A Long Adventure: Repairing Ultra-Rare NTSC Amiga Ultima 6 - <AUTHOR> https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1013 <comment><USER2> It seems quite unwise of the OP to write-unprotect the diskette and run an "in-place salvage" software on it. With rare, old media like that, the best chance to preserving them is reading the raw magnetic flux data with specialized equipment. Even putting the diskette in a standard floppy drive might be something to avoid, but surely writing to the media is worse.

<comment><USER3> "With rare, old media like that, the best chance to preserving them is reading the raw magnetic flux data with specialized equipment"

Kryoflux is great for that. [https://www.kryoflux.com/?page=kf_features](https://www.kryoflux.com/?page=kf_features)

<comment><USER4> Or if you prefer free-as-in-speech kit, there's also Discferret (www.discferret.org) and a ton of other similar community-developed tools :)

(Full disclosure: I'm one of the guys behind Discferret but it hasn't seen much dev work recently due to lack of time on my part)

<comment><USER3> Seems the correct project URL is : [https://discferret.com](https://discferret.com)

That's interesting i was not aware of this project. I'll take a further look asap. Is there some feature/comparison sheet with Kryoflux available ?

<comment><USER4> Sorry, quite correct. Apparently I can't even remember my own domain name!

It'll do exactly what a Kryoflux can do, including flux-transition-level read and write. (I'm not sure if the Kryoflux can write). The big differences are that it has a complete Shugart drive interface which matches what floppy drive datasheets advise -- so it's fully open-collector, with the right type of gates.

This also makes it very flexible -- it's been used to read ST506 MFM/RLL drives and decode the resulting output. It's been connected to NEC 8-inch drives with non-Shugart interfaces.

Its only major problem was that it was expensive - about $150 per unit. You could probably get that down a lot by using a more appropriate FPGA. If I did it again, I'd probably use a Lattice MachXO and the Yosys/Nextpnr toolkit, and possibly an STM32 microcontroller.

Practically speaking if you didn't need Winchester support, you could probably use the STM32's timer and PWM peripherals with DMA reload, leaving a single- chip solution with a bit of LSTTL for the drive interface.

<comment><USER5> Heads up, store.discferret.com isn't resolving.

<comment><USER4> The store closed years ago. I was working 7am-6pm for a long while and just didn't have the time to put in.

I still have about a dozen boards and a few components, actually. Look me up on Twitter (@philpem) or Mastodon (email@example.com) if you're interested in a board, my usual offer is "beer money plus shipping" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the guy finally found an ultra-rare disk, the disk had errors on it, and he set his recovery program to WRITE OVER THE RARE DISK? That's a huge no-no.

</comment><comment><USER7> I had a utility called Hacktrick 60Hz that I seem to recall allowed switching between 50Hz and 60Hz? Discussion of it here:

[http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=77875](http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=77875) [http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=1925](http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=1925)

It was on this disk - which brings back memories! Even though I didn't manage any programming it was the Amiga that led me into a career in tech: [https://archive.org/details/amigaformat023disks_1991-06](https://archive.org/details/amigaformat023disks_1991-06)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting that trying on an A1200 had no joy. That machine will switch quite happily between PAL and NTSC timing if you press the space bar at the boot menu.

<comment><USER9> The author does state "I could play the game on my A1000 Phoenix in PAL mode, but I really wanted the NTSC version."

The problem with running it in PAL mode is that it won't run at the correct speed (I assume). Most of the time when a game was converted to run on a PAL system, developers didn't adjust the game to take into consideration the slower framerate (50 Hz for PAL vs. 60 Hz for NTSC). This is very noticeable on action-based games like Sonic the Hedgehog, where if you are used to the NTSC version, playing the PAL version makes it feel like Sonic's feet are glued to the ground (not to mention how off the music sounds!).

Comparison video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSSYo0npMhA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSSYo0npMhA)

<comment><USER10> I wonder what percentage of Amiga games were designed for 60Hz first! My bet is that it was not high...

(This is also probably not the sort of game where it's a big deal.)

<comment><USER9> According to this comment, it seems it is noticeable, though: "The speedup can be significant. On my stock A1200 Ultima 6 was annoyingly slow in PAL mode but much more playable in NTSC mode."

[http://www.lemonamiga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=129566&sid=d...](http://www.lemonamiga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=129566&sid=d44c84ac0d22f7c41f0bd5bc9ce420fc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just curious: In that one screenshot, what is a "logical block" (= 13098476)? I thought blocks on floppies were far fewer than 13million? (It also says the physical block is 880.)

<comment><USER12> I believe the 13098476 is a hash table entry that maps to an actual location.

Block 880 appears to be the Rootblock. _" The Rootblock contains information about disk : its name, its formatting date, etc...It also contains information to access the files / directories / links"_. Where "information" is a chained hash table.

My guess is that it looked up the actual location for that hash table entry and found the write error there. Or maybe the hash table entry location itself is borked.

Gory details here: [https://github.com/lclevy/ADFlib/blob/master/doc/FAQ/adf_inf...](https://github.com/lclevy/ADFlib/blob/master/doc/FAQ/adf_info_V0_9.txt)

<comment><USER11> Great! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can understand why a fan of the Ultima series goes to such lengths :)

</comment><comment><USER14> "That was the first 1-bomb I've dropped on a seller since using Ebay, and I've been using Ebay for a long time."

If the software was described as "working, tested" then the item is "not as described" and is eligible for a full refund under eBay Buyer Protection, seller's desires be damned; they'll actually take the money back from the seller in that case.

</comment><comment><USER15> I found amusing that he claim to have paid "a small fortune" for the Ultima VI game... which turns out to be less than one hundred dollars?

I also found it weird that he claims the disc is extremely rare, that none can be found and yet wanted a refund due to a bad sector? And left a bomby ebay review? And was in the end easily able to use it? (In fact, when reading it, my first thought was to use the PAL version copy to replaced the damaged files... which he did last instead of first.)</comment>


Apple Buys HopStop.com From Nigerian Entrepreneur Chinedu Echeruo For $1 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailybuzz.ch/2014/07/apple-buys-hopstopcom-from-nigerian.html

<comment><USER2> A quick search on my favorite search engine reveals a lot of articles about this dated July 2013.</comment>


Modern-Day Gadgets that Annoy Us - <AUTHOR> http://gadgetcrave.com/annoying-gadgets-11-gadgets-that-annoy-people/2736/

<comment><USER2> > Number Two: The Automatic Hand Dryer

Just recently, this has been Done Right. I don't remember where I saw a good one, or the brand, but good ones _do_ exist now.

<comment><USER3> It's called the Air Blade and was designed by Dyson, the same guy who re- thought the vacuum cleaner so effectively: <http://www.dysonairblade.co.uk/></comment></comment>


Reddit CEO Resigns, Alexis Ohanian Returns as Chairman - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/13/reddit-ceo-resigns-alexis-ohanian-returns-as-chairman/ <comment><USER2> He resigns over the location and price of the new Reddit office?

That is not a very good or logical reason to resign. There must be more to it than that.

Creepy that they linked to a Necrophiliac Subreddit, there are also XGoneWild Subreddits that are offensive but not as creepy.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8603845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8603845)</comment>


MyDecadeTV: A set of nostalgic TV simulators that let you channel-surf the past - <AUTHOR>

A set of projects I created to honor the pop culture memories of decades past. Basically, each site aspires to simulate the vintage experience of channel-surfing on a TV from a particular era. While you watch, you can also filter your selection by category and year. <comment><USER2> Wow, Bob Barker sure looks young!

I can't believe I'm watching The Price Is Right from 1973. But I have to know whether Jean will win the $995 organ.

A couple of suggestions:

You have the name of the shows under the video, but a person channel surfing in 1973 wouldn't be able to do that. Could you make that 'off' by default?

Also, there's no way to make it full-screen. I know it would lose the vintage rounded corners on the screen, but I think that's ok.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I see how to make it full-screen. There's a bunch more options under 'Menu'. It doesn't make the video full screen but it makes the app full screen.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the link :)

[http://www.mydecadetv.com](http://www.mydecadetv.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> this is amazing. where did you get all the videos from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! All of the content you see is directly sourced from YouTube :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Wow. Neat!</comment>


What I learned during my first year as a VC - <AUTHOR> https://associate.vc/what-i-learned-during-my-first-year-as-a-vc-7ac1fbf4ba7c <comment><USER2> Just skimmed through it. Nicely written post... This is best:

 _One of the most difficult aspects of being a VC is tip-toeing the line between optimism and pessimism._</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about the patreon situation? - <AUTHOR> If you don't know what's going on, here's a recommended reading : https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/a4rqj2/whats_up_with_patreon/
Obviously all of the people banned have done a lot of shitty things, use offensive language etc and that's not the point of this discussion. Sure, a private company has every right to ban anyone, but when most tech companies share somewhat similar political beliefs, don't you think that becomes a problem? I mostly agree with the ACLU stance on free speech i.e defend the right to speech for everyone, even those that you hate.
Another related issue is that all these companies are answerable to their payment processing networks and banks and they generally don't approve of any questionable content including sex related, weed companies etc. So we have companies like Stripe making it easy to accept payments, but they are basically lipstick on a pig i.e the underlying system is hot garbage from a free speech pov.
I don't know what the solution is, but what are your opinions on this situation.
Paul Graham on twitter said he thinks there's an opportunity for startups here and he also seems to disagree with patreon's policies. Yay.
Jordan Peterson and Rubin are working on a free speech alternative to patreon : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvGs5bGwWiM
I have no idea who Jordan Peterson is, so can anyone give me a tldr? Why is well regarded among some and others seem to mock his followers something to do with "clean your room" memes. <comment><USER2> > free speech alternative to patreon

Already done, it was called Hatreon, it didn't last long at all. [https://hatreon.net/](https://hatreon.net/)

Sure, you can throw up an alternative to Pateron, using crypto even to bypass payment processors, but then all you're dealing with 24/7 is alt-right, Nazis and insane people and getting a lot of unwanted attention from the 'powers that be', you could even be accused of directly supporting and financing terrorism, not worth it IMO.</comment>


Offer HN: A/V help, with a web-savvy background - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, thought I could throw myself into helping out. I've worked on big broadcast productions like ESPN, TNT and others, as well as working for "big internet brands" like CNET, Engadget, AOL, Netscape, Justin.TV and others. Would be happy to help anyone out with any A/V advice. Be it on the small scale, the huge scale, etc., I'd love to help anyone produce something they're proud of.<p>I'm on twitter @randallb, or email me: firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Are you familiar/comfortable with setting up a live video stream transcoder based around ffmpeg and/or openrtsp? (or another package of your choosing)?</comment>


Ask HN: Good examples of user guides? - <AUTHOR>

I'm creating a user guide for a SaaS application. We've done the plain-old-PDF versions before. I want to do something different and better. Does anyone have any good examples I could use for inspiration?<p>I know basic HTML/CSS and can figure stuff out, but I'm not a web developer so I'm not looking to build anything crazy. I should probably also mention that the users are tax professionals and are not particularly tech savvy individuals (understatement). <comment><USER2> Have you asked your users what format would they like the user guide in? If your users are okay with PDF, then stay with it. In the end, user guide and its format is for users, and not for you. Unless, users are requesting or indicating preferences for different format, I will suggest focus on other tasks.

Personally, for user guides, I prefer PDF. It keeps the formatting and the order. I can markup the PDF with my notes and highlights. I can download and keep a copy. Wiki (information dump with no specific order of reading), FAQ (answers to most often asked questions) and knowledge base (answers to one off/unique situations) are different tools for different purposes and don't necessarily address user guides in a nice way.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see more and more saas products putting out wikis (you can build/integrate your own via wikia.com etc, or github supports them natively for repositories).

For non-technical users, however, maybe a "knowledgebase" would feel more intuitive. Here are some examples:

rackspace.com/knowledge_center/

support.godaddy.com

help.linkedin.com

aws.amazon.com/support/ (need to login to aws first)

</comment><comment><USER4> We offer an knowledge base widget that you can add to any page of your existing website and inherits your design and blends into. You can check it out at [http://userdeck.com/guides](http://userdeck.com/guides) and if you have any questions or feedback, I'm all ears!

</comment><comment><USER5> Shopify docs are really good.</comment>


Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs is killing the music business - <AUTHOR> http://beatcrave.com/2011-03-15/bon-jovi-says-steve-jobs-is-killing-the-music-business/

<comment><USER2> "Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it."

Most kids these days also don't know the joy of waking up at 4am in the middle of February to head out to the barn to shovel out the cow and horse excrement from the night before.

<comment><USER3> "...the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it."

I think he's saying kids today don't get to experience disappointment and strong feelings of buyers remorse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When Bon Jovi say,

 _God, it was a magical, magical time. I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business._

What I hear is,

 _Damn kids, get off my lawn._

When new customs replace old customs, the people who grew up with the old customs are often sad that the new generation won't have them. What they're doing is imagining their youth without their customs, but they're not able to put the new customs in their place because they just don't know them. The next generation may get just as much enjoyment out of the new customs.

</comment><comment><USER5> "...not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it."

So, what he's saying is, Steve Jobs killed the music business because people can now preview tracks, decide "Bon Jovi is terrible" and then proceed to not purchase anything. In essence, Steve Jobs has saved people millions of dollars from buying music they don't like.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was about to say the same thing with different words. But yeah, you pretty much have put it in perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> First, the business part of music is easily the worst part. If it has been killed, no real loss there. Most of the good musicians aren't making much money anyway.

Second, it would be more appropriate to say that Jobs _saved_ the music business, by giving consumers an easy way to access and _pay_ for music when Napster/Kazaa/Limewire/Bittorrent were quickly becoming the preferred distribution channel.

</comment><comment><USER7> "...and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it."

I can't count the number of mistakes that I made in album purchases based on 1 song I sort of liked in my high school years. In this regard, I think the industry has been disrupted in a good way.

It's true that albums are losing ground to singles due to the choice that comes with having your music on a computer and the convenience of picking and choosing songs when buying or sharing, but don't give blame (or credit) to Apple for that.

</comment><comment><USER8> I haven't seen much evidence to the contrary that the music business is tanking. I don't really buy the disappointment with buying a crappy album argument. Radio stations used to play entire albums at launch when I was growing up. I might be disappointed with a track or two on an album but it was very rare that I would purchase a complete stinker.

His point that there aren't a lot of concept albums anymore where people listen to every track is an interesting one though there were hardly a lot of concept albums in the heyday of rock that those that were are very notable.

One issue that is not iTunes specific, but the ease that we can play digital music including custom and autogenerated playlists may also have something to do with it. With CDs and albums, there was a physical cost to jumping around and most of us were not ambitious enough to create mix tapes. Maybe just the convenience factor of accessing our existing libraries reduces the purchases of new music.

</comment><comment><USER9> This just in, everyone under 40 says Bon Jovi killed the music business. :P

ok, snark aside- noone is powerful enough to single handedly kill an industry. Its the culmination of bad practices/changing technology/ and many other things that few have the power to completely understand.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well if the artists start releasing albums that are worth buying, then this wouldn't be an issue. Seriously. Name an album released in the past two decades that is even close in scope and depth to Led Zep I-IV, or Dark Side of the Moon, Jashua Tree, Revolver, etc.

If you want people to buy more albums, the solution is really simple -- MAKE GREAT ALBUMS.

<comment><USER11> Current 93, Coil, Ulver, Gridlock, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Architect, Shpongle - in fact amount of good music is always near the same.

But you must search it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What he had is an emotional sentiment. What's interesting is why do people old enough to talk about "kids these days" are not wise enough to think back to one generation before them? I think the answer is along the lines of: everyone knows this, but let me just be sentimental for a moment. After all, it's my turn to be old.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why should anyone have to imagine? Why should they have to pay for a whole album when only one song is worth paying for? That's the problem with Bon Jovi, most albums weren't worth crap and he wants us to pay for crap. That's stupid.

</comment><comment><USER14> previous: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2328952>

</comment><comment><USER15> Aiming vague anger and frustration with a systemic problem at a small subset of people seems to get us in a lot of trouble. (Jews, The Government, Blacks, Democrats, Upper Class, Gays, Steve Jobs, etc, etc, etc, etc)

</comment><comment><USER16> "You know who never complains about the shift to digital music? People who buy and listen to music.": [http://betterelevation.com/2011/03/15/jon-bon-jovi-is- functi...](http://betterelevation.com/2011/03/15/jon-bon-jovi-is-functionally- retarded/)</comment>


Data Science Contest Keeping It Fresh: Predict Restaurant Health Scores - <AUTHOR> http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2015/04/data-science-contest-keeping-it-fresh-predict-restaurant-health-scores.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Yelp is co-sponsoring a new Data Science Contest. Use Yelp reviews in Boston to predict whether a business will have a poor Health Inspection score.

Participate in this contest to help in an important social cause. Cities have limited budgets and currently send Health Inspectors to restaurants on an ad- hoc basis. Using the Machine Learnt models built via the contest, they would be able to assign Health Inspectors to restaurants more efficiently. Past models have shown high accuracy (82%) since Yelpers often talk about the same things that health inspectors look for – cleanliness, ambience, methods of preparation. The contest started yesterday and will finish on June 23, 2015. Winners will win cash prizes from a pool of $5,000.</comment>


John Waters: Life Lessons from the Prince of Puke - <AUTHOR> https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/books-art-and-culture/john-waters-life-lessons-from-the-prince-of-puke/ <comment><USER2> "He's arguably best known for making an actor eat dog poo on screen; six people on his contact list have been sentenced to life in prison."

If all you know about Baltimore is HBO's "The Wire", then allowing John Waters give you a tour from a different perspective. There really is an odd 'charm' to this town that his work somehow seems to capture.

See you soon hon.</comment>


Project Habakkuk, Britain's plan to build an aircraft carrier from ice - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk <comment><USER2> More interestingly, a combination of cardboard and ice. A prototype was built in Canada by conscientious objectors, who did not know the purpose of their project. The whole article is full of surprises and quite entertaining.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you like social login - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guys,
Just wanted to get some community feedback regarding your use of the social login. Do you like it? Do you hate it? Why?
Would you guys be open to use a better login solution?
Thanks in Advance! <comment><USER2> I like to use Google Login for Google services. I don't like FB login due to privacy issues. I would prefer a login solution that doesn't need to use passwords.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great insight! Thank you! If you have more thought on the matter, please share it!</comment></comment>


Open 7400 Logic Competition: The BrainFuck Machine (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://grapsus.net/74/ <comment><USER2> I so wich they would call the language something else. It is a useful construct, and using a name appropriate for a project by a 14-year old diminishes it quite a bit.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate careful use of profanity as one of the linguistic instruments, but this is tasteless and unnecessary.

<comment><USER3> Oh man, I entirely disagree.

Sure, there are two forms of profanity, and I consider profanity as a part of speech on par with other parts too:

One form is lazy, and it's there for shock value. It can be parsed by subtracting it to see what value it really added to the expression.

The other form adds value.

Lazy profanity is largely useless. Value added profanity is quite useful, and is a valid part of speech. There are good cases against that, but I really won't validate them here.

The language is quite accurately described by brain fuck, and when "fuck" is removed, it's not just shock value. In fact, it's a struggle to embody my feelings about the language and reach the brevity and fidelity inherent in the current name.

This isn't a disagreement worth a serious debate over, I suppose. It was worth a brief counter point. By and large, profanity is OK. It's not gonna hurt anyone, and this world does, in fact, contain ugly things, people, ideas, etc... It only follows that we have ugly words for those things, and it's really easy to purify some of what brings life, society, and the world overall it's texture and richness, away.

Besides, one can drop an asterisk or two and get along with the current name just fine.

<comment><USER4> But "brainfAsteriskUck" doesn't quite roll off the tongue... ;-)

<comment><USER3> Touche'</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Radboud University connects first click-on arm prosthesis to nerves - <AUTHOR> http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=174734&CultureCode=en <comment><USER2> > Through an opening in the skin, the patient "clicks" the prosthesis onto a > metal rod in the bone.

So he has a flap of skin that just spreads apart and reveals this metal rod? How does he avoid infections?

<comment><USER3> It's a terrible article. These may be better.

Economist: "Artificial limbs that feel like the real thing are getting closer"

[http://www.economist.com/news/science-and- technology/2162358...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and- technology/21623580-artificial-limbs-feel-real-thing-are-getting-closer-once- more)

Wikipedia: "Osseointegration"

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

Videos of surgery (somewhat graphic) and use of the prosthetic.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irtF- kGpaV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irtF-kGpaV4) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmt165ZTPmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmt165ZTPmI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder at what point these arms are going to get better. I suspect it'd be a lot easier to train a prosthetic arm when there is still a physical arm to be attached. Doing this before a replacement should really cut down on the 'rehabilitation time'.

Perhaps, in the scenario, it is better to just leave to current arm attached and give a prospective cyborg a third arm rather than replacing the current arm.

<comment><USER5> IMO, the next stop is going to be a drop in price. Good enough and 2k generally beats awesome and 200k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been thinking for a long time that such prosthetic arms should also be able to act as USB HID. e.g. send keystokes "directly" from the nerves - optionally merging with the input from a regular keyboard. And once you have that USB cord from your new arm, you might as well pack some flash storage, 2FA device, etc in there.

<comment><USER7> For the longest time I wondered why that guy from _Ghost in the Shell_ had the fingers that each split into several tiny, blade-like fingers just so he could type faster; if you already have robot hands couldn't you send impulses directly to enter stuff into a computer?

<comment><USER8> I've always thought that was an air gap - if you lived in a world where your ghost could be hacked you wouldn't want to risk being plugged in just for some text input.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py the myoband approach to nerve control is fascinating. they're not plugging into the user's nervous system, they're just measuring what the upper arm does when the user controls their phantom limb.

this is a much better ad for myo than the video on myo.com, which looks like a bad remake of the gesture controls from earth final conflict.</comment>


Windows Azure to support node as a first class platform - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/12/12/improved-developer-experience-interoperability-and-scalability-on-windows-azure.aspx

<comment><USER2> Answering the burning question, "How can I run a commodity application platform on more expensive, less secure servers?"

<comment><USER3> As compared to what? Azure is Paas and, for what it is, seems to be a reasonable value. Of course there are ways to do things cheaper and/or more secure but often I find those comparisons are apples and oranges. And often the comparisons are complex and very situation specific (e.g. one is not automatically better or worse in terms of security or cost). I personally am glad to see node added to the Azure toolbox.

<comment><USER2> It's a completely odd decision for someone to make. "I'm going to run this bleeding edge, open-source app framework, but I can't figure out EC2 and Windows makes me feel safe at night."

When you ask someone, "Why Node?", it seems like a complete mismatch with Azure.

Node is pretty bare-metal, and you can figure that out, but hosting on EC2 Linux is too hard for you? Node is bleeding edge, but you want an "enterprise- ready" server OS? Node is free to use, but you want the additional costs of paying Windows server licenses over time? You can get approval to run Node apps, but you're only approved to run on Windows in production? I'm not seeing what would make someone say "this Node app should run on Microsoft".

<comment><USER3> I agree with a lot of that. Most people who choose Node are going to feel more at home with EC2. However it's not so far fetched to think that one might choose to pair Node and Azure. They each solve very different problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Huawei P30 Pro Review – Better Than P20 Pro but No Mate of Mine - <AUTHOR> https://elitegamer.com/2019/04/04/huawei-p30-pro-review-better-than-p20-pro-but-no-mate-of-mine/ <comment><AUTHOR> Huawei's P-Series unapologetically aims to be a camera with a decent phone attached. Borrowing from the Mate 20 Pro made sense in this respect. The result is a better all-around experience than P20 Pro but without the same impact.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my new Twitter recommendation engine - <AUTHOR>

	Mofollow
http://www.mofollow.com
I tried submitting this late last night but Sunday traffic got zero reviews, sorry for the repost to those of you who already saw this (and if you did, where's my feedback?!).
I have been developing this site long before Twitter announced their user recommendation service but I've been hesitant to go public. There's a couple reasons behind my wariness:
1. It's currently only running on two linodes.
2. I wanted to ensure I had my MongoDB session handler working properly for scale out. If you notice any problems regarding sessions, please comment to let me know. I just enabled round-robin DNS and I had to fix a few hiccups along the way.
3. The number of API calls made to Twitter to generate a request is quite high, it's along the lines of ~105 requests if you have over 100 friends. Due to the sheer amount of data and handshakes being transferred, I was wary of both my bandwidth and the server load.
Oh well, here we go. It is quite likely you guys could get my servers to a crawl. If anybody is going to stress test my server, I would prefer if it's my fellow hackers to give appropriate feedback (and snarky comments) before I go entirely public with this thing.
I do plan on some form of integration with the new twitter recommendation API calls as well in the near future, but for now this is my completely custom version.
As a side note: I would appreciate it if you didn't tweet or blog about this as the site hasn't been stress tested and I'm just looking for some preliminary feedback.
I enjoy any and all comments and criticism. <comment><USER2> I gave it fifteen minutes and bailed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. I'll check the error and access log files from this morning and see if there's anything fishy going on.

It's not uncommon for it to take 5 minutes, but 15 is definitely indicative of something far worse...

 _EDIT: found one issue; the secondary server was missing php-mbstring, which caused problems with my utf-8 checks and conversions. sorry!_

<comment><USER2> Does it matter that I was coming in with Firefox 2.x? Never had any problems with other Twitter API services.

<comment><USER2> OK, I started it a second time, let it churn while I was busy with other things ... half hour later, still churning. Not going for a third time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nearly half of US medical visits are at emergency rooms - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171017091849.htm <comment><USER2> The summary and headline are badly misleading. It sounds like shocking news, but what they really found is disappointing but not that surprising.

It's not half of US medical visits to _any kind of medical care_ that are at emergency rooms. It is half of US medical visits to _hospitals_ that are at emergency rooms.

That's a big difference. Among other things, they are not including visits to your family physician. If they included ordinary visits to your doctor outside of the hospital, then emergency rooms visits would be a much lower percentage.

Looking at the original abstract:

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020731417734498](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020731417734498)

It says, "Our study aimed to determine the contribution of EDs to the health care received by Americans between 1996 and 2010 _and to compare it with_ the contribution of outpatient and inpatient services using National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Hospital Discharge Survey databases."

They are comparing emergency visits to other kinds of hospital visits.

<comment><USER3> Bingo, I'm so glad you clarified this. Something "didn't smell right" here.

Even beyond the family physician, there are many specialists that are affiliated with hospitals but see patients in their offices, outside of the hospital registration process.

In fact, those specialists often have offices in the hospital or in buildings attached to the hospital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just another report highlighting the need for change to our current healthcare system.

Although anecdotal, multiple family members who are health care providers in the ER (Nurse, PA, Doctor) it's more often than not far from an emergency ailment. This creates a scary supply and demand scenario.

<comment><USER5> Yup. The system is pretty messed-up and from my view (as a user), it drives people towards ERs as there are few other options. Some examples:

1 - Any time a condition/illness causes bad nausea/vomiting, the urgent care will send you to an ER to get IV meds and fluids, which they can't do. You probably don't need a full ER, but that's the only place to go. This must be fairly common during flu season, and a huge waste of resources. A startup idea could be an Uber for off-hour home visits. If all you need is IV fluids, check some vitals, keep you comfortable to ride-out a nasty virus, surely it's in everyone's interest to have a quick visit by a nurse/PA, possibly MD.

2 - Pain management. If you have a relatively new illness or injury that requires stronger medications to manage the pain, you have no choice but to go to an ER, or perhaps be admitted to a hospital (which is even more expensive). I can't say if over a longer period of time, for a chronic case, there are better options that eventually get worked out. But 2 months into such an issue with a family member, and going to the ER was frustratingly the only option.

3 - Chest pain. Yes, it could be a heart attack, so maybe an ER is the best place to go. You will get triage pretty quickly with an EKG, and some basic vitals, but you're still stuck there for hours if it's a false alarm (I'm guessing quite often). There's got to be a better way.

<comment><USER6> 3 has been an issue for me recently. I was referred to ER for some chest discomfort, which, unfortunately, the school clinic I was studying at cannot do the blood tests to see if it's a blood clot. I was given scary words like "you could die from this if untreated".

For that reason, I visited ER twice that week, and was diagnosed with some mild stomach issue and stress. Every single test they ran gave negative result. It's a huge waste of time for me, and I feel very guilty for wasting ER resources (especially as an immigrant). There has got to be a better way.

Edit: I was very lucky to be covered under school-mandated health insurance, and I don't think you could live comfortably in the U.S. without having one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Urgent Care facilities and walk-in clinics can fill the need for immediate, after-hours care at a far lower cost than the ER. Here's a screenshot from my health insurance provider, you can see it gives options along with a comparison of their cost: [https://imgur.com/a/4Lqb7](https://imgur.com/a/4Lqb7)

<comment><USER8> There is a major lack of information and advertising around Urgent Care. Very very few people know Urgent care exists. And in what form does it exist. Its different across states and cities.

Comparatively, Emergency care/Ambulances are available almost everywhere through 911 AND take most of the mind space around urgent issues.

Finally, Urgent Care centers are not equipped to handle lots of things like broken bones etc. They just refer you to an emergency center instead.

<comment><USER9> > There is a major lack of information and advertising around Urgent Care.

Maybe we should just put the Urgent Care facility in the same building as the ER and then route people appropriately when they show up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This isn't that surprising. The cost of health care is so astronomical that many people WITH insurance refuse to go to a doctor until their condition is so bad they can't avoid it any longer, and then it's straight to the ER.

<comment><USER11> yeah having insurance, even for some of us with six figure jobs is "we give you a small tax break on the first 10,000 you spend on health care every year in exchange for paying us $300 a month!"

thanks?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> just a personal anecdote (i don't think that such situation affects any significant percentage of people though) - English words "urgent" and "emergency" translates to basically the same Russian word which means "emergency". Given that "urgent care" is missing in Russian medical system (at least 20 years back it was), we, being recent arrivals and thus not very skilled in both, English language and the details of US medical system, were going to "emergency" whenever told to go to "urgent care", and we were so disappointed that regular US doctors would refuse to see us except by appointment of some weeks/month in the future when an issue would require prompt attention, and they would be sending us to "emergency" instead (as it sounded to us when in reality it was urgent care). We thought that it is such an inefficient system - either appointment in 2 months or emergency room (where we'd wait 3-4 hours - obviously our issues weren't any close to priority there, and where we obviously wouldn't get a specialist attention which would better suit the issue we came with). Sometime later (after 6 years in US :) we did accidentally learn about urgent care.

</comment><comment><USER13> Strangely, a study on whether providing expanded medicaid* would reduce emergency room visits seemed to suggest that it did not:

> It was widely believed that having insurance would encourage people to get > routine medical care in doctors' offices or clinics, instead of waiting > until they have more serious symptoms and have to head to the ER, where care > is most expensive.

> The study's first findings, published a few years ago, showed that Medicaid > was beneficial in many ways. It improved people's financial security. They > went to the doctor when they were sick. And having the insurance correlated > with a drop in rates of depression.

> But the study also found Medicaid enrollees increased their emergency room > visits by 40 percent over the first 15 months.

[0] [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/10/19/49852611...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/10/19/498526110/emergency-room-use-stays-high-in-oregon-medicaid- study)

edit: fixed medicare / medicaid

<comment><USER14> _But the study also found Medicaid enrollees increased their emergency room visits by 40 percent over the first 15 months._

Well, did they go there because they were actually ill? If so, the experiment did in fact improve public health.

<comment><USER13> From another article on the same study (albeit earlier):

> "Medicaid coverage increases emergency department use, both overall and for > a broad range of types of visits, conditions, and subpopulations," says Amy > Finkelstein, an economics professor at MIT and one of the authors of the > study.

> "Including visits for conditions that may be most readily treatable in > primary care settings."

[0] [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2014/01/02/25912808...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2014/01/02/259128081/medicaid-expansion-boosted-emergency-room-visits- in-oregon)

<comment><USER14> _" Including visits for conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings."_

That's just engrained practice. People used to go to the ER instead of a regular physician, now they continue what they always did. You ask yourself why the hospital doesn't set up a regular practice on the premises and has triage send patients there.

<comment><USER15> > You ask yourself why the hospital doesn't set up a regular practice on the > premises and has triage send patients there.

In Texas, they are legally prohibited from doing so. They would have to send you to a physically-separate location, even if said location was still in the hospital's parent network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What I can't get is that my primary care doc makes me wait 6 weeks to get a checkup.

It seems like it doesn't take any more resources to take care of me next week then it does 6 weeks later.

<comment><USER13> The reason you have to wait 6 weeks is that the doctor's office does not have infinite capacity, and increasing that capacity would require adding nurses, doctors, and rooms.

Instead, the 6 weeks is a result of 1) the number of people who wish to get appointments, 2) the time that each person spends, and 3) the number of people who can be treated at a time:

MeanResponseTime = MeanNumberInSystem / MeanThroughput

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law#Finding_respons...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law#Finding_response_time)

<comment><USER17> That doesn't really work for medical offices. A better solution is to reserve more schedule slots each day for patients who call or just show up that day. That makes the overall system more efficient since patients with urgent symptoms don't have to go to urgent care or ER.

<comment><USER13> Urgent Care clinics might help fill the gap between long term care (where delays are OK) and emergencies (where delays are not OK).

<comment><USER17> Urgent care is still more expensive than visiting your regular doctor. And it's less effective because the urgent care doctors are less familiar with you as a patient, so it takes longer to get up to speed on current symptoms and the risk of error is higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a nice graph[0] showing the relationship between income inequality and healthcare, and a good quote:

"The high-income group, with average household income greater than $70,000, is the standard to which all others are compared... 30 percent of the population in the $30,001–$50,000 range ...have 59 percent more mortality than is true of the richest group."

[0]: [http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/21/2/31/F2.expansio...](http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/21/2/31/F2.expansion.html)

Source: [http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/21/2/31.full](http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/21/2/31.full)

</comment><comment><USER19> Even with insurance, they implicitly encourage people to say everything is an "emergency" because otherwise you'd have to call them to get approval. But if you say "it was an emergency" you can avoid having to jump through hoops. So you go, and it clogs the emergency room, everyone pays more.

</comment><comment><USER20> The disappointing part of the US medical system is it doesn't do much for you unless you're really seriously ill or about to die. If you're about to die, it's the best in the world. If you just eg have a shoulder pain or something — you will have great difficulty finding a competent doctor to deal with it. People discover this by their mid to late 30s, around the time they begin to have their first real health problems.

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, what does one expect when the answer given by many when the topic of socialized medicine comes is "go to the emergency room, they can't turn you away for having no money"?

<comment><USER22> Especially when it covers non-citizens and people who are illegally in the country.

We could at least have a little compromise by making health care more tiered so that citizens, payers and people with insurance receive better health care than others. Make a list of services that will only be provided to payers and automatically push non-payers to the back of the queue.

<comment><USER23> I would view that as a horrible compromise, because it would result in poor people receiving worse health care than wealthy people.

<comment><USER24> I'm amazed sometimes the things people say here. The idea of withholding medical care based on citizenship comes very close the criteria for evil, with the drawback that it's largely incorrect, too (non-citizen residents, legal and illegal pay taxes at many levels of government for far less in return comparably than citizens).

<comment><USER25> What is the maximum amount we should spend to save a human? A million? A billion? Should society absorb any cost to save a human even if it gets exponentially more expensive with each subsequent procedure? Or should there be a cutoff where you are basically told "Sorry, you've exceeded the threshold and have to either pay for it yourself or die"

<comment><USER26> It would seem that the cost of being stingy here is that the medical care system is _more_ expensive for less performance in the US. Cut off your nose to spite your face exemplified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Didn't one of the anti-obamacare republicans say this is how most americans should get their medical care?

</comment><comment><USER28> How does this compare with elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER29> Stop letting the elderly and poor use E.R rooms as convenient one stop shops and it'll sort itself out.

<comment><USER30> Do you have an alternative proposal for how these people access health care services?

[https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health- spending.htm](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm) implies that the US is spending considerably more (~ double the OECD average) per capita. ER visits could certainly explain some of that.

<comment><USER29> [https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949](https://market- ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949)

The crux is making it easier for consumers to get health care information, putting more choices in the hands of the patient, and creating a mechanism to encourage price sensitivity even if people don't pay for their care directly.

<comment><USER30> Respectfully, I feel this link is missing the broader picture - that the US has a health care system unlike any other OECD nation. Perhaps the crux is looking at models that have been successful in other countries and adapting them to the US?

<comment><USER29> America should lead the world in healthcare and many of those proposals would help us accomplish as much.

We're mired in this current system with no rationing, low accountability, and rentiers sucking cash with the Government's approval and leftist protection against any reduction to the cashflow. Look at the yelps ushered by leftists when Trump stopped giving insurers free money - many of them bemoaned the loss of corporate welfare.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Freelance hackers from Eastern Europe unite - <AUTHOR> http://www.hightechhire.com Freelance marketplace for East European programmers and developers. join the club! <comment><USER2> Stop spamming, please.</comment>


Canon Cat - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat

<comment><USER2> A Jef Raskin followup project to the Canon Cat is Archy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy> Fascinating UI concept: largely search- based, with everything persistent (no saving), infinite non-windowing work area, and many other interesting features.

<comment><USER3> Everyone should read Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface. He expresses many of his interface ideas used with the Canon Cat and Archy in the book. I now consider thoughtful interface design a moral decision.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface>

<comment><USER4> From that article:

> Every action should be undoable, even after a document or application has > been closed and reopened.

At first, this sounded ridiculous. Undo after a save? But then I realized I do that now & then myself, using a version control system. So here I am editing a DVCS-managed document. Pre-save undo is handled by the editor, while post-save undo is handled by the DVCS (which is nice, but I usually have to look up how to do it).

All this underscores what crappy interfaces we really have, and how we get used to them, and so overlook their _serious_ flaws.

<comment><USER3> Jef doesn't think you should have to save. It should be automatic. I've been thinking about a system that version controlled a file after every keystroke. It would be a little heavy but, consider that you could undo anything forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Raskin's book, The Humane Interface, is basically what kicked me over into UX from development.

The Canon Cat is absolutely fascinating, and I got to study one for a research project in college.

Archy never really got traction. Creating a text editor from scratch in Python wasn't the way to go; starting with something like Gecko and contentEditable would have gotten them somewhere -- anywhere -- faster.

Jef Raskin passed away shortly before my college research project, very sad, but the project was to extrapolate from the proposals in The Humane Interface and examine if they still applied today. The big issue is that Raskin, THE and the Cat only explored text editing in any level of detail. You can imagine how the ideas could apply to any sort of process on the PC, from system management (Time Machine) to video editing (non-linear) to web browsing (Ubiquity), but none of his published work discusses it (except for maybe his QuickDraw thesis, which I read so long as as to have forgotten it in its entirety), so you're entirely on your own to envision what it might have looked and worked like.

He was also a big fan of zooming UIs which I am, to this day, not sold on (but Oberon looked neat, I'll have to check it out).

Speaking of Ubiquity, Raskin's work lives on through his son, Aza, who formerly ran Humanized (I still run Enso on my Windows PC), and now runs Mozilla Labs.

Emulating a Canon Cat would be neat. Putting a real Canon Cat online would be hard without the special keys. It wouldn't be inconceivable to put an Apple IIe online, and plug in a SwyftCard: essentially a basic Canon Cat expansion card for the Apple IIe. There have been some efforts to get a copy of SwyftWare, the software version of this (I've even emailed Aza asking if he had a copy) and try to get it running in an emulator, but no-one's had any luck in the few years I've been watching people try (I own an Apple IIe with a SwyftCard).

</comment><comment><USER6> Funny. I named my cat Conan, but I had no idea he was being named after a computer as well as a talk show host and barbarian.

<comment><USER7> Canon =! Conan

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Flagged - no content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you implying the wikipedia article contains no content that might be interesting to HN readers?

The CC is quite extraordinary in terms of its UI, and yet many people are unfamiliar with it.

<comment><USER8> I flagged it because the submission contains no content. It's just a link to a random(?) wikipedia page. The page was last modified in November 2008. The device was released in 1987.

You do know what the N in HN stands for?

Seriously, are we gonna submit half of wikipedia now? I'm sure the pages for Newton, Apple II, Atari, Amiga and other vintage hardware are no less relevant than this.

<comment><AUTHOR> > What to Submit[1]:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.

If you think any of the pages you've mentioned are interesting and would spur conversation than I think you should submit them.

If HN readers disagree they won't up vote it.

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can data be owned by the individual creating it? - <AUTHOR> This is something I've been thinking about lately.
If you are walking across the street and I watch you do it, does that mean I need your permission to remember watching you cross the street (aka store data) and make decisions based on your previous actions?
Further, should I need your permission to tell other people about you crossing the street?
Seems to me that in this example, "data" (which is really just my interpretation of an observation) is owned by me and not you. It is after all my sensing & storage systems that collected the data.
What are your thoughts? <comment><USER2> Crossing the street is a hugely public thing to do, and is not something any reasonable person would consider information they own. So most would class it as public domain and maybe data collected could be used to make decisions.

But this does lead to interesting scenarios, where some parts of the country are _not tracked_ and others which _are tracked_. Private areas, your data would not be recorded and hence be your own.

So I guess your data is yours if no one else records it.

</comment><comment><USER3> i think we should switch to talking about information , not data. data is like photons, they are mediators. An agent owns his information content which is his internal thoughts and intentions. Everything he makes in your online property is a trace. The traces belong to the owner of the online property. Just like how your footsteps on my home belong to me, while your foot belongs to you. Data are measurements of those traces, thus they belong to you as well. The self-ownership of the agent's information content is not compromised.</comment>


An AI expert took on his toughest project ever: writing code to save his son - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2019/07/25/ai-expert-writing-code-save-son/ <comment><AUTHOR> title edited because it was too long</comment>


Windows 8 is the new XP - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-is-the-new-xp-7000006095/

<comment><USER2> To this day, a large fraction of companies has ignored Windows Vista and 7, and is still running Windows XP. The upgrade to Windows XP went smooth by comparison.

I think one major reason why XP succeeded was that it actually made a lot of difference. Compared to Windows 98: Way less crashing, way more stability, and a much better platform to make serious software on - thanks to a modern 32-bit kernel with proper segregation between userspace programs, which finally became widely available and tested.

What does Windows 8 bring over Windows 7 that justifies an upgrade? Small incremental updates don't count, Windows 7 has those too (over XP), yet it's still far from universally adopted after over 3 years.

(Now my lens may be colored with my view that convergence between laptops and tablets is a stupid idea, so I don't really consider that as an actual advantage of Windows 8.)

<comment><USER3> I installed Windows 8 this weekend on my primary machine (my school has an MSDN subscription). My initial impression is that it's actually an upgrade on the desktop - the Start screen really is better as an app launcher, and the app search works quite quickly (it was always dog-slow on Windows 7 on the same computer); the small upgrades to the task manager, taskbar, and Windows Explorer are nice too. It took a bit of time to figure out the new UI (it's all hot corners, but they're well hinted if you know to look for them), but it's pretty reasonable. That's the good news - the bad news is that all Metro apps (especially the Microsoft-branded ones) are useless, ad-ridden, under- featured dreck - if you clear them all from your start screen, it's a decent OS, but even Solitaire has ads, and takes a good 10 seconds to load because of its pointless XBox live integration.

<comment><USER4> You summed up my thoughts too. Windows 8 starts up about twice as quick for me, which is great. The explorer changes are nice enough, and if you don't like the rather large ribbon UI, you can just hide it.

However, I also agree with you on the apps. On a laptop, I haven't once used a Windows 8 app for anything (other than the weather app once or twice to try). First, the apps take awhile to start. Secondly, they are unintuitive on a laptop. Third, the ads. Why are there ads in the apps made by microsoft? Customers aren't going to like seeing ads in a OS they just paid for.

Also, navigation between Metro apps and desktop apps is somewhat confusing. Mousing over the top-left corner seems to only show your last used application unless you awkwardly swipe your mouse downwards. The only easy to use app switcher seems to be alt+tab.

Overall, Windows 8 isn't bad at all. But it is somewhat confusing. And if it seems confusing to people who use technology all the time, will it make any sense to those less tech-savy users? I don't think it will, but we'll have to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone forgets that XP is very different from XP SP2. SP2 was a major update that replaced most of the binaries and offered significant API and security upgrades that were essential to everyone.

Before SP2, XP didn't offer much over Win2000 and NT4 other than a slightly lower price:

[http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/18829228/windows- xp...](http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/18829228/windows-xp-slow-to- take-hold.htm)

In that same vein, Win8 doesn't offer much over Win7 if you're not using a tablet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I had forgotten how different the experience was pre- and post- SP2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a ridiculous article. So there was negativity about XP that turned out to be wrong. What about the negativity about Vista that turned out to be right?

And how about considering each case on its own merits? Even aside from the product itself which changes, the competitive landscape is nowhere near what it was in XP or Vista days. A failure (Vista) back then was a minor inconvenience. A failure today would be different.

<comment><USER7> Most of the negativity about Vista was related to changes that were a good thing in the long run, but didn't have 3rd party support (updated drivers) out of the gate. SP1 fixed some problems, but in my opinion the bigger reason for SP1 being reliable was that the ecosystem had gotten its act together.

Windows 8 might not have a lot of native metro apps in their store yet, but at least everything works properly. Fewer companies have the option of screwing it up out of laziness.

<comment><USER3> A lot of the Metro apps are a bit broken (even the Microsoft-provided ones) - a big problem is them trying to go to websites that have moved since whenever they were released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The only reason Windows XP "suddenly" became popular is because the next version of Windows that came out was so bad that everyone finally capitulated.

</comment><comment><USER9> I recently visited Microsoft innovation labs in Mountain View and they were really touting how cool Windows 8 would be on desktops and tablets. I've actually been using the release candidate version on a dual boot laptop with Ubuntu for the past couple of months and have not been impressed or greatly inconvenience. I did ask the presenter, a Microsoft developer, how I could easily shutdown my computer as the shutdown button is now not easily accessible as in Windows 7. His answer annoyed me as he gave me three options on how to do it but didn't address the "easily" part of my question. This may be a pattern with Microsoft, lots of feature but limited simplicity.

<comment><USER10> Shutting down using Win 8 takes exactly the same number of clicks as in Win 7. Alternatively you could just hit the power button and it'll shut down fine.

<comment><USER11> Alt-F4 from the desktop in Win 8 still works, as well. Being that I'm in the desktop a majority of the time on Win 8 and have always used Alt-F4 if actually needed to turn off my machine for some reason (who does this anymore?), so not much change for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I more or less agree with this take. Windows 7 was good enough that a lot of people won't have a reason to upgrade, but as Windows 8 tablets become more common I think we'll see a "halo effect" on desktops. Having seen it running for a few months, there are a lot of nice things about 8, and once you get over the Start menu there aren't many negatives.

And new computers will come with 8 installed, so that's some pretty significant adoption right there.

<comment><USER12> Re: "new computers will come with 8 installed, so that's some pretty significant adoption right there."

I don't know a single corporate IT department in the Bay Area that has committed to a full-scale Windows 8 Deployment in 2013. My estimate is that 75%+ of new computer sold to enterprises (everywhere) in the First Half of 2013 will ship with Windows 7, not Windows 8.

<comment><USER13> Corporate IT is inherently conservative. Frankly, any company doing a full roll-out of a new version of an operating system in the first year after release is probably irresponsible, and any company planning their roll-out before the software is even released definitely is. Good admins always wait for SP1. I wouldn't try to extrapolate anything about the quality of the software based on whether or not corporate sysadmins are deploying it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article dodges (willfully ignores) the every-other good-bad release schedule that has tended to be the pattern of Microsoft (and Star Trek movies).

2000: good ME: bad XP2: good Vista: bad 7: good 8: bad

<comment><USER15> I have never understood this sentiment. If it's such an easy pattern to spot, how come someone in senior management at Microsoft hasn't spotted it too? Is your average internet commenter really smarter and more perceptive than one of the world's largest and most successful companies? Furthermore, has Microsoft not grown as a company at all for the last ten years? Has the IT environment not changed at all either? And is history destiny?

I would argue no to all those notions. I think Microsoft in 2012 is a much more disciplined, focussed, and frankly ambitious company than it was in 2002 or 2006. The development of 7 and especially how the company communicated with the public about 7 was a quantum leap from Vista. As far as I can tell, Microsoft has carried forward all of those improvements into the process of building 8. If it is making mistakes with Windows 8, they are entirely different genres of mistakes than it made with Vista or ME.

<comment><USER16> It's easy to explain: it's just a media narrative. If I know in advance that the next product will be much better than the previous one, why should I read any "news report" or "analysis" about it? I'll just enjoy the goodies when they land. But if there is criticism, well, I better read up so that I can react accordingly -- _here's my money and my ad impressions!_ The same will happen, in reverse, with the following release.

Even Apple is subject to these media cycles (see antennagate, batteries exploding etc), they just manage to deflect them to smaller items, stuff most people don't care about. Microsoft seems to struggle much more when trying to control product perception across media channels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nope , no one in enterprise will touch it. We will wait and see what windows 9 brings.

<comment><USER7> Yeah. Enterprise users are going to buy Windows 7 tablets instead.

Sarcasm aside, (some) enterprise users are going to buy tablets, and they're going to have Windows RT. Whether they adopt 8 on the desktop is a separate question, but if there's good uptake of RT that will give it a kick.

<comment><USER12> Why would the Enterprise buy Tablets with Windows RT? None of their apps will run on WIndows RT. Wouldn't they want to buy Tablets with WIndows 8 so they can run both legacy and Metro Style Apps?

<comment><USER11> Given the fact that several of my enterprise clients provide iPads to quite a few employees, which definitely don't support legacy apps or Office (which SurfaceRT will come installed with), I don't see why legacy support would be an issue where the use case for an iPad already fits and a Surface tablet might fit better.

<comment><USER7> This is my point exactly. Thanks for putting it better than I did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We had all that when Windows 95 came out too. My dad and I stayed as MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 holdouts for a good year or so.. ;-)

Luckily, nowadays it's easier to try out new systems, watch video reviews, and get a feel for new products, so it's even easier to be open minded nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER19> XP had no real competition. Windows 8 faces well entrenched competition, much of it brutally undercutting MS on price and offering considerably better integration with their smartphone of choice (unless you're the %4 of smartphone users on WP7).

<comment><USER11> I blame Verizon for my not having a WP7 phone. I refuse to switch over to AT&T and Sprint coverage is hit or miss in my area, but I still hold a grudge over Verizon for not offering a better WP7 device than the HTC Trophy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> XP was great. There were so many worse versions of Windows. Think about Vista, and ME.

</comment><comment><USER21> Windows 8 is the best operating system available today. All you have to do to make it work for desktop is to uninstall all the WinRT (Metro) apps. You will end up with a really nice start menu that can be accessed quickly from a corner.

The best new thing is suspended apps. That alone is a deal breaker over previous versions of Windows.

This comes from a guy that has a MacBook Pro since 2007.

</comment><comment><USER22> I keep XP on an older machine because Win7 does not run DOS programs anymore, and Win7 broke the windbg debugger.

<comment><USER23> This can't be right! Whatever happened to WinXP emulation mode or Dosbox?

<comment><USER24> Not to mention only 64-bit Win7 removed NTVDM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The biggest risk that Windows 8 brings is that it's not just a no brainer upgrade. It requires training, it requires consideration of the costs and benefits. And once you are on that road then you are on a road that could easily lead you to non-windows alternatives. iOS or android tablets, linux workstations, etc.

And all of this because MS was too cocky and decided to go all in on metro instead of trying for a smoother, more gradual transition.

<comment><USER26> I don't agree that there really is a big learning curve really. The training you need is about a few minutes with the computer to know to take your mouse to corners and the sides. Once you know the patterns its basically training your muscle memory which for me took a couple of days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> For those who will be using Windows 8 and miss the Start Menu, Classic Shell is a FOSS solution. <http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER28> This is silly. Win8 is a step backwards in usability period. You have to do a lot more to perform the same actions.

Whereas XP was actually better.

Win8 is the ME of this decade.

</comment><comment><USER29> I still remember a magazine showing how you can make Windows 95 look more like 3.1 by putting folder shortcuts on the desktop :P</comment>


My Case for Veganism (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.merovius.de/2018/01/02/my-case-for-veganism.html <comment><USER2> I'll open the gambit with I totally agree with the OP that in a world with replicators, why would you go for the kill based option when you don't need to for the same mouth feel, proteins, fats and texture.

But that's the issue. That's not the case and though I'd love to see that tech moved forward we're not there yet.

<comment><USER3> Food prepared in a vegan manner provides all the nutrients you need, there have been several studies to confirm this and millions of vegans are also proof of this that we don't need to consume animal products to survive (depends where you are, e.g Inuits need to hunt to survive).

That leaves 2 criteria you listed that are not 100 covered, which are mouth feel and texture. Both of those things are not necessary for our survival.

Do you think mouth feel and texture are more important than reducing animal suffering, reducing destruction of our environment and eliminating horrible working conditions for other humans?

Do you have to have the exact mouth feel and texture to make that moral decision?

Foods without animal products are quite delicious, it just takes the willingness to try and take it step by step, like the author did.

We don't need replicators to make more compassionate and sustainable choices.

Check out [https://www.challenge22.com](https://www.challenge22.com) if you're interested in giving it a try.

<comment><USER2> I don't think I agree, I'm sensitive to grains and sugar so following a low carb diet.

A single steak gives me 680 Calories, 48g of fat, 62g of protein and a raft of macronutrients.

If I could get vegan food to deliver the same I'd happily swap over to be honest.

<comment><USER3> Ok, I didn't know that.

But there are plenty of vegan low-carb options available.

Maybe this article[0] helps or check out the challenge22 site, they have vegan dieticians who can provide more guidance if you're interested.

[0] [https://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/why-you- should...](https://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/why-you-should-try-a- low-carb-vegan-diet/)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for that link, I do appreciate the effort.

My current intake from carbs is < 5% so it doesn't look like my current needs would be able to be met:

Fat 219 grams 70 %

Protein 182 grams 26 %

Net Carbs 25 grams4 %

I keep watch of the industry though and hopefully I can meet the market on this.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for trying to find a vegan solution for your specific needs. Many people wouldn't have even clicked that link.

I'm not a nutritionist, so I don't know how to hit your targets.

If it's because you're bodybuilding, you might want to check out vegan body builder forums or the vegan fitness community on Reddit.

Here are more ideas for low carb foods (further down the page)

[https://www.onnit.com/academy/vegan-keto- diet/](https://www.onnit.com/academy/vegan-keto-diet/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I'm Moving Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/opinion/why-im-moving-home.html <comment><USER2> This is all good for JD Vance who is emotionally invested in the region with a deep familial history, but he acts like it is only the lure of money, society, and culture that make high achieving individuals move to the cities.

Maybe it's not just a pull factor, maybe it's a push factor? People aren't just moving to the cities because they have such great value, it's because they're escaping the toxicity of the villages.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, reading this is pretty alien to me; I actively want to avoid going "home".</comment></comment>