Microsoft's Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/microsofts-surface-hub-sales-surprisingly-strong-its-a-huge-hardware-hit/ <comment><USER3> I've been using one at work for a while now and I love them, which to me was a huge suprise. Its a product that finally got almost everything right when it comes to a digital whiteboard. And yes to another point that was raised here certainly integration with Mircosoft services was a plus. Its great to have a computer interface that is remote on half the board and white board interface on the other. You can mock up while you have the specs inches away from your face on a huge screen so everyone in the room can read and interact. The skype integration kills it as well; there's been a number of times I've seen teams huddled around the board mocking things up with one or two people remote.

<comment><USER4> Can you do remote collaborative whiteboarding? I'm looking at this for either having a Hub at each end or a Hub at one end and a tablet at another. Trying to find a way to bring geographically distributed team members (virtually) closer together.

<comment><USER5> I tried my luck in this space but couldn't get it off the ground

It's fully functional but lacks polish.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.writelive](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.writelive)

Small showcase:

\- vector graphics/drawings created by freehand / writing [http://write- live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934](http://write- live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934)

\- handles more complex drawings: (give it time to load) [http://write- live.com/d/7fce10bb-bc39-43d4-a7f1-6bd0d60b9550](http://write- live.com/d/7fce10bb-bc39-43d4-a7f1-6bd0d60b9550) [http://write- live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e](http://write- live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e)

\- unlimited* levels of zoom [http://docs.write- live.com/WriteliveServer/webview.html?d=34...](http://docs.write- live.com/WriteliveServer/webview.html?d=3483c3de-b329-4af1-97d7-2d7f27d96ad1)

\- Drawings are stored in the cloud, and can be accessed by multiple devices simultaneously: co-drawing, draw on a tablet, view on tablet / web [http://write-live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab](http://write- live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab)

<comment><USER6> This is pretty cool

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "In a Forrester report commissioned by Microsoft, it's claimed that meetings start more promptly—less faffing about to get remote attendees dialed in or computers hooked up to the projector—saving 15 to 23 minutes per meeting."

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

Every company I've been at, I've seen this happen over and over and over again, every meeting. I feel like I'm the only one aware of how much time and productivity is killed by this problem.

<comment><USER8> You are not alone. This is a constant source of frustration at our organization as well.

Even once everyone is on the Hangout / HighFive/ Slack call... If anyone's internet is less than perfect, the whole experience sucks.

<comment><USER9> We've been using zoom.us for a few years now and it seems to work pretty well. If your internet is too flaky you can still dial in.

<comment><USER10> +10. Also has an awesome Linux client that works flawlessly in Ubuntu and Debian, so we can do customer demos (@userify, if it matters) in the Linux+SSH environment that several of the more hard-core people here (including me!) prefer.

<comment><USER11> I hate their bus ads in SF, but the product rocks. I requested a Debian Stretch package and they made one for me the next day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Microsoft is killing it in this space because current conferencing technology is flat out horrible.

Despite the fact we have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of conferencing technology at my work, I'll regularly see twenty minutes wasted at the start of a meeting with someone bumbling around with a mix match of DisplayPort, thunderbolts, HDMIs and VGAs. Then the software headaches of having to install some sort of client software, create an account and find the person.

The icing on the cake was a sales rep from Microsoft who invited us to a conference using third party software that required Silverlight and MSIE 10, and our Windows machine was too new.

It's great something is being done in this space, but $19,999 for a problem Microsoft is largely responsible for feels like extortion.

</comment><comment><USER13> It doesn't surprise me that Microsoft is in this space, and that they're doing well. But who would have thought this was a billion dollar business? I figured that the conference room's tech begins to rapidly depreciate almost immediately after installation; but maybe this is something different.

<comment><USER14> Playing accountant here you might depreciate the thing over 4 years so $2000 cost per year. Against that the occupants of the conference room are likely costing > $1m a year in wage costs so you don't need a huge boost in productivity to make it worth it.

<comment><USER15> To put it in perspective, a single Cisco Telepresence device (you typically will need at least two) runs ~30k list (you'll be paying, eh, maybe ~70% depending on your relationship with your distributor). A whole 3200 system will run around ~300k (again, list). A device @ 10k is absolute peanuts. Take eight engineers, a few managers and a C-level and put them into a conference room with your organization's Boulder, CO branch's counterparts and 90 minutes of their time in salary is going to run about the same.

Microsoft is playing at the integration game. The Surface Hub is a knock-out, they gave it a decent whirl at the Surface Pro 4 (honestly, it's the best far note-taking device on the market IMO simply because the PixelSense display[1] is so stylus friendly - writing on it is nearly like writing on paper), and their very very crummy phone apparently is going to run native Win10 binaries on the new 4-core ARMs so they can leverage all those previous apps and throw them into the ecosystem.

[1][http://www.anandtech.com/show/9767/microsoft-surface- book-20...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9767/microsoft-surface- book-2015-review/6)

<comment><USER16> The ARM announcement is targeting what they are calling "cellular laptops" that use 64bit ARM chips in a clam shell form factor. They didn't really announce anything around the phone, but its pretty obvious that something like that will be coming pretty soon.

I really wanted to like the Nokia 1520. The screen was fantastic. Man, it drove me crazy though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If it solves the problem with every meeting where the first ten minutes are spent trying to get the screen setup and the conference line open...it should make a gazillion dollars. Every meeting, every time...How does this work? Which remote? Is the projector even on? Can you see my screen? Which connector do I use?

It's painful.

<comment><USER17> Do people not set up the room 15 minutes before the session starts just to sort out those kinds of issues? That way it's only 15 man-minutes rather than 15*n man-minutes. Seems unprofessional.

<comment><USER18> Sorry but do you actually work in a real life company ?

Nobody is coming 15 minutes early to a meeting. That's unheard of in all of the enterprises I've worked.

And with there being more and more meetings often you are literally running from one room to another.

<comment><USER17> I work for a very large organisation. I book rooms 15-30 minutes before my meetings start time and depending on what it is rock up then or 15 minutes early. I use the time to set up, manage any glitches, and then make any last minute preparations such as preparing handout material, water, etc... Sometimes I get 5 minutes of rest and that's nice too a busy schedule. Then people start rocking up and you build rapport with them until it's start time.

Coming prepared has saved me far more time that rocking up just on time and then trying to set it up only for windows to update. People also learn that my meetings matter because they have a purpose and we get right on it, saving up on people showing late etc...

Investing those 15 minutes of my time really goes a long way for everyone else which benefits me too.

<comment><USER19> You're lucky. In my building, you're lucky if you can find an available slot long enough to accommodate your meeting. Finding a slot long enough to book 15 minutes before would be near unheard of.

Then there's the perception thing. 20 people twiddling their thumbs while a meeting is set up is totally acceptable, but a single person monopolising a meeting room just to mess about with a laptop? Rude.

We're pretty impressed with our surface hub. As others have said, it "just works". The twin cameras are pretty good at picking up who's speaking and following them if they move around, and even though it's really not doing anything spectacular, it does it well and has that all-important "fancy new technology" feel that exec's love.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I saw the prototype in Redmond over a decade ago, back then it was in the form of a coffee table -- very impressive at the time, but no clear business strategy.

In technology terms, this is a glacial age! I find it amazing they were able to persist and refine the technology into a successful product. Kudos!

<comment><USER21> Doesn't look to me like it's very related to the PixelSense.

<comment><USER22> Careful, Surface is now a brand of various computers, PixelSense was the old Surface Table with a display where pixels included cameras, but is now used to describe the new Surface's screen. So let's summarize:

* old Surface: a table.

* new Surface: a brand that started out with tablets but now includes a convertible laptop, a desktop, and a conference room computer.

* old PixelSense: a renamed old Surface with new fancy (very cool) display technology that includes optical sensing pixels, but seems defunct ATM.

* new PixelSense: the screen of a new Surface (high resolution, capacitive touch, stylus).

(disclaimer: used to work for Microsoft but with no inside knowledge)

<comment><USER23> PixelSense is a company that Microsoft acquired a couple years ago. It's unrelated to the original "surface" technology they showcased previously (the big coffee table you are talking about), other than sharing the same name. Surface is now just the branding of their whole series of first party touch enabled devices (surface pro, surface studio, surface book, surface hub)

<comment><USER22> That was the case a few years ago, but it is no longer the case now. See:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface- stud...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface- studio/innovation)

And compare to:

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

Two totally different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Really surprised by the specs and cost of this thing compared to what's out there. Might be the reason Google is making their Jamboard.

<comment><USER25> People aren't buying specs, they're buying an integrated experience. You can definitely reproduce the spec sheet for less money, but you cannot trivially reproduce the HUI or the research that went into it. It is the interface which is the USP of this product, not the hardware.

The Jamboard may be superior but the Jamboard doesn't exist as an actual product. We have no final demos, no release date (except "2017"), no specs, and no prices. When the Jamboard ships, only then can we draw decent comparisons.

<comment><USER21> > The Jamboard may be superior but the Jamboard doesn't exist as an actual > product. We have no final demos, no release date (except "2017"), no specs, > and no prices. When the Jamboard ships, only then can we draw decent > comparisons.

Yeah, but it's Google. It feels like at least half their products that are announced with big fanfare either are never released, or released and then scrapped after just a couple years (Code, Wave, Code Search, ...).

<comment><USER26> What should they do to products that dont work? Keep pouring good money in them?

<comment><USER27> not hyping vaporware would be a start

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This could be a great launch point for a new generation of (very) smart TVs. Combined with what Microsoft is doing with HoloLens, they seem to be very well positioned for the future of communication devices.

</comment><comment><USER29> The "board" part of Weiser's original "pads, tabs, and boards" vision [0] always made logical sense, but for some reason never realized itself. I'm a bigger fan of the tabletop form factor myself (see for example the original "surface"). It'll be interesting to see how this grows.

 _> to boot, it's a piece of hardware that it got right even in version one_

Except it's not version one; see the surface and surface 2 before the current surface :)

[0] [http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html](http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html)

<comment><USER7> That is an outstanding work of futurology! It gets a lot right, and the parts they get wrong are wrong for interesting and fascinating reasons.

Comes really close to forecasting the smart phone, but instead of an intensely personal device, they envision very similar devices that are shared and spread out through the environment. Surface Hub seems to have struck a nerve for the "shared environment" paradigm, wonder if there are still other opportunities in the "pads and tabs" paradigms. What could be done with "virtual post it notes", for example, whose content is always kept up to date, and placed in the context where they are most relevant?

<comment><USER30> Absolutely, though the biggest problems are the walled gardens. Personal pads are a thing -- the various assistants from google, ms, and apple will already do things like take reminders in the form of "remind me to x at y time" or "remind me to z when I'm at w". However, sharing those notes in a reasonable way still isn't a thing as far as I can tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I recently changed job. When I was at the interview for the new job (gonna start there in january) they had surface hubs on all meeting rooms. And this is in Norway so the reach is great!

<comment><USER32> Well Microsoft's market penetration in Norway is massive. To the point that if you see someone with a Mac you can basically claim him to work in media production and be right 99,9% of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If it really saves travel then its worth something. I wonder how often its it doing an update when you want to conference.

<comment><USER34> Based on anecdotal stories about Windows 10 updating in the middle of gamers' live streams, I can just imagine the frustration of conferencing with an important client when BAM! Windows is applying updates, 1 of 198.

<comment><USER35> That is why corporations have the ability to defer updates if they want to. Personally I've found that shutting your PC at the end of the workday means the updates will always get installed then and not during the day.

<comment><USER34> Good point. I wish the large corporation I work for would do this.

<comment><USER36> In the fairly small organisation (1000+ screens in two sites) I work in the PCs switch themselves on overnight and do the updates then. I gather the updates are pushed from a server after being tested by the IT support chaps.

<comment><USER34> That is certainly ideal. Unfortunately, many (maybe even most) of the machines here are laptops which are taken home each night. I could probably overlook the Windows updates if it weren't for the noon full-disk virus scan every day, but that's a topic for another day :)

<comment><USER4> Noon full-disk virus scan even once a week is a great way to alienate your user base. If your enterprise AV doesn't support "start at a scheduled time or if sleeping/off start upon next wake/power on" then you need a new enterprise AV suite. If not that at least temporary deferment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Very impressive entrance into what I thought would have been a well mature market by this point.

<comment><USER38> If Microsoft has managed to make it "just work" (I don't know if they have, but that was the pitch IIRC), then I can understand the enthusiasm. Most of the existing solutions have all the features you need, but fall on their face in the case of reliability and ease of just setting up a meeting. Being able to say "no more 10 minute scrambles at the beginning of meetings to get the tech working" is probably worth a lot.

<comment><USER39> They do kinda "just work". Less valuable if you'r not on 0365/Skype for Business, but it's a Microsoft product so that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Have two in our office's. They are great. 365 integration, Skype and the whiteboard are fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER41> The Microsoft Hub is fine and dandy... but it is very limiting in it's ability to integrate with any and all meeting participants. It's great if everyone all worked off Microsoft products, but they do not.

Example: I am in an office where 90+% of people work with Macs and iOS products. The integration between those two is not seamless by any make or measure. I would rather have a product that worked between the two than a single product trying to mold it's way into the entire space.

<comment><USER42> iOS seems to actively avoid integration with anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> How good is the remote audio and video quality? Is it on skype level?

Skype sucks in audio and video quality and those are really important to my company.

We have a solution from Cisco which had excellent video and audio quality sadly it's just a Tv that can call another Cisco TV and share the screen including a very good webcam. No whiteboard features or something like that, no touchscreen. Except the small tablet to control the thing

<comment><USER44> This uses Skype for Business, formerly Lync, which is different tech than Skype-the-consumer-app. Skype for Business connects though your own network infrastructure, and uses your own servers (or Office 365 hosted ones). Quality is about as good as it gets - depending on the latency and bandwidth of your network of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> We've got on here and I was surprised how much time I (not in IT, but sit near the Surface Hub) got wrangled into helping IT support this thing. The problem seems to stem from it being a phone underneath, in the OS (error messages will occasionally mention this). IT has trouble wrapping their head around that it is not a regular Surface, which they have rolled out boat loads of, successfully.

In addition, you can't really install anything on it, so it's tough / impossible to meet automated compliance checking (AV in place, etc.).

I guess this is really an IT group not trying hard to support it, but it was an eye opener to see the round peg / square hole thing going on.

Having said that, it's a nice whiteboard / Skype appliance. Nobody mentions the stand. It's built like a tank and finished really cleanly. Also would be nice if it weighed less. Smaller people really have to lean into it to move it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm surprised by this as well, but I wonder how many of them were bought as "trophy" purchases, put on display in the lobby and the CEO's office.

<comment><USER47> "The average Surface Hub customer is buying about 50 devices for each deployment...(and) One (unnamed) car manufacturer bought 1,500 of the thing"

Sounds like people are actually rolling them out through all their conference rooms

<comment><USER48> I wonder if the car manufacturer wants them for show rooms?

I could imagine a surface hub could make a very fancy virtual catalogue for going through the manufacturers full range of models, trim levels and options for instance. Maybe something a higher-end brand would be interested in (after all such dealerships often abound with fancy furniture for customers)?

<comment><USER49> But you could do this much cheaper with a cheap Windows or ChromeOS device connected to a touch display. Paying $8000+ would be completely unreasonable.

<comment><USER50> Because the Surface Hub is an integrated device, there are savings in:

* purchase research - deciding what parts to buy and making sure they'll all work out of the box and that the computer is fast enough to support what people will be doing with it

* physical setup - hooking up those external PCs and peripherals and making sure they are all working like an appliance so that you don't need an IT person "turn it on" for the salesperson before every meeting, etc.

* support - if something goes wrong, you're talking to Microsoft, without figuring out which part is broken and then figuring out who to call

Considering a decent 1080p 55" touch display is probably going to run you around $3K (and it doesn't have active pen support), I'm not sure $9K is that unreasonable for a business, especially if it stays in operation for five years or more.

\-- edit: i realized the parent was responding to the to car showrooms comment and not boardrooms after the fact - but left the post here for the context of boardrooms

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm happy for Microsoft, I get the feeling that they are really trying now and it is always a pleasure to see strong innovations and competition.

</comment><comment><USER52> This spells trouble for Cisco and friends. MS can use the Hub as a foothold into your phone system, and BAM! Out go all those expensive, obscure and clunky Cisco voip systems, replaced with some MS cloud-based solution that is 100x cheaper and integrates with Skype and LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER53> The integration with OneNote is quite killer as well - you can plug in your laptop, draw as much as you want (collaboratively) on an infinitely-scrolling whiteboard, and then have all the notes from the meeting saved, digitized, and searchable, and shared with all participants.

<comment><USER54> OneNote plus a surface pro 3 were game changing for me in school. All of my notes digitized and accessible for study from my phone or whatever, an infinite whiteboard, a tablet + stylus that _actually_ let me take written notes. They have a writing-to-text feature as well that unfortunately doesn't work too well, but we can't have everything I suppose. That feature requires an Office subscription though. Meh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Does anyone have a link to the promo video of the original Surface, the table in a restaurant version? It's soundtrack had a song I loved, can't remember the artist, and the version was different from the studio version.

<comment><USER56> Is it this video?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZmaZK435_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZmaZK435_8)

Google Assistant tells me the song is "Out of Time" by Levitation (but I didn't click the track to listen so it may be wrong).

<comment><USER55> No, not this one. The one I'm talking about had people talking about the product and how you could use it. The part with the song I'm talking about was a food restaurant setting (as opposed to a bar setting)

Edit: The one I have in mind was more like this one in terms of setting - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRU3NemA95k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRU3NemA95k)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Will have to check it out! The company I'm at has more Chrome boxes than rooms, running meetings with Google Hangouts, but everyone hates them. The controllers randomly stop working and only start again if the dongle is unplugged and replugged or the box is rebooted, not to mention tons of other flakey issues the past week or two particularly. Our leadership complains about wasting 5 minutes of every meeting getting the Chrome boxes working.

<comment><USER58> Humm, maybe depends on which Chrome Box you choose. In my experience they work very well, only needing a reboot every now and then.

The main issue is people not taking care of equipment in shared spaces like meeting rooms. The technology is usually the least of your problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Considering how many "smart boards" our little community college buys, if it works at all well, I can see how it would be a big seller in the category.

<comment><USER60> Uhg, those "smart boards" are terrible. I'm trying to get ours to give up and just buy TVs and projectors. It's amazing what a company can achieve by focusing on education and claiming to be tailor-fit.

<comment><USER59> The software is terrible, but the ability to draw on the board keeps us from having just a TV / projector. We put up with it because of the added capability.

<comment><USER60> It's a nice feature, I just see people struggling with it far too often. The software is a huge stumbling point, and the finish on the TV versions really detracts from the benefits of 4k.

<comment><USER59> All true, but I'm stuck until I have a budget and a better solution. I might give Microsoft a try on the next go around.

<comment><USER60> Yeah, I'll certainly be seeing if we can try these if/when we get some funding for another "Smart" brand product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Is it actually a product people love or just a product companies buy? The Skype integration seems like a bit of a red flag.

<comment><USER62> Aside from the crappy mobile app, Skype for Business (formerly Lync - <USER2> nothing to do with the consumer version of Skype) is pretty excellent when it's deployed correctly.

<comment><USER63> I totally agree. I got forwarded a skype for business invite this morning for a meeting with Microsoft and I haven't used it before. I clicked on the link followed the instructions, which meant installing a pkg on my mac.

The thing that struck me was that after installing the pkg I got taken straight to the conference - I didn't have to go back to the link, put any ID / PIN or anything. It was seamless.

<comment><USER64> The seamless redirect after install is a nice touch. However the "receive link in email for software/plugin download to install so you can do this important thing" harkens back to earlier times and is the classic malware infection scenario. I guess it still works because enough people still do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Meetings and printing/scanning are two areas where I lose so much time doing nothing. Now only if someone made printing scanning far more simpler and glitch free.

</comment><comment><USER66> We have a few at work in our new building, I really love them. They're very nice to write on, very responsive and fast, and you can wheel them around - brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER67> Wow, companies are spending on average between $450k to $1M per deployment on these things. You don't need too many customers to reach $1B at that price.

</comment><comment><USER68> When I was working on www.kokonaut.com in 2012, my vision for it was a mix between Slack and Surface Hub. The closest thing I've seen was Bluescape.

</comment><comment><USER69> How does the Whiteboard work on this and is it effective?

</comment><comment><USER41> My company is using DiplayTen for our meeting rooms. They are partnered with Zoom Communications and they are able to seamlessly integrate both PC and Mac users as they join into Zoom Rooms.

Also meeting room participants can effortlessly participate using a PC/Mac dongle to share content to the boards wirelessly.

The Hub may be a shiny new Cadillac but like them, require constant professional maintenance. The DisplayTen board we use was out of the box and set up in a matter of minutes with updates done in a simple and timely matter.

</comment><comment><USER70> Didn't they try to offer something similar with the Xbox One? That may have mostly been targeted at consumers though.

<comment><USER71> The Xbox One is a combination of game console and DVR. It has no features designed specifically for workplace conferences, but of course there are tons of apps so it's possible some workplaces are using it that way. In between rounds of Call of Duty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would not be so surprised. MS have, beyond playing dirty, been good at coming up with tools for the office sphere.

</comment><comment><USER72> Plus, it lets Microsoft eavesdrop on business meetings worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER73> This is much much better and cheaper [https://www.acrossio.com](https://www.acrossio.com)

<comment><USER30> Totally different. That is a web-based chat app. MS is selling a large monitor which has chat, whiteboarding, etc, which doesn't depend on a third-party server to run. If that company goes under a year from now, you have to find another app, retrain everyone to use it, etc. Plus, it doesn't have any hardware, so you still need to set up cameras, microphones, fuss with them if things don't work right, etc. That's what MS is selling, something that's plug and play.

<comment><USER74> If you look closer, it's not a chat app.

It actually records all meetings or meaningful team interactions (video mainly) and it allows people to bookmark the moments and put context. After the end of the meeting, all bookmarks, tasks etc are saved and you can share important points with people that could not be there.

The most amazing thing is that you can mention people with permalinks that get you in the exact time something was said.

Now, can it run on a hardware like Microsoft of whatever? YES

but the innovation is in the concept of LIVING MEETINGS that they live after their end, since people can go in and socially enlive them :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> We are using a 70 inch from DisplayTen, bundle with Zoom Video conferencing, it's much better than the skype for business, especially when we have slow internet in our office. The whiteboard and wireless sharing are great, Zoom is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER76> Really? We're calling it a "hit" already? How many have they sold? I don't know anyone who has one, and most people I know don't even know it exists.

Once again Peter Bright being the ultimate Microsoft shill. (I knew this was him before even clicking on the article just from the headline.)

<comment><USER77> 2000 customers, average of 50 devices per customer, average of $15000 per devices

2000 * 50 * $15000 = $1.5 billion

I think that objectively counts as a hit...

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> We are using DisplayTen for our meeting rooms, bundle with Zoom video conferencing, which works better than skype for business when slow internet in our office. The Wireless sharing dongle is the killer app.

</comment><comment><USER78> Google's entrant into the Conference Room Tech market is their Chromebox for Meetings. It doesn't do the whiteboarding, but it's an easy and cheap way to put a webcam/speaker/mic into a conference room that integrates well with Google Calendar.

Obviously it makes the most sense for companies with "G Suite" as employees can then use gCal to book conference rooms, set up Hangouts video chats in the rooms, etc.

And Google's product costs one-tenth as much. I know there's no way I'd get a budget to spend $7k/room at my company, given we only spend $500/room for furniture the last time we redid them.

Having an ok experience with them at my company. Occasionally one needs reimaging but overall I forget they are there.</comment>


An open source object storage server with Amazon S3 compatible API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/journeymidnight/yig <comment><USER2> Cool, it uses a distributed database TiDB as the meta data storage.

</comment><comment><USER3> Minio is what I have been using for this</comment>


Math Can Make the Internet 5-10 Times Faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.en.aau.dk/News+and+Events/News//math-can-make-the-internet-5-10-times-faster.cid102747

<comment><USER2> There is no detail of how this actually works. They are keeping everything secret. Easy to wonder if this is vaporware. "In order for this to work, however, the data is coded and decoded with the patented technology. [...] The company makes the RLNC technology (Random Linear Network Coding) available to hardware manufacturers and they are in secret negotiations that will bring the improvements to consumers."

<comment><USER3> The concept of using different optimizations to transfer and store different data types is interesting, but I agree the total secrecy in this article is disappointing, and there are no references to the study claiming to transfer video 5x faster without interruption.</comment></comment>


Windows 10 one year later: The Anniversary Update - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/windows-10-one-year-later-the-anniversary-update/ <comment><USER2> Windows 10 has a few issues I hope Anniversary fixes:

A lot of core OS functionality aren't searchable (sleep, shutdown, random settings tabs (e.g. privacy), MMC, etc).

The entire Start Menu locking up when DNS times out. I start Cisco AnyConnect VPN client, and connect onto a network with no internet DNS (intranet only), and when I click the Start Menu it hangs and then the entire TaskBar hangs. Only way to fix it is to restart Explorer. Even connecting back to the internet doesn't resolve it.

Also have a lot of phantom ringing from Skype. Someone Skype calls me, it rings in Outlook.com (in Chrome), Skype client, and on the OS(?). Once I answer the ringing doesn't stop, it just keeps ringing and ringing. I also have a Windows Phone (don't ask) and it causes the desktop PC to ring, with no obvious way of answering it or stopping it (even answering the call on the phone doesn't stop the incessant ringing).

The article touches on how jumbled the Settings are between Windows 95 style applets, Windows XP applets, and Windows 10 settings tabs. But it doesn't directly say if they're fixing it. MacOS has definitely had a much better designed settings system than Windows since I can remember, and the Settings "app" isn't really helping.

The biggest thing I want Windows to fix... So TweakUI (remember that?) had a mode where no window could ever steal focus. TweakUI has been retired, and this remains my most hated thing about Windows. No window should be able to jump in front of another without direct user interaction, instead they should just "bob" on the Taskbar, but yet even in Windows 10 I still have windows (e.g. updaters) jumping in front of me when I'm trying to work (e.g. typing in Word, iTunes updater steals focus).

Why does nobody ever discuss how window-focus works in Windows? Why should a window be allowed to steal focus from another application? Why does the OS even allow that? Why did TweakUI's fix for focus never become mainstream?

<comment><USER3> I totally agree about the focus stealing problem. Drives me crazy.

I have a long list of similar blindingly frustrating bugs. I wish there was somewhere where they could be highlighted and discussed. I did try to bring them up in the developer forum, but got nowhere.

Anybody?

<comment><USER2> Have you seen Windows 10's feedback hub? That seems like a place to point out stuff.

If you post it, post the link here and I'll +1 it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps I haven't read an Ars OS review in a while, but this just comes off as an extended advertisement. Where are the valid criticisms that we come to expect from an Ars OS review?

Ars was once the king of opinionated and influential OS journalism, to the point of making the GNOME project _drop everything_ to embrace Spacial Navigation off the basis of an Ars article comparing OS X to OS 9. What happened?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think when it comes to Windows 10, Microsoft has been its own worse enemy.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, not to be all "Herp, derp, Linux is better", but I started using Linux quite recently, and I never realized just how retarded a lot of these things probably have looked like to Linux users since the beginning of time.

I mean, man, while reading this article, the sentence "Just use a different desktop environment." has shot through my head multiple times.

Or also when the guy wrote that they had to have good touch functionality and good mouse functionality in the same DE, I immediately asked myself why, since obviously they could just create two different DEs, one for touch, one for mouse.

And I think, Microsoft could actually have two DEs now, as they've recently separated GUI from core for Windows Server, but obviously, they don't want to maintain two DEs. They wouldn't have done their UWP-stuff, if they wanted to.</comment>


Recreating the Doctor Who Time Tunnel in GLSL - <AUTHOR> http://roy.red/slitscan-.html <comment><USER2> This was pretty neat and works on my Nexus 6:

[https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dtSWS](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dtSWS)

<comment><USER3> Really? Damn. Brings Firefox to its knees on my machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's down to hardware & driver support, I think.

The post doesn't work well at all on my Moto G, and I don't know why. The texture generation doesn't work right and the animation fails completely, and I haven't tried to debug it yet, because probably it's only that particular device that has whatever particular bug it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I built a very simple Doctor Who inspired WebGL game a while back. If I had known how simple this effect was I'd have included it! The (terrible) code is on GitHub if anybody wants to remix it: [https://github.com/mattfran/developer- who](https://github.com/mattfran/developer-who)

</comment><comment><USER5> There are several tunnel effects in the XScreensaver collection and rss-glx (timetunnel, atunnel, blocktube, hufo's tunnel). I don't know if any of them use this same approach. Maybe Hufo's tunnel does, it looks similar.

</comment><comment><USER6> Now try recreating the _Steins;Gate_ introduction in 8-bit pixel graphics.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3vRheJlpeE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3vRheJlpeE)

(side by side: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8YH-1ljDDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8YH-1ljDDk) )

</comment><comment><USER7> So whose face is in the effect just after the Dr. Who logo appears in the tunnel? Watch for it in the upper left of the tunnel.

</comment><comment><USER8> the original was done by pointing a camera at a monitor using the hall of mirrors effect

<comment><AUTHOR> My understanding is that the first intro sequence[1] was done that way, with analog video feedback, but for the Fourth Doctor's intro they were using slit- scan.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4)

ED: just realized that's probably what you meant by "original." Oops. Yeah, that's right. In camera effects!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> P.S. I wasn't sure if this should be a Show HN, because it's a blog post, though it's got code to play with.

<comment><USER9> It's for posting your own cool thing, so it could be. Doesn't hurt anything without though.</comment></comment>


Overdosing on Celebrity Gossip, The News, and Low Quality Information - <AUTHOR> http://jamesclear.com/brain-food

<comment><USER2> _" The problem with most news, gossip, and link-bait titled articles online is that they are filled with surface level information. Your life isn't better off for reading them and you're rarely better informed because of them."_

Strangely enough, that is how I feel after reading this blog post: The title promised more than the content delivered. I recognize the problem, but the article is thin on insight beyond the observation.

It doesn't provide insight. It ends with asking the reader what to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for sharing this article sunasra, accurately describes how I spend (too much of) my time. I am slowly getting better at controlling how much infosugar I intake, but it's still a pesky habit.

Most of the time I waste online is HN-related. I'll read articles that at best I only have a passing interest in. Whilst I enjoy knowing a little about a lot, I'd still prefer to be chipping away at larger projects, even if I only have a few minutes at a time to spend. Time for another HN detox...

<comment><USER4> Turn it off, put it down, go outside. Talk to people. Or make something with your hands.

This is _exactly_ the same like junk food. The solution is the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everywhere you find addicted users, look at who is feeding them, and you'll find perverse incentives: whether they're page views, contextual ads, or in- app purchases. Aggregators compete amongst one another for users, so they trickle out _all_ content. They claim that quality content is voted to the top, but it is ultimately thinly-masked groupthink. Comment sections are often intellectual wastelands rife with people needing to yell and/or 'win' Internet points for no reason at all.

The world needs innovative thought, not people reinforcing the 'right' opinions. I find social media is particularly bad at this: why is it normal to ingest everyone's opinions on a daily basis? Why don't we want that mental space for ourselves?

We're far too content with the cheap substitutes for things that truly satisfy us. Facebook uses this to great effect, and aggregators do too.

<comment><USER6> There is plenty of innovative thought out there. The problem is the lack of efficiency in requiring that every individual find and consume the best innovative thought on her own.

Also, I agree that modern manners insist on a a very peurile fear of conflict, which leads to strong segregation of viewpoints, groupthink, a lack of empathy, and even an ignorance of alternate viewpoints.

What we need, among other things, is a new set of manners that encourage conflicting opinions (or even debate) while providing ground rules for avoiding harm to feelings, reputations, and relationships. The fact is, if people become hurt, angry, or withdrawn when someone simply disagrees (let alone argues) with their viewpoint, there is not really any hope for breaking everyone out of their echo chambers. It's simply not worth it to antagonize people for the sake of calling Scientology bogus or homeopathy a waste of money.

And as long as that is the case, I don't see news aggregators (including all forms of journalism) promoting against-the-grain or otherwise uncomfortable information within their respective echo chambers.

<comment><USER5> And this is the true sadness: new media suffers from the exact same biases/critical flaws of old media. Except it's OK this time, because it's a _different_ set of biases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That popup at the end of the article totally broke my concentration about the subject at hand. I quickly fell from thought to disgust when the popup came up and covered 1/4 of the screen. Then I backed out of the site. Why do people insist on getting their users onboard a newsletter for a blog like this?

<comment><USER8> because it works. the site owner knows it's obnoxious, but the numbers justify the annoyance.

<comment><USER9> Does it really, though? Any hard numbers to back up the "it works"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is almost entirely this post from a week ago: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/07/how-big-is-your- ci...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/07/how-big-is-your-circle-of- control/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This article reads like a call for better curation. There's too much information for everyone to be fully informed about everything. But (and here's where I differ) it's not acceptable to just remain ignorant about things I can't affect. If nothing else, I can (and should) react strategically to even the biggest and the most foregone trends.

Journalism is exactly the answer to a call for better curation. News networks, newspapers, blogs, documentary film-makers, and so on, should be providing the high-level view of what is important and nothing more in an age where attention is a scarce resource.

Unfortunately, there isn't (yet) a successful business model for journalism that rewards the content producer for being efficient. That is, newspapers don't get rewarded for not producing a paper on slow news days (or for being shorter in general). Likewise, TV channels cannot pride themselves on providing a twelve-minute newscast covering the same information as the competition.

On the contrary, all modern sources of information (news, facebook, and otherwise) get rewarded for attracting eyeballs as much as possible, so there is an incentive to do the exact opposite: there's no news today, so here's a kitty fashion show or some linkbait to get your blood boiling.

</comment><comment><USER11> Er, Natural disasters, as caused by climate change, are increasingly within the sphere of human control. War is also very much a result of our own behavior. I have trouble with the argument that 'ignoring' these things has a positive outcome.

<comment><USER6> Or how about: So what if I can't do anything _about_ big issues? There's usually something I can do _because_ of those big issues.

If I'm aware of a war broiling in a certain country, I can avoid investing there. If I'm aware of market trends, I can plan my investments accordingly. If I believe immigration restrictions on educated workers will be loosened over the next fifty years, I can develop products that will be especially useful to people with green cards and white-collars.

Sure, you won't be able to do anything _tomorrow_ , but that won't mean you ready yourself to seize opportunities that present themselves over the next decade or two.

<comment><USER12> I think the author was more talking about the difference between consuming information or consuming narrative even though he didn't quite phrase it that way. Learning about a new piece of regulation that just passed on immigration reform is information. Learning about what the sheriff of Arizona thinks about illegal immigration is narrative. Someone somewhere crafted that piece for you to consume and is spoon-feeding it to you. It's like the junk food of information.

We like narrative, because its fun and exciting and designed to appeal to us, but at the end of the day has very little information value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wikipedia is my modern and globalized version of CliffsNotes. I only deep dive into sources and research if I happen upon a subject incredibly interesting to me (my "fun" reading) or might help me get ahead with one of my projects (my "work" reading).

As for HN, this site provides more of the guilty pleasure of looking inside the tech bubble than actually being an incredible source of information. So to me it lies somewhere between the national news and Wikipedia.

</comment><comment><USER14> I really identified with this article's message. It is nicely written. For my part: in an effort to cut through some of the noise of one of the most popular channels - Twitter - I recently created and launched this service:

[http://qureet.com](http://qureet.com) \- Find Meaning on Twitter.

FYI, it is implemented 100% in golang, and runs on a Raspberry Pi.

</comment><comment><USER15> Literally clicked away from this article to Facebook.

Maybe I have a problem. ;)</comment>


Picasa Web for Online Photo Backup? Not at this moment - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=5edb53748a357d37&hl=en <comment><AUTHOR> When one of my external hard drives failed, I decided to backup my photo library to some online storage space. After some quick research, I settled down at Google Picasa Web, the price was very affordable ($5/year can buy you 20GB). It also has a nifty utility called Picasa Uploader, which can access pictures from my iPhoto library and upload to the Picasa Web.

Everything looked like the way it should be and I was very happy. Until I hit the wall -- there is a limit that one album on PicasaWeb can only contain maximum 1000 pictures. This is very annoying (I should have been aware of this 'flaw' during my research, oh well). Say, I have some 2700 pictures in the 2006 folder (the smart folder in iPhoto, very handy feature anyway), in order to work around the limit, I had to create three albums on PicasaWeb, and make a local temp folder to split the pictures into 3 parts, 900ish each; then, fire up the Uploader to work each folder at a time. That's a pain.

And the uploading was very slow...

I feel sorry for Google Picasa Web, it does have lots of potentials and look like the solution for online photo backup.</comment>


How Forking Perl 5 Could Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2013/01/how-forking-perl-5-could-work.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a commentary on "Perl is not Dead, it is a Dead End" which was discussed on HN here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049457></comment>


Man with tiny brain shocks doctors (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-shocks-doctors/ <comment><USER2> If this much of the brain is not completely necessary for its function then there are all kinds of questions raised.

What is the minimum viable human brain? If our brains are indeed highly- redundant scale-free networks, would it be possible to eliminate a precisely targeted 99% of neurons without significant degradation? Can we simulate 1% of a brain on today's supercomputers? How about emulating an existing brain? Do animals have the raw hardware to match or exceed human intelligence? Can we download human 'software' into modified animals instead of machines? Are we already being simulated?

This would keep me up at night too.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of dropout regularization where you improve a neural network by removing random neurons from the neural network.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropout_(neural_networks)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropout_\(neural_networks\)) and [https://youtu.be/u4alGiomYP4?t=33m53s](https://youtu.be/u4alGiomYP4?t=33m53s)

<comment><USER4> Dropout is only used during training a neural network and also neurons are turned off not removed.

<comment><USER5> Well, the brain is constantly trained and used. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hemispherectomy patients do not decrease in IQ as much as one might assume. Typically less than 15 points. Some have no change and others even a slight improvement.

While not directly comparable, as these are brains with massive problems, you don't remove half just for the fun of it, it's still a testament to the resilience and redundancy of the organ.

</comment><comment><USER7> "If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side"

The way I see it, the Human Brain increases its efficiency (Assuming the 10% Brain Efficiency Myth is true) in such cases, to be able to do all the work that otherwise an entire Brian would have done. I'm curious what would happen if we were to somehow gradually disable parts of the brain, ensuring all functions of the Human Body are still intact, and then suddenly bring all of it back.

<comment><USER8> There is a limit to the flexibility of the brain. In a compensated brain, it is very likely that an injury that would normally not have any effect on function would have devastating consequences.

To answer your question, I'd imagine that it likely depends on the timescale. People with TIAs have decrease in function that lasts minutes to hours, and on return of proper bloodflow, might take days to fully recover. You might see this as people who completely lose speech during the TIA, and then have word hunting for several days.

A brain that adapted to gradually diminished function, say as a result of microvascular changes, over the course of months to years would likely experience the same debilitation if there was a sudden permanent change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are a few recorded examples of this. Peter Watts had quite a good blog post on them a while back:

[http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116](http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116)

About 50% of the examples have above average IQ (he says).

<comment><USER10> That reminds me to read Blindsight again. I find Peter Watts' novels disturbing but fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've heard that most processing in the brain happens near the surface, while the central brain regions are more connective. Is that accurate and could it be a factor here? If he's got otherwise mostly normal brain function, my gut reaction is that maybe those connections were just displaced or formed in other ways.

<comment><USER12> Article says his IQ is 75, which is quite low.

<comment><USER4> But he has a job in the civil service and a wife, which are more useful indicators than a high IQ

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm skeptical of these images. I can't find any follow-up scans on Lorber's patient, despite such an unbelievable finding. Unfortunately John Lorber has passed away (1996), making this patient impossible to track down.

Interestingly someone took it upon themselves to reclaim these images in 2012...

[http://retractionwatch.com/2016/09/08/authors-didnt- generate...](http://retractionwatch.com/2016/09/08/authors-didnt-generate-key- brain-images-probe-finds/)

Only to get retracted in 2016.

<comment><USER14> There's nothing unbelievable in this findings regardless of authenticity of these images. I know about at least one such case here in Russia, from my own fathers career, and he told me there were others. It's something people know about for quite a long time, at least in our country.

<comment><USER13> It is the particulars here that are unbelievable to me. Normal after hemespherectomy - sure, depending on the lobe, you will have fully intact language, hemiblindness but probably can regain motor function on the effected side after some time (depending on age). No cerebellum, nbd, cerebellum does not plan, initiate, or stop motor movement - it only corrects errors and has some putative cognitive roles.

What we have here is far more extreme: massive cortical tissue loss and compression, bilaterally. His striatum looks completely gone. There are many well studied and documented patients with far less tissue loss who suffer major cognitive and learning deficits. That makes this case here remarkable to me.

<comment><USER14> It's probably not a tissue loss, rather it's just undeveloped, as it was in the case I mentioned above. But nevertheless this probably should push nervous system to its limits to compensate such deficiency, so it's quite remarkable indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love the idea that _one of us_ might be an example of a high performing "tiny brain".

What if it's you? Or me? How would we know without a brain scan? Would it matter? Would it change the way you think about yourself and stop you trying?

Probably best to never find out!

</comment><comment><USER16> Another thread on HN points to article [1] that starts:

 _For decades now, I have been haunted by the grainy, black-and-white x-ray of a human skull. [...] The image hails from a 1980 [...]_

Anyway to actually trace back that patient? Do we know who he is (I would like to read about his story and daily life; nothing creepy).

Do we know if he/she is still alive??

[1] [http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116](http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116)

</comment><comment><USER17> The linked article within that story about the other person missing the entire cerebellum is also interesting.

<comment><USER18> It highlights how popular press write science stories too.

The article on absent cerebellum says 50% of neurons are there, clearly a smaller cross-sectional area is missing but this statement serves to increase the magnitude of the issue to the layman ... but in the article where it appears most of the cerebellum is present this key point on brain structure isn't noted; that would reduce the apparent magnitude of the injury.

That may be happenstance, or otherwise unintentional, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of the CTO at my last job.

</comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10810454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10810454)

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice title, one of those which people definitely click. But is the add really necessary?

</comment><comment><USER22> It might be that he has a usual number of neurons but squished.</comment>


The arrival of man-made earthquakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/13/weather-underground

<comment><USER2> Doesn't the arrival of man-made earthquakes signify the departure of even larger natural earthquakes? This would oddly strike me as possibly a valid use of fracking technology -- forcing earthquakes before tension builds to catastrophic levels.

(If so, I'd prefer we did this without pulling up more petroleum products.)

Disclaimer: I skimmed the article. Also, I'm against a future built on petroleum and fracking in general.

<comment><USER3> I would think most of these earthquakes are the vertical-movement variety, whereas tectonic sliding horizontal movement earthquakes are the much larger and dangerous kind, and may not be affected by any release of tension like these man made ones may be creating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dam can also cause earthquake.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake)

<comment><USER5> Checked the original article: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5912/322.full](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5912/322.full) And I cannot see a clear conclusion, just wait for more data and see. More updates for that recently?

<comment><USER6> There's an old USGS paper on the increased seismicity around Lake Mead after Hoover Dam was built.

[http://usgsprojects.org/lee/Rogers_Lee_BSSA1976.pdf](http://usgsprojects.org/lee/Rogers_Lee_BSSA1976.pdf)

The Wikipedia page on induced seismicity has additional examples:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, can anyone cite any reasoning suggesting that we aren't going to trigger the Yellowstone Supervolcano with fraking?

Just curious.

<comment><USER8> I think it's similar to the reasoning for "We aren't going to trigger the Yellowstone Supervolcano with the Tesla Model 3" and "We aren't going to trigger the Yellowstone Supervolcano with new vegan egg replacements" — we just don't have any good reason to believe it _will_ happen.

<comment><USER7> That's not reasoning that's just being sarcastic. Increasing seismic activity... Why not?

<comment><USER8> Because "Why not?" is not a reason to believe something. Cars also cause the ground to shake. So do sledgehammers. Not everything that sometimes causes the ground to shake will cause the Yellowstone Caldera to erupt.

Fracking is associated with relatively small earthquakes. But relatively small earthquakes happen in the area of Yellowstone all the time, so that doesn't necessarily seem alarming.

The thing is, this isn't, as you requested, "reasoning suggesting that we aren't going to trigger the Yellowstone Supervolcano with fraking". But it's also not "just being sarcastic". What I'm pointing out is that we have no logical reason to believe we _are_ going to make Yellowstone explode with fracking. Until there is evidence that something will cause Yellowstone to erupt, it's kind of weird to be asked to argue positively that it won't.

<comment><USER7> You have a very different kind of logic it seems...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> WTF is with the abrupt money talk in the middle of the article? The author just can't resist the urge to bash on the evil oil men? This really spoiled the article for me.

<comment><USER10> The references to money buying political influence are both brief and relevant. I don't see how you could write a credible article on this topic without observing the existence of powerful economic incentives.

(Edit: I originally wrote 'credible argument' which doesn't make much sense)

The oil business is interesting to economists because the real world market comes quite close to the economic model of perfect competition; it's fast and cheap to set up or shut down a well (relative to the value of the oil one may extract), the commodity is standardized and fungible, there are enough producers in the market that they exist as price-takers, and the price of oil is widely known and tracked throughout the economy - far better then any other single commodity. Why _wouldn 't_ you consider the economic factors in a story like this?

<comment><USER11> Well, the article could be simply about the physics of geology or it could add some context.

One important thing about this is indemnification. Since these quakes are induced by industry and some quakes cause superficial (on the earth's surface) damage, the question of who pays for damage to structures arises. Whose drilling caused it? Since it probably can't accurately be pinpointed, it's more likely there be some kind of industrywide insurance scheme which would cover these incidents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oklahoma is a seismically active region that has _always_ had a lot of earthquakes in the magnitude 5 range. USGS even has dedicated seismic hazard maps for Oklahoma. This has been going on long before anyone was fracking in Oklahoma.

Most Americans are unaware that Oklahoma is an active seismic zone and articles like this prey on that ignorance by implying that these earthquakes arrived with fracking. There is a lot of fracking in places do not naturally have a lot of earthquakes but the fact that they always pick Oklahoma suggests that they are trying to construct a false correlation.

A lot of fracking occurs in California too but most people understand that earthquakes in California are going to happen whether you frack or not. Same with Oklahoma.

<comment><USER13> One of the key differences between Oklahoma & California earthquakes is the relative depth of quakes of significant magnitude.

Quakes caused by tectonic plate interaction and those possibly caused by fluid injection may not be usefully comparable - but ask a seismologist, or at least a geologist, not a journalist, or a random internet commenter.

There's a nice interactive quake map at:

[http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map)

edit: Pasting a long (512+ chars) URL did not work well, but use the settings sprocket and the checkboxes for US Faults & Hazards.

BTW, the hot spot in the Missouri/Arkansas area is the "New Madrid" fault, locally pronounced with the stress on the first syllable: "Mad-rid" not "Mu- drid". It makes emergency preparedness folks nervous because it had a big quake in the early 1800s, very little since, and now has lot of brick construction - sigh.

<comment><USER14> Describing the New Madrid quake as "big" is a bit of an understatement. Closer to "The Day the Earth Stood Still" in terms of impact.</comment></comment></comment>


The technological singularity and limits to exponential growth - <AUTHOR> http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/06/the-singularitys-time-in-the-sun.php

<comment><USER2> Eh, just when you thought he was going to spit out the coolaid he swallows it instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an edge of your seat ride every day around here...

I'm of the school of thought that everything allowed by physics will be built at some point in time. The only things worth arguing about are when a specific product is likely happen and whether you're going to help make it happen.

More on timelines and growth constraints based on human nature and incompressible human organizational strategies can be found here in a review of Kurzweil's singularity book from 2005:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/09/reading-the- sin.p...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/09/reading-the-sin.php)</comment></comment>


Lit: Literate Programming for Any Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spro/lit <comment><USER2> Hey, I know who made this. This is a pretty simple tool to convert markdown documents with indented code into runnable programs, simply by deleting the markdown and un-indenting the code. AFAIK the simplest literate programming tool on the market. It should work with basically anything because of that simplicity.</comment>


Show HN: React Reactions – Slack, Pokemon, GitHub, Facebook and YouTube Pickers - <AUTHOR> https://casesandberg.github.io/react-reactions/ <comment><USER2> I am seeing css styles in javascript more and more now. Is this a performance thing?

<comment><USER3> Worth noting that the same author created a fairly popular library for JS styles: [https://github.com/casesandberg/reactcss](https://github.com/casesandberg/reactcss)

It's more about getting locally-scoped, composable CSS than performance. It's similar in concept to CSS Modules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Glitch in chrome: [https://share.viewedit.com/hpHseCYcRVRFowSoxWEV2H](https://share.viewedit.com/hpHseCYcRVRFowSoxWEV2H)

</comment><comment><USER5> Glitchy in Firefox 47, Ubuntu 15.10

[https://snag.gy/1ELC2A.jpg](https://snag.gy/1ELC2A.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> Did you get permission from Slack to rip off their emoji picker like this?

<comment><USER7> Along the same lines, did you get permission from Henry to use his name?</comment></comment>


Interactive learning startup Top Hat Monocle wants to gamify learning - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/15/top-hat-tournament/

<comment><USER2> I tried using this in my classroom at a local college and found it to be quite useful. Students were able to send answers from their cell phones, which made it really accessible.</comment>


The Windows Era is over... - <AUTHOR> http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/The-Windows-era-is-over/1274899297

<comment><USER2> It seems that 2010 is the year of the cloud on the desktop. With revolutionary products such as Youtube, who can argue?

On a more serious note, I really don't see why everyone is getting so excited about their devices becoming dumb terminals and giving away their power to corporations that own the cloud.

I shudder at the thought of powering on a ChromeOs device and having to log in to Google to be able to do anything.

Not sure about the Windows era being over, but we're certainly entering a Google era and it's getting really difficult to ignore Google. Both of the Opera browsers on my phone are locked into Google search (previous versions had mulltiple providers, Amazon, Wiki, etc). Firefox comes with Google. Chrome comes with Google. Android is tightly integrated with Google. A lot of people use Gmail and Gdocs due to lack of alternatives. A lot of websites use a Google powered search.

I'll never buy an Android device because I'm getting weary of Google: they're becoming too powerful and control too much information.

Furthermore, they are competing unfairly: they use their ads profits to dump products on the market at very low prices or for free, killing the (possible) competition. For now this has been good for the consumer, with two observations: you're not getting something for free, you're paying with your privacy; once google gets big enough it may get to be the only player in some markets and that always ends badly.

<comment><USER3> > _Furthermore, they are competing unfairly: they use their ads profits to > dump products on the market at very low prices or for free, killing the > (possible) competition_

How's that unfair?

I don't fear Google because the cost of switching is low and I only stay with them as long as their products kick ass. Not only that, but they do make it easy to import and export your data using standards on all their products that I use ... GMail has POP3 out of the box, Gdocs can export your docs in whatever format (HTML/OO/PDF/Word/Excel), GReader can export your feeds in OPML.

As far as search engines go, replacing them is ~5 clicks away in both Chrome and Firefox. And from a dev POV, I only care about white-hat seo stuff, like having good articles with semantically correct tagging that all other search engines care about.

I care more about the availability of my data and about my privacy. There's no point in fear mongering about what might be as long as they are playing nice ... trust and reputation have been the foundation of any society for thousands of years, I can't see why that wouldn't continue to work.

E.g. both Apple and Microsoft have betrayed my trust, and now I don't use their products or recommend them anymore. And I don't really miss them that much ;)

<comment><USER4> I also think it is somewhat unfair. They have lot of money from their ads, so they can create product in another category (for example GPS), and offer it for free, while other companies who don't have those advertising dollars can't offer their product for free. Basically they can easily kill competition in certain niches, since they can support their product by money gained by another product (Adsense/Adwords). Maybe it is not unlawful, but fair is it not.

<comment><USER3> > _so they can create product in another category (for example GPS), and offer > it for free_

That specific case I view as a good thing, since turn-by-turn GPS data was provided by an oligopoly for high fees, which is a lot more "unfair" to everybody.

<comment><USER5> Who gets to decide which kinds of businesses are allowed to make money and which must be free?

<comment><USER6> Usually the market.

<comment><USER5> Really? So when one company is getting all its revenue from ads and gives things away free in other market segments it is _the market_ that decided those areas weren't worth anything? Care to sight any credited economics sciences people who explain this?

<comment><USER6> I don't mean market as just being purchasers but the overall market of suppliers, consumers, and, of course, regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _In March I declared the end to the Wintel (Windows-Intel) hegemony when asking..._

 _About five years ago, when blogging as an analyst, I asserted that computing and informational relevance had started shifting from the Windows desktop to cloud services delivered anytime, anywhere and on anything..._

That's a pretty odious writing style.

<comment><USER8> There's a name for that: Unwarranted Self-Importance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Short Version: There's blood in the water. People are realizing Windows could fail and that in itself is leading Windows down the road to failure because other companies are now starting to vie for Microsoft's core business where as they wouldn't have dared before(Example: HP buying WebOS)

<comment><USER10> Windows is going to have to play nice with other technologies.

To an extent, this is already in place, with technologies such as WCF that support web standards.

I'm currently talking with a potential client about splitting out part of a Silverlight thick app to a platform-agnostic RESTful api to allow mobile and webapps.

It's to Microsofts credit that this sort of thing is getting easier, though it's an uphill battle to sell such techniques to Microsoft development shops that still regard running a Citrix viewer to a Terminal Services farm, as a web-app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> MS missed the chance to marginally extend Windows relevance by making Visual Studio more accessible and relevant. The "architect" and "testing" versions of the IDE are ludicrously expensive. And even though they claim VS2010 is better for JScript development (the MS name for javascript), it's still an inadequate IDE for javascript.

I would think the point of VS is to sell copies of the OS, office, SQL Server, Exchange, etc. Not to be a profit center on its own.

It's too late to attract independent and small web developers, but perhaps they could extend their life with corporate development by making all versions of VS free, even open sourcing it, and fix the editor so you can collapse down javascript code by curly bracket pairs now, don't wait for VS2012.

A real shame. The .NET Framework, C#, Linq, and from what I gather F# were all conceived and carried out very well.

</comment><comment><USER12> In other news, water is wet, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is STILL dead.

</comment><comment><USER13> PG: The other road ahead, September 2001

The whole idea of "your computer" is going away, and being replaced with "your data." You should be able to get at your data from any computer. Or rather, any client, and a client doesn't have to be a computer.

<comment><USER14> John Gage: "The network is the computer", 1984

There's not really much more to be said than that. Most people here are aware of the competing visions of that time, and Microsoft never quite got it as their business model depended on (depends on) a computer on every desk. Apple never quite got it either (though, a little more now). Sun got it (obviously). Google got it even more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hogwash.

I have more pc's than ever. Everyone I know has one or two. So now we have multiple copies of windows out there PLUS an android phone and apple device in a household.

Microsoft doesn't have to lose for Google/Apple/Whomever to also prosper. It's not a zero sum game for one computer in a household. Multiple winners, not one loser.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a "smart phone" with Internet connection, but I've used it about 5 times in the last year. Its useful for checking emails but horrible to try and respond. If you actually need to do something on the net, you need a netbook or laptop..which needs Windows or Linux.

<comment><USER17> I have a smart phone with an internet connection, which I use daily to send and receive email, read blogs, search with Google, look things up on Wikipedia, etc. In fact, virtually everything I do with Chrome/FF on my Windows PC, held back only by a somewhat non-standards-compliant browser, which will apparently be fixed with the next major release of Blackberry OS. I send virtually all my personal email using my phone now (I keep it away from my work email account).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that everyone is looking for microsoft's Waterloo to come, which I don't think will ever happen. MS is fighting a war of attrition where their monopoly is slowly getting gnawed away. If Linux, a renewed Apple, and Google didn't kill Microsoft, how will some pidly little thing like the cloud?

</comment><comment><USER19> It was over in 2003. It's time to consider the ends of iPhone and Facebook eras. =)</comment>


How did a 30 year-old Su-22 defeat a modern AIM-9X? - <AUTHOR> http://www.combataircraft.net/2017/06/23/how-did-a-30-year-old-su-22-defeat-a-modern-aim-9x/ <comment><USER2> If you enjoy reading about electronic warfare, it is worth reading Steve Blank's "Secret History of Silicon Valley".

Here's the bit about moths [1]:

> John said, "Listen, you can hear the jammer." The what? "The jammer," he > said, "Watch the moths." It turns out the moths, through evolution, had > developed their own electronic countermeasures to jam the bat radar. They > had developed ultrasonic receivers and ultrasonic jammers and physical > countermeasures. When they picked up the bat radar illuminating them by > sensitive hairs on their antennas, they would send out their own little > squirt of ultrasonics by rubbing their legs together, jam the bat radar, and > then they would immediately take evasive action and dive to the left and > right.

> Through Darwinian selection over millions of years, these moths had > developed an entire electronic warfare, electronic countermeasures, > electronic countercounter-measures suite, and here was a guy in 1973 in > Thailand who was figuring this stuff out. To be honest, it was my first > insight that there was really a bigger picture.

> So, John's point was, "I keep trying to tell officers way above me that > there's probably a ton we could learn from watching these natural systems. > What we're doing in the air war over the North is just nothing more than > something that's been going on in nature for millions of years, but I can't > seem to get anybody's attention." (Thirty years later MIT would develop the > Insect Lab and work on swarm behaviors for UAV's and robotics.)

[1] [https://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon- va...](https://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon- valley/page/4/)

<comment><USER3> Reminds me about this piece about microbes using mechanical "weapon-systems":

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/watch-militarized- mic...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/watch-militarized-microbes-use- some-sophisticated-weapons-to-snare-prey/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a 14-year old missile.[1] It's a variant of the Sidewinder missile from the 1950s. The Sidewinder has a good track record partly because it's so dumb. Classic versions are tail-chasers; the pilot must get on the opponent's tail before firing. Newer versions are supposed to be "all-aspect", but they still work better if they can see the hot end of a jet engine.[2]

[1] [http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/aim-9x/](http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/aim-9x/) [2] [http://www.donhollway.com/foxtwo/](http://www.donhollway.com/foxtwo/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Overfitting to the training data. Sounds vaguely familiar.

</comment><comment><USER6> Call it a hunch, but if the flares spew dirty and irregular, maybe there's an awareness that this sloppy spread of IR readings has benefits.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. Sloppy is random is simple is robust.

This reminds me of a story where the USA got its hands on a new MiG and when they opened it up found that it used some kind of antiquated technology. Some time later the USA found out that this was intentional because the older tech could withstand nuclear radiation whereas the new tech would instantly fail.

<comment><USER8> Was the Radar on the Mig-25 that a defector landed in Japan, they used Valves when all the US radars had moved almost entirely to transistors.

Fun history, the Russians demanded it back off the US/Japanese so the Japanese government let the US take it apart, photo and test the parts (as quickly as possible) then shipped it back in crates _and_ billed the Russians for the shipping. Which iirc they never paid.

<comment><USER9> _Was the Radar on the Mig-25 that a defector landed in Japan_

There's a similar story about the "sloppy" riveting work on the Mig-25. Turned out to have significant beneficial effect in the airflow.

<comment><USER8> The USSR was brilliant at doing more with less (advanced technology).

That was brought home to me in a documentary I watched about the Mig-29, the US/Nato avoided FOD (Foreign Object Damage) by scrupulously walking the runway/apron every day and cleaning up.

The USSR just put air intakes on the top for taxiing so crap didn't get sucked into the main inlets.

It was such a simple design and yet the advantages in a war situation operating from crappy debris strewn airfields where obvious, they had Mig-29's taxing over rough dirt berms and all sorts of crazy things (at least from a western viewpoint).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Obvious follow up question: soviet tech is easy to come by, at least the kind that's now used in dozens of countries. How is the missile not designed to be effective against the most likely target? Surely Raytheon must have a dozen versions of Russian and European flare dispensers and not just the US kind?

<comment><USER11> The answer: this is war propaganda. There are no real facts here, only half- truths and mis-direction.

<comment><USER12> What are you suggesting? That the Su-22 wasn't actually shot down? That the AIM-9X was actually successful, and the AIM-120 wasn't used?

You can't just say "blah blah propaganda, blah blah misdirection" every time you see a news article from a war zone.

<comment><USER11> Read what I said: this article may be full of misdirection and half truths.

<comment><USER12> No, you clearly did not say that the article _may_ be full of misdirection. You very emphatically stated that the article _certainly_ contained misdirection, but did not deign to tell us mere mortals what that misdirection might be:

"The answer: this _is_ war propaganda. There _are no_ real facts here, only half-truths and mis-direction." [Emphasis mine.]

Calling everything around you propaganda may seem like an easy way to look smarter than everyone else, but it is a painfully transparent move when you can't back it up with substance. It's even worse when you try to pretend you weren't doing it.

<comment><USER11> Okay, so the purpose of this article is what, exactly? To highlight the technological prowess of US forces when compared to their rivals?

And you think this doesn't involve any propaganda at all?

<comment><USER12> That's a fairly obvious dodge.

I would assume that the primary purpose of the article is to generate advertising and subscription revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it interesting the US jet was an FA-18, which entered service November 1983 (USN) is actually more than 30 years old as well.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hor...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet)

<comment><USER14> This is equivalent to say a couple years old Ford F-150 is a truck from 1975. The branding is the same, the shape is similar, but it ain't the same plane.

Super Hornets are still being produced, upgraded and improved and will probably still be in the assembly line in 20 years. A 30 second Google didn't show the year of the F/A-18 in question, but I assume it is from the mid 2000 or something like it.

This was even more true for Soviet tech. The American B-52 are ancient, but the Soviet Bears were produced, upgraded, replaced and improved until the very end. Cost-plus programs like the F-35 with enormous upfront R&D are good for the manufacturer, suppliers and lobbied politicians, but iterative designs, like evolution, also just works.

<comment><USER15> The Tu-95 "Bear" is still is service:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95)

<comment><USER14> Yes, but my point was more about the Soviet program of continuous improvement associated with it. According to your link, they stopped the assembly line at the collapse of the USSR. It doesn't prevent them from upgrading the existing airframes like for the B-52, but it isn't a true rolling replacements/improvements program anymore like the F/A-18 [almost] is.

Edit: Maybe the F-104 starfighter program would be another good example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've often wondered if a WW1 stringbag could fly right past modern air defenses without being detected or tracked.

<comment><USER4> Probably not, since modern air defenses are effective against small missiles and even mortar rounds. Here's a CIWS in Afghanistan shooting down incoming mortar rounds.[1] (Read the comments for more explanation from people who have been there.) The CIWS has radar which can track not just the target, but its own bullets. It makes quick adjustments until bullets and target are in the same place at the same time.

On one occasion, a US ally shot down a hobbyist-sized drone with a Patriot missile. Very expensive, but it hit the target.

[1] [https://youtu.be/KsVUISS8oHs](https://youtu.be/KsVUISS8oHs)

<comment><USER17> An ababil UAV is larger than a hobbiest drone and the PAC5 apparently missed it and it was downed by a derby missile fired from a near by SPYDER battery.

<comment><USER17> Pac3 not 5 don't know why 5 got in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are we certain that the first missile actually missed or could this just be America saying, "Oh, gee whiz, our missiles sure are terrible. No need for anyone to upgrade their countermeasures."

</comment><comment><USER19> Out of curiosity, anyone know the overall expenses for an AIM-9X and AIM-120, vs. an SU-22?

<comment><USER20> Wikipedia lists: AIM-120 400 000$ and AIM-9X 600 000$.

Which is very surprising, typically short range missiles are cheaper. Apparently AIM-9X has gone through recent face-lift that still affects prices.

Su-22 is harder to find, but comparable aircraft SEPECAT jaguar goes for about 8 million.

<comment><USER21> Check wikipedia again

an AIM120C is 300-400k

an AIM120D is 1.7M (I _think_ it was listed as 1.2M last I checked this page)

According to this [http://www.f-16.net/f-16_armament_article1.html](http://www.f-16.net/f-16_armament_article1.html) a sidewinder in 1999 had a unit cost of 55k-85k which would be 9L,M, or P most likely. 9X did enter service until 2003

These toys, much like the planes carrying them get progressively more expensive in newer version.

But the cost ratio stay much the same. You get 4-6 AIM-9 for the cost of one AIM 120

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a perfect example where machine learning will overcome the issues of variability in burn times and intensity.

I think ML will have a great impact in warfare.

<comment><USER19> ML isn't going to help if all your training data comes from friendly flares.

<comment><USER22> You get your data when you fight an enemy airplane.

<comment><USER23> That's not a lot of data

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> still waiting for the answer, how was it able to do it?

<comment><USER25> The AIM-9X uses IR signature and it was trained to ignore US type flares which have a very consistent burn between different batches. Soviet era decoy flares are very irregular and for some reason the missile IR targetting prefers some of the Soviet flares to the Su-22 engine.

<comment><USER26> That's in the article, but it's pure speculation as applied to this particular event. It's possible the pilot screwed up or the missile just failed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Obvious follow up question: soviet tech is easy to come by, at least the kind that's now used in dozens of countries. How is the missile not designed to be effective against the most likely target? Surely Raytheon must have a dozen versions of Russian and European flare dispensers and not just the US kind?

</comment><comment><USER28> Cancer on mobile. Kept sending me to the App Store to install various spammy apps.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ah, but the modern AIM-9X is not so modern anymore. AI will be able to decrease false tracking.

</comment><comment><USER30> No mention, of course, that the American pilot was actually protecting the terrorists(even Michael Flynn talked about US financing the terrorists in Syria before he got sacked) the SU-22 was targeting but this is a different story here( here we are talking about geeky technical things like why the exceptional missile from an exceptional country was not so successful)

<comment><USER31> What acts of terror did those commit? Oh, none? So why are they terrorists and not freedom fighters?

How come "anti-establishment" doesn't mean anti-Russian/Syrian-dictatorship?

<comment><USER32> I just mention what your ex defence minister has told the public. Period. And there are no freedom fighters in Syria. Just missionaries on washington's payroll. [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47311.htm](http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47311.htm)

<comment><USER31> I'm not even on the same continent as the USA, and I don't reckon belonging to or owning any secretaries of defense.

That's certainly a nice collection of links, yet don't seem to answer my question at all.

Also, claiming there are not freedom fighters in Syria is denying the whole civil uprising in 2011, and all of the utmost brutality and horrors perpetrated by the Assad regime against those protesters.

I'm not advocating funding terrorist groups, nor do I think the CIA and the Pentagon did a great job. (The whole intel/defense community is in shambles. Too much internal infighting, too few people taking responsibility, too much politics, funding issues, too much corruption because too much high-tech gadgets that must be maintained, produced, supported. You know.) But your worldview is overly simplistic if you think the story is that "a US plane was protecting terrorists". Those fighting on the ground probably have a very flawed sense of religion and what's right, how the world should be, but they're are currently fighting a fucking dictator. And that's a good thing.

The situaion around Raqqah (where Tabqah is) is basically the Rojava trying to purge ISIS from Raqqah while keeping Assad at bay at Tabqah.

see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava) for who these folks are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This unfortunately seems to again validate John Boyd's sentiment that a low tech, highly maneuverable, simple and reliable single purpose fighter with a simple gun is a better investment for actually winning a war than incredibly expensive high-tech planes tested by people with clip boards.

Edit: Between 1 F35 for $85 million or 5 F16 for $73 million total my money would most certainly be on the F16s.

<comment><USER34> Boyd hated the F-15. Funny how the F-15 is undefeated, and if you look at how it has fared in Israeli hands, it's one of the most exceptional fighters when it comes to actual combat...

And you seem to be implying that numerous SU-22s would have fared well against the Super Hornet? You could put 10 Fitters up against the Bug, and it'd still win before going winchester.

<comment><USER20> The super hornet typically only carries 6 air to air missiles. While SU-22 can carry the most modern short range aa missiles.

Hornet would not win with gun only against 4 missile armed fitters. If the missiles are modern. In air warfare numbers have always mattered and always will.

<comment><USER34> Iraqis thought the same thing, as did most of the Arab world when fighting the Israelis. While Stalin was partially right (quantity has a quality all its own), the most valuable factor in determining the outcome of air combat is pilot skill. And even if the Fitter pilots were as good as the Hornet pilot, they don't have as good ESSM/ECM systems, nor as good AWACs providing support.

The Bug doesn't even typically carry 6 AAMs. The one that did the shootdown probably only had 3-4 depending on its mission tasking. They have to worry about bring back weight when landing on their carrier. But for our hypothetical, the Bug can carry 12 missiles without a lot of trouble (1). It might not have much range, and the drag would be a bitch, but the Fitters would go down in flames...

1\. [http://runway.cz/img/zbr/aim120_2.jpg](http://runway.cz/img/zbr/aim120_2.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Reminds me how su-24 completely shutdown a sophisticated Aegis defence system on US destroyer in a Black sea recently. The crew was so demoralized that they all quit upon return to the shore. [http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/11015434](http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/11015434)

I bet it was some old Soviet tech from the sixties.

<comment><USER36> That never happened and for people to incredulously report that it did is absurd.

[https://medium.com/dfrlab/russias-fake-electronic- bomb-4ce9d...](https://medium.com/dfrlab/russias-fake-electronic- bomb-4ce9dbbc57f8)</comment></comment>


Amazon Launches "Mac Downloads" Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000691231

<comment><USER2> Anyone knows on what are the reqs for publishing into this store?</comment>


Ask HN: Problems/Opportunities in Medicine/Healthcare - <AUTHOR>

For those who have had experience in the medical/healthcare fields, whether as profession or patient, what problems do you see exist as opportunities for clever software/webapp solutions? I'm not just talking about EMRs and implementing huge infrastructure -- even simple and nifty web apps that may serve to a subset of individuals with a particular disease or help handle a job for private practices are definitely welcome. <comment><USER2> \- iphone/android vaccination tracker for travelers

\- vision prescription app for iPhone/android

\- iPad book reader app for people who have vision and mobility impairments due to stroke

\- trackers for blood pressure, diabetics, diet, mood, etc. (there are already tons of these but there are many UI improvements possible.)

\- travel/immigrant related medical apps for mobile devices. for instance, if I'm in France, how do i get to a doctor? how do I get a new set of contact lenses? Likewise, for someone who just moved here from China, how do I do the same in the US?

\- many physicians have to use this horrible EMR software called "EPIC." all of them hate it. the UI is amazingly bad. If you made some sort of app you could sell to physicians which they could overlay on top of EPIC with a usable UI, they would pay good money for that.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a patient: keep track of simple things like my kids' vaccinations over the years, while moving countries etc. Google health lets me do that, but then it also tries to do 100s of other things, and it's too US-specific.</comment>


Bespin is now Mozilla Skywriter, moves to GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://mozillalabs.com/skywriter/2010/09/02/bespin-is-now-mozilla-skywriter-moves-to-github/

<comment><USER2> To say that this project is awesome is a HUGE understatement. We are currently using it in our upcoming CMS (<http://www.gethifi.com>) as an in-browser text editor. It looks and behaves great: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/gethifi/4952045778/>

They are currently trying to get it to work on the iPad/mobile safari. That could quickly make the iPad a reasonable mobile development environment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, it's huge. And there is more to come due to the flexible plug-in model.

BTW. The mockup of your CMS looks impressive.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! It's actually not a mockup -- that is running live as is everything in that Flickr account.

We're actually in our last stage of heavy development. We've got ~35 sites running on the system now and will soon be able to open it up.

<comment><USER3> Open source or something else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At first I have to admit I didn't quite get the point of Bespin, but I've realized its incredible power as I've come to appreciate the web as a viable platform for most applications. I will probably use it when I transition one of my current projects to the web, and look forward to seeing what others do with it. I have only one complaint so far: alt+left/right is used to move by words instead of the more common ctrl+left/right.

[This comment was edited with Bespin bookmarklet]

<comment><AUTHOR> Kudos for using the bookmarklet. :)

The whole point of Skywriter is the underlying totally new architecture: The use of canvas, incredibly fast rendering and unlimited editing file size. No other textarea-based editor can do that. When it comes to editing source code in the browser, there are often 5000 and more Lines. Other editors slow down or can't even handle such many lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Idea for it that me and a friend had: often times when new users need help in IRC they paste some code, and make some changes, and repaste etc to show what their issue is. The idea is to write a plugin for editors that, at a click of a button, live streams the content to bespin^Wskywriter and they can just link the "view into the editor" to IRC so people can see the code in a real time way. Then when they're done they can kill the "view".

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. What you are describing sounds like a combination of EtherPad and Skywriter.

<comment><USER6> And gist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really cool name, logo, and concept.

</comment><comment><USER8> Any plan for IE support?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there is no plan to support current IE. Skywriter relies on the <canvas> element and makes heavy use of html5.

<comment><USER9> IE9 will support the canvas element.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter is close to completely useless - <AUTHOR> http://metro.us/us/article/2009/06/05/04/3818-82/index.xml

<comment><USER2> This is terribly stupid. Along with the fact that the participation ratio of anything tends to look like that (web forums are close to completely useless! HN is close to completely useless!), don't you have to be a member of twitter to get your own custom following feed? A twitter account's value is not simply the ability to produce, it's a customization hook too. At least, I can't figure out how to follow two people from Twitter's home page without logging in.

Yes, if you make up a terrible definition of "useful", some obviously useful things will turn out not useful! Hooray for you! ... simply fiddling with semantics like that is just a way to try to look important, not to say anything actually important.</comment>