Secure Hardware and Open Source: An Alternative to Java Card - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Ledger/secure-hardware-and-open-source-ecd26579d839 <comment><USER2> Here is a fully open secure hardware device:

[https://sc4.us/hsm/](https://sc4.us/hsm/)

(Please don't submit this link to HN. I want to stay somewhat stealthy until I've had a chance to write an introductory article.)

At the moment it's only a prototype. I have done a very small production run, so if you want one to experiment with, contact me. I'm planning on doing a kickstarter to fund a real production run.

<comment><USER3> One thing that seems to be missing from your project is the actual "HSM-ness". Things like side channels and so probably are not relevant to the target market, but some kind of assurance that device's firmware was not tampered with is probably required.

<comment><USER4> Well side channel attacks should be very relevant for all projects involving security. And several similar projects have already been produced (see TREZOR, KeepKey in the Bitcoin space), based on a similar chip which is in my opinon not great for that kind of use case (the fuse protection mechanism is not certified, the chip doesn't offer any protection against active physical attacks and so on) - that's well explained in the original Yubico article.

<comment><USER2> The SC4-HSM is not designed to be secure against physical compromise, but it can be made resistant against such attacks by encrypting the keys with a pass- phrase. This is not a perfect solution because the pass-phrase needs to be entered through a non-secure host, but it's better than nothing. An attacker would need to compromise the pass phrase _and_ obtain physical possession in order to mount a successful attack.

<comment><USER3> With this security model it is in essence no better than plain USB flash drive. I would assume that adding at least some protection against physical attacks could be reasonably simple and would greatly expand the usefulness of the device (eg. making it somehow inherently tamper-evident and replacing the DFU bootloader with something custom and open that does the same thing as RDP Level 1, but without the bricking risk)

<comment><USER2> > With this security model it is in essence no better than plain USB flash > drive

I disagree. With the right firmware, the SC4-HSM can securely generate keys that cannot be compromised without decapping the chip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So what measures does this "secure" C alternative offer against memory corruption to be positioned as better option than Java Card?!

<comment><USER4> It's based on public ARM specifications (MPU + service calls) so the attack surface is way smaller compared to a virtual machine and the performance is of course way better. Applications can still corrupt their own memory space temporarily (not rewrite their code) but can't touch other applications or the Operating System.

<comment><USER5> So I don't see any benefit to go from possible logical errors to possible logical errors + memory corruption bugs.

<comment><USER4> the benefit is running native ARM code that you can verify vs running slow interpreted code in a black box. Have a look at the SHA-512 implementation in Java Card quoted in the article and it should be fairly obvious why you want to avoid that kind of pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is relevant for things like OpenPGP Card ([http://g10code.com/p-card.html](http://g10code.com/p-card.html)) etc. Running free software on practically non-researchable proprietary platform is worrying.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's gonna be hard if you really want security. Card developers put a lot of effort into securing operations against sidechannel pertuberation, sidechannel and many more attacks, that opensource developers will hardly be able to handle on theeir own.

<comment><USER4> This architecture allows you to move gradually from certified libraries (included in the proprietary HAL) to your own custom libraries when you're satisfied with the result.

</comment></comment><comment> TD-Linux Was there a justification why the Ledger Blue still has a proprietary HAL?

<comment><USER4> yes, some parts of the chip are still available only under NDA (typically I/Os, cryptographic accelerators, tamper detection)</comment></comment>


How was the first assembler assembled? - <AUTHOR> https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/129123/were-the-first-assemblers-written-in-machine-code <comment><USER2> If we have the following things:

a) Monitor

b) A rudimentary file system

c) Shell

d) Keyboard input

e) Rudimentary text/line editor

Then the first, or one of the first "assemblers" that would have been written is HEX2BIN.

That is, you enter your assembly code, in hex, and you run HEX2BIN to generate your executable file.

All it does is convert hexadecimal character pairs 00-FF to a single binary value from 0-255, and writes that value to the standard output stream, which is hopefully redirected to the executable file to be generated.

That's it.

But that's a huge jump in functionality from using switches or even punched cards.

How does HEX2BIN evolve from there, what's its next step in becoming a more powerful assembler?

Labels.

That is, the abililty to insert a text label into the HEX stream, which will now represent an address after the code preceding it is converted, and the ability for the fledgling assembler to automatically insert that address in later code when it sees the text pattern of a label.

Newlines might be included in this "fledgling" assembler, that is, every line now can be either a hex stream, OR a label, and if it's a label, then further references to that label get auto converted to an address...

And the assembler evolves from there...</comment>


The Bad News About the News - <AUTHOR> http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2014/bad-news?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=14546300&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-99lsT9-65Nxgq3uPcYuxJhEJVZGzbZjcfUV_2LbfWszPDyuniAtvRLz_J2IZ8tR1lnUMVp7GDpyGCDq4iEy5-igr9oRH78gmlXUNOGogK3Gh-Wc5s&_hsmi=14546300 <comment><USER2> The article doesn't note that at least for the major networks the news divisions that weren't expected to turn a profit. They were allowed to run at a loss and revenue from the entertainment and sports divisions was used to make up the difference.

At some point in the 80s profit became the be-all end-all of corporations, including the media. The news division was no longer allowed to be purely a cost center, it now had to at least break even in its own revenues.

While this doesn't help newspapers -- they pretty much are going away as printed ad revenue disappears -- it still matters to TV and online sources. As long as the news reporting function is expected to be a profit center it will be at the mercy of whatever ad revenue it can directly generate. Thus you see click-bait stories and instant "rehosting" sites overwhelmingly growing because they generate the revenue.</comment>


Make A WordPress Plugin - Readme.txt and Refactoring | FooPlugins - <AUTHOR> http://fooplugins.com/make-a-wordpress-plugin-part-readme-refactoring/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting. I've recently started building WP plugins myself and I would like to know what the workflow is for doing it through github.

I don't really like invoking the global, though that may be the way Wordpress does things and i'm just not aware. I've been able to avoid it in any case with one multi-file plugin by dependency injection.</comment>


Does anyone else get sites breaking when you're using a VPN? - <AUTHOR> I use a VPN [1] for my own privacy and security reasons. I often find, however, sites either bouncing me to captcha sites (normally the Cloudflare captcha IIRC) or just refusing to load.
For example, I tried searching on Etsy, but when entering a search term and hitting return I just get a blank page. I turn off the VPN, try again, and hey, presto! It works.
Perhaps this is more of a rant than a question, but I would also be really curious as to how people are seeing this. I'm seeing it as a fundamental assault on the freedom of individuals to browse the internet, as well as on the decentralised nature of the internet as giants like Google (through AMP) and Cloudflare funnel all the traffic through them.
My view is that this is a really concerning development, beyond my own inconvenience. Does anyone have good strategies for dealing with this or suggestions for how we should resist? Or perhaps a different lens through which to view this?
[1]: https://www.mullvad.net <comment><USER2> I guess the IP addresses used by VPNs will get a lower trust factor for a number of reasons - the material accessed and actions performed will differ to the behaviour of someone not using a VPN, as most people choose to use VPNs only some of the time. Also, some people use a VPN for abusive purposes such as spamming or trolling and this can affect the trust level of the IP address and associated range.

I find the combination of a VPN and private browsing causes problems when browsing the internet, but using a VPN and my regular browser profile doesn't really differ, so I guess that means I can be tracked in that way.

My theory is that as more people start using VPNs for regular browsing this issue should start to diminish, as the good or neutral actors will begin to outweigh the bad actors and therefore improve how those IP addresses are seen in isolation.

The other way that could go of course is that VPN IP address space is permanently tainted for as long as it's used for that purpose in order to make browsing the web as unpleasant as possible for VPN users to force them into the happy path of letting their activity be spied upon by their governments.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use the same VPN and have had no problems with this. In fact, part of the reason I subscribe is I see less captchas and it keeps me from getting locked out of my account when I'm traveling.

VPNs are not perfect though. Check out [https://mullvad.net/en/help/faq/](https://mullvad.net/en/help/faq/)

They block some ports and do some workarounds for weak spots like webrtc. Some sites might be applying hacks. Cloudflare is a known problem but it could depend on which IP you pick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which region do you tend to connect via? I'm normally connecting via the UK (because I'm based there) and I wonder if some exits are basically semi- blacklisted.

<comment><USER3> I'd rather not say exactly, but I use some of the less common regions for that reason, not UK or US. It's interesting to know what prices poorer countries get too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some websites will restrict search or other behavior if your VPN is in a major public cloud, such as AWS, as it's an indicator that you might be trying to scrape their site. For example, you can't watch Netflix or purchase from Nike from an AWS IP. I believe in Nike's case they are trying to prevent people from automating the buying of limited edition sneakers.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use VPN (protonvpn) and privacybadger and I find pb breaks more sites than VPN (or maybe its both in conjunction?)

Some sites wont deal with traffic coming out of known tor nodes, which i would consider part of the same resistance to free browsing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have µMatrix and lots of websites break but I'm more ok with that. I'm very irritated by having to disable my VPN, allow traffic outside of it, and then reload the website.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's Wrong with Your Hosted Time & Billing Software - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently a Harvest (http://www.getharvest.com) user, and it works great for my needs as a freelance developer. I showed it to my accountant, and he was underwhelmed and deemed it not feature complete.  He tried to explain why it fell short on his requirements (much of it on the reporting side). Most of it went over my head, with various accounting terms and what not, but it made me curious; how can these types of hosted time tracking and billing be improved from a feature standpoint?<p>What features are missing from the web-based time & billing tool that you currently use? If you can include your industry and role, it will help qualify the responses. <comment><USER2> There are more "feature complete" products out there. People who use harvest (myself included) use it BECAUSE its simple, and doesn't require an accountant's mind to understand. Those people are freaky.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I have been looking for a time tracking application that is DEAD SIMPLE to track my daily activities. I work for a large consulting firm and I am required to track the hours I bill to each of several contracts on a daily basis by filling out a time sheet online. I am not responsible for sending invoices or anything so all of the programs with additional capabilities like that seem too cluttered for my uses.

Clearly, I am not the target audience for a complete "fully featured" application, such as the one the OP describes.</comment></comment>


Teach yourself Anything - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@msuworld/teach-yourself-anything-83d8a8b2e5b8#.gvt5z1oe5 <comment><USER2> check out this older book Thinking as a Science

It had a great approach to learning something new that I think is still valid today.</comment>


Programming languages with extensible syntax - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164665/programming-languages-with-extensible-syntax

<comment><USER2> No way this goes more than an hour or two without being closed.</comment>


A humorous introduction to Haskell  - <AUTHOR> http://freeshells.ch/~revence/Link.lhs

<comment><USER2>
      let nth = Nothing in
      whatStringPlease js

shouldn't that be:

      let nth = Nothing in
      whatStringPlease nth

Otherwise, it's a fascinating read.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely enjoying the article so far. Literate programming seems to fit Haskell very well. The little 'Selah' is very Kurt Vonnegut, which is the high praise. public static void main.

</comment><comment><USER4> Candidate for new Haskell slogan:

"Let the PhD grecophiles write your code, and _you_ earn the money."

</comment><comment><USER5> x++;

public static void main.</comment>


Winamp Skin Museum - 0-_-0 https://skins.webamp.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Winamp skins make me miss the fun of software circa 2000. The sun was bright and the possibility space wide open. A piece of software would come out, make huge strides in enabling a new use case effectively, leave the door open for people to make it theirs - and boy did they ever!

In the last 20 years how have software music players changed? The files come from a subscription service easier to use and with much better metadata than tracks from Napster ever did. That's awesome! Also the subscription dictates you use their hot turd of software, with dreary spartan UI and zero room for functional customization to be had. Welcome to the future, now learn to like it or get called a luddite.

<comment><USER2> We've lost so much since the 90's and 00's.

Most people are using less configurable computers: phones.

We can't easily install the software we want on our devices (iPhone especially, but Android also to an extent). Add to that the fact that we have to go through a distribution channel that takes a 30% cut. It's gross af.

The social media platforms took over from websites. Nobody really bothers with personal websites or blogs anymore since the majority of the population get their news from social media. Why spend effort building for the long tail?

Forum communities are dead because of social media. Facebook pages and subreddits are not the same.

There's one search engine, and it has a pretty big moat. This search engine built a browser and is now trying to destroy ad blockers via extension capability removal and web bundles.

It's pretty obvious that Google is trying to kill the web. AMP, steering away from semantic web, etc. They want everything to be Chrome.

Firefox doesn't have as much user share because of aforementioned browser.

We invented some cool protocols along the way (blockchain), but also lost a few that were really great (bittorrent, DHT).

IRC is pretty dead. Now there's Slack and Discord. Riot is a pretty distant third.

Apps and websites got SUPER BLOATED.

A few things have improved, though: Git is pretty freaking sweet, and Rust is the language of the future.

It's like when Link wakes up in Ocarina of Time after retrieving the Master Sword. Except in our case, everything's suddenly shiny, but feels plastic and artificial. We've discovered we're now renting everything and craftsmanship has withered away to a world of composability and integration.

It's a simple story: billions and billions of dollars chased after capturing and exploiting the average human user. Each company it super simple to adopt their platform. To do so they had to destroy the competition and create a moat. These negative externalities coupled with high concentrations of users to platforms has left a wake of destruction.

The indie, free and open web got knee-kicked by the giants.

<comment><USER3> Most of this is nonsense.

Most of what you're describing is simply an extension of Eternal September. "We" haven't really lost any of these things. It's just that newcomers don't care about them so much.

And that's okay.

Why would I be upset that that some teen or 20-something, who primarily uses the internet to post and browse selfies on social media, does so from a phone rather than a IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad? Their main use case is Instagram or TikTok. A ThinkPad makes no sense for them. But I can still buy one.

Social media platforms "took over" in the sense of having more eyeballs. But so what? Few if any of those eyeballs are really interested in the things that I'm interested in from websites, blogs, etc. Moreover, websites and blogs are still around, and just as populated as they ever were. It's just that there's a bigger population on social media sites.

There ARE multiple search engines. DuckDuckGo even has good policies. True, none of them may be as good as Google. But pretty much ALL of them are better than Lycos, Infoseek, AltaVista, and all of the old-school competitors who lost to Google.

The only thing on this list that's a halfway decent point is Firefox user share. Just to the extent that browser engine monoculture gives Google a lot of power. But as long as the engine is open source, and there's a possibility of more privacy-conscious players leveraging it (e.g. Brave, Vivaldi, etc), then I can live with that.

The "positive" bit about Rust being "the language of the future" gives me the impression that you're mostly mourning geek culture being delegated to a side subculture, instead of being the dominant culture of the Internet itself. To an extent, it is a bummer to no longer be at the forefront of the hype wave. But to be honest, now that I'm middle-aged I don't so much care about being at the forefront of the hype wave anyway. As long as I have my crufty greyboard corner in the Internet's basement, I'm happy. And that doesn't really seem to be going anywhere.

<comment><USER4> As someone who sympathizes with the parent, I think it's mostly a lament for a lost favorite hangout. What happened to the internet, for me, feels like when a local restaurant gets featured on diners drive ins and dives and suddenly you can't just walk in and sit down, if you get a table it's too loud and crowded to enjoy, they can't function on just the usual staff so they hire a bunch of asshole hipster waiters that ignore you, and the food quality wavers. The internet got popular. The people who remember it before it was ubiquitous miss what it was and are disappointed by what it became.

<comment><USER5> The nuance and poetry of this comparison to a favorite local diner is a refreshing breath of air and conjured up a very similar sensation in thinking about what the web is now compared to the one we had.

Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Winamp was so slick. Lightweight, did one thing very well.

A modern version would probably be built on Electron, be a 500Mb download & require 8Gb RAM to just run (12Gb required if you want to change the skin).

I long for the days where things weren't so bloated.

<comment><USER7> Just to trigger you, we did that :P

[https://desktop.webamp.org/](https://desktop.webamp.org/)

It was just an experiment to see if it would work, but if you want something to hate-download check it out :P

<comment><USER8> Didn't you notice that the link in the post itself goes to the same website? :p The skins from the museum are hosted on and implemented on Webamp.

<comment><USER9> The person you are replying to is literally the creator of the website, so I expect they know that. They were pointing out that there is explicitly a desktop version. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Loved this web project ever since I learned about it.

Also think Winamp, hands down is one of the best pieces of software to withstand the test of time.

Winamp v2.92 still runs on Windows $LATEST. Geiss/Milkdrop Plugins and all.

Lets not forget the high quality audio output; its 834 KB (854,016 bytes) binary size and next to nothing CPU/MEM usage (Testimonial: left it playing my entire music collection in a forever loop and memory usage never budged more than it start with <3)

My primary music player still to this day and when on Linux Audacious or VLC

Of course other notable players: FooBar2000 Media Player Classic (MPC-HC)

<comment><USER11> > Winamp v2.92 still runs on Windows $LATEST

I loved Winamp, but this has more to do with Microsoft maintaining backwards compatibility for a long time. Try running something from Mac OS 9 on a modern Mac.

<comment><USER12> For what it's worth, qemu-system-ppc works extremely well on a modern Mac and setting up a virtual OS 9 system is very easy.

And because you're emulating and not virtualizing, it works just as well on ARM Macs, too.

Screenshot: [https://i.imgur.com/3usNwXz.png](https://i.imgur.com/3usNwXz.png)

<comment><USER13> I think his point was that no average user is going to do that -- whereas any Windows user can just double-click the .EXE and it works.

<comment><USER12> I wonder how difficult it would be to make a wrapper program around qemu to reduce this problem to a couple of clicks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Winamp is a media player for Windows, macOS and Android, originally > developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev[5][6][7] by their company > Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million.

80M, for an MP3 player is peek 1999

<comment><USER15> They also had a directory of streaming "stations", Shoutcast

<comment><USER16> And you could install shoutcast to host your own station! I remember hosting one for all of my friends to listen to, and we all had a great time.

Of all the things of the internet of old, Winamp 2.x, its skins, shoutcast and the visualization library are what I miss the most by far

<comment><USER17> Oh I'd forgotten about the visualisations. Those were, for me, one of the best parts of Winamp.... other than the sound bite about a llama. :-)

<comment><USER18> > [https://desktop.webamp.org/](https://desktop.webamp.org/)

TripX was the jam. [https://winampheritage.com/visualization/tripex3/92178](https://winampheritage.com/visualization/tripex3/92178)

<comment><USER19> TripX was pretty, but Geiss, Milkdrop, and Gforce were my favorites, if only because of the insane number of add-on visualization presets. What was always ironic to me was that most of the presets by the actual developer were pretty garbage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember long nights by the crt screen back in the late ninties. My parents would go to bed and I was left with a newly found napster application and winamp.

I would watch the download finish, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, and then i would open up that track with winamp and my favourite skin.

I loved those nights as christmas. It was so intens and a totally new world for me.

Miss those days at times

<comment><USER21> Ah, man. I wish I could still get as excited about things as I did back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh this is awesome. I remember using Winamp in high school, and I think it was Winamp 2 came out one morning and they had an Easter egg on the site, writing in with the location of that Easter egg netted you a reward. It was a Winamp t-shirt.

It was a cigarette box with the llama on it.

Winamp, it whips the llama's ass.

What a trip down memory lane.

For those that aren't aware, the guy that created Winamp (Justin Frankel) is now working on a DAW called Reaper ([http://reaper.fm](http://reaper.fm)). It's stellar for what it is as well!

</comment><comment><USER23> Found it! [https://skins.webamp.org/skin/5e4f10275dcb1fb211d4a8b4f1bda2...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/5e4f10275dcb1fb211d4a8b4f1bda236/base-2.91.wsz/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I love this, like a trip back in time! My favorite skin was this one, which interestingly became the basis for XMMS, the classic Linux Winamp clone:

[https://skins.webamp.org/skin/d72ca73bdde779b18e8e8980962124...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/d72ca73bdde779b18e8e898096212426/Fusion%20AMPdeck%202.wsz/)

(For reference, the XMMS default skin is on here too: [https://skins.webamp.org/skin/dd26a8459c364a833e53ef0d994562...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/dd26a8459c364a833e53ef0d9945622f/xmms.wsz/))

<comment><USER16> My favorite of the older generation skins was "Classix", which was later ported to Winamp 3.x too

[https://skins.webamp.org/?query=classix](https://skins.webamp.org/?query=classix)

<comment><USER24> Oh that's a good one, too!

I remember that skin had an associated "uxtheme.dll" theme you could install on Windows XP, which was one of the best third party XP themes out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Deep inside me I hold a hope that one day we can return to GUI design like this. My human soul demands more than the bleakness of material UI

<comment><USER26> I can relate. But would pixel-based designs really work well on today's hires displays?

<comment><USER27> We have the technology for pixel perfect rendering (SVG, ...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I lived through it, so you'd think i'd remember, but what struck me was how long anime girls have been a part of 'computer culture'.

Winamp, OSX Aqua, Sonique, Shoutcast, Windows 9x : all gone.

Rei and Lain -- still immensely popular across the internet.

edit : found my old favorite [https://skins.webamp.org/skin/78deb012fc1bd1db7ccc00de2a28a1...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/78deb012fc1bd1db7ccc00de2a28a124/The_Winbreta_v2.wsz/)

there's something nice about contrasting chickenscratch style hand-writing with graphing paper and the rest of the rectangular interface plastering the rest of the computer. Almost a squiggle-vision Dr.Katz feel to it.

<comment><USER21> Let's all love Lain!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The Jennifer Love Hewitt skin should tell you what era this was popular! This brought back high school/college memories (from the late 90s to mid 2000s)

<comment><USER16> The various Mac OS X Aqua ones are also a dead giveaway!

[https://skins.webamp.org/?query=mac%20os%20x%20aqua](https://skins.webamp.org/?query=mac%20os%20x%20aqua)

I remember running with those for quite a while even though I only bought my first Mac in 2019

<comment><USER30> I remember using one of these. I wasn't even remotely aware that those are somehow MacOS related back then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It took me a while to realize that all the skins are interactive and playable --not just animated. The playlist is the same for all (and includes the llama soundbite), but all the buttons and equalizer sliders work. Really neat (and in-browser capabilities never cease to amaze me).

<comment><USER7> Glad you enjoyed it! The Winamp player ("Webamp") is open source: [https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp](https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love the idea of software museums. We need more of these. In the future we will have to have something like software archeology to keep our aging legacy systems running in perpetuity. Imagine a large, critical legacy system built on ancient software continues for 100+ years, and the cost to replace it with modern technology is devastatingly expensive and close to impossible?

Oh wait, we already have systems like that in the US Federal government! Okay they're not more than a century old, but ai can imagine scenarios where they will be. The programmers for these systems are in now their sixties and early seventies, with very very few younger engineers learning the old stuff, especially recent graduates.

We need a specialized CS program just for this.

</comment><comment><USER33> Justin Frankel, the Winamp developer who sold to AOL and later made Gnutella, the original p2p file sharing phenom .. has this AMA website and he still replies in hours if you ask him something. [https://www.askjf.com/index.php](https://www.askjf.com/index.php)

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow, the skin I made is in there: [https://skins.webamp.org/skin/20b66bbd0313e399e8981ead0b0bd2...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/20b66bbd0313e399e8981ead0b0bd264/Aureus1.0.wsz/)

I haven't seen this in what feels like forever. I use Foobar200 now.

I made this using Dreamweaver when it was still popular and useful. It had really nice slicing features for graphics at the time.

<comment><USER35> NICE! I found the one I made as well. Holy nostalgia. I was actually using the skin several years ago on the Linux player Audacious. I should install it again...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey! Author of the site here, thanks for sharing. I'm happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER36> This is an awesome site! But the scrollbar behavior is a disaster. There are four scrollbars, and none of them allows me to navigate the main content.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for flagging. I'll be sure to fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I notice if I submit a URL & title that already exist, the story doesn't get submitted and HN forwards me to the previously submitted post, but I submitted this yesterday so how does this avoid said redirection?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366172)

<comment><USER7> Funny! Author of the site here. I came to post a "Show HN" but it got redirected to your post so I gave up :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think this shows the entire collection: [https://skins.webamp.org/?query=*](https://skins.webamp.org/?query=*)

<comment><USER7> Search results are capped at a certain limit, but no query should give you the full results. No query was breaking before due to hug of death, but things have stabilized a bit for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Nucleo AlienMind & NLog stand out in my memory, they were and are so great. I think Winamp clearly got a lot right.

[https://skins.webamp.org/skin/bfd4187850616fc9b4e433c4b632b6...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/bfd4187850616fc9b4e433c4b632b68d/Nucleo_AlienMind_v5.wsz/)

[https://skins.webamp.org/skin/6edc6d5a5d07ceb361912824a17004...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/6edc6d5a5d07ceb361912824a17004d7/Nucleo_NLog_v102_.wsz/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I just can't get this site to work. Nothing shows up, the "Random" button doesn't take me anywhere.

<comment><USER7> Hug of death. Working to get things working again.

<comment><USER7> I think things have stabilized a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shoutout to [https://twitter.com/winampskins](https://twitter.com/winampskins) which is listed in the about section. Commenting here in case others miss it

</comment><comment><USER41> I happened across this the other day that should work with these: [https://winampify.io/](https://winampify.io/)

> Winampify is a Web Client for Spotify using Winamp 2 skins

It's made by Rémi Gallego, who releases music as The Algorithm and Boucle Infinie.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm trying to think of areas of software that still have UIs that match this type of non-uniformity and creativity and can't think of very many.

The only one that immediately comes to mind is GPU overclocking software on Windows ala [https://www.evga.com/precisionx1/](https://www.evga.com/precisionx1/)

<comment><USER43> Twitch stream layouts look like this. I've also seen some crazy obs skins (it's made in qt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Winamp skins are an interesting source for design inspiration since the player follows the template of a single page mobile application.

</comment><comment><USER45> I 'member X11amp, it was in the glory days. Things were simple back then, no systemd, none of this k8s stuff, perl ruled the scripting scene and people wrote maintainable code. People had time to test their code. SCSI was the thing because you couldn't get IDE cd writers. Floppy drive cables had a twist so you had a primary and secondary. They were 50K per second. Mobile phone users complain loudly and change operators if their phone internet is slower than MB/s.

Anyway, please add the x11amp skin! It was something like this:

      <http://daffyduke.lautre.net/pictures/png/x11amp.png>

Hopefully it won't become my white whale, this rabbit hole has gone pretty deep:

      <http://www.x11amp.ml.org/>
      <https://web.archive.org/web/19981206071453/http://www.x11amp.ml.org/skins.html>

</comment><comment><USER46> If the author is around, I get double scrollbars in Chrome on Ubuntu

double horizontal [https://i.imgur.com/4joQkPL.png](https://i.imgur.com/4joQkPL.png)

double both horizontal and vertical [https://i.imgur.com/0MoiDdD.png](https://i.imgur.com/0MoiDdD.png)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for flagging. It got reported yesterday but haven't had time to fix. Scrollbar blindness is real on mac: [https://svenkadak.com/blog/scrollbar- blindness](https://svenkadak.com/blog/scrollbar-blindness)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Not a big fan of scrolljacking. Make the page work with space/page down, etc.

<comment><USER48> Those work fine for me. Firefox 79.0 in Windows 10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I miss the era of design where the form factor never changed. You could design stuff like this without worrying about the window resizing because you simply couldn't resize the window.

</comment><comment><USER50> Fusion and Cold Fusion were the best, IMO:

\- [https://skins.webamp.org/skin/cc24464c27369f14e2631c709eb095...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/cc24464c27369f14e2631c709eb095f6/fusion_ampdeck_2.zip/)

\- [https://skins.webamp.org/skin/efb2ac84260d283513e8b940de12cf...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/efb2ac84260d283513e8b940de12cf3d/cfusion202.zip/)

</comment><comment><USER51> Page doesn't work for me in Safari on iOS 13.6.1

There's a top bar and then everything else is just all black.

<comment><USER52> Same here in Win10 on Firefox 80.0

<comment><USER53> Same here on chrome for Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Ah, takes me back to before the flat anti-skeumorphism trend, when unique UIs were socially acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER55> This page shows that there was an "art" to making a good Winamp skin. You couldn't just pick a background picture and make all of the buttons transparent, or else the GUI became incredibly difficult to use. You had to balance the theme with usability.

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow, some of mine are in here. That's amazing.

</comment><comment><USER57> Found mine! Amazing! Hadn't seen it in years.

Turns out it's not as good as I remember. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER58> I couldn't seem to find Flow by Uriel: [https://www.deviantart.com/uriel/art/Flow-5172551](https://www.deviantart.com/uriel/art/Flow-5172551)

</comment><comment><USER59> I still use Winamp. Many skins and plugins still available - [http://www.mywinamp.com](http://www.mywinamp.com)

</comment><comment><USER60> There's also the archive.org winamp skins collections: [https://archive.org/details/winampskins](https://archive.org/details/winampskins)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for pointing that out. This website draws from that exact collection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> My word, I made the MozAmp skins. 3 was great, 2 was bad, but 1 was awful and I actually had lost it. I had hoped the internet had forgotten MozAmp 1, but nooooooo, 15 years later is surfaces.

</comment><comment><USER62> Ah, simpler and better times. When I pretty much brough my own music to work and had a dedicated directory. I was amazed that a program could list the title and artist of the song.

</comment><comment><USER63> Famicom skin!

[https://skins.webamp.org/skin/5efc489eb8c7866a43e9fdf237755f...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/5efc489eb8c7866a43e9fdf237755f65/familycomputer.wsz/)

XMMS skin!

[https://skins.webamp.org/skin/dd26a8459c364a833e53ef0d994562...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/dd26a8459c364a833e53ef0d9945622f/xmms.wsz/)

</comment><comment><USER64> For linux users out there, in a previous discussion, audacious has a winamp 2.x appearance, and it can even be skinned with winamp 2.x skins!

</comment><comment> WD-42 These can still be used with the Audacious media player! Great piece of software that I still use to listen to online radio streams.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is absolutely awesome. As someone who is _still_ using Winamp daily, I'm thinking of replacing my shortcut with a script that, before launching the executable, opens the .ini file and writes some random skin's name in the property, so that at each execution I'll be shown a different skin.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is one incredible journey back into my teenage years. Thanks so much to the developer and the person who shared it here!

</comment><comment><USER66> Awesome. They even have noerroramp my favorite and the skin I'm using as of this moment and have for ~10 years now.

[https://skins.webamp.org/skin/8a466a39534e4be0dc6ca5cc0d6f5a...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/8a466a39534e4be0dc6ca5cc0d6f5a80/noerroramp.wsz/)

</comment><comment><USER67> I used this one for years: [https://skins.webamp.org/skin/83447bc283821369d0887e3ee38c19...](https://skins.webamp.org/skin/83447bc283821369d0887e3ee38c1972/r-mix.wsz/)

I still think it's an incredible piece of art/design.

<comment><USER68> Artist here, thanks for the kind comment! I still like it too, can't believe it's been 20 years already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Somehow I don't see most skins here that were popular in russia in late 90s..early00s. Have no idea where to dig them now, but some of those were really cool. A lot of them were anime-themed, movie-themed (Aliens, Predator, Matrix, Terminator, etc).

</comment><comment><USER70> Black screen for me, in chrome and ff

<comment><USER46> When I get the black screen, I notice in the dev tools this request gets stuck at pending and never returns - [https://api.webamp.org/skins?offset=0&first=100](https://api.webamp.org/skins?offset=0&first=100)

<comment><USER7> Hug of death. Working to resolve

<comment><USER7> Should be stabilized now. Monitoring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Some kind of dark version was my fav (a bit like Xmms looked by default). Most special one, aesthetically (yet still with function of Winamp), was probably Winamp with a Kjofel skin/interface.

</comment><comment><USER72> Ah, I remember some of them. To be honest I mostly used the default one and nowadays the included Bento (except to modify the eq which is still better on the Classic skin with ctrl-d)

I also remember some cool plugins, like the one that would put speakers left and right.

</comment><comment><USER73> So nostalgic. In all the example images, the Matrix (1999) soundtrack will play after the Winamp intro sound.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HaF-nRS_CWM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HaF- nRS_CWM)

</comment><comment><USER74> Try these out on VLC using these instructions: [https://www.hacktrix.com/how- to-apply-winamp-skins-on-vlc-me...](https://www.hacktrix.com/how-to-apply- winamp-skins-on-vlc-media-player)

</comment><comment><USER75> Oh man... it's 2020 and I'm here discovering and installing Winamp skins :)

FEUEREIS is beautiful

</comment><comment><USER76> I loved Winamp. There's a theme for every occasion and it great attention to detail. I always had it opened to admire the beautiful interface and enjoyed seeing the equalizer movements.

</comment><comment><USER77> Not a comprehensive collection; there are repositories of classic winamp skins scattered throughout the web. I myself still keep copies of every skin I've used in Qmmp.

<comment><USER7> If you know of any ones we are missing, please send them my way. I'd love to add them here and to the collection we maintain at the Internet Archive.

<comment><USER77> deviantart.com use to host plenty of winamp classic and modern skins (version 5+) but sadly, it's no longer publically browsable. Others like wincustomize.com and customize.org already have snapshots on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I can't find the "Yellow Submarine" skin that used to my favorite. I expect that if I found it I would be overwhelmed by a frisson of Proustian nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER79> Anyone else get glitched views when they open up an individual skin and it switches to the animated view? I'm on Firefox and it seems to work fine on Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER80> I wasted hours with winamps themes, and the advanced visualization studio. I like to think I managed to create some half decent presets too.

</comment><comment><USER81> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366172)

</comment><comment><USER82> This website was a delight to view on mobile. Perfect use of space. Infinite scroll. Search. No wasted space with nonsense. Wonderfully done.

<comment><USER7> Wow, thanks for the kind words! My only fear is for mobile users on a metered data plan. I suppose we show fewer images per screen than on desktop, but I do fear that it will add up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> So many good memories, the simplicity of this player was wonderful. I made a skin for sure, but I don't think I ever submitted it.

</comment><comment><USER84> It's neat how a strange name wakes up memories. Just reading the link title, the image of WinAmp's gray gradient UI popped in my mind.

</comment><comment><USER85> I used to remember playing with Winamp skins for hours as a kid and watching the visualisations. Loved it! This brings back memories.

</comment><comment><USER86> Are there any details somewhere on how the skinning was implemented in software? It's so amazingly flexible.

<comment><USER7> These "classic" skins were just a zip file (renamed to `.wsz`) containing a number of bmp sprite sheets. Future versions of Winamp had free form skins which consisted of XML and a custom scripting language called MAKI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> No mention of 5.8 in the comments yet... winamp.com

Is this really the original team? Or a clever scam?

</comment><comment><USER75> I still use Winamp, with the plugin that shows the lyrics of the current song.

</comment><comment><USER88> As a quad 22 owner, alas broken, I can recall running the quad 33 skin.

</comment><comment> V-2 OK, I'll be the one to say it. Nostalgia aside, 99% of these skins make me think "why on Earth would anyone want an app they _use_ to look like that??"

</comment><comment><USER89> Please don't hijack the back button. Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER90> Linkin_Park_-_One_Step_Closer[128kbps].mp3

If you know, you know

</comment><comment><USER91> This site really whips the llama's ass!

</comment><comment><USER92> Some of these are pure works of art....

</comment><comment><USER93> The nostalgia is strong with this one

</comment><comment><USER94> oh, I scrolled through these and saw so many I've used, so many years ago... nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER95> Makes me miss Windows XP ;)

</comment><comment><USER96> Jeez there's a lot!

</comment><comment><USER97> Y'all are talking like you don't have Winamp 5.666 installed on your PC right now.

</comment><comment><USER98> Obligatory: that's not a llama you hear, it's probably a goat or sheep. The llama says: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah4h3Mo4pRI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah4h3Mo4pRI)

</comment><comment><USER99> The prefix of "Winamp" is critical in the title here

</comment><comment><USER100> ctrl-f "llama"

ONE post? seriously?

I'm disappointed!</comment>


How to Fix Everything That's Wrong with the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackernoon.com/what-is-wrong-with-the-internet-and-how-to-fix-it-c67w32no <comment><USER2> Step 1: reach agreement with all interested parties about what's wrong with the Internet.</comment>


The power of I AM and how to use it - <AUTHOR> https://www.nairaland.com/4700320/power-how-use-it <comment><USER2> I ARE - Eyeh Ashar Iyeh</comment>


Learning to Launch – Stop Failing. Start Launching - <AUTHOR> https://learningtolaunch.co/ <comment><USER2> Direct to book: [https://learningtolaunch.co/read](https://learningtolaunch.co/read)</comment>


Most Memory Leaks are Good - <AUTHOR> http://www.shopify.com/technology/4321572-most-memory-leaks-are-good <comment><USER2> Memory leaks are not good, ever. The author just has a wrong definition of memory leak.

      A memory leak is any memory that is allocated, but never freed

This is not a memory leak in most people's books. A real memory leak is memory that is allocated, not used anymore by the application and never freed.

This is a small but important difference. What the author described as "good memory leak" is just allocated memory.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I had never really appreciated the fact that people working in GCed languages had to deal with memory leaks. One of the things I enjoy in the limited time I work away from C and C++ is not having to worry about memory leaks but I guess it can happen depending on the complexity of the system and what you're plumbing together.

I'm wondering, though, is there no way to point back at the code that did the allocation? We used to instrument our heap management routines to give us whatever info we need to figure out who the offending allocator is, e.g. functions, line numbers, thread IDs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Misleading headline , but a nice, and useful, anecdote about the techniques they used to find a memory leak, ending with a good explanation of why the typical ruby tools would not be able to find it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was expecting this to be an essay on how memory leaks are good because they expose code bugs that only are exposed in long-running code, that would never be found normally or in unit testing.</comment>


Vim is now a more popular topic than emacs on HN - <AUTHOR> http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=vim,+emacs

<comment><USER2> Vim is also more popular than sex, <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=vim%2C+emacs%2C+sex>, but I am still not going to use vim!

<comment><USER3> If emacs users bothered to read its manual[1] maybe sex wouldn't be so unpopular

[1] <http://sqzm14.ust.hk/sexman.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an emacs lover, I could not let this pass uncommented. I have to confess that I've given vim more than a look lately (I even wrote a review about vim for iPad), after reading about some new stuff here. Curiously enough, the stuff people are talking about vim here lately (except for VIM adventures) are (for example, one that was discussed several times) org-mode clones.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh, I'm definitely switching now! :)

</comment><comment><USER6> That is an obnoxiously long animation to get to the most relevant data (the current data).

<comment><USER7> I find the animation quite good, it adds to the dramatic affect and builds anticipation on the final result. That is if hntrends is used for contests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Emacs is like "Linux on the Desktop", it will never dominate the market, but the people that love it... will keep writing lambda calculus interpreters in it...

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think I'd read a trend into that.

Emacs had a short burst of popularity that's reverted to the mean. Vim's had a little uptick in the last few months, but nothing to write home about.

Plot it on a different scale and you'll see that it's just noise; <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=vim%2C+emacs%2C+python>

</comment><comment><USER10> hmm.. I will start worry when the number of commits to the Emacs source tree fall behind of VIM.

<http://www.ohloh.net/p/emacs/commits/summary>

<http://www.ohloh.net/p/vim/commits/summary>

</comment><comment><USER11> Just switched from MacVim to Emacs as my main text editor. Org-mode is very powerful for outlines and tasks. For a while I stayed with Vim because it's lighter on system resources, there are nice plugins like a lightweight Org- mode clone and VimWiki... and it's hot in the Ruby/Rails community. But the 60 or so MB for Emacs is lightweight compared to mobile and desktop standards now and has features that blow any editor out of the water. No reason to stay with Vim (except on iPad). Reportedly Emacs also runs on Android... so with Evil mode and Emacs I keep all my Vi bindings and have the best of all worlds: calculator, calendar, planning, games, integrated browser, emacsspeak screenreader etc. The only thing I miss is a nice Cocoa file tree browser next to the GnuEmacs editor window.

<comment><USER12> >nice Cocoa file tree browser next to the GnuEmacs editor window

Have you tried M-x speedbar?

<comment><USER11> Hi Fein, thanks for the tip. I noticed the speedbar tree, and it's adequate.. but I'd rather like a nice Cocoa tree like in Alloy's MacVim port <https://github.com/alloy/macvim/wiki/Screenshots> instead of a NERDtree like speedbar.

<comment><USER12> Ahh, then what you want is ECB.

<http://ecb.sourceforge.net/>

and a screenie: <http://kasun04.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/emacs1.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think we can use this to infer how many programmers who actually work for a living are contributing to HN:

[http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=vim%2C+emacs%2C+visual+stu...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=vim%2C+emacs%2C+visual+studio%2C+xcode)

;)

<comment><USER14> I'm sure the decline in emacs is mainly due to RSI :)

VS user here. I'm genuinely surprised that it's trending that low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Note that this could be caused by a number of things. A couple thoughts:

It gives equal weight to submissions and comments. There could be a lot more vim submissions from a handful of contributors, but they may be less likely to get the votes to bring them to the attention of HN.

Another possibility is the increase in popularity of other text editors, namely Sublime Text:

<http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=emacs%2C+vim%2C+sublime>

It could be that Sublime Text stories garner more comments from vim users for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's more popular also according to Google <http://www.google.com/trends/?q=vim,+emacs> but the word "vim" has various meanings.

<comment><USER17> When searched on Google, vim can be any of these things (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim>), and many more. Notice that Korea is the top searcher, and Vim could very well be a popular Korean name.

<comment><USER18> In Japan 'Emacs' seems to rock too :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sensationally meaningless?

</comment><comment><USER20> I have tried very hard to get with vim and really learning it but I have always end up switch back to emacs for 'real' programming.....

</comment><comment><USER21> I think this correlates closely with the observed decline in civility and quality discourse on HN :)

</comment><comment><USER18> As an Emacs user this doesn't really scare me, but I do know and always defend that Emacs and Vim are the best and only two decent editors out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> as a lifelong vim user, what is emacs?

<comment><USER22> Emacs is something that Vim aspires to become one day :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> vim is more popular than sex, god, and cats. [http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=vim%2C+emacs%2C+sex%2C+god...](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=vim%2C+emacs%2C+sex%2C+god%2C+cats)

<comment><USER24> apparently god and emacs are positively correlated! <http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=emacs%2C+god>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Round one: fight! _ding ding ding_

</comment><comment><USER23> LIES!!!ONE!!!!</comment>


Ask HN: 15 lines of code to represent yourself - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine was recently asked in an interview process to provide 15 lines of code, that he wrote, that represents him. After thinking about it I wondered what I would have submitted. Do you choose lines from an old side-project? Do you write 15 fresh lines? Do you provide a fancy algorithm? What if you're a web developer? I assume these lines are going to be "judged" by other developers that would potentially end up working with you.<p>Is this something you've had to do before, if so, what did you send? <comment><USER2> Never done before, but this is roughly what is currently in my clipboard:

function digest(s) \--return crc32(s)..adler32(s) \--return hmac_sha1(pass,s) return sha1(s) end

function phe_encode(s) t = {} for i = 1, #s do t[i] = digest(s:sub(1,i)) end return t end</comment>


GM Stock Sinks 30% After Analyst Sets $0 Price Target - <AUTHOR> http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/081110/business_us_generalmotors_research_barclays.html

<comment><USER2> They fell behind 20 years ago and have been trying to catch up ever since. With no success. The only thing a government bailout now ensures is that there will be another bailout in a few years time.

Let them die.

</comment><comment><USER3> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it perfectly possible for General Motors go go bankrupt but continue to operate?

I'd sure miss GM (particularly Cadillac, Opel, Holden and even parts of Chevrolet) if it ceased to exist, but if the company can go bankrupt, discharge some of its liabilities, and have its valuable assets bought up by other car companies (Chevy goes to Tata, Cadillac goes to VW, Buick probably winds up Chinese and Pontiac vanishes altogether) then that'd be okay too.

A government bailout at this point would be a favour only for the unions, not for the shareholders. (Which is why it will probably happen.)

<comment><USER4> Yes. In fact, most companies start by filing for Chapter 11 protection where they are sheltered from their creditors while they try to get their act together. In the meantime, GM would operate pretty normally from the perspective of anyone on the outside.

If GM goes completely bankrupt, what will happen is that pieces of it will be sold off in order to take care of its debts/obligations. So, even if GM ceases to exist, it's very likely that the vehicles will find new life. The problem is that no one wants to buy GM whole because that comes with obligations like $75/hour labor costs and a pension system that was ill-conceived. Pieces of GM without those obligations (which can be voided by bankruptcy courts) are very valuable.

GM is still the second largest auto manufacturer in the world. Despite the fact that many are yelling at GM management saying that they need to build cars that people want to buy, that simply isn't true. People do want to buy GM cars and they buy more GM cars than they do Hondas, Fords, Nissans, VWs, etc. Only Toyota does better. Maybe they don't make vehicles that yuppies like. That's different. I personally think GM cars are crap, but I'm not everyone and, as sales numbers for 2007 show, GM cars are equally popular to Toyota cars ([http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/23/news/companies/gm_global_sal...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/23/news/companies/gm_global_sales/index.htm)).

The problem is that GM is loosing money on the vehicles they produce (around $2,000 per vehicle). A large part of that is labor costs. Unionized plants under foreign manufacturers don't have the costs that GM's plants do, so it's not a pro vs. anti-union thing. For a lot of reasons, the UAW was able to get really great terms for its contracts since it started organizing at a time when GM could simply pass on higher labor costs to consumers. Now, that isn't the case and it's hurting both the union and the company. Unions are great things most of the time (in my opinion). However, in this case the market changed dramatically and the UAW didn't adjust rather expecting GM to make all the adjustments. Competition from Japan and others meant that the age of amazingly high auto-profits was over as consumers got choice. Likewise, that also meant the end of wages as high as the UAW had gotten them.

At this point, a government bailout wouldn't help anyone - it would merely delay things. GM doesn't need cash for 12 months while they develop a new product. As an HN way of thinking about this, Digg has recently shown that it needs cash to keep the lights on - that its revenues cannot cover its costs. It isn't a matter of finishing a new product. It's just that advertising doesn't cover their costs. Likewise, sales don't cover GM's costs. They need to cut costs and become more efficient and one of the largest costs they have (compared to their competitors) is labor. In fact, based on GM's labor premium and the number of hours it requires them to build a vehicle and their annual vehicle sales, a reduction of the labor cost to Toyota's level of around $48/hour would likely make them safe with a savings of around $8bn per year (not profitable, but safe).

GM still has other problems - they need to cut the number of hours it takes to produce a vehicle, they need to cut the costs their suppliers charge them by multi-sourcing more, and they need to better utilize their plants (all three of which would likely be opposed by the UAW since less labor required is bad for them, multi-sourcing means their suppliers can't offer as high wages, and better utilization of plants means you aren't paying workers to do nothing meaning you need less labor - GM has many idle workers).

So, in conclusion, people like GM cars. GM has labor costs that are too high. GM isn't efficient enough in production. If GM becomes more efficient, it means requiring less labor. It's crappy for workers, but economies change. I totally understand why the UAW doesn't want to change. I totally understand why Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, and many tech companies continue down many of their paths. However, if they're paths that end because the landscape changed, it just isn't reasonable to believe you can continue taking them. When the economy changes, you can change with it or you can fade away slowly.

<comment><USER5> It won't be business as usual from one set of outside constituents: prospective customers. Who the heck is going to buy cars from a company that's in bankruptcy?

<comment><USER3> Indeed, what they really need to do is find some way of guaranteeing that their warranty obligations will be fulfilled, by fobbing that off on someone else as part of the reorganization. If they can do that, I don't see why they'd have a problem selling cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Johnson cut his price target on the stock to $1 from $4."

Equity value is also known as "Diluted Earnings Per Share" and is not the same as the share price.

</comment><comment><USER7> How terrible. :(

It's hard to imagine a foreign competitor having this same problem: running into a rough patch for a couple of years and then all of a sudden looks at bankruptcy.

I just want my volt.

<comment><USER8> It's really not terrible. America invented the TV and Zenith, the last American TV company, was sold to LG over a decade ago. Not many cried when IBM sold it's laptop division to Lenovo either. Americans just aren't great at manufacturing. PG wrote about this a long time ago here:

<http://paulgraham.com/usa.html>

It's not sad to pass the torch. The car is 100 years old. It's time to do something new. We should be focused on innovation not on some notion that it's our god given right to have American cars.

As of this writing there is an interview with Elon Musk of Telsa Motors at the bottom of the news.yc page. That should be the future of American cars. I heard that the Tesla engineers had a week long sit down w/ the Volt engineers. The word was that the Volt guys were an embarrassment and that they couldn't answer simple questions about their batteries. Chevy can't build a simple gas powered car that can go over 60k miles w/o having all the buttons fall off the dashboard. There is no way they're going to build a decent Prius competitor. They had a good run, let them die.

<comment><USER7> I'd feel better about an analysis from an expert on manufacturing and so forth, which I get the impression neither you, pg or me are.

I dunno about throwing "innovation" around on cars; I think people use that word without caution or really thinking about what it means.

When I grew up the nearest stop light was 20 miles away; cars were the only way to get around. Even now, living in Mountain View it's a hassle living without a car. Everywhere I've lived up until now was a huge hassle without a car, partly because it was so remote. A very large segment of the US lives like this and frankly, I don't like the idea of sharing a bus seat with strangers, waiting on trains, etc. I like the idea of automated cars as public transit and so forth but we shouldn't throw stuff out because it is old. The chair is lord only knows how old and just like I need to sit, I need to get out of the house to do whatever. ;)

<comment><USER8> I don't think anyone's arguing against cars. I just think that American cars are less desirable than Japanese, Swedish or German cars. Cars are no doubt useful things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> yeah as soon as you let all your employees join unions and negotiate, they get to lock you in a negotiated price or shut you down. The better alternative is to probably give an environment where the employees feel they don't need a union.

<comment><USER10> Of course this is the answer but a lot of management doesn't understand this. If you take a look at Japanese manufacturers, you can see that they actually value their employees.

However, in the case of the UAW, management laid down for them for decades in fear of production cuts. When the income was rolling in, the worst thing for them was a production shutdown. They weren't forward thinking enough to realize that eventually these relatively unskilled workers would be making $40/hour on an assembly line and getting ridiculous health care benefits in their pensions. It's a double-edged sword but a lot of baby boomers ended up making a lot more money then they ever should have.

Now, when any group of employees wants to organize, most management immediately thinks of what the UAW has done and thinks its the worst thing in the world. They think that it's 100% employee greed and don't look at themselves for answers. In reality, most unions organize today because management is really bad in creating a good work environment. A little DAILY effort goes a long way in making your employees feel valued and as long as the compensation is somewhat close to average, you're not likely going to face a union coming in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally, an analyst gets it right.</comment>


Ghosts of Unix Past - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4156

<comment><USER2> Actual link: <http://lwn.net/Articles/411845/>

There are several parts, links are on the bottom of each chapter.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot has been said about how Plan9 is "Unix with all the design issues fixed", but as much as I like the idea of "everything is really, really a file", I'm not sure whether I could get used to the Xerox Star style GUI (which you can't easily replace, since it too is exposed to the filesystem), or trade my lovely Vim in for Acme.

<comment><USER4> _GUI (which you can't easily replace, since it too is exposed to the filesystem)_

What? The graphics system is _quite_ nice, there's no reason to replace that. I'm pretty sure there is nothing tying the graphics protocol to their GUI paradigm. I think it would be entirely possible to implement, say, GTK over it.

 _Vim_

There's no reason it couldn't be ported. I would use it if you made it. It would be nice to have a libdraw based vi, even just in plan9port.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought this was excellent. I highly encourage everyone to read all five parts; the bits about signals were particularly enlightening to me.</comment>


NASA Spacecraft Dives Between Saturn and Its Rings - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-spacecraft-dives-between-saturn-and-its-rings <comment><USER2> As someone working on what amounts to fairly trivial applications in the enterprise, it's amazing to see engineering efforts like this take place over nearly 20 years of in-flight time.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing to me how normalized these accomplishments has become. Humanity didn't master rocketry until the mid-20th century, and now we regularly have robotic vehicles flying around other planets (and sending photos to us).

Perhaps it's an example of how humans naturally notice only change. This is just more of the same, I suppose.

And we also hear how incompetent and inefficient NASA and the whole U.S. government are. They certainly could improve but they also just flew a craft around Saturn, for 12 years. What was it that you were working on again?

<comment><USER4> You also have to compare NASA's incredible success rate to others in their field. In 2013, China's Yutu moon rover broke down in less than a month. In 2014, the ESA's Philae lander failed to launch its harpoons and fire the thruster necessary to attach the probe to the comet's surface, and ultimately bounced into a dark crater. In 2011, Russia's ambitious Phobos-Grunt mission to return a sample of Martian soil never got beyond low Earth orbit because of a rocket misfire.

I'm not saying other space agencies aren't doing impressive and amazing work. (Both Yutu and Philae were able to keep functioning and achieve at least some of their mission objectives.) I'm just saying space exploration is Really Hard. And NASA and its partners keep succeeding, even when they try crazy new things, like landing the SUV-sized Curiosity rover with the Rube Goldberg-like "Sky Crane maneuver", or sending a nearly two-decade-old spacecraft through the narrow gap between Saturn's rings and the planet's atmosphere.

We take their successes for granted, like this stuff is easy, but it's not, even for teams of well-funded geniuses. Worth taking a second to appreciate the engineering achievement as well as the science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cassini has been the most incredible mission… so many fascinating discoveries and wonderful imagery. We really need to do more (far more) missions like this.

<comment><USER6> I've really been enjoying it also, we're so far past the expected lifespan of this mission every new picture and reading is a gift; well done to all involved! We get things right sometimes! The software onboard remains a bit of a black box though; I'd really love to know the software architecture of these things...

I'm not too up on the capabilities of Cassini, but considering how long it's been in action would I be right to guess we're not going to get any kind of 'steaming video' of the final dive? Some pics will get picked up before it meets its end in saturn's atmosphere would be great anyway!

I'm hoping we can find enough out with Cassini's swan song to get interest up enough to fund lander missions to Europa and Titan (if we can work out how to totally sterilize things, right?) but I don't think anything is on the cards currently..

Wishlist stuff: I really love the pics; but having HD video streams from twhat he next gen of craft will be would be so amazing, I really hope we get there someday...

I'm very much looking forwards to the James Webb scope when it gets launched too!

Edit: You can see some pics here [0] and one of my favourites [1].

[0] : [https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/raw- images/](https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/raw-images/) [1] : [https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGF...](https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS99/N00280312.jpg)

<comment><USER7> Those raw images are mind blowing. Kerbal Space Program isn't too far off. :)

[https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGF...](https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS95/N00265856.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Just to geek out even more-- I really liked this one of enceladus too [0] ... I wish I knew an astronomer who could explain what that 'shooting star' looking thing is in that pic..

Do you have any ideas?

I'd expect every bit of light to be streaked if it was a long exposure, so it has to be something moving? Massive "I'm totally uneducated on all this stuff" disclaimer -- but if this pic was taken from inside saturn's atmosphere; did it capture a 'shooting star' ??

[0]: [https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGF...](https://saturnraw.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS99/N00280320.jpg)

<comment><USER8> It's probably a cosmic ray, which overloads the CCD detector in a streak-like pattern as it flies through the focal plane. All uncorrected deep space imagery has them.

<comment><USER6> Aha; thanks! I'm pretty sure I like the effect even more because of your explanation though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The FAQ[0] about the images has some interesting things in it:

> Why are there images of different sizes?

> The Cassini cameras are 1-megapixel cameras. A normal image is 1024 x 1024 > pixels. Using a technique called "summation" the cameras have the ability to > combine pixels together to get smaller but less noisy images. This results > in smaller images that take a lot less time to readout out and take up less > data volume. Summation is very useful if a scientist needs to conserve both. > In the 2 x 2 mode, the camera takes a 2 x 2 pixel square and averages those > values into a single pixel. Images in this mode will be 512 x 512 pixels. In > the 4 x 4 mode, the camera takes a 4 x 4 pixel square and makes that a > single pixel. Images in this mode are 256 x 256 in size.

[0] [https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/faq/#raw_images](https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/faq/#raw_images)

</comment><comment><USER10> Amazing</comment>


The economics of the $9.99 ebook - <AUTHOR> http://ac-idealog.blogspot.com/2009/05/economics-of-999-ebook.html <comment><USER2> This is such an uninformed argument, publishing has a narrow profit margin. These companies aren't trying to extort you at 2000% profit like other companies.

The entire publishing process is designed to filter out the chaff. First you need an agent (this is undeniable when some publishing houses won't accept a submission without one) whose job it is to first find publishers that are interested and then to make them pay every penny they're willing for it. When a first time author like Stephanie Mayer gets handed $750,000 for a series, that's because their agent just got handed 75,000-112,000. If you go it alone you'd probably get less than what your agent alone would get.

After the books in the publishing house, it is usually reviewed by like up to 5 editors who give their opinion before it's handed over to one editor who they believe is the best for it. You then get an editor, who through multiple revisions helps the author get the book to a better standard and quite often to more closely resemble the authors original idea.

I've worked with editors, and they're very passionate and put a lot of themselves into the work. This isn't something you're going to get at some slapped together organization. The argument that they're being replaced by digg (in the disaggregate link) is completely laughable, I'm sorry but digg and HN link mostly to articles at websites that all have editors. Just because people aren't committed to one information source and choose their own news (hence why some people get several news papers in the morning) doesn't mean the editors job is [gone].

Then he argues that it's help authors by allowing them to produce more books... Some authors release a book every few years and some release one nearly every 3 months (Stephen King). This isn't an efficiency model that can simply be stepped up by a new technology. It's an entirely ignorant argument.

This article is just plain bad. No one should sell their work at $9.99 a copy if it isn't going to cover the costs. In the publishing world especially, you should never release a copy for such a low price when the majority of books make most of their money in the first few months to a year when the book is priced the highest.

I hate these articles, because they're always written by people who are so uninformed on the issues. They're by people who assume the end is nigh for corporate publishing, despite the fact that there's been little to no effect on traditional publishing media, in fact global book sales have been on an increase over the past years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great comment. I have posted it at my blog.

Actually, I do deal with publishers quite a bit, as well as music labels and broadcasters. It is not that they are not dedicated to their work. Unfortunately, the economics of the Web works against these cost structures. It might not happen to books yet but with new reading devices and new marketplaces coming up, I think changes will come.

As to my comment on new genres of books being created, this argument is not unique. Every new medium will create a new form of media that suits its characteristics. Online video created 1 minute clips. Mobile created mobile books (in Japan currently).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's $9.99 more than I'm willing to pay for any book which I cannot sell, cannot lend to a friend, and could be retroactively censored or deleted from a central location at the publisher's whim. Not to mention one which will vanish when the publisher goes out of business.

<comment><USER4> Seriously? You wouldn't even pay, say, $0.99 to _rent_ a book? I pay more than that, in time and gasoline, every time I check a book out from the library.

Just driving to the library or the post office, spending 10 minutes, then driving back is a 30-minute commitment for me. If my time is worth $20 per hour, that's $10 right there, not counting the cost of gas or the odds that the book I want isn't available. Unless I'm very diligent about checking out books in large batches (and how many books can I really read before my three weeks is up and they become due at the library?) I might be saving money with a Kindle [1], even if each book self-destructed, Mission-Impossible style, three months after I paid $10 for it. Which they don't.

I am an old-school book collector; it runs in my family. And, yet, when I look at my shelves I dream of actually owning fewer of them. The world has changed. Amazon and Abebooks exist now. By this point, very few of my books are sufficiently precious and sufficiently likely to go out of print that I need to physically hoard them myself -- such books do exist, but they're much fewer in number, perhaps no more than a single bookshelf's worth.

Yeah, I guess the apocalypse could wipe out Amazon and Abebooks, or the copyright Gestapo could create some kind of digital Fahrenheit 451. But, really, what are the odds? To worry too much about that is like hoarding beer because Prohibition might come back. I'm literally more worried about my house burning down.

I'll worry when we reach the point that important books are routinely published in electronic form _alone_ , with no paper copies _anywhere_. But I don't think that will ever happen. Indeed, the preservation of archival versions might become an even more significant _raison d'etre_ for paper publishers -- we really need _more_ archives, and more librarians and editors, to select, print out, and preserve all the great blog posts and HN comments that will otherwise be lost to linkrot, or buried in spam and rendered unfindable, within my lifetime.

I still love libraries. Shelves of books make me happy. But that thrill is not what it once was. Because it was the exciting feeling of knowing that you were surrounded by the work of centuries of scholars, that the world's knowledge was within reach. And that's true all the time now. I live in a library 24/7. I have to take special measures, like hiking out of cellular range, to _escape_ that feeling of being surrounded by knowledge. I could sit here in this chair for the rest of my life and never run out of interesting things to read, watch, or listen to, so long as someone keeps paying the Comcast bill.

\---

[1] Ignoring the cost of buying the Kindle in the first place, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a great opportunity it would be for someone to replace the traditional role of the publisher with what the blog-author calls a "lightweight service". Then authors could go directly to these disaggregated services for marketing and editing and then to Amazon for e-publishing. The traditional publishing houses are going the way of the dodo and print newspaper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I fully agreed with your view. That is why I am building a service that allows authors to easily create an iPhone application simply by uploading their book. The idea is to use the iPhone application as a base from which the authors can build their community or fans upon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Beyond new structures, we will also see new genres or formats of books that are more light weight and easier to produce. These will enable authors to produce more books."

Really? I read mostly science fiction and CS books. I am not sure what these new genres are, but I dont find the idea compelling. Lightweight books? Half a century ago SF books were 120 to 150 pages long. I like the current 300-400 page books better. Lightweight technical? If I want lightweight, I read blogs. The fiction authors that I read produce 2 or 3 books per year. Writing is hard work, and I dont see format changes changing that. Authors need to make a living. The generally poor quality of OSS documentation attests to that.

There is probably room to squeeze some fat out of $50-100 technical books. Safari rents a selection of books for a reasonable amount per month, so that could be a good model. And there are educators working on low cost/free textbooks.

I would hate to see well written books replaced by crowdsourcing.

ADDENDUM: There is a small but growing trend for authors to put out a free online version at the same time the book is published. It seems to actually increase book sales.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is hard to claim that eBooks are too expensive while audio books are already profitable at 10$. Hence, I think that the discussion about the need for high prices for eBooks is ridiculous.

<comment><USER2> Audiobooks are an after-publishing product. Once a novel has become profitable, they can hand the book to a voice actor and say 'read', they then sell the product for $10 because it no longer kills their bottom line.

The reason eBooks don't cost like this, is because people want them here and now like you get with a real book. I'm sorry, but if people want a $10 book, do what everyone else on the fucking planet does and wait for it to come down in price! There's lots of books in book stores that cost less than $10, so why pay for an ebook? You're never going to get a brand new ebook at $9.99 and it cover the cost of the process. Your best bet is a $10 eBook released a year or so after publication like with an audiobook, or discounted mass market paperbacks.

<comment><USER8> If ebooks cost 10% of what books used to cost, but everyone buys 10x as many books because of the lower cost, convenience of buying and storing them, etc., then the costs can be covered the same as today.

<comment><USER9> This ignores the fact that there might be a fixed cost per book. If it is 10% of the current book price, then you are making no profit. Books don't just grow on trees. It also assumes that I have time for 10x as many books because they are cheaper. Currently, my time is more of a premium than my convenience or money.

<comment><USER8> It seems to me that the marginal cost for an ebook is indeed zero. (Or very, very nearly zero: do you count the cost of the electricity or bandwidth to download it?) You disagree?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't say I've ever had a problem paying a decent amount for a book. Never been a fan of ebooks either.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's true. I would've bought 5 or 6 e-books in the past month if they were all $9.99.

The ones I needed were well over $50 and so I spent the extra time finding free alternative. They're lower quality, but unless it's under $10 it's worth the extra research I have to do myself.

</comment><comment><USER12> From the article: "More and more, ancillary revenue sources will reduce the reliance on book sales."

What -would- the ancillary revenue sources be for writers?

I doubt they can do what the rock stars are doing and sell ten of thousands of tickets for $50 for people to come listen to them reading their books..

Off the top of my head I can't think of anything that would scale enough to be worthwile.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I've heard this one before. A few authors do have decent speaking gigs (often for keynotes and things like that) but they're the exception. And those who can make money this way are already doing it. The whole idea that there's some huge untapped pot of money in live performances (for reading, music, or whatever) is pretty silly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recently self-published (via <http://Lulu.com> ) a 730-page book of stories in hardback. I disabled Download as PDF. This means someone would have to scan it in and proofread it (the difficult bit) to get it in a digital format. I like that barrier to piracy.

[Additional] Also, Xlibris.com is not as convenient as Lulu, but it's much much cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER15> 99cts ebooks.

No need for publishers.

Write your own book and sell it on AppStore alikes.

Everybody can be a writer.

Convenience wins.

Everybody wins.

<comment><USER13> So are you not going to edit the book? Or just have a friend do a cursory job for free? How are you going to promote the book so people know about it? Of course, you don't have to do any of those things to get an ebook out there but getting a quality ebook out there and marketing it are something else again.

<comment><USER15> I understand your point, but the thing is lowering the entry barrier so everybody can write AND publish on their own. If you want to spend on a more professional publishing I bet online stores can give you extra exposure for a "fee" at the same time a new crop of side business like editing, proof reading, marketing, etc can grow to make the market healthier and self sustainable.

So, a newbie can write an publish, their work may start at 99cts so if they hit the jackpot a million copies sold can make them millionaires over night.

Professional books, best sellers, academic books etc, can hire professionals to do their job, same as you can do your own web site if you wish, or hire web designers to do a more professional job, which most big companies do. And sure they can sell it for $9 or a thousand, up to them or to the market to decide their price and worthiness.

It all starts at 99cts.

Again, no need for the publisher.</comment></comment></comment>


CRM for tracking web customers? - <AUTHOR>

Any one have suggestions for a very light weight CRM system for tracking your web customers, e.g. logging e-mail conversations, sending mass e-mails, etc. <comment><USER2> I've been looking recently as well - trying to decide whether to build our own or not. There have been some votes for <http://www.kayako.com/> in previous HN posts....</comment>


Twitter Starts Blacklisting Spammers - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/07/twitter-starts-blacklisting-spammers/ <comment><USER2> This is good news. The twitterstream is so noisy without the spam that having spam could just kill the whole thing off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most impressive thing about Twitter: Number of times it gets on places like techcrunch.</comment>


A JIT Compiler in 380 Lines of Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=97 <comment><USER2> Caches of the original article and each associated chapter:

Original Post [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=97)

Chapter 1: The Lexer [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=105)

Chapter 2: The AST Nodes [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=144)

Chapter 3: The Parser [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=150)

Chapter 4: AST Translation [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=173)

Chapter 5: JIT Compilation [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=195)

Chapter 6: Adding Control Flow [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=218)

Chapter 7: Playtime [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=230)

Chapter 8: Mutable Variables [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chris.wailes.name/?page_id=248)

<comment><USER3> Text-only loads faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless I am mistaken, I think the title could do with being changed. It looks to me like the Jit compiler is written in C++. LLVM is not written in Ruby. What is implemented in Ruby here is a version of the toy Kaleidoscope language which is given as an example of how to use the LLVM Jit on the LLVM website.

Are the LLVM bindings for Ruby up-to-date? I thought about using them last night for a while, but ended up deciding to use peg to create a recursive descent parser for my language and am going to write some pretty generic code to do the AST myself. That way I can keep everything in C/C++.

<comment><USER5> You might be interested by the first steps that I have taken to generate llvm IR from boost::spirit (for the peg parser) even if the languages where too simple to warrant an ast. <https://github.com/scientific-coder/Computer- Languages>

<comment><USER4> Thanks, though I already have a small language working with the LLVM Jit that accepts the language described by this grammar: <http://selmer.warwick.ac.uk/c.grm>

I'm in the process of rewriting it to use peg though, as I was using a parser generator that is not open source, and it started to bug me that it wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Kaleidoscope language reminds me of the hoc language. In Chapter 8 of the book "The Unix Programming Environment", Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike used hoc as an example to demonstrate how to use yacc, lex, and make to develop a compiler.

In hoc, you have control flows and can define your own functions. Unfortunately, hoc lost the battle to bc, that's why it's rarely known in the Unix community.</comment>


The intersection of mathematics and murder - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/magazine/17wwln-idealab-t.html?ex=1360904400&en=570cd1aab828752e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Anyone know the name of the statistical formula he's using to determine the population size, as mentioned in the article?

<comment><USER3> Not the same formula this guy is using, but related: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/20/secondworldwar.t...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/20/secondworldwar.tvandradio)</comment></comment>


Freeman Dyson 1923-2020 from Edge.org - <AUTHOR> https://www.edge.org/conversation/freeman_dyson-freeman-dyson-1923-2020 <comment><AUTHOR> John Brockman's Edge.org hosts a myriad of intelligent conversations with amazing people. Freeman Dyson, who died Friday, February 28 at 96 (RIP), was one of the contributors: sometimes right, sometimes wrong, often provocative, always interesting. I love that he never got a PhD and that he knew he really did not need that ticket.</comment>


I dropped Dropbox and you should too - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2015/10/29/i-dropped-dropbox-and-you-should-too/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=I%20dropped%20Dropbox%20and%20you%20should%20too&awesm=tnw.to_t3QsP&utm_campaign=share%20button <comment><USER2> I am a fan of Google Drive. It allows for awesome collaboration, and, like the author of this post says, lets you put your storage to work. Reliable storage on its own isn't that cool; but reliable storage that empowers other applications (Docs, Sheets, etc.) is cool and extremely valuable.

The author says: "But as competitors have built elaborate offerings where you can put all that storage to work, Dropbox has kind of stagnated."

Or maybe I and the author are just gaga for Google and blind to what Dropbox truly offers.

</comment><comment><USER3> My ironic reason for moving from Dropbox to Google Drive: I really wanted to try a 3rd party app that only offered Dropbox as a storage solution, but my Dropbox was full. So I moved everything out and now use Dropbox with a free account solely for 3rd party apps.

This is but one data-point, but perhaps 3rd party app storage and general file storage are features that don't complement each other at all.

<comment><USER4> You're not alone. I think this is a serious problem for Dropbox. When people reach their quota they have the following options: 1. Pay up and upgrade; 2. Spam friends to get more credits; 3. Sign up for another service, FOR FREE. We all know what's the easiest to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really tried to use Dropbox, but never got hooked.

I share most of my stuff by Git or email.</comment>


Fromer: Normal People Never Used RSS Anyways - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/rss-2011-1 <comment><USER2> Right, RSS is definitely not dying.</comment>


What's So Hot About the New MacBook Pros? The Stuff You Can't See - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/04/14/whats-so-hot-about-the-new-macbook-pros-the-stuff-you-cant-see/

<comment><USER2> It saddens me that so few PC manufacturers feel like challenging Apple on battery life.</comment>


Books Travelers Are Always Leaving Behind at Their Hotels - <AUTHOR> https://www.travelandleisure.com/culture-design/books/top-books-people-leave-in-hotels <comment><USER2> This recent list of books left behind at hotels seems to correlate with a list of best-selling books available at around the same time?

Who'd have thought?

<comment><USER3> It's like those "prevalence of X" maps that roughly correspond with population density maps.

<comment><USER4> [https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

 _Pet peeve #208:_

 _Geographic profile maps which are basically just population maps_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Websites that visitors are always leaving behind include those that autoplay video.

</comment><comment><USER6> These books are from the folks who stay at Travelodge - a budget chain. I wonder what books more high end chains are finding as demographics shift.

<comment><USER7> More affluent readers probably use e-ink devices and therefore are probably less likely to leave anything behind.

<comment><USER8> I bet they have a nice collection of chargers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cached copy without all that tracking cookie opt-in/out malarky:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eSAV6-...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eSAV6-6j4GkJ:https://www.travelandleisure.com/culture- design/books/top-books-people-leave-in-hotels+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

<comment><USER10> > all that tracking cookie opt-in/out malarky

Since GDPR, this is really getting out of hand...

<comment><USER9> I know, it's really quite infuriating and some of the dialogues are verging on "dark pattern" behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what does Travelodge do with all those books? I've stayed at various UK Travelodges many times and never seen a book. Surely they could just leave the books in the rooms. 70k books is enough for every one of there rooms to have several books.

<comment><USER12> You can't leave what is effectively other guests' lost property in the room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you plan to leave books behind, consider using bookcrossing: [http://www.bookcrossing.com/](http://www.bookcrossing.com/)</comment>