They have my vector to any number of decimal points, and will nonchalantly hop out of harms way at the last possible moment - often into the opposite lane, if no oncoming traffic is seen there. We _never_ see them as roadkill. Pheasants, gulls, sparrows, what have you, but never the crows.

</comment><comment><USER4> I imagine Aussies could make a bigger dent in their cane toad problem by giving some smart folks a budget to teach classes and produce educational videos specifically for crows.

Spread the knowledge on how to safely eat cane toads to every corvid on the continent, much faster than that information could spread naturally.

Some crows have a concept of death and mortality, and the ability to make causal associations. It is certainly possible to teach them a skill by literal demonstration, and may be possible to teach via symbolic representation.

Catch a bunch of cane toads. Prepare the edible parts from some as motivational snacks to attract interested crows. Use a crow puppet to naively eat a model cane toad, and make it "die". Then use another crow puppet to manipulate and eat a model toad avoiding the poison glands. Give a live cane toad to a crow known to have the skill, so it can demonstrate. Then release some live toads for novices to try it out.

Then attempt an experiment to show a video of that demonstration to an ignorant flock, and see if they can acquire the skill that way.

<comment><USER5> It'd be a very interesting experiment to figure out how to effectively teach wild crows new skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clever crows, but a real shame other predators are being killed off because of their unfamiliarity with an invasive species. I wonder if any naturally immune individuals will rise up from the loss of their main populations.

<comment><USER7> More likely some of those predators will learn to avoid them rather than become immune to their poison. Hopefully they will learn that before they are reduced to unsustainable levels.

<comment><USER6> Do most animals have that ability though? How do you learn from something when you're dead from it nearly instantly? I don't think snakes have knowledge outside of instinct. That's the point of this crow article.

<comment><USER8> Natural variation and selection. (Biological) Evolution changes populations, not individuals.

Suppose there's one snake that is genetically disposed not to eat toad-shaped things, frogs, cane toads, anything like that, the same way I don't like nuts. They're not toxic to me, I could eat them, but I don't. Previously toads weren't toxic to snakes, but that snake didn't eat them.

Normally that snake has a small disadvantage, other snakes eat toads and it goes without. Too bad. But now it won't get poisoned. This means it's slightly more likely to survive to adulthood, breed and produce more snakes.

Further genetic changes to avoid toads will also be selected for in the same fashion.

This process is very slow in multi-cellular creatures, but it does exist. It may not be fast enough to adapt to the cane toad of course.

<comment><USER9> Appreciate your comment. It always impresses me how many people misunderstand the _(what I feel to be)_ basic concepts of evolution. I'm not educated on the matter either, mind you - I'm sure I'm very ignorant on many aspects of it.

Regardless, it always makes me wonder how much the anti-evolution "movement" would be affected if people simply had a better grasp of it.

<comment><USER10> Quite a bit of the provided possible outcome rests on likelihood of certain genetic factors and, relative size of snake population, and how quickly cane toads spread.

The actual values of these variables (and a few more I'm sure) can change whether one population dies out or not and how quickly. Just because evolution provides a solution to the _general_ problem, doesn't mean there's a solution that saves the population when the _specific_ problem is looked at in detail. Invasive species cause local extinctions all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recommend this excellent and hilarious documentary if you'd like to find out more about cane toads:

> Cane Toads: An Unnatural History

[https://imdb.com/title/tt0130529/](https://imdb.com/title/tt0130529/)

(I have found versions of this on YouTube, but unsure how legal they may be)

</comment><comment><USER12> In some respects, if human development followed the cane toad, we would become virtually indestructible. As children, we would use them as cricket balls and some would still hop away afterwards. We found that inserting lit penny bungers into them was an effective way of terminating. Freezing them was also effective, but your mother tended to object to them being in the freezer.

What was disturbing about them was the size that some would grow to. I personally have seen one that was about 20 cm (8 inches) high. I have heard of them being much larger.

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel bad for those frogs. Imagine being eaten/beaten for 40 minutes by a crow. Probably left to slowly die after it is done eating you.

And the crows friends are watching the whole time too.

<comment><USER14> Cane toads are an ecosystem destroying highly invasive introduced species.

The crows are doing our work for us. The method might be messy, but cane toads should be exterminated in non-native habitats as expediently as possible.

Instead of feeling bad for them, why don't you feel bad about the species they have almost wiped out?

<comment><USER15> You can feel bad for the toads and the species they are wiping out. It's not like they are consciously deciding to be an invasive species.

<comment><USER14> I feel bad for the native species. Cane toads are prolific throughout the world, and they've driven many species to near extinction.

At some point you have to decide what your priorities are and start culling. E.g. Australia wants to kill 2 million feral cats over a decade, as there are 30 million of them, and each one kills 3-20 native animals a day. [0] At some point you have to make decisions and decide which is more important. If you could teach crows how to eat cats, Australia would like to have a word.

[0] [https://news.vice.com/article/feline-massacre-australia- unve...](https://news.vice.com/article/feline-massacre-australia-unveils-plan- to-kill-two-million-feral-cats)

<comment><USER16> It's OK to kill an animal and feel bad for it at the same time.

<comment><USER17> crying onto my bacon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> These frogs are really strange - usually poisonous animals have some way of clearly showing not to mess with them: bright colors, smell, sounds they make...

<comment><USER19> They're stealthy hunters, so bright aposomatic coloration would be counterproductive. I also believe that there is some aposomstic scent markers and behavior in the case of cane toads, it's just that native Australian fauna has taken time to adapt.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/101/49/17150](http://www.pnas.org/content/101/49/17150)

They're not "learning" to avoid, but selection pressures are having the same end result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me if this joke from QI, the UK TV show:

"Australians have a big problem with cane toads. They have a foul odour and spread like wildfire. And they have a big problem with cane toads."

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems to be a handful of videos on YouTube of this phenomenon. A bit in the gruesome direction as a warning to others [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lWX5x0Kmgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lWX5x0Kmgs) There's a few videos posting about the phenomena from 6-7 years ago so apparently they've learned this trick for some time.

</comment><comment><USER22> "During much of this process other crows stood and watched."

      EXT. A FIELD OUTSIDE BRISBANE - <USER2>

      CROW 1: I dare you to eat that poisonous frog.

      CROW 2: Hold my beer.

<comment><USER23> I'm from Brisbane, I'm going to start paying more attention to Colin the Crow who frequents my back yard with a little more care.

At this present moment he's helping my house mates chicken finish her breakfast.

Day 1 Colin seems to be a chicken in disguise</comment></comment>


Ionic gets a native touch in AppGyver Steroids 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.appgyver.com/steroids2

<comment><USER2> Steroids2 will change the game by boosting ionicframework with a fully declarative native UI.</comment>


Blooie, Airtime and online chat - what's the future? - <AUTHOR>

Two stories published in the last 24 hours, two startups tackling online chat in very different ways:
Airtime - http://allthingsd.com/20121002/like-eating-glass-sean-parker-on-airtimes-bumpy-launch-exec-departures-and-more/
Blooie - http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/03/blooie-launches-its-chat-platform-for-online-publishers-powered-by-the-interest-graph/
Not a fan of video chat, too evasive but matching people around web content is interesting.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Airtime building on top of Facebook with no platform of their own is massively dangerous. Don't understand the scale of investment when there's no control. Will take a look at Blooie, bit of an underdog in comparison, but prefer text to video.

<comment><USER3> The key about Blooie is that it lives where the content lives. It isn't a destination site like Airtime. Users dont have to leave content to find a conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I'm told that the chat logs themselves are never stored, it does give pause for thought" Some interesting scaling challenges there I imagine</comment>


The iPhone Tab Bar - <AUTHOR> http://www.significantpixels.com/2011/04/04/the-iphone-tab-bar/ <comment> news-yc When working on news:yc, I first used a standard, Apple-style, navigation inside tab bar structure. The logic, I guess, is that it allowed access to the tabs anywhere in the app, not only at the top level.

However, when testing the app, I found this was rarely useful in practice, and completely not worth stealing the bottom pixels of the screen where a real toolbar could go. So I switched to Twitter for iPhone style, with the navigation bar as the "top level" element and the tab bar shown only at the root level.

Might not work for all apps, but I think Apple should try to suggest that structure as well, since it does make more sense than their "tab bar always visible" design for at least some apps.

<comment><USER2> I'd actually recommend to go through Apple's HIG before trying do things differently. I've tried news:yc but was not happy with it's UI :(

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I tried news:yc out for the first time yesterday and wound up deleting the app pretty quickly. The toolbar at the bottom was probably the biggest thing other I didn't like. It just felt wrong.

<comment> news-yc I can't fix it without any help: I want to make something that's a pleasure to use. If you have improvements or even just issues with the choices I've made, could you submit an issue so I can fix them?

<comment><USER3> I'll reinstall on the simulator and make a few notes for you later today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I will likely lose a few points for this, but I accept it because it needs to be said. If you are going to write a big article, please have someone with a good grasp of grammar proof read it before you publish.

This article has a lot of good points, but it's much harder to take seriously when it sounds like it was written by someone who didn't pay enough attention in English class. Yes, I realize there's a good chance that this person is a non-native English speaker, but if you want to be taken seriously, that's not really an excuse.

I will leave you with this: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/02/how-to- write-withou...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/02/how-to-write- without-writing.html)

<comment><USER5> So, where do you get the impression that the author wants to be taken seriously by people who are easily offended?

This looks to me like a typical personal blog where a non-native speaker jotted down his notes about a certain topic. The text is perfectly understandable and the grammar mistakes are harmless. Take it or leave it.

<comment><USER6> I don't see anything in the GP about being offended. And I totally agree; I automatically and almost unconsciously take an article less seriously if it's got glaring and common errors.

I also disagree with your characterization of the amount of work that went into the blog post. From the number of screenshot examples and the overall structure of the piece, it looks to me like the result of a significant amount of work.

That said, direct feedback (like through the links provided at the bottom of the article) is probably a better way to let the author know about (and correct) the mistakes than a comment on HN.

<comment><USER7> I like Stephen Fry's take on grammar and 'correctness':

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised he doesn't mention anything about text inputs barely above the tab bar. The Google Voice app does this, and it's painful to consistently accidentally switch to one of the other tabs when trying to respond to a text message.

</comment><comment><USER9> This Article point out exactly the problems I experience with Android software. I am glad developers are point on thought in to details like this. UI continuity is really important. It's not 'fascism', it continues the illusion of intuitive-ness. (<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2272575,00.asp>)</comment>