Behind the Motion Photos Technology in Pixel 2 - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2018/03/behind-motion-photos-technology-in.html <comment><USER2> I love learning and reading about the technology behind some of my favorite features. Motion Photos (and Apple's version as well) has been one of the biggest "I didn't know I wanted this" features on modern smartphones for me.

I've taken a lot of pictures of my dogs over the years but the pure _joy_ I had when one of the first photos I took with my new phone turned into a looping 1 second video was surprising to me. I'm really looking forward to this summer when I get to take too many photos of my new kid.

Now if only I could directly upload these to Instagram without having to manually loop them...

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing I want to ask google is, why can't I browse through my previously- taken motion photos when I'm in a dead cell zone?

I went to the aquarium this weekend, took a lot of motion photos- but when scrolling through them in the gift shop, the "motion on" button just turned into an eternal loading icon. _Even on photos I had taken the previous week._

<comment><USER4> If you have smart storage on, those photos are not saved on the device but in the cloud.

<comment><USER5> The local copies usually stick around a lot longer, I think 2-3 months. Perhaps the original poster ran out of storage, which triggered more aggressive purging?

<comment><USER3> nope. Have several gigs free. This is something else. The pictures all load when I'm in a dead cell spot, but the looping clips don't.

Interestingly, it all works fine and quickly in airplane mode. My theory is that before it plays the video, it checks settings to see whether it's online, and then makes a blocking call to a google server to, like, increment a view counter or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google's computational photo/video expertise is so far ahead of any traditional camera manufacturer..

I wish they would release a prosumer Android camera with a 1"\+ sensor, perhaps m43 mount, 10bit video and large bitrates - with all of their computational photo goodies.

<comment><USER7> Right, can you imagine a Sony RX100 with the post processing of a Pixel 2?

Then again, maybe we don't need that additional step and we are already at the point where your phone is enough: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/9/17097696/pixel-2xl- geneva-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/9/17097696/pixel-2xl-geneva-motor- show-2018)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's getting closer. With fast enough sensor they could probably do HDR+ on video too, like HDRx on RED cameras. If they had a 10bit HEVC video profile for recording, they could store more of that extended DR too.

Some things will be out of reach with a single small lens phone - depth of field on video, and selection of focal lengths/fov. And small sensors always have worse noise performance (quantum efficiency)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks really similar to Apple's Live Photos with a bit of video stabilization.</comment>


Sperm Count Zero - <AUTHOR> https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero <comment><USER2> It's probably a combination of ibuprofen and birth control pills tainting the water supply enough to result in horomonal signaling.

It's weird, because you look back to 40 years ago, and the lack of gender dysphoria didn't seem nearly as prevalent, and I don't think that's because of pressure to enforce social conformity. I must admit, the plastic surgery didn't exist, and maybe we're worse for having it.

It's possible that perception has simply been altered by the internet's capacity to surface specialty subcultures, but even so, I feel like it's a really, _really_ strange thing for so many men these days to push as hard as they do to live as women. And it really does seem like there's a lot more traffic heading in that direction and not the reverse.

So it would make sense to me, that part of this gradient of diffusion is also other reproductive system problems. There's probably a wide grey zone of infertility without gender dysphoria, and the higher rates of gender dysphoria are the extreme cases of the root cause of male infertility.

It would make sense to me if it works out this way, although, I am uncertain that these are really the facts.

I just don't remember people being like this, the way things are now. The 1970's had a lot going on, and then we saw promiscuity kill up to 50,000 annualy when AIDS hit. Now, higher rates of gender dysphoria and infertility, so what gives?

</comment><comment><USER3> Thankful that I have no plans to reproduce.</comment>


How to thrive among pirates - <AUTHOR> http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2010/04/how_to_thrive_a.php

<comment><USER2> This article is an example of research done in a very surface manner, and where pre-judgments were decided on and the facts bent to meet the judgement.

They control piracy by keeping costs low and pricing at a level that makes it uneconomical to pirate. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Make really crappy movies and befriend criminals? Maybe Hollywood should just quit while they're ahead.

<comment><USER4> or make profits through sales of movie tickets by giving a better theater experience (air conditioning vs. no air conditioning) Some of the movies are already doing that with IMAX and 3d technology.</comment></comment>


Minority Report has arrived: two states using computers to predict future crimes - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2260609/Maryland-Pennsylvania-using-Minority-Report-style-computers-predict-crimes-Washington-D-C-next.html

<comment><USER2> ...except that they're using statistics rather than telepathy!</comment>


So Here's How Many Games I Sell - Indie Game Developer Story - <AUTHOR> http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html

<comment><USER2> Covering a salary for yourself is no mean feat, particularly for selling games.

In general, when folks with no business experience tell me they want to start selling games, I tell them "It is a black hole of time and talent". There are exceptions towards the top end (and $100k+ of sales is, if not stratospheric, probably still in the top 1% of indie developers), but more typical games either are never completed or end up profiting less than $1k per man month invested (i.e. not covering reasonable imputed salaries of founders).

You can see a whole bunch of case studies here:

<http://www.gameproducer.net/category/sales-statistics/>

<comment><USER3> From what I've followed with gaming, is that modding and level design is generally the best way to get into a game development.

I believe there are a lot of indie developers who do make money, but if you want a real career you can't go it alone unless you really want to invest time into a truly unique idea. I believe the classic example is Chris Sawyer with Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon, both of which IIRC were programmed solely by him. If you do that and sell it to a publisher, you've got gold, but unless you do that I doubt there'll ever be an indie developer earning a large amount.

If you sell big like Sawyer did, then it doesn't matter if it takes another two years before your next game, because your only company expense is your own house!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Some of you might ask, "Why would anyone pay money for a game that looks > like that?" The answer is, "I don't know, but they do."

Some people really enjoy gameplay a lot more than pretty pictures. We've built a webgame (a tennis manager game: <http://rockingrackets.com/>) where our website didn't even had a decent layout for the first six months after making the website public, but a lot of people were playing it because of the game play.

We're not breaking even on the time part yet, but our other costs were covered after only two months. Currently we're close to being feature complete, after which we'll fix bugs and refactor some code for a short period. After that, we'll be moving the game into a maintenance mode and we'll start developing a new game.

Rocking Rackets' expected shelve life is long enough to cover our time investment quite well even at the current rate of making money. The game is still growing though...

</comment><comment><USER5> Geneforge, and Avernum servies of games are extremely good. If you are an RPG fan and havent played them, you are missing something. (though I am pretty sure if Jeff did not make these games, my GPA in college would have been much higher)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's really cool that he's able to make a successful living making indie games, but it definitely is a labor of love. So far, he hasn't broken even on it, and it's a two year old game. He spent around 120k, and made around 116k.

It really looks like it needs some more promotion though. He said that the original game sold a lot of copies on other sites. But this one was just released on his site, and mainly marketed by word of mouth.

<comment><USER7> Most of the 120K was his salary, so just breaking even is a significant accomplishment.

<comment><USER8> I think I am confused. Did he work on the game for one year, and thus the game is judged based on paying back one year's salary? He says his other games have done better and worse, not having looked at the game catalog his company offers, it seems to me that this game has probably more than covered the part of his salary he spent working on it. Am I confused?

<comment><USER9> Think of it this way: the game cost his company 120K to build, and his company has pretty much made that back, so his company has broken even(1). While developing the game he paid himself a decent salary, so he personally has done well (and that's the part that actually matters).

(1) Leaving out the time value of money, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Costs for this particular kind of game are mostly content costs: Writing, gameplay scripting, art. The engineering effort doesn't carry over a great deal from one game to another. As well, downloadables get lower market penetration than browser-based games. All those factors go a long way to explain why he's only breaking even.

If you want a hope of success in games, either do a low-asset kind of game, do a game where big assets are matched with big marketing, or involve the users in creating content. I think there's still lots and lots of room for the third.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting read - I was wondering myself [1] how to get into that field, it seems so unlikely that one can make money in that space (even only enough to make a modest living out of it).

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=521475>

</comment><comment><USER12> Can someone explain to me --- and I never even play games (Hacker News is my computer game), let alone write them --- why any indie game developer would sink $120k into a title and not design it so they could collect recurring revenue from online multiplayer subscriptions?

<comment><USER11> 1\. Developing multilayer games requires more work than developing single player games. You have to look at the cost/profit ratios, not just the profit.

2\. The work can be qualitatively different - multilayer games are not designed the same way as single payer ones, you have a whole new can of worms to worry about.

3\. Maybe he likes single player games (or making them) better than multilayer ones.

as a side note - 120k usd is not _that_ much money, considering most of that money is the author's salary.

<comment><USER12> Considering the other expenses in that budget, 120k gross expenditures sounds more like a 60k salary for him.

Obviously it's trickier to develop a multiplayer game, but the economics seem so compelling; in a 15 year career, he's never broken out into multiplayer? Or is there something I'm missing about those economics?

<comment><USER13> He mentioned in the comments that the reason why he has not made a multiplayer game is because he is only a so-so programmer and lacks the skills to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks quite good if you view it as returning somewhere between 35-50% per year on invested capital. However, it's hard to guess what shelf life of the product will be.

<comment><USER15> It's hard for us to guess, but the Vogel has several other titles that have been available online for a number of years so I bet he can make a reasonably strong prediction.

I would be very surprised if Geneforge 1 (which I don't think is his earliest title, but is several years old) hasn't sold more than 5 copies this year. The tail for his products is very long. Pretty flat I'd guess, but very long and since they're distributed digitally there's no reason not to keep them available, gradually dropping prices or making bundles available. Once 5 is released he could sell a "box set of the entire series" and spike sales of the old titles again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd love to see sub and renewal data like this for "indie" or small shops making an MMO or other on-going, recurring revenue games.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I'd love to know if an indie game can accomplish a profitable MMO following.

I mean assuming you can keep roughly 1,000 people subscribed at $5 a month, then each year a game would pay out $60,000 dollars. If you get a loyal fan following then this would be a great revenue source. Once people are emotionally tied into a game then it can often keep them in the game for many, many years.

If you could keep a lot of the heavy work on client-side (not unreasonable for modern computers if you're producing a non-CPU intensive game by nature) so that your bandwidth and server needs stay low, then once you break-even you'd hopefully be able to keep a large chunk of that $60k.

Correctly done, I imagine an MMO could quite possibly be the best way an "indie" developer could make big money without a publisher taking a huge cut. I mean sure if you can get a publisher to sell the game for $20 or so and let them take most of it to help grow your users, but keep the monthly fees in your pocket.

<comment><USER17> I want to see a major MMO start offering modding tools that let indie developers make mods that people can play for some small sum of money -- say, somewhere between free and a dollar. I think it could really take off if the modding tools were flexible enough and the mods cool enough. Small profit margins, large audiences, and tiny marginal costs are where it's at.

Installing new games and learning how to play them is work. Making a game you already like be bigger and better could be a profitable business.

<comment><USER18> > I want to see a major MMO start offering modding tools that let indie > developers make mods that people can play for some small sum of money -- > say, somewhere between free and a dollar.

Done. It's called 2nd life.

<comment><USER19> 2nd life isn't a game, it's an online world, vastly different thing. There's nothing to play, there are no goals, nothing, it's just a world; you go there to socialize with others in the world.

<comment><USER18> There is lots to play. People make games. People play games, <http://slgames.wordpress.com/> There are active RPG groups. Star Trek, Harry Potter I've heard about. Basically virtual world LARPing with kick-ass interactive props that don't need to obey laws of physics.

There is nothing stopping anyone from creating games in 2nd Life. It's exactly what you asked for mod tools. It's all mod tools. It's all up to you.

Games esp mmo's are mostly socializing.

It's just a world. Geez, only a __world __. Like saying its just reality there's only sticks and rocks here, no games. Pick up the damn rock and hit it with a damn stick.

Have a modicum of imagination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would love to see sales numbers broken down by platform for a cross-platform game that's available for GNU/Linux.

<comment><USER21> My research has shown that, traditionally, an indie developer can get 40-50% of their sales on the Mac, and a 5% or lower share on Linux. There's a bit of a chicken-egg question over why Linux sales are so low - most game devs don't go for Linux because they hear they won't sell well, but low numbers of games for Linux may contribute to that trend.

<comment><USER11> Another issue might be that linux users are not used to paying for software.</comment></comment></comment>


You Can Mark 'Fire Tornado' Off Your 2020 Apocalypse Bingo Card - <AUTHOR> https://earther.gizmodo.com/you-can-mark-fire-tornado-off-your-2020-apocalypse-bing-1844739302 <comment><USER2> I have a chapter in the novel I'm writing set in Hiroshima the day of the bombing. One of the aftermaths of the bombing was fire tornadoes. I didn't know how to describe them (and had envisioned a whirling cone of flames). Seeing video posted of this (it never occurred to me that I'd ever be able to see video of fire tornadoes) is really helpful in adding detail to that chapter of the book.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think i'm going to lose: missing Alien Invasion Tomato Monster Mexican Armada and An Asteroid And All Sorts Of Things.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Better video here, 140+ MPh winds.

[https://earther.gizmodo.com/watch-this-terrifying-new- footag...](https://earther.gizmodo.com/watch-this-terrifying-new-footage-of- californias-fire-t-1828399515)

</comment><comment><USER4> Please keep garbage off of HN. Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to help by clicking that "logout" button.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I'll put that right on my 2020 apocalypse bucket list along with trying these 4 weird tricks that doctors hate.</comment></comment></comment>


AWS Lambda and Beyond with the Serverless App Repo - <AUTHOR> https://blog.runpanther.io/serverless-app-repo-intro/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. You can check my article too.

[https://medium.com/@tunatore/how-mycrypto-tools-uses-aws- lam...](https://medium.com/@tunatore/how-mycrypto-tools-uses-aws-lambda- serverless-architecture-b5603df10443)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Have you dabbled at all with the AWS SAR?</comment></comment>


Garn.io – A new take on SaaS cancellations to reduce Covid-19 churn - <AUTHOR> https://www.garn.io/covid-19-cancellation-page <comment><USER2> Love this. We've been trying to build a custom cancellation survey for our subscription box service for a while. Definitely will check it out!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let me know if you need any help whilst getting setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work for a large SaaS company (SimilarWeb)and Covid-19 has caused real churn issues, this could be really useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> All accounts look brand new.

Don't fake up votes, it doesn't really work anyway

</comment><comment><USER5> Love this concept! I'll be sure to check it out

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks useful, How long is it free for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our Covid-19 cancel page will be free forever

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you integrate with stripe?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Jack, we do indeed. As a verified Stripe partner, to integrate Stripe into Garnio is as simple as a click of a button

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very useful! Nice one</comment>


Sub $200 Android tablets arrives: is the iPad doomed? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tech-no-media.com/2010/03/sub-200-android-tablets-arrives-is-ipas.html

<comment><USER2> This seems like a horrible comparison. The Android tablet has 8X less memory, at best, smaller screen, low build quality, a low power chip, no app store, no marketing or brand, but because it has Flash lite it is going to cripple the iPad?

This does not deserve to be front page on HN.

<comment><USER3> Well, I must disagree on most points. As the archos has a sd card reader, the memory isn't an issue (16GB modules are quite easy to find), the chip is low power but that's not bad, as it'll have more autonomy, (that's why the iPad has the A4), and most importantly, Archos IS a brand. A quite good one at that. The build quality is excellent (well, I can't vouch for this product, but Archos is a good brand).

<comment><USER2> I don't get how a lower powered chip is an upgrade. When you say autonomy do you mean side loading software?

I respectfully disagree re: Archos. Do you know many kids who asked for an "Archos Clipper" for Christmas? Does Archos do any consumer advertsing? Is there a cottage industry of bloggers who make livings reporting on the happenings at Archos. You are technically correct, it is a brand, but not a very popular one.

I think this is something many people ignore. For people who don't hang out here, the iPod goodwill goes a long way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> With a rating of 3/5 stars from 70 Amz reviewers?

[ [http://www.amazon.com/Archos-32-Internet-Tablet- Android/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Archos-32-Internet-Tablet- Android/dp/B002OL2PLU) ]

Maybe not.

Or... maybe tech-no-media just didn't tell me about all the publisher relationships that 'droid manufacturers have been developing (à la Steve Jobs since January).

It's not just the "cool" of the hardware that Apple plans to leverage - it's the store and retail relationships.

<comment><USER5> The 5" was a beta program that the users had to pay $400 to participate in. And oh yeah, nobody was told that before paying the $400.

Needless to say, not all the Amazon reviewers were too happy about that.

The reality is, Archos fixed the problems, and now that tablet is basically a desktop machine in terms of web browsing and video playing ability. You can connect a keyboard and mouse (for writing HN posts), if you want, and you can output and record 720p video / 5.1 channel audio. (And it plays real-world video formats, not just what Apple sells in its video store.)

Honestly, I thought Archos was quite clueless when they released the 5" device, but they are doing better now. I emailed them asking why their media player app couldn't display Japanese fonts, and the next firmware update had a Japanese font. Of course, I would have been a lot happier if I had write access to my own filesystem... then I could have added it myself. I would also like documentation / code for controlling the DSP chip, so I can write a media player app that doesn't suck. Archos has kept the same codebase on all their devices, and while the video decoding works OK now, the UI code is just horrible. I think the whole app is a bunch of if statements like "if( volume > 0 && headphones_attached && phase_of_moon == FullMoon && ... )". Sometimes they forget to cover all the conditions, and weird stuff happens.

(To be cynical, I doubt we will ever see the tools we need to write a good media player app, and that Archos will eventually be dead from buggy software and obscurity. If that happens, hopefully someone else will release a Linux- based music/video player, because I am tired of Apple dominating this market.)

 _Or... maybe tech-no-media just didn't tell me about all the publisher relationships that 'droid manufacturers have been developing (à la Steve Jobs since January)._

Nobody is buying the iPad for the ebooks. You don't want to read a book on an LCD screen.

But oddly, it seems that Amazon is deliberately shunning Android with their Kindle app. It works on Windows, Blackberry, and iPhone... but not on Android. WTF, Amazon? How hard is it to display plain text on a screen? (My DRM- stripped Amazon ebooks work fine in the stock browser.)

<comment><USER6> I participated in another $400 beta from Archos back in 2000. I see they didn't change much since then - it all looks very familiar.

Later on someone developed an open-source firmware for the Archos mp3 player, so there is hope.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. I thought I would give them another chance, but they are trying to be as controlling as Apple without having the ability to do it.

They say they can't allow arbitrary firmware reflashes (or root access) because they want to sell DRM'd content. Well, their content library is like one home video. It sucks and reflects poorly on their company and shareholders. (Same with their DRM'd games and other crap.) It's time for them to realize, "we're not Apple", and to stop acting like Apple. Archos is a hardware company, but like many other hardware companies, don't get software. So they should just let the community write the software for them. (Remember Sony? They made awesome hardware, but their consistently bad software did in all their consumer electronics that run software.)

Archos now lets you flash Angstrom Linux instead of Android, but the image they provide is just horrible. They seem like they're trying to improve, but sadly, I don't think they are ever going to make it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The big problem for Apple is that for most common tasks such as surfing, reading eBooks or playing audio and video the Archos tablet will will perform as well as the iPad for less than half the price."

Will it perform as well? Maybe on paper but CPU doesn't mean anything if the user experience isn't tuned and Apple has a good track record there.

<comment><USER5> How is the user experience going to be different? Step one: click picture of globe. Step two: browse Intarwebs.

<comment><USER8> Yep, that's all there is to it. iPhone OS took one guy about a week to write.

<comment><USER5> And Android was written in a few hours, in a coffee shop...

<comment><USER8> The point is there's more to the device than just the web browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The big problem for Apple is that for most common tasks such as surfing, reading eBooks or playing audio and video the Archos tablet will will perform as well as the iPad for less than half the price. The only usage scenarios where Apple dominate is mobile gaming, will that be enough to justify the price? For some people most certainly, and you can expect a lot of Apple fans to be ready to pony up the cash too, but I am afraid that the average user won't see it that way and that the iPad will stay an high end device with limited market share._

Apple can position the iPad as the "cool" device where the Archos can get the low-cost segment. It can become the "cool" thing to have on campus, just like Apple laptops were. It will be a flash in the pan unless it's actually useful to college students, however.

<comment><USER10> Brand is everything.

<comment><USER11> Branding is where I think android will win.

Google is better at marketing and branding than Apple. Also Android is cooler (sorry apple people it's true). Apple is now seen as mainstream, and boring. Finally android is technically superior.

A better media player is another reason why android devices will win.

Until the Troll (tm) comes out, and eats them all up ;)

<comment><USER12> Bwha? It could be that I'm missing sarcasm, but wasn't Apple named the best brand of the 00s, and Jobs the marketer of the decade? There is _no way_ that the company that screwed up the introduction of Buzz is better at marketing or branding than the company that got months of free advertising of its name and product for the cost of one significant demo.

Apple gets millions of dollars in free advertising by keeping things close to its chest—and even stories like this give Apple free advertising because it keeps the Apple name in the headlines.

These sorts of stories are nonsense anyway; the tech industry isn't a zero-sum game. There won't be one winner. There will always be people who only buy Apple products because they're blinded by the RDF. There are those who buy Apple now because the quality's higher, but could see switching if something better comes along—but nothing so far has. There are those who buy nothing Apple because they are also blinded by the RDF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article has a list of ways it is inferior, but says that's OK because it's cheaper. That's not Apple's market.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not going to buy this piece of garbage. I want something that just works, and has every detail (hardware and software) thought out beforehand. That's why I'm going to buy the first 3G-equipped iPad that I can get my hands on.

</comment><comment><USER15> New Archos Mini-Tablet Challenges iPad, Kills eInk [http://ipadtest.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/new-archos-mini- tab...](http://ipadtest.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/new-archos-mini-tablet- challenges-ipad-kills-eink/)

</comment><comment><USER16> The iPad isn't even launched and it's already doomed? Yeah right... it will sell like crazy.</comment>


Which Programming Language Should I Learn First? - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/which-programming-language-should-i-learn-first-1477153665

<comment><USER2> Any language that you are comfortable with like the new high level languages(ruby or python) but it also depends on the kind of need you have for example if you are going to be a kernel developer "C" is your thing, if you are going to be a web developer "Ruby on rails, Php, java"; if you are going for software field maybe java and c++ would help; It all depends on your need so decide wisely. Languages are fun!!!</comment>


Ask HN: What did you do that has changed your life the most? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> When I was 20 years old I gave up adding sugar and salt to food and drink. This was due to current news advising the overuse of these ingredients in commercial products. That was more than 50 years ago and I consider my giving up sugar to be the best decision of my life!

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a hard one. It could be the kid I had at 15 (still with the same woman, now married, and a couple more kiddos). But maybe bigger than that was finally getting a job that allowed for disposable income at age 27, or that that same company went public years later and I got a windfall removing all debt. But other keystone moments include the following. As a teenager, internalizing a proverb I read: if you can't do something about a situation, don't worry; if you can, then do so and don't worry. Earning a full academic scholarship to university where I took my first programming course. Taking a sales type job that requires talking to strangers (which I also failed at, but the people skills have been a great reward). Starting CrossFit with a very knowledgeable coach which led me to being stronger and eating healthy (mostly the removal of sugar). I could go on.

<comment><USER4> wow, a kid at 15 is not easty. Congrats

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Meditation as regularly as possible, whether it's 3 minutes or 30 minutes.

Has helped digest conscious and subconscious thoughts, occurrences throughout my day, and emotions. My family and friends have mentioned a noticeable change in my personality as being much more relaxed and insightful no matter the circumstance. That's without them knowing I've been meditating consistently for the past year.

</comment><comment><USER6> Applied for jobs I felt entirely unqualified for.

</comment><comment><USER7> I gave up my more or less very highly paid software development career and moved to Utah to eat ramen noodles every day and ski 120 days a year.

All things considered I now wish I'd done that immediately as soon as I was old enough, and never got into programming as a career. I'd almost say I wish I'd never learned to program, except being able to write your own programs for your own use (or fix/improve existing free software that you use heavily) is pretty nice.

The money I've made in those ~15 years sure is nice, but it doesn't really come close to making up for wasting the best years of my life.

<comment><USER8> How else would you have earned money to pay for the lifestyle?

<comment><USER7> Like everyone else does it, by working evenings in the service industry.

<comment><USER8> So you can bartend on the evenings and make enough to have a comfortable life?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Made a habit of writing regularly. This was something I wanted to do for a while but I had only sporadic output until I gave a group of readers (almost none I personally knew) the expectation that I would email them weekly original posts related to understanding systems. I've been doing this for over a year now here: [https://unintendedconsequenc.es/blog/](https://unintendedconsequenc.es/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Intermittent fasting. Vegan diet. Cycling 100 miles/week.

And yes, meditation. Meditation is key. You've got to take hold of yourself (your mind).

</comment><comment><USER11> Having a bedtime routine that I stick to. At 9:00 I will drink my chamomile tea and at 9:30 I will put away my electronics and read until I fall asleep. I have found using a red headlamp to read also helps me relax as opposed to having a lamp illuminate my room. Blackout curtains also do wonders.

</comment><comment><USER12> Continuous learning and studying outside of work. I know being a workaholic is not good but if you really enjoy what you do and you have big goals, getting the discipline to learn something new every day, pays huge dividends short and long term.

<comment><USER13> >learn something new every day

Do you apply everything you learn regularly or something? I like learning new things (by watching nature docs or the like) but it feels like I am unable to recall what I learned a few weeks to a month down the road.

<comment><USER7> I have the same problem. A couple of days ago I was about 1/3 of the way through an interesting technical article before some of the phrasing started to sound eerily familiar. Turns out I read the same thing about 2 years ago.

I still agree that learning something new every day is ideal, but it seems it'd make sense to carefully structure that to focus on things you might reasonably make use of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Assuming you mean for the better, got a good quality mattress, a house, and a coffee pot I can schedule. Maybe reading/writing every day, but i don't think that's really changed much.

</comment><comment><USER15> Got a divorce

<comment><USER16> How so?

<comment><USER17> from another person

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I got a kid, which pretty much changes everything.

</comment><comment><USER19> It sounds trivial but exercise and a moderate diet affects my well being more than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER20> Stopped drinking alcohol

</comment><comment><USER21> Learnt Mindfulness</comment>


Techniques of Systems Analysis (1957) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memoranda/2006/RM1829-1.pdf <comment><USER2> One of the co-authors here is Herman Kahn, the nuclear strategist. He wrote On Thermonuclear War in 1960, which made him one of the models for Dr. Strangelove - some of the lines in the movie are direct quotes from that book. Later he became a utopian (or dystopian) futurist - when he wrote a book called The Coming Boom (which title provoked ironic comment, given his earlier book).

A biography appeared several years ago, The Worlds of Herman Kahn by Sharon Ghamari Tabrizi. She concludes that Kahn was a sort of performer, a monologist working in a then-popular genre called "sick comedy".

<comment><USER3> "... But one source was Kahn. Strangelove's rhapsodic monologue about preserving specimens of the race in deep mineshafts is an only slightly parodic version of Kahn. There were so many lines from "On Thermonuclear War" in the movie, in fact, that Kahn complained that he should get royalties. ("It doesn't work that way," Kubrick told him.)"

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/fat- man](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/fat-man)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> pg. 33-34: _" There is usually no point in using a Cadillac as a pickup truck. (In practice it depends a little on what commodity is being «picked up.»)"_

LOL!

</comment><comment><USER5> Bottom of page 52 is hilarious.

<comment><USER6> Page 52 in the PDF or page 52 in the document?

<comment><USER7> The latter.

The tone is surprisingly light-hearted given the audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Was the larger book that they reference in the introduction ever published?

<comment><USER2> I believe On Thermonuclear War, 1960, by Kahn alone, must be that book.</comment></comment>


Apple Describes 7nm iPhone SoC - <AUTHOR> https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333705&_mc=RSS_EET_EDT&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=link&utm_medium=EETimesDaily-20180913 <comment><USER2> What are the honest chances that Apple is prepping to move off of x86 to ARM for their computers? They are basically the undisputed leader in ARM processors at the moment right?

<comment><USER3> The writing is definitely on the wall in a number of ways, including the deprecation of "legacy" stuff like OpenGL and 32-bit.

I would guess that ARM Macs, if not some iPad+Mac hybrid, might come one year after they finally release the UIKit-on-macOS API that they showed off at WWDC 2018.

I'm curious as to how they might solve x86 compatibility.

<comment><USER4> They already have a history of cross platform "emulation" from the PowerPC to X86 move.

You know they've already figured it out and it's down to a business decision not a technical one.

I could even imagine they've gotten Parallels involved - an ARM prototype perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >powered by a 7nm SoC enabling up to 512 GBytes of memory.

What is the relation between 7nm and storage capacity? Is the nand 7nm?

<comment><USER6> Addressability — 512GBytes is 2^39 bytes aka 2^36 8-byte chunks. So each memory address needs 39 bits, and each internal memory address bus needs either at least 36 or 39 wires, depending on the context — too much for 32-bit addresses.

In other words, going to 7nm makes it easier to route wide busses around the chip. You could do the same thing on a larger process, but it's less space- efficient.</comment></comment>


Going back to a "non-smart" phone – why I want to, but can't quite do it - <AUTHOR> http://mmoorejones.com/2011/05/12/going-back-to-a-non-smart-phone-why-i-want-to-but-cant-quite-do-it/

<comment><USER2> Instead of reading or replying to things as soon as they come in, I just silence everything on my phone except phone calls. That way, I check emails, texts, tweets, etc. at my convenience. It interrupts me only when necessary.

<comment><USER3> I don't even answer phone calls. Why is some telemarketer calling me more important than my friend saying something on Twitter?

<comment><USER2> Sure. I just don't get many unsolicited calls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone ever experimented with deleting/disabling features on an Android phone?

I'm always curious what it'd be like to have a "smart" phone with no email or web browser, but still GPS and a camera.

I'd like to work on my nervous habit of taking out my phone and checking HN/email/Twitter, etc all the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use a pretty awful phone, and have a iPod touch that can get on wireless. I'd say I miss not having a smartphone about once a month, which is acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just don't use twitter, facebook, etc. So I'm not in habit of answering a bunch of BS notifications all day.</comment>


Show HN: Professional sound effects for UI projects - <AUTHOR> https://soundkit.io/

<comment><USER2> I just bought this. I was very excited about it - it seemed like the sounds would be varied and of good quality; and for $18 it would be a complete steal.

Sadly for UI work the selection and quality are just not there.

First of all, a lot of sounds (especially those in the MUSICAL TONES / RHYTHMIC / SPACEY folders) are more than a second long and use more than one note/sound. This is extremely distracting and out of place for UI - the sounds have too much "story" to them already. In UIs, the sound should subtly accompany the action, give it some weight, and that's it. It should definitely not become the user's center of attention or even be noticeable at all. That's a really hard thing to do, that even the big players fuck up - a lot of alert sounds on major operating systems are terrible, if not down right terrifying (one of my favorites ~good~ examples, as a contrast is Tweetbot 2).

There is also the problem that a lot of sounds have audible static/background noise. A very noticeable one is Air Pop.wav in INPUTS. On my K240s it's borderline painful.

The names of the folders are quite disappointing. SPACEY? LOOPS? RHYTHMIC? A solid set of UI sounds would have folders like APERTURE SOUNDS (with sounds from dozens of existing cameras + synthesized ones), CLICKS (with sounds from a variety buttons, some clicky, some soft, some very short, some a bit longer , some plastic-y, some metal-ly, etc.), SLIDERS (same as buttons but with sliders), and so on. Those are the sounds that UI designers need.

The best ones are in INPUTS - some amount are usable, some could be usable with some editing (e.g. the slider sounds that'd need to be split into 3-4 distinct sounds for each file and then mapped to a slider), but some remain completely useless for UI work (e.g. Twangy.wav, which would make any interface feel like Microsoft Bob, or Reverse Woodpecker.wav which would make the user feel like their computer is glitching).

I'm disappointed because I feel like what I've bought has nothing to do with what I, as a UI designer, was led to believe I'd get :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Please send a message to the support link with your email and I'll issue you a refund. Thanks.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that's great customer support/PR!

Hopefully you'll take his(?) feedback into consideration for the sound packs -- it's a great idea, it just needs to be refined some more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using freesounds. They have a large selection of free sound effects: [https://www.freesound.org](https://www.freesound.org)

<comment><USER5> But Creative Commons doesn't permit the use of the art past marketing. Not allowed to include it in the actual project for instance. Do I have that right?

<comment><USER6> None of the CC licenses that I know of distinguish between marketing and other forms of use. The CC licenses have a range of restrictions depending on the specific one used. Freesound has a faq at [https://www.freesound.org/help/faq/#licenses-0](https://www.freesound.org/help/faq/#licenses-0) The actual name of the license pretty much tells you what the restriction is though.

<comment><USER5> by-nc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat. The license terms make it difficult/impossible to use for something created by a business, or other kind of team, rather than a single individual:

> The maximum number of users of this sound effects library is limited to ONE. > It is unlawful to distribute any of the audio files to ANY ADDITIONAL USERS. > This license allows ONE individual...

So... if a company (or university department, or non-profit entity, or small volunteer team) wants to use it, they need a license for... every employee that has access to the source code repo? And another one for every new hire? Or...?

<comment><AUTHOR> The license is designed to work like a font or stock photo license. It's allows for a specific user individual or within a company to use the sounds for as many projects as they'd like.

From my experience this is typical for most licenses on most royalty free items. The same type of license can be found at sites like Shutterstock at the Boom Library that another user mentioned in the comments.

It's just the nature of the business. I believe the prices are fair for the quantity and unlimited project use. But it wouldn't be fair to just then share all of them with as many people as you had in an organization.

<comment><USER7> I guess i haven't worked with this kind of stuff before, but i'm having trouble figuring out how it would work with these sounds.

These sounds are meant for web apps, right? I would imagine they will wind up in a source control repository for a web app.

So there's only one individual that's allowed to add them to the source control repo?

The license says "It is unlawful to distribute any of the audio files to ANY ADDITIONAL USERS", does that mean it's unlawful if other individuals have access to that repo and check it out? Or they can check out the repo, but they can't... write code that uses the sounds added to the repo, only that one guy can write code? Can another individual fix bugs in his code? Can another individual deploy the code? Or to the other extreme, as long as you have one individual committing all the sound files to the source repo, the entire rest of the company can then write code using them?

None of those make much sense, I can't think of anything else that does.

But if Boom Library has the same sort of license and has been succesful, then either it makes sense in a way I don't understand... or nobody uses Boom Library for projects from companies or team entities, just one-man operations... or everyone's just ignoring the license and doing what they think probably makes sense.

Looking up the Boom license, it does say "If you want to purchase a multiuser license, please contact us directly." So I'd guess some are doing that, and others are probably ignoring and violating the license.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your concerns. Let me see if I can ease them. The intention is to make this product as useful as possible at a good price. The license is in place to try and keep a few basic things from happening.

1.) Purchaser buys SoundKit then adds the sounds to a commercial product like a toolkit that they want to sell. Or they add the sounds to a website template that they sell to others. Anything where another user would come along and use those sounds commercially for their own projects.

2.) Purchaser buys SoundKit then gives it to their friends for free.

3.) Purchaser buys SoundKit then places it on a server at an office for everyone to use.

4.) Someone accesses a repo who doesn't have a license for SoundKit, they pull the sounds and use them on another project.

On the other hand, if you buy the license and then you work on a project like a web or mobile app and you want to add the sounds, go for it. If someone else adds to the project or makes changes, that's not a problem. As long as a license owner is involved with the project and added them.

I really don't want to limit the use of the product, I just have to try and keep from everyone giving it to everyone for every use. And regarding the company issue, I should add a multiuser license. It is common in these situations.

At the end of the day, most people are probably not using their licenses correctly for all sorts of design elements, but this gives us some sort of protection in a worst case scenario.

I'll try and update the wording of the license to be as clear as possible for future buyers. If you have already purchased, feat not, the usage will become more flexible, not less.

<comment><USER8> > On the other hand, if you buy the license and then you work on a project > like a web or mobile app and you want to add the sounds, go for it.

Those scenarios involve redistributing the audio files to a public audience, which the license loudly forbids in its current form.

<comment><AUTHOR> The license works the same as any other license you probably have for fonts, images, sounds, etc. For example, if you load a web font in an app, you most likely have a single use license, but thousands of users may use the font when they use the app. They don't however have a right to use that font in other applications.

This is similar. However, I'm going to work on wording that makes the concerned users more comfortable. I understand that this is a tricky situation. And I'm much more interested design then legal matters. I hope I can ease the concerns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These are some nice UI sounds! If you're interested in learning more about the use of sounds in UI, I have a blog just about that called Beyond The Beep [http://beyondthebeep.tumblr.com](http://beyondthebeep.tumblr.com)

<comment><USER10> Interesting, although without videos or animations along with the sounds it's not very effective. I don't get the feel for the UI with text/sounds/static images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you need something a bit bigger and fancier, I can recommended The Interface from Boom Library: [http://www.boomlibrary.com/boomlibrary/products/the- interfac...](http://www.boomlibrary.com/boomlibrary/products/the-interface)

It's considerably more expensive but also considerably larger.

I'm a huge fan of everything Boom do. Their nature stuff is amazing. SFX design is in my list of fantasy jobs: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2prl_DTrukc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2prl_DTrukc)

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome work, definitely keep going at it. This is an overlooked aspect of UX and you could write a lot about how to use sound effectively in an app.

At rapt.fm I would spend time hunting for the right sound, it was often really hard and rewarding. Sometimes I ended up using effects seemingly unrelated the intended action, but in a humorous way (for example, a smack sound for challenging people to rap battles).

A lot of thought has to go into sound design. Games have done it for years but with phone, pad, and real-time web apps it is becoming crucial.

</comment><comment> j-hernandez Awesome effort and always great to see Atlanta on HN! Thanks so much for sharing this, can't wait to pick it up and give it a try. The demo was one of the best presentations I've seen in a while.

Minor nit - I went to check who was behind it and the https link in the footer hangs, [http://dunktank.co](http://dunktank.co) works fine though

<comment><AUTHOR> We just fixed the link. Thanks for catching this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The swoosh sounds are pretty funny: sounds like someone recording themselves making swooshing sounds :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> We will not share our secrets. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for the support today. The biggest concern has been the license and uses. In trying to make it easier to understand, we have rewritten the license in simpler terms.

For anyone who purchased previously, no rights have been removed. In fact, the new license is more flexible. If anyone has questions, please reach out.

The new license can be found here. [https://soundkit.io/license.html](https://soundkit.io/license.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Very slick.

I would definitely use this if I had a need for it beyond changing the default notifications on my phone/desktop.

One suggestion, I think the those little 'devices' are the perfect way to demonstrate why I would want this, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me that they were interactive at all.

A unique color or subtle animation for the play buttons to make them eye- catching might be worthwhile since clicking was definitely a revelation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. We'll look into making it more clear for future visitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool. Problem is though that on the rare occasions where I need sounds I need very specific sounds, and if I can't listen to/preview the sound I'm not going to buy the library. Case in point, a stopwatch app I build a few weeks ago that needed beeps like a hand-held stopwatch makes.

[http://bit.ly/12dOjeH](http://bit.ly/12dOjeH)

</comment><comment><USER16> Great stuff! I don't need them for any projects at the moment, but I'll probably wind up buying 'em for future use.

</comment><comment><USER17> I simply love those video demos. Great presentation! Gives me high hopes for the quality of sound files. Purchased immediately.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy you like them. We worked hard on the product.

Credit for the animations goes to [http://chika-yeah.com](http://chika- yeah.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank you so much. I was recently looking for a UI sound library, but was not able to find one to fit my small hobby projects. This is just awesome. I love your license! Best luck with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hope it serves you well. We welcome feedback and will hopefully be able to offer more sound packs in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was about to buy, but the sound of Bongo Beat Down cuts off too quickly. How can I be sure that I'm getting quality sound effects out of the set 300?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure if there was a playback issue, but I've replaced the sample anyway to be safe.

The point of the product is to be a good value for the price. I encourage you to listen to all of the sounds available in the videos and listening samples to decide if it's a good value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Purchased! This is just what I was looking for Hipster CEO

<comment><AUTHOR> As a Hipster CEO owner, I think this is perfect!

<comment><USER20> Glad we could help each other out :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What SW/HW did you use to make these?

<comment><AUTHOR> On the software side it's a combination of Reason for synth sounds and Audition for recording and editing. Sounds were recorded with the Reason Balance box and with a Zoom H6 portable recorder using various mics.

Everything was mastered in Pro Tools at another studio for consistency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good job on these!

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice... will buy.</comment>


Performance These Days - <AUTHOR> http://inessential.com/2016/04/21/performance_these_days <comment><USER2> I'm afraid I have to disagree with the basic premise of this article and say that app performance matters more than developer performance.

Improving the sign-up funnel speed on our app by one second resulted in a 11% increase in signups. People are impatient and lazy, and everything you do to improve app performance will improve sign ups, retention, app store reviews and the perceived quality of your app.

The point isn't to get apps or new features out as quickly as possible, it's to make a quality product and the speed of your app is critical to that.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you're catching the basic premise here. Brent is suggesting that when you're writing code targeting iOS or the Mac, the majority of time spent is within the system libraries (in most situations). So the language of the driver code (i.e., your stuff) doesn't have much impact on app performance.

<comment><USER4> You're correct, and that's the same excuse Ruby and Python advocates use when developers complain about performance. Frankly, it's bullshit.

Take Rails as an example. In 2006 we were told that Ruby's slowness didn't matter since web apps spend most of the time waiting for IO, processors were getting faster, yada yada yada.

Guess what? 10 years later and Rails is still slow. Django is also slow. Template rendering is slow. I've written enough Erlang, Clojure and OCaml apps to know that no, I don't need "russian doll caching" in a fast language. Hell, I rarely need caching at all. My database layer is fast enough. /rant

<comment><USER5> I'm Django developer and I agree with you. We've ditched Django templates entirely. We use it as our API platform only - most of the computation time is spent in json and in Postgres.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article's title is somewhat coy about the author's central thesis which he states at the bottom[1]: _Basically, he prefers a language that is dynamic instead of static._

Instead of giving a reader an immediate heads up about the dynamic-vs-static argument, he gave it the subtitle of _" Another kind of performance"_ ... which he means to be "programmer performance." The majority of the article is about this topic.

The (cpu) "performance" is therefore a subtopic of the dynamic-vs-static choice. He argues that "performance" was one of the drivers of static type checking but that factor does not matter anymore. (E.g. his example of objc_msgSend taking nanoseconds on both desktop & mobile.) I think the Android interest in AOT (static) instead of JIT is a counterexample to that. Performance still matters on battery powered, low GHz cpu devices like smartphones.

[1]author says: _" Yes, I realize that would have meant pushing some errors from compile time to run time, in exactly the same way Objective-C does right now. But I don't care — I'd take that trade-off every single day of the week."_

<comment><USER7> For me, when working in dynamic languages (that lack static checking of types, null, etc) I'm a bit too nervous to "really fly."

When the computer helps me find errors, misspellings, and bugs—given that I understand the type system well enough to not get very confused— _that 's_ when I "fly."

<comment><AUTHOR> What sort of dynamic language? And what sort of environment?

I know people working in very dynamic/interactive environments who feel exactly the same way when they can no longer "touch the objects".

<comment><USER7> Well, I'll also say that I really fly in Common Lisp, and I think that language has a nice balance: the compilers do check types and nullability, to some extent at least... and the interactivity, "touching the objects"-ness, and general pleasure of coding weighs up for the lack of a really rigorous Haskell-like type system.

And I'm not really a strong advocate of any particular language. I'm still holding out for a really excellent environment with some kind of best of all worlds approach. Maybe in 30 years...

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here (2nd para). IMHO, it _all_ sucks pretty badly, though there are tiny patches of light here and there.

What I get somewhat tired of is advocates who have seen one of these tiny patches and then proclaims having seen THE LIGHT and declaring all the rest obvious darkness (and you're obviously not one of them).

I want to be able to adapt my language to my domain without having to write a DSL or solve boring multi-language integration problems, I want to reuse components without being overwhelmed by and stuck in glue code, I want to be able to define any type of architectural connector that's appropriate for my problem and have it be on par with any built-in stuff. I want static checking of any properties I care to check, and I want to that to not get in my way by obscuring the problem I am trying to solve. And I want it all live and with amazing performance that is under my control :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> objc_msgSend is amazingly fast considering everything it is trying to accomplish. But, it is amazingly slow considering what it actually does 99% of the time in practice: call a single function repeatedly without variation that could have been determined at compile time, but wasn't.

I sometimes come across companies making iOS products that don't heavily leverage Apple's SDKs (games) but still use 100% ObjC instead of C or C++ for some reason. Best I can guess is because Apple said that's what you are supposed to do. ObjC is very nice. But, some of these companies have measured upwards of 50% of their CPU time being spent inside objc_msgSend and I question how much benefit they are getting in return.

Meanwhile, I have measured a direct, immediate correlations between performance issues coming and going in my own apps to drops and recoveries in revenue per day in those apps.

My point is: The widespread theme of valuing productivity over performance is very wise. But, I frequently see it being applied in knee-jerk, unwise situations. Getting good performance is difficult. Working in high- productivity languages/styles is fun. I know you'd rather work on stuff that's fun. But, having fun making a product that performs badly and drives users away isn't as much fun in the end as it seems in the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER9> That "2 nanoseconds for objc_msgSend" number is misleading for several reasons. For one, that's the timing you'll get for a fully correctly predicted, BTB hit, method cache hit, which does not always describe the real world: Obj-C method cache misses are several orders of magnitude slower. But the bigger problem is that the dynamic nature of Objective-C makes optimization harder. Inlining can result in multi-factor performance increases by converting intraprocedural optimizations to interprocedural ones, not to mention all the actual IPO that a modern compiler for a more static language can easily do. Apple clearly cares about this a lot, as shown by all the work they've done on SIL-level optimizations.

Another way to look at it is: I would probably get similar (or better) numbers by comparing the speed of a JavaScript method call with a warm monomorphic inline cache, with the type test correctly predicted by the CPU branch predictor. Does that mean JS is as fast as C++?

<comment><USER10> Though if your code size is smaller, your icache more likely has what you're looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article seems to conflate performance with speed. An app's impact on battery life is also an increasingly important performance metric.

<comment><USER12> Usually there is a direct correlation, most of an applications power consumption will come from time on the CPU, even SSD's are using 2-4W.. memory is even less expensive for power, but CPU can be up to 85W for a fully loaded laptop CPU (well, mine)

Make sure your application doesn't idle rough, and executes quickly to spend less time on the CPU, power consumption will follow.

<comment><USER13> It's a little more complicated than that though. For example, SSE/AVX instructions cause Intel CPUs to (briefly) raise power consumption considerably[1]. In some cases it may be better to avoid vector instructions when optimizing for battery life at the cost of speed.

Also being smart about rendering (particularly for web, poorly written animations can run smoothly but kill battery life) can dramatically affect battery life even without affecting execution speed particularly much. They are separate, though closely related, concepts.

1\. See e.g. [http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...](http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white- papers/performance-xeon-e5-v3-advanced-vector-extensions-paper.pdf) p.1 ¶2

<comment><USER9> > For example, SSE/AVX instructions cause Intel CPUs to (briefly) raise power > consumption considerably[1].

I've never seen a case in which getting the work done faster wasn't a win. That doesn't mean it can't happen, of course… But usually vector instructions are a win.

<comment><USER8> When optimizing for wattage, SIMD is great for getting stuff done quickly so you can get back to spinning on low-power Pause instructions.

But, if you SIMD-optimize, cheer at how much faster things are, then tell yourself "That means I can squeeze in 4-8x more work in the same time!" Well... You not only eliminated all the Pause time you gained, but you replaced it with high-wattage work.

It takes discipline to optimize for power. Somewhat karmicly, pushing to max out everything can backfire when you overheat the CPU and end up just pushing it into adopting a lower clock rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not so much raw performance of a given language, but the stuff that "managed" languages and their runtimes do under the hood that's the problem. I've spent a lot of time debugging stuff like ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) creating hidden reference counting calls that were eating up a terrible amount of total CPU time. These hidden performance traps are much worse than having to think about (e.g.) proper memory management and data layout. I'll take manual memory management over any 'magic solution' anytime (they just increase complexity and if disaster strikes it is _much_ more trouble to find and fix the problem).

Details: [http://floooh.github.io/2016/01/14/metal- arc.html](http://floooh.github.io/2016/01/14/metal-arc.html)

<comment><USER15> Kinda depends on the cost of an error vs the cost of a slowdown though, and then there's a big difference between say Objective-C or the once-relevant COM/ATL etc. by MS, where you have all the C bugs and manual memory management plus somewhat automated memory management in some places with all the troubles of _that_ , and say Java where at least you have a fully working garbage collector which deals with cycles and never leaks unreachable memory, and you also have guaranteed memory safety.

I'd rather trust my credit card number to a Java program than a C/C++ program - or an Objective-C program; see also [http://www.flownet.com/ron/xooglers.pdf](http://www.flownet.com/ron/xooglers.pdf) for the early Google billing server disaster, not possible with a garbage collector "thinking" about proper memory management and rather hard to prevent with very good developers thinking that they have thought proper memory management through. (And git had a bug where you could execute code remotely because nobody can really manage memory in C, etc. etc. etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't buy it. Part of what makes a great app is that it doesn't have bugs. So don't try to tell me that the special tool you need to really make great apps is one that lets you write more bugs.

</comment><comment><USER17> lols. as if replacing objective-c with clean c or c++ wasn't a valid performance strategy (p.s. it is. i've made real world applications hit framerate that way because a ton of objc_msgSend is more expensive than nothing every single time, and its very exceptionally necessary (are you crossing a very hard boundary like a network?)).

i agree with his basic point though. almost all ways of building an app require needless complexity that is easily solved at the tools level.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish people would stop talking about "fast" and instead talk about "efficient".

<comment><USER19> I think it's actually the opposite. The important thing is a short response time to the user - whether that's achieved by reducing the number of things you do, or by doing them more efficiently, is kind of moot.

<comment><USER20> > whether that's achieved by reducing the number of things you do, or by doing > them more efficiently

Is there any way to do stuff more efficiently instead of doing less things (i.e. doing it in less steps)? Optimizing is always about trimming out the fat.

<comment><USER19> Depends on what you're defining as "things". In terms of base instructions? No, all you can do is do less things. (Edit: Although even here, you can do different things to make the overall process cheaper - multiply by the inverse instead of dividing, replace a sin() calculation with a lookup, etc.) In terms of intermediate goals? If you have to process 500 objects, you can either find a way to skip some of the objects ('reduce the number of things you do') or you can make processing an object as fast as possible ('doing them more efficiently').

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most of the other comments point out the idiosyncrasies of the article but I think most of the commentators are missing the point behind the author's basic frustration. While Chris Lattner is a brilliant system's programmer, the work he and his team did with Swift shows their focus on systems type programming. As the author points out, Objective-C was actually a _brilliant_ language for GUI's and application design. It was hampered by C syntax cruft (easily remedied), but the proof is that Objective-C and the Cocoa Framework has had one of the best (IMHO) successes for any GUI toolkit and desktop framework.

Consider that Obj-C survived transitions from desktop to mobile apps, and many of the features such as modern email viewers with embedded image viewing were accomplished on NeXT long before Windows had comparable features. I think Steve Jobs realized this which was his particular genius -- choosing the right tech and focusing it with a "marketing" angle [8]. I think the newer shift toward Swift at Apple shows a focus on "systems" type of thinking, but unfortunately I've also notice a certain decline in application quality -- i.e. Safari search bar crashing on OS X and iOS [2].

If I had to speculate, I'd say the success of many of Apple's UI were due to the SmallTalk aspects of Objective-C which focused on message passing instead of eager function binding and C++ style inheritance. Having written my own low level object system in C and LLVM for an XML processing language, my take is that while having similar intent to implement dynamic dispatching, the emphasis shift between message-passing vs virtual-tables forces a slightly different style of library and framework composition. Essentially message passing is more expressive but sacrifices potential speed, but as Wikipedia describes it:

> Because a type can have a chain of base types, this look-up can be > expensive. A naive implementation of Smalltalk's mechanism would seem to > have a significantly higher overhead than that of C++ and this overhead > would be incurred for each and every message that an object receives. Real > Smalltalk implementations often use a technique known as inline caching[3] > that makes method dispatch very fast. Inline caching basically stores the > previous destination method address and object class of the call site (or > multiple pairs for multi-way caching). The cached method is initialized with > the most common target method (or just the cache miss handler), based on the > method selector. -- > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_dispatch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_dispatch)

However, practically speaking cache inlining can allow the language implementation to be more expressive and forgiving -- a failed method lookup can be forwarded to an "unknown handler" method as in Ruby's `method_missing` unlike in C++ [3], or the situation in Swift (?) [4].

Basically, Haskell et al have made tremendous strides in progressing type theory and corresponding practical implementation of functional style programming with monadic theory and similar, we're still not sophisticated enough to basically provide easily expressive statically type code which still gives the full expressiveness of dynamic languages. Humans are _really_ good at reasoning about systems of communicating components (message passing, overlapping the actor models of computation) but really not as good at category theory, which while mathematically equivalent don't necessary make them as good for programming large, untyped information that's present in most modern GUI's. Thing's like React however make a huge stride forward in some aspects in that regard. Though I'd rather program that in JavaScript (another prototype based language borrowing from the message passing tradition) than in Swift/C++ style languages which essentially force type checking at a lower level while more complex higher abstractions remain un-type checked. So all the work of the type system while not getting benefit for higher abstractions (e.g. User clicks button which sets system into X state). I'm branching out quite a bit, but it's actually quite a complex problem and is still very much an "open problem", although one we're getting closer to solving well. For clearer examples of what I'm talking about see some of these type of papers I found with a quick search: [5], [6]. My take is that the author is talking about a language more oriented toward system-architecting, an example approach like that taken by Ceylon [7].

[1]: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2005/12/2221/](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2005/12/2221/) [2]: [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420573](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420573) [3]: [https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Respond_to_an_unknown_method_ca...](https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Respond_to_an_unknown_method_call#C.2B.2B) [4]: [https://github.com/rodionovd/SWRoute/wiki/Function- hooking-i...](https://github.com/rodionovd/SWRoute/wiki/Function-hooking-in- Swift) [5]: [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8a42/9baf82c17a936801de4e37...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8a42/9baf82c17a936801de4e37b8bd6b5c9e077e.pdf) [6]: [http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5329](http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/5329) [7]: [http://ceylon-lang.org](http://ceylon-lang.org) [8]: [http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/10/steve-jobs- contribution](http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/10/steve-jobs-contribution)

<comment><USER22> Objective-C is not a brilliant language and it's finally being discarded by Apple and replaced with something better. This is hard to accept for the (surprisingly) many fans that it has, but Objective-C is almost legacy - jobs, docs, APIs will be Swift-first. Talking about performance and dynamic typing and message passing won't change that.

Apple looked at the competition and saw that Java 6(!!) was kicking Objective-C's ass - it was easier to program in, less error-prone, easier to understand and fast enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think that in most programs the performance depends on the architecture. A well written Python + twisted or Java + netty network code can easily outperform any naive C implementation. The same goes for algorithms used. Number crunching is the exception, not the rule.

</comment><comment><USER24> Forget scripting languages -- Where's our Photoshop for (web)apps?</comment>


SF Bay Area Jobs for C Programmers? - <AUTHOR>

I like different tools for different things, and I'm just as likely to write a bash (or python or perl) script if it's something quick, and javascript is growing on me as I do more front end work, but C is one of my favorite programming languages.
I work free lance at the moment, and there is never really a great opportunity to work with C, except on my own personal projects, or occasionally contributing to open source.  I've been reviewing it for technical interviews, and enjoying the clarity of it.  Yes it's imperfect, but then so is javascript, and people built lots of stuff with javascript.
Anyway it made me wonder, what companies in the Bay Area hire people to write in C?  A quick search through the who's hiring thread for this month shows... one.
There are 140 comments for companies in the sfbay area.  40 mention python. 28 mention ruby. 71 mention javascript.
That's fine.  I am a software engineer, not just a C programmer.  But I am curious if I'm missing any good ones in my job search where I could have a place.  There do seem to be occasional jobs for C programmers, but they seem to be for people who have 15+ years experience developing kernel modules, or a masters in EE.  I'm not sure how I can bootstrap that radically. <comment><USER2> I don't HN is reflective of all the jobs out there. There's tons of C work at places like Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, Ericsson, Lab126,and so on. And then there are plenty of smaller companies doing hardware things like cameras, augmented reality, and so on, though this kind of work usually requires an intersection of things like computer vision and embedded work.

You will, of course, greatly expand the possibilities if you include C++ or Objective C in your search. I know plenty don't like C++, but many places treat it as C with the modularity that C++ classes sort of provide, plus the standard library, so it is pretty nice to work with.

These languages sometimes receive dismissive comments on HN, but the work is often fantastic. I'm at a C++ shop, and my days are filled with linear algebra, nonlinear optimization, computer vision, AI, HW interfacing, and so on. But then there is the bootstrapping problem that you mentioned.

Look to companies that aren't based on the web. Applications - databases, security/virus scanners; hardware - tablets, augmented/virtual reality, drones, automation&control automotive (entertainment systems, self driving cars, control systems). You may be able to get into this stuff by being strong in something else "I'm strong in Javascript, but also know C", get hired to do mobile work, and then stretch out and start learning the stuff you need to interface with hardware. Don't take job reqs _too_ seriously. Places often have a laundry list of requirements, but it is hard to find help, and if you have something that they want you can usually explain that their requirement of, I dunno, Unity or Qt is pretty silly, as you can pick that up in a week or two.

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly HN who's hiring threads are going to be weighted towards startups and smaller companies, and especially web and mobile companies, with less emphasis on hardware.

That said, it does occur to me that android allows you to write native c/c++ code and link it to your java program. You'd think there would be more people looking for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A lot of the C programming opportunities come in firmware development. It doesn't all require working with kernel modules or EE. Think of things like Nest, fitbit, etc. You could get an ARM microcontroller board and build up some gadget with it to see if the work interests you.

</comment><comment><USER4> At Oracle we use C extensively on the database-related products.</comment>


Ask HN: How much would it cost to build the ultimate VR hardware system? - <AUTHOR>

We have a lot of epic Nerf battles around our HQ and we also play a lot of Call of Duty.
That got me thinking... what if I could combine the running, ducking, and aiming of Nerf with the visuals and general awesomeness of CoD?  The ultimate toy... Snow Crash without the brain stem tap.
I'm picturing a 15ft diameter ball with precision servos coming in from all directions attached to a full body suit and helmet combo with built-in projection glasses.
The servos would sense your body motions to animate your character model and would also provide feedback... the sensation of running, climbing stairs, crawling on your stomach, leaning on a wall, getting shot.  The helmet would control point of view.
You would have full range of motion within the ball and the ball itself could move up and down and rotate in all directions to provide the appropriate gravity simulation.
The development scope would necessarily include modding a game to accommodate the inputs and outputs that the suit needs.  CoD would have to enable reaching down to pick up a grenade and lifting a gun, Skyrim would enable riding a horse and swinging a sword, etc.
Success is defined as being able to do every stock action in the game using the body movement that you use in Real Life and with the sensations of RL... gravity, obstacles, etc.
So, if you picked one game (let's use Skyrim) to port, how much would it cost to build a fully functioning system including hardware, software, and game mods? <comment><USER2> I'm hesitant to put an exact figure on how much that would cost, but, including all the RnD that you would need to get even a basic working system, I would say upwards of 1 million. To get something that would work well (not requiring frequent modification to keep it running) and be somewhat realistic, anywhere in the region of 15m to 50m. Once the first one was running and you could just duplicate the design, I would guess that parts and assembly would cost around 100k.

If anyone went into this project with less than 1m to spend, I would be skeptical of their success even if they weren't paying for labor - this is something that would take perhaps dozens of prototypes to get perfect, and the cost would add up quickly even if it was very modular.

However, that's just an arm chair estimate. It's not my field of expertise (I'm not an engineer), and it's quite likely that a committed group of people could pull it off for much less.</comment>


Call to end paper exams for digital generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12566122

<comment><USER2> Depends on the subject. Yeah, a History final on a keyboard vs. bluebook is easier on the fingers (perhaps harder on the plagiarism?). Hard to do a math/science final, though, unless you've got a pretty fancy sketch input system - such as deriving thermodynamic relations, etc. Test's where the final answer isn't "4" as much as an application of math.

Where it might get interesting is through the use of e-tests that allow for customization for each student. If each test is different (different question order, different numbers), certain kinds of cheating become harder. Grading becomes harder as well but I assume the software would facilitate that.</comment>


An unusual UCI chess engine - <AUTHOR> For some time now I have been fascinated by the idea of a chess engine with an unusual evaluation function - at least I imagine it is unusual, I'm not an expert chess programmer and am not particularly familiar with the field.
Most chess engines employ a tree-searching strategy with an evaluation function applied at the leaf nodes. It is the evaluation function that interests me primarily. Most evaluation functions embody some form of 'chess knowledge' such as pawn structure, placement of pieces on the board etc. My idea is for an evaluation function that scores a position purely on the number of legal moves available. By adopting such a simple function I would hope to be able to explore the tree a little more deeply than other engines.
I have never written a chess engine before and I based my work on the Vice engine which is described in detail on Youtube. My engine - provisionally called Moby (for mobility) is written in C++ and the first implementation is running. Right now it plays a reasonable game but would be no match for the competition. At present it is only searching to depth 5 or 6 as it presently doesn't detect duplicate moves. Adding this in should make a difference I imagine.
I'd love to hear from anyone who has considered something similar or who might find this post interesting.
If my engine gets stronger I might release it so that it can be ranked alongside similar engines. <comment><USER2> > _By adopting such a simple function I would hope to be able to explore the > tree a little more deeply than other engines._

I think you will explore the tree more _widely_ , not more _deeply_. Many engines trim the tree very aggressively to make a mode depth analysis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. The answer is that I am still hoping to trim the tree like other engines. The simplicity of my engine lies solely in the evaluation function. What I hope to save in CPU cycles on the evaluation might enable me to go deeper on the tree. That's the idea at least.

<comment><USER2> Have you look at the method used by DeepBlue or Alpha(Chess)Zero? IIRC they use a simple evaluation function and a lot of brute force ...</comment></comment></comment>


Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook is a trap - <AUTHOR> http://news.bioscholar.com/2010/11/web-founder-says-facebook-is-a-trap.html

<comment><USER2> Here's what I use instead of Facebook:

 _Google calendar for events_ \- Anyone with any email address can be invited to an event. Google calendar also emails out standard format .ics files with it's invites so participants are free to use whatever calendar app they choose and just import the ics files. (This also hooks up nicely with my android calendar). I'm looking forward to when everyone on Facebook gets an @facebook email address and then I'm going to start sending them all Google calendar invites ;-) Seriously, I think Google calendar is a seriously under recognised service.

 _Twitter for a news feed equivalent_ \- You don't need an account to read so it is open enough. (There is also status.net or identi.ca if you want even more openness). I embed a feed of the most recent posts in my webpage. If you want to subscribe, you can use RSS so you don't have to use twitter to follow me.

 _Photos_ \- I use a combination of FlickR and my own custom image gallery on my website. On FlickR you can set the photos to be public so viewers don't need to have an account.

 _Messages_ \- Obviously I just use email.

When I meet people I want to connect with, I ask for their email address rather than ask if they are on Facebook. I occasionally use Facebook to find people and then ask for their email address via Fb message.

I can't think of anything else I really miss out on from Fb.

<comment><USER3> You're not missing out on the quality of the tools. You're missing out on connectivity. Some people can't be accessed without Facebook. The quantity of those people is growing.

<comment><USER4> Everyone has an e-mail address (it's a requirement to be able to create a Facebook account) and pretty much everyone is on one of the IM networks.

<comment><USER5> My teenage son regards email and IM as something old people use. Of course, this was until Facebook added email features and suddenly it's OK to be seen using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think that Berners-Lee and W3C get way too much credit for the web. And this is an incredibly arrogant statement by Mr. Berners-Lee.

Facebook has in-fact done some serious web innovation the last years and W3C has completely dropped the ball. Facebook and Twitter have been catalyzing internet adoption and the general spread of information.

Mr. Berners-Lee's obsession about content-silos shows that there is a serious disconnect between the current state of the web and W3C. The web was about content and documents fifteen years ago, now it's about the flow of data.

I know Berners-Lee is a big Linked Data advocate, but the approach that's being taken by the W3C is painfully slow and doesn't take into account the fluidity of information.

This is one of the reasons why developers (and even semantic web developers) have resorted to non-W3C technologies more and more: JSON, Javascript- wrappers, Webkit, client-side routing, non-REST HTTP requests, IOSockets/Coment, streaming apis, etc.

The web is emergent and out of control. Deal with it. Technologies and tools compete for attention and adoption. You snooze, you lose.

As for the 'content silos': Are you fucking kidding me? 'Content' being stuck in Facebook is not going to happen, in fact, the content is going to flow more and more. If you mark something as 'only my friends can see this', it will leak. Don't want to be tagged in a picture? Well, you have no choice. Face recognition will get you soon.

The internet, thanks to social web, is a giant copy machine. There's a huge shitstream of content and your attention and the activity around it is the thing that matters. Who cares about the damn content.

So maybe it's time for the 'Web Founder' and the W3 Web Museum to roll up their sleeves and do something, instead of bitch about the companies that actually advance the web.

So instead of bitching about the companies and people that actually advance the web and change the world, maybe it's time for the 'Web Founder' and the Web Museum to roll up their sleeves and do something...

<comment><USER7> Facebook dominating the web is a horror scenario.What good could you see about it? Do you want to pay a Facebook tax for every online innovation you can come up with? Do you want to be at their mercy for the survival of your business?

My only hope is that in the long run freedom of innovation will always be stronger than a walled garden like Facebook.

I thought Berners-Lee invented the web - how can he get too much credit for that? Hypertext as an idea existed before that, I think, but he did it.

<comment><USER8> Most business now have to pay a Google tax in one way or the other, whether it be adwords, content building, link building or paying for SEO.

That's just the cost of entering a particular marketplace.

Think of it as rent.

<comment><USER9> Paying for SEO isn't a 'Google tax.' It's marketing. That's like saying that when you start a business you have to pay the 'Yellowpages tax.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The other day we went to an arts event/party. Most of the pictures are trapped inside Facebook. The artists couldn't comprehend why I didn't have "face" at all. This same crowd would've uploaded the pictures to Flickr only a couple of years ago.

Staying out of Facebook isn't enough.

<comment><USER7> I loved the blog article the other day about the guy who had to create a Facebook account for his granny to see his pictures, then delete it again after a while. I think the same person mentioned going through their privacy settings in Facebook once per day. What pain point is FB solving that people willingly go through so much pain?

Are there no other photo sharing services out there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I voted with my feet - I have long since stopped using Facebook for anything other than an occasional game playing platform. Unfortunately I haven't yet found a suitable replacement to use as a social network, but I live in hope...

</comment><comment><USER12> I always have a feeling that facebook is limiting entrepreneurs. You can't launch a social product today without making it facebook compliant and this means abiding by facebook's rules, and working within their structural limitations. These limitations they've imposed ensure that they keep their market share and prevent anyone else from really growing in the same space as them. But I don't think they can stay at the top forever. Demand for an open alternative is too high, and I'm really hoping (along with many others) that Diaspora can make some headway with this.

<comment><USER13> I know a guy who recently tried to build a social application, starting outside of Facebook. It was actually a very good idea and well implemented; unfortunately, the complete lack of connectivity to groups of people sealed its fate. By the time he got to integrating into Facebook Connect, he was almost out of money.

I think entrepreneurs wanting to build a social product are in better shape today because of Facebook and its built-in social network. But you are, of course, correct that building on somebody else's platform is always dangerous.

Lastly, "Open" is not really a feature to end-users. Diaspora will win if they can build compelling features that Facebook, as a result of its closed network, can't. Otherwise, I doubt highly it will be successful.

<comment><USER12> I agree ... but openness and transparency alone may be a good enough draw for many people, so long as diaspora can compete with facebook feature-wise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Previous discussion from 2 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1929796>

</comment><comment><USER14> I think he's right in some ways. I for one don't want my internet to be branded. I'd like to know how it came about that everywhere you look you only see a few brands on the internet now. Facebook, Twitter, Google, eBay. Are we saying there's only one social networking site, only one whatever-Twitter-is site, only one search engine, only one place to sell your garage sale junk? How did that happen?

Companies like Disney control the movie industry by controlling the channel. You can make movies all you want, but try to get them into the theatres and rental stores. It's the same for the music industry. You can cut cd's all you want but try to get them on the radio or in the music stores. You can make a website and it can be the best website in the world, but if it doesn't appear in a search engine, it doesn't exist.

With all these big, rich companies doing business on the internet, do you think for a minute they are going to allow it to remain free?

</comment><comment><USER15> In a world where people take out payday loans at 400% is it any a surprise that they would incur technical debt in managing their content? The typical user thinks about the interaction with other users, not the content.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't know how FB can be a threat to the web if it can only exist because of the web. In a sense, friend data is just another kind of data. The same thing can be said, for example, of Gmail or hotmail. They host the email and contact information for millions of people.

<comment><USER17> That's like saying cancer can't be a threat to people because it can only exist because of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have successfully solved the Facebook dilemma by not having any friends.

</comment><comment><USER19> Facebook is the AOL of today. It just make it easy for non-computer literate people to communicate without learning how to send and receive email.

</comment><comment><USER20> Aren't closed silos a big part of the web already, Facebook or no? The W3C is mostly a closed silo, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there much value in the content on FB to those outside the social circle it is intended for? Most of my friends on FB post interesting blurbs, but it is time-specific and usually requires some insider information to be useful/interpreted.

<comment><USER22> One huge value: Targeted advertising. The FB scripts can tell your sexual orientation from your post content. I imagine they know a lot more than that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nothing to worry about - people will realise in a few years or so that status updates are only feeding their stupid egos and they'll find themselves many other things to distract themselves with soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think this headline puts a somewhat sensational slant on what TimBL actually wrote.

</comment><comment><USER25> w3c should create open standards for social networks.

i don't think these companies are going to do it, and this seems exactly what w3c is meant to do. so why not? seems more productive.

<comment><USER5> I don't exactly rejoice at the idea of reading another W3C standard document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Was TBL refused a job in FB?

</comment><comment><USER27> As does Admiral Ackbar!

</comment><comment><USER5> So if Facebook is so bad, someone please come up with a compelling high level vision of what could replace it and why the replacement would be better?

Preferably something as compelling as Sir Tim's original vision for the Web...

<comment><USER28> I've got an idea. How about if you want a presence on the web, you have this website that you control with whatever data and pictures you want on it? Coders can develop things we'll call content management systems to make it a bit easier for you to put your data on there if you don't want to do it all yourself, and since you'll control it, you can add whatever tools and automation and widgets and the like.

<comment><USER29> I'll one up you on this. Maybe one particular group of coders can build a giant CMS that also has social networking features and allows everyone to have their page on the web, and keep up with what their friends are doing, without having to own, set up and administer their own servers (a prowess which most are incapable of). The hardest thing would be getting critical mass, but if someone could do it, wow, that would be awesome, right?

<comment><USER30> Sweet. We can call it Everyone On-line, or EOL.

We'll start first in the States, and call it AOL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I agree with the sentiment completely but doesn't Tim-Berners-Lee work for Google, the main competitor?

<comment><USER32> I don't think so (wikipedia doesn't mention it). Maybe you're thinking of Vint Cerf? He works at google.

       Serf - TCP/IP
       Berners-Lee - World Wide Web, HTML, HTTP (I think)

<comment><USER31> Yes, you are correct, I was thinking of Vint Cerf.</comment></comment></comment>


Splendid Bacon - How it was built (espressos, steaks, bacon, and whisky) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kiskolabs.com/post/1367112423/splendidbacon

<comment><USER2> Related (initial) HN thread on Splendid Bacon with discussion about features and questions answered by the team members <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1801964>

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry but I don't like the UI. May be it's just me but black doesn't look good on the product you use daily. Looks more like a porno. :(

<comment><USER4> Black = Porno. There's some UI guidance you don't see every day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love the UI, but was hoping for some info in 'How it was built'... technology stack, implementation process, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> That is not how you make bacon

<comment><USER7> As the man who made that bacon - I blame iPhone's HDR camera!

<comment><USER6> Honestly, you can't just toss bacon into a pan willy-nilly and whip it around like scrambled eggs. You must lovingly lay out each slice so they all get the heat and crisp up. That bacon is all soggy and tangled together. You need to go home and do some serious soul searching. Talk to your bacon. See what it needs, and more importantly satisfy those needs. Help your bacon reach it's fullest potential. Then come back to me.

<comment><USER8> There could be some confusion here due to the different cuts of pork which are called "bacon" in different countries. It appears that you're Scandanavian and appear to be using "full" bacon whereas Americans only use the small strip bit at the end. The two types of bacon demand different cooking strategies.

I can go on for hours about the wrongness of American bacon, but I don't want to get too distracted right now. Anyway, as an Australian that bacon there looks delicious to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wikipedia to the rescue: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon#Cuts_of_bacon>

Unfortunately I have to confess that that was indeed streaky bacon (which would be better served crispy), not back bacon (which would not). But then again, this is just my opinion...

Anyway, I think we can all agree than bacon is delicious?

<comment><USER8> I agree. It's also brilliant marketing. If you hadn't mentioned bacon, steak and whisky in your headline I never would have clicked and become aware of your product. And yet, here I am, discussing bacon, steak and whisky.

<comment><USER9> mmmm, nothing like watching how bacon is made:

<http://devour.com/video/how-bacon-is-made/>

and its cousin, lardo:

[http://aveceric.com/wp/gallery/videos/season-two/episode- thr...](http://aveceric.com/wp/gallery/videos/season-two/episode-three- everything-is-better-with-bacon/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This probably will come as a shock to you, but I won't even try out that app. The screenshots look nifty, I love you did it in 48h; also in rails. Normally I really am into new productivity tools and can't wait to check them out.

However, you got it right when you wrote "bacon isn't as popular as we were lead to believe." Honestly, I find it disgusting to read equally much about your 'manly' behaviour - drinking just so much coffee and killing off a lot of cattle to get your weekend fix.

Sorry guys; I'm sure your project is technically great. The popular reaction will assure you of this, so I don't have to.</comment>