Putting This Blog on IPFS - <AUTHOR> https://ipfs.io/ipns/Qme48wyZ7LaF9gC5693DZyJBtehgaFhaKycESroemD5fNX/post/putting_this_blog_on_ipfs/ <comment><USER3> "Even if my server goes down, as long as these files are pinned somewhere, anyone should be able to use that IPNS name at another gateway and see the blog."

This is also, in my opinion, the biggest objection to IPFS - that it really doesn't necessarily lead to _any_ kind of true decentralized hosting unless someone else has decided to pin your files.

And why would they? I understand that IPFS is supposed to prioritize connections based on seed/leach ratio like a typical torrent service, but I only torrent a few files at any given time and it's pretty trivial to set them to seed or disable manually; there's no way I'm going to make seed vs. don't seed decisions on _every website I visit._ So unless for some reason I specifically think to help share some webpage or other, it'll just get auto- deleted from my machine when it cycles out of the cache, as the automated stuff is what'll be keeping track of maintaining my seed/leech ratio, total disk usage for other people's content, upload limits, not leaving if you're one of the only seeders left, etc. In theory, IPFS could be even _more_ prone to link-rot than the vanilla Web, depending on how many people try and actually depend on the decentralized hosting and end up having their files vanish once it's been a long enough time that nobody's still hosting them.

And when there's so many different webpages, as opposed to just a few torrents, why would I think to pin any one thing in particular? Torrents can work based on charity and the need to maintain a particular seed/leech ratio; but I don't have the mental energy to bother deciding whether to be charitable about every dang website I visit.

So this ends up meaning that IPFS works for _popular, recent_ content, where there's enough people who have downloaded the content themselves recently enough that it's still in their cache to meaningfully take the load off the original host in serving that content. But you're not going to get dedicated long-term seeders of any particular site the way you do with highly-desirable files like pirate torrents. But generically, you will always need your own centralized server for any content you want to upload and make sure stays online long-term.

As I understand it, this is sort of the problem Filecoin is trying to solve, but that has its own issues (it's hard to see how paying people to host your stuff on their own machines can ever be cost-competitive with paying AWS to do it).

<comment><USER3> Basically - _why_ would anyone else have your files pinned somewhere?

<comment><USER4> It's not just pinning though, is it? This is like saying " _why_ would anyone host your file on BitTorrent", but the reality is that no one has to host your file on BitTorrent. Downloading naturally seeds[1]. Unless something has changed with the pitch, this is the same with IPFS. Not only do people seed while downloading, but it will _(eventually)_ even seed locally first, such as within the same network.

IPFS promises nothing, nor tries to, in the way of permanent archiving. It's about reducing congestion and gaining benefits of immutability. It _could_ archive something in the sense that something popular is difficult to remove.. but that's definitely not a guarantee.

[1]: _ignoring aggressive non-sharing downloaders of course_

<comment><USER3> Yeah, and that's entirely true as an explanation for why IPFS is still valuable - if you have _popular_ content other people have accessed recently or are currently accessing, it can in theory take a ton of load off of your server by letting _those_ people share some of the load to new users. Incredibly powerful for DDoS protection/avoiding the "Hug of Death", and potentially greatly reducing hosting costs by reducing traffic to your particular server at precisely those moments that would be most expensive - when you'd otherwise be serving lots of requests for some newly popular bit of content.

It's just a mistake to view IPFS as allowing for truly "decentralized" websites or as a decentralized file storage platform - unless you have the kind of content that makes other people want to follow the typical torrent model and actively long-term "seed" it by pinning, you'll _still need to have your own personal central server_ to host the content on if and when nobody else is.

Which, yes, IPFS has _explicitly never promised that_ \- but a lot of people seem to think it does.

<comment><USER5> this explanation actually makes sense as to a possible use case for this tech. thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I couldn't get it to load from the ipfs.io gateway, nor my local ipfs daemon, but I could through cloudeflare's ipfs gateway.

[https://cloudflare- ipfs.com/ipns/Qme48wyZ7LaF9gC5693DZyJBteh...](https://cloudflare- ipfs.com/ipns/Qme48wyZ7LaF9gC5693DZyJBtehgaFhaKycESroemD5fNX/post/putting_this_blog_on_ipfs/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the beauty of content-addressable networks! :)

It's also available at regular-old [https://leotindall.com/](https://leotindall.com/)

<comment><USER7> Isn't this a _failure_ of IPFS that you can't reliably get to the content even though you know it's address?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's what I'd like to know.

Being a total noob I enjoyed the article (thanks OP) then went on to wonder how this works. So first I thought it was available through all of these gateways, but then I read something about pinning - do the gateways pin the content? Or the "hosting nodes" (forgive my lack of knowledge about the terminology)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's been a few things cropping up in this space recently. On the topic of "indicating that this might be an outdated version", I've not managed to figure out a better solution than either linking to an IPNS index of document versions (so, for humans, some text that says "this might be out of date; check [here]), or running an IPFS node in JS on the browser and then querying for a later revision. I guess I'm looking forward to when browsers integrate with Dat, IPFS etc. natively (Beaker and Firefox are already heading down this path), so that I can rely on a little bit of Javascript that queries `window.IPFS` or some such, instead of having to send something much more heavyweight to the client.

In the meantime, if anyone has any better ideas for solving that problem (rel=canonical to an IPNS entry? browser extensions?), I'm all ears :).

<comment><USER10> The ipfs-companion extension provides `window.IPFS` in Firefox, Chrome, and others :)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that might be the only way to handle this reasonably in the short-term -- `if (window.IPFS) { fetch(revisionListFromAnIPNS).then(renderIt) }`... but my concern is that if the standard changes in the future and IPFS gets integrated into browsers/becomes `navigator.IPFS`/etc. -- then all those old, immutable pages are permanently going to check the wrong thing. Still, I guess that's a graceful degradation, because for people who don't have the extension today, they'd see the same behaviour.

Perhaps it's best to provide a link to a revision list as the default behaviour, with the window.IPFS test as a mildly nicer progressive enhancement. Cheers :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool explanation. I found Cloudflare's explanation really well put. [https://blog.cloudflare.com/distributed-web- gateway/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/distributed-web-gateway/)

Since hosting a ipfs node feels like being an onion endpoint, can you restrict bandwidth?

Also can you control the size of your local cache or how does it work with the replicated content?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and yes! There's a cache plus the concept of "pinning".

Hosting a node is not quite like being an onion endpoint, because the bandwidth load gets shared out very quickly.

Hosting a _gateway_ is a big bandwidth commitment, but I pay for lots of bandwidth for just that reason.

<comment><USER11> If we compare hash content with http urls, urls are easy to remember, while hash are hard to remember?

It feels like the dark ages before altavista, and you had to know the url. Still, a url was more memorable to pass friends by email, than a hash.

Will there be ipfs search engines and wouldn't that just be bittorrent?

Also browsers remember urls... If everything goes through your local gateway, it's all just /hash, hard to remember / re-discover? Or is the plan also to move away from browsers?

<comment><USER3> DNS works just fine for IPNS content-hash-addresses too, and heck, you can do that _right now_. You just use that, the same way you'd use anything else - just say that dweb.foo.xyz is associated with a particular IPNS address (and www.foo.xyz can be the regular ol' web address).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could you explain why you think that Cloudflare's recent effort constitutes an attack on IPFS? That is, wouldn't the pinning of a large number of files, hosted on a fast CDN, be a good thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cloudflare's business model is intrinsically threatened by the existence of a global, distributed, and (basically) commons-supported CDN, because that would make their point-served, centralized, relatively expensive CDN obsolete.

<comment><USER13> No, not really. IPFS is a storage platform. Cloudflare is fundamentally a compute platform (servers in hundreds of cities to which you can deploy arbitrary code and trust that it is executed faithfully). These two things are complementary, not competitive, which is why we decided it would be interesting to integrate with IPFS.

(Disclosure: I work for Cloudflare.)

<comment><USER14> I understand that Cloudflare aspires to be primarily a compute platform. I think it's a cool goal, and you have the technical chops to build it. But isn't it fair to say today that Cloudflare is primarily a _networking_ platform? We customers use you, overwhelmingly, to make our sites load faster, and pay less in the process. Not far behind comes anti-ddos protection - <USER2> a networking-centric feature. Everything else is aspirational.

I am aware of where you want to go - and the workers feature you're working on, for example, is extremely cool. But realize that there is a huge gap between where you want to be as a business and a brand, and where you actually are.

IPFS may not compete with what you want to be - but it does compete with what you are. That's because IPFS is not a storage platform, it's a content distribution platform. And Cloudflare is in the content distribution business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Loading this page took a good 62 seconds to complete. That's 62seconds for a 78.7kb payload. ([https://ibb.co/gqoUWe](https://ibb.co/gqoUWe)). At least at the present point, this is not a viable option for serving web-pages.

What I do like about IPFS is that you get links to CONTENT as opposed to LOCATIONS. This is completely independent of the hosting aspects. It would be interesting to offer content links to blog posts. I provide at least a link to the GitHub version history at the bottom of my blog posts (e.g. [http://heinrichhartmann.com/blog/Latency- SLOs.html](http://heinrichhartmann.com/blog/Latency-SLOs.html)). Not ideal but at least it gives you some idea what people might have seen at earlier point in time.

In general, I see (at least) two different use cases for links:

(1) Pointers: "If you want to learn more about this, check out this website"

(2) Citations: "This website claims that there were 20 people at this event."

For Pointers you want to have the latest version of the content served at high speed. For Citations you want content links, so you can be sure your readers see what you have seen, and don't care about retrieval performance that much. So there might be a case for Citation Links being hosted on IPFS. Services like archive.org / archive.is might consider integrating with IPFS, though I am not exactly sure how that would look like.

<comment><USER16> Loaded in 1-2 seconds for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was wondering about how to get NGINX to play with IPFS. Now I have a better idea. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there any way to get a metric of how much something has been downloaded on ipfs? I'm guessing you would have to use google analytics or something?

<comment><USER19> I assume you mean metrics for how much something has been downloaded from a node you own, right? If so, you can monitor "ipfs log tail" for which blocks have been downloaded and by whom. You can also monitor how much content a specific peer has asked from you and such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As I understand it, this is sort of the problem Filecoin is trying to solve, but that has its own issues (it's hard to see how paying people to host your stuff on their own machines can ever be cost-competitive with paying AWS to do it). [http://newpipe.xyz](http://newpipe.xyz)

<comment><USER21> It can't - the moment that it becomes at all profitable to run an IPFS node, AWS and their competitors could undercut and effectively capture the market. Their costs are just lower, and will continue to be lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was able to load the blog, but the latency was pretty high. That might be one of the downsides of ipfs vs something like Medium.

<comment><AUTHOR> Two things about this. First, the blog is also available at [https://leotindall.com/](https://leotindall.com/) where it is just a regular website. I think it's _really_ interesting that the first thing that comes to mind is Medium and not, you know... a regular website.

Second, public IPFS gateways aren't the intended way to use the network. It's meant to be built into browser software, so each user acts as a mirror of what they're currently reading. Latency is high because the gateway is run by a nonprofit and they don't pay for ultrafast hardware for the public gateway.

<comment><USER23> Love what you've done with IPFS and this blog!

There are a couple of advantages to places like Medium, Facebook, or Quora over a normal website.

The first is branding -- you get what you expect from a site. FB for personal connections (memes or distraction for others), curated content for Medium & Quora, etc. I remember using the web back in the 90s or so. I had committed to memory a dozen sites or so that I would visit every day. Slashdot, Yahoo News, ScaryGoRound etc. It was a bit stressful. Now I can just go to Reddit and just get distracted by whatever. Even curating your own Reddit experience is difficult, like it was for RSS. Most viewers of Reddit don't really create an account.

The second is ease of use for publishers. I'm not going to set up a website, even a Wordpress blog now if I can just go post content on Reddit or Medium where I have a chance of people reading it.

There are other things like consistent UX, etc.

<comment><USER24> For Medium, I get what I expect: Some annoying "we've seen you here before" banner covering up the whole page. That usually doesn't happen for personal web pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> People point out that getting your data stored on ipfs is not guaranteed unless you pay for it. But there is a huge amount of unused storage space out there on people hd's. That means that once the market gets going, storage is going to be really cheap.

</comment><comment><USER26> May I ask why IPFS instead of ZeroNet that's explicitly build to be a P2P distributed website platform and it's far more simple, lighter and clear than IPFS?

</comment><comment><USER27> _It's a great technology, and of course that means that Cloudflare wants to run a monkey-in-the-middle attack on it._

If you're publishing a service or a piece of software, and absolutely everyone is happy with it, you're doing something wrong.

</comment><comment><USER28> Qme48wyZ7LaF9gC5693DZyJBtehgaFhaKycESroemD5fNX is a catchy thing to put in an URL.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I say in my general post on the topic, IPNS is not meant for human use - DNS can be adapted to point to IPNS names just as easily as to point to IP addresses.</comment></comment>


Corona Remedy: Protein That Binds to Covid 19 Spikes Found - <AUTHOR> https://nazology.net/archives/55717 <comment><USER2> This seems to be a nice step forward I hope they can move forward with it fast.

What really blew me away was that I was able to read and understand the article given that it was written in Japanese and translated to English using google translate. WoW!</comment>


Dark Patterns in Telsa App - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tedstein/status/1219406746868953088 <comment><USER3> It's interesting that in many countries of the EU, or even in the EU as a whole, all this is simply not possible. Not because of dark patterns being illegal, but rather because they would not be profitable.

As an example, in Germany:

First, a contract only exists when - in a somewhat metaphysical sense - <USER2> matching agreements are made. One by Tesla, one by the customer. Accidental purchases regularly do not constitute an agreement by the customer, which is why before a court, it would be decided that the contract does not, and in fact did not exist. Here, it would be especially trivial to show that the purchase was accidental. Indeed it would probably be enough to have contacted Tesla after the "purchase". As an implication, Tesla would be forced to roll back the transaction and eat any costs associated with it.

Second, and of more practical relevance, there is legislation mandating that anything ordered online can be returned within 14 days, retroactively voiding the contract. In this case, the customer may need to pay some of the costs incurred with rolling back the transaction, although there is legislation for this. In this particular case, a software update, the cost would of course be zero.

I personally do not see these legislation as a source of friction. They are simple to implement and fair, and have no impact if one does not rely on deception.

As others have said, anyone doing business in the EU is aware of these matters. If these patterns do not exist in the EU version, then Tesla is employing these patterns for deceptive purposes.

<comment><USER4> > in the EU as a whole, all this is simply not possible. Not because of dark > patterns being illegal, but rather because they would not be profitable.

I don't understand this argument. It costs Tesla literally nothing to reverse these purchases. They'd still make a profit from everyone who doesn't request a refund.

<comment><USER5> Their next argument would be on reversing the unlocks on the vehicle. Unless they're blowing e-fuses to unlock features I don't really see how it should be an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand. The screenshots seem to contradict what is being said here.

You have to enter in complete billing details to accidentally make this purchase. For Apple Pay I can only assume that the standard Apple Pay confirmation window comes up, which cannot be triggered in your pocket. If that window comes up and you authorize a $4,000 purchase I don't see how that's Tesla's fault.

All the text that's claimed to be hard to see seems plain as day to me.

The claim that one of the people seems to be making to Tesla support, that they never had the app open at all when this purchase took place, seems kind of questionable. I don't see any way that's possible.

Now, I agree that putting shit in your shopping cart by default isn't a good practice but this isn't exactly a shopping app, either. You wouldn't go the upgrades section or checkout with anything unless you were looking to buy upgrades? I don't own a Tesla, I don't know.

I do agree that the policy of no refunds ever is nonsense. The software can most definitely be disabled or removed, and if Tesla isn't using some kind of package manager, shame on them. The analogy of the house addition is total garbage.

See, what you need to do with customer service in these situations is to just tell them that they can give you the refund or that you'll take care of it through a chargeback to your bank. That's their two options. Companies process your refund 99% of the time after you say those magic words (just don't do this for things like your Steam account where a permanent ban will be a hardship).

The last thing: I had to laugh at the letter that started with "Dear Sirs." Made the whole thing impossible to take seriously.

</comment><comment><USER7> So this misleading UI exists in U.S. versions of the app? But not in EU versions? Strongly suggested they know this is deceptive, or even fraud.

<comment><USER8> No, the issue here is that the Tesla App now allows you to buy a software upgrade package by just tapping through a few screens and the $4k package is added to your cart by default. They don't offer refunds (unless you're internet famous). Practically all other apps require fingerprint or password/code for purchases. Tesla doesn't - and their default checkout basket has $4k worth of unrefundable stuff in it, which is hilarious bad.

The EU/US is a separate historical issue where Tesla states on its website the cost of the vehicle incorrectly - the cost includes the federal tax credit (which you can reasonably expect to get) and _$8k_ in gas savings (which is just a made up number based on random assumptions about how, where, when you drive). Imagine if BMW told you the cost of your vehicle including the gas savings you'd make versus driving a hummer. In the EU lying about the price of a product is illegal, so Tesla display the real price in the EU without their bullshit "savings".

<comment><USER9> The screenshots show that _the app requires clear authorization_ for purchasing the upgrade.

Either you use Apple Pay with a fingerprint, or you have to _enter credit card details_ and press a button that says "Pay $4000". This is impossible to do by accident.

<comment><USER10> I might have been miss informed, but I was told that it's storing your credit card details so that if you've already made a credit card purchase from the Tesla app you could just hit The "Pay 4000" button on that final screen. And I couldn't find anything in this thread that confirmed or denied that, though reading things on Twitter...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone left tech for a career in medicine? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This was posted recently:

[https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/second-act-former- ceo-o...](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/second-act-former-ceo-of- radioshack-now-an-er-doctor-on-frontlines-of-covid-19-fight)</comment>


The commas that cost companies millions - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180723-the-commas-that-cost-companies-millions <comment><AUTHOR> Short simple declarative sentences solve the "comma" problem. Do not use commas. Do not use complex subjunctive clauses.</comment>


Building a business, not just an app - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2014/pleco-building-business-just-app/ <comment><USER2> He's clearly not delivering enough value then, or he's not focusing on a large enough target audience. He's probably also not charging enough. Every single app that I've built has easily grossed >$30-50k each in less than 6 months after launch without having to do significant marketing. And we're talking apps built in <30 days.

The app store has a massive audience; you need to focus on large enough target groups. How many people use RSS apps these days?

Now that I think about it.. I should probably write an ebook on building profitable apps from a developer point of view.

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested in such ebook.

Can you/somebody recommend good sources for learning this kind of thing (building/marketing profitable apps)?

<comment><USER2> Personal experiences mostly. Can I add you to a mailing list if/when I launch something? I might consider putting something together.

<comment><USER4> \+ 1. email in profile.

<comment><USER2> Could you put it in the about section of your profile? Otherwise it's not visible. Alternatively, send me an email with your contact details. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Thanks. It is thakur.com at gmail dot com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author is on point in describing how to create a business not just an app but he glosses over that many people develop apps with monetization as an afterthought and that monetizing an app is as complex as rocket science. Pleco had a lot already going for it before it even before it launched on iOS. Its founders had years of business experience and a strong market differentiator. So even though they had to retread their business models, they knew that Pleco had enough value that people would pay for it. A lot of other developers however, like Sinclair, develop apps for themselves, find a small user base and decide its enough to establish there own business, but usually these apps are cool but not unique. Pleco was built on licensed and unique tech, which gave its value. The author should mention that not every app can be turned into a business and that you need to create enough unique IP for yourself, so that you can grow and create value others can't. Sinclair has the entrepreneurial drive, he just didn't have the right idea to be a business.

<comment><USER6> I really wonder what Sinclair's rationale for quitting his day job to work on his app was.

I wonder if he had some sort of analysis that made him think it would be more of a success which turned out to be wrong (e.g. projecting early sales numbers into infinity, whereas in reality they dropped off), or if he just jumped into it thinking that if he built it they would come.

<comment><USER5> Probably the "If i build it, they will come" mentality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want organic growth, don't charge money for your app. Period. No one wants to pay money for something they can't even try, unless they are positive they know it will work for them. For example, I paid money for the Pure ad blocker because it had tons of positive reviews and coverage in the NYT. But this will not be you.

Make money on ads, paid upgrades (remove ads, get premium features), and subscriptions. Show that you have value first, then it becomes very clear how much more value someone can get by paying a little extra.

Especially for mobile apps, ad revenue is very high right now as freemium games and VC money has flooded the market. I get as high as $5 per click, usually around $1-2, which is much higher than it used to be.

<comment><USER8> Hi, would you mind explaining more about what type of ads you serve and which network? Thank you!

<comment><USER7> Admob, finance category apps

<comment><USER8> Do you do both banner and interstitial? What about native? I didn't know AdMob pays that well, usually they're mentioned on the low end.

<comment><USER7> Banner and interstitial, interstitial happens every 5 minutes. Often people open my app several times a day just to check their financial status, triggering an interstitial every time. I'm sure finance ads pay very well. What mobile ad networks do you recommend for higher payouts? I would love to experiment.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the info! I appreciate it. Yeah finance ads seem to have higher payouts than most, you're in good shape. :)

I've heard Airpush is pretty good. Have you tried them?

<comment><USER7> Haven't used them, will check it out, thanks for the tip

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The key takeaway is the ever common mantra 'what is your sustainable competitive advantage?'. As many App Store developers have found out, design is not one.

Rather, paying for exclusive license to a dictionary, and ensuring his apps are on the school syllabus was the path to success for this app. (Remind you of those TI calculators?)

</comment><comment><USER10> In other words, don't start with a solution; start with a problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to add that this is a great example of how a great In App Purchase can be utilised in place of free trials. People are so against IAP because of companies like Zynga, but there are good examples of IAP like this one.</comment>


XKCD: Research Ethics - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/1390/ <comment><USER2> Companies have been purposely making people feel bad about themselves for a very long time.

Ads intentionally make people feel ugly, lazy, stupid, fat, dirty, smelly, dandruffy, lonely and ashamed so they'll buy whatever product is on offer.

Commerce is all about manipulating people for profit. I'm not a Facebook fan, but tell me how this is worse than standard operating procedure with every other consumer product?

<comment><USER3> Because those aren't psychological experiments. Nobody's claiming it's ethical for an ad company to make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not really the point here. The point is that there are strict ethics rules for running experiments, and one of those rules is, except for a limited exception (that does not apply), the subjects need to be knowingly taking part in the experiment.

<comment><USER4> You're not explaining the inconsistency, you're just giving it a name. If someone says "why are the sentences for crack cocaine 5 times longer than for regular cocaine?", it's silly to answer "because these are the rules we have, and they were passed by official people".

<comment><USER3> That's really quite a terrible and completely irrelevant analogy. It's not that the rules are different, it's that we _have_ rules, period, for experiments. There are no ethical rules for advertising. There are rules about lying, but that's basically it. But experiments? Yeah, we have ethical rules for those, and Facebook seems to have deliberately ignored them.

<comment><USER5> What about ad companies running different ads in different markets and analyzing the resulting sales data? Isn't that an experiment?

<comment><USER6> Not in the sense the OP means. They mean in the sense of a scientific experiment being done nominally to advance our understanding of the world (or in the case of psychology, specifically the mind and our perception of the world), vetted by a review board, and published in a peer-reviewed journal as part of the academic process.

This is very different from the colloquial use of 'experiment' to talk about an A/B test or similar. It's a very specific context where we have very specific rules in order to prevent people from committing horrendous acts in the name of obtaining greater understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It annoys me a good bit that when I choose the 'recent stories' feed rather than the 'top stories'...whatever it is...that the setting gets reverted every time the app is restarted, or occasionally in the web version as well. Of course, it's par for the course, so it's not like I should be surprised. Yet it seems like the setting is stored on the Facebook servers and seems to persist across browser sessions on the web app.

I guess you could chalk some of that up to incompetence, but most of it to apathy.

<comment><USER8> I just read this the other day, if you have a link that you access facebook from you can change it to be [http://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr](http://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr) [0] and that will fix it for you[1]. Be that as it may, I do agree that it seems to be developer apathy that this hasn't been fixed already.

[0] [http://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr](http://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr)

[1] [http://www.pcworld.com/article/262206/make_your_facebook_new...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/262206/make_your_facebook_news_feed_default_to_most_recent.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found this article quite insightful on this topic: [http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/07/01/faceboo...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/07/01/facebook- experiment.html)

Here's my TLDR... If this research enables Facebook to curate people's feeds to make them happier, would we consider the cost acceptable? Does Facebook even have the right to do so? Is it ethical to hide your friend's serious post or cry for help and show you cat pics, even if that will make you happier in the short run? Separately, Danah talks about how the media's hypocritical outrage over this is likely going to lead to Facebook and other companies still doing a bunch of unethical things to increase their revenues, but just becoming more secretive about it.

Seriously, read the article. Don't stop with my inadequate tldr.

</comment><comment><USER10> The newsfeed doesn't show us every single thing that every friend does. So it has to make some kind of decision about which things to show and which not to show.

If the newsfeed accidentally did a poor job of this (and mine often does), we could accuse facebook of being incompetent (or less than perfectly competent).

If, however, newsfeed _intentionally_ did a poor job of this, and _purposely_ showed us things specifically designed to make us sad, that's gone beyond "less than competent". That's "actively malicious".

THAT is the reason people are getting upset. Or at least it would be if they understood how facebook works.

<comment><USER11> And what standards body has defined the metrics so that we can measure what a "poor job" is in this case? The comic still stands, Facebook could very well be doing a poor job now, and is that unethical? What if FB's input had no overall effect? Is the test still unethical even though no one was sad? How will we define what is and isn't unethical? If advertisements makes me sad, and FB experiments with placing more ads on my news feed, leading me to become depressed, is that unethical? Are they still intentionally doing a poor job even though they are probably more or less unaware of my disposition to ads?

I think Randall has a fair point here. FB has essentially been doing this for years and _something_ about their latest test got all our panties in a bunch. Its clear though now, FB never had to adhere to any sort of standards for their website.

<comment><USER12> Going further: what if this was broad exploratory study, not meant to test any specific hypothesis? What if they rated posts based on thousands of features, a parameter space large enough to guarantee they would find plenty of correlations (both spurious and substantial), and randomly perturbed each user's feed and monitored how the features of their contributions changed? I would expect that they already do this, and from the very small amount of detail I've seen in articles about the mood factor so far, I wouldn't be surprised if this was just one of the more interesting correlations that fell out of that sort of process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> qu4z-2 I wonder whether this study really shows what people are inferring from it. Aside from the somewhat unreliable metrics ("not happy" contains happy => positive!), an increase in negative posts when being shown negative posts could subconsciously promote Facebook as a place to vent, etc. I'm sure the study addresses these things, but as usual the summary is "Seeing unhappy things on Facebook makes people unhappy!"

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't get the controversy over this. How is this different than a news website displaying more tragic stories or more upbeat stories on their homepage, and seeing how it affects users? Someone in another thread mentioned supermarkets playing sad music and happy music. Or even Facebook's normal newsfeed algorithm tweaking, where they've very likely done tests similar to this.

<comment><USER14> Because in your example, it is an interaction between you and the news site. You expect the news corporation to do this.

Facebook is not about communication between you and Facebook, but between you and other users. Facebook is effectively manipulating communication and the relationship you have with your friends on the website.

The manipulation of the feed is subject to the intent of the manipulation. If the goal is to make sure that you see things you want to do anyways (posts by friends you interact with often, for example), then that seems reasonable. Here the manipulation is not to make the user's experience better.

<comment><USER13> Their goal is to make you stay on the website the longest, or click on the most ads, or whatever. It's not like facebook is normally benevolent and tuning their filter to help you. In any case, the filter is presumably for posts from distant friends and pages you've subscribed to, not manipulating your close friends.</comment></comment></comment>


AI-Driven Talent Acquisition Software Hits Marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://www.alyssanalytics.com/blog/ai-driven-talent-acquisition-software-hits-marketplace <comment><USER2> I really don't like the idea of some of this. Facial analysis just seems creepy and prone to dismiss people who would make candidates because they don't like their photo being taken etc. I like the idea of automated filtering to some extent and see how this would be useful but disagree with the use of photos.</comment>


Emotional Rescue - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/12/emotional_rescue <comment><USER3> Great post that's basically a healthy dose of reality and commonsense.

A lot of those predicting Apple's doom (or simply decline) or a repeat of the OS wars are ignoring the power of Apple's supply chain. As Gruber puts it: if Android can make a great $100 handset why can't Apple?

The point about the cost of service contracts is worth repeating: the difference between an iPhone 4 or a free handset is about 10% of the total cost so price of the isn't all that important.

You see the power of Apple supply chain with the iPad. Apple (IMHO) had no real inkling of just how big it was going to be, just like they didn't know wit the original iPhone. Now volume is more of a known quantity Apple has a lot more room to increase specs and/or lower price with the anticated revision.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab (so far the most credible competitor) offers a screen half the size at a $600 price point. That's the power of Apple's supply chain.

<comment><USER4> It might be only 10% in the US, but it's significantly more than that in other countries.

In the UK, getting an iPhone 4 on a £25/mo 2 year contract from any of the 5 major carriers costs you £200-300, and gets you 100 minutes max and 500mb of data (some networks are more generous with the data).

In the end I got an HTC Desire HD, still £280 up-front, but £10 less a month (£240 less), 300 minutes, 'unlimited internet' (3GB). It was 70% of the TCO.

Even on the higher end (£40+), iPhone contracts offer significantly less of everything per month than Android or Blackberry phones they give you for free.

I don't know who's setting the prices, Apple or the carriers, but as Android keeps getting better I expect something interesting to happen over the next year or so.

However I expect nothing interesting to happen in the tablet sector when you can get a clearly-superior iPad for £30 more than Samsung's offering.

<comment><USER5> Android phones are starting to appear nearly free, but everybody (really everybody) seems to be carrying an iPhone nowadays. People don't even use it for anything but for phone and SMS; but that tells a lot about how strong it is as a phone brand now.

<comment><USER4> Despite knowing only two people with iPhones (brother and flatmate) and nearly a dozen with other smartphones, it still amazes me how 95% of the phones I see on the Tube are iPhones. London is more affluent than the rest of the country, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These cheap Android phones are a bigger threat to Nokia than Apple. Internationally Nokia feature phones are still incredible popular and pretty soon Android phones will be priced low enough to be extremely competitive.

I bought my first smartphone yesterday. A Huawei Ideos for $150NZ about $100 US (I actually payed $300NZD but that included $150 prepay credit). [http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/huawei-ideos- review-...](http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/huawei-ideos- review-50000664) Sure it's not as slick as an Iphone or Droid but the gap is closing. It runs Android 2.2 and has all the popular features eg gps/wifi/radio. Considering that an 8gb Iphone 4 costs $919 here in NZ ($600 on a contract) I think I got a pretty good deal. The next wave of smartphone users are going to be people like me that are driven by price more than features.

<comment><USER7> That's pretty much all I was thinking about while reading the article. While cheaper Android phones may hurt Apple a bit, I think it hurts Nokia much more if they aren't able to change fast enough. Judging from responses at the Meego conferences, I feel bad for Nokia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's amazing to me that any pundit would be stupid enough to claim that Android will eat Apple's lunch based on an analogy to Windows crushing Macintosh in the 90s.

Apple was a slowly sinking ship after Jobs left, coasting on old ideas and brand loyalty from the 80s. The Apple of the 90s was a different company, and there are no lessons there that are applicable to the Jobs era(s). To argue any differently belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the basis of Apple's success.

<comment><USER9> > It's amazing to me that any pundit would be stupid enough to claim that > Android will eat Apple's lunch based on an analogy to Windows crushing > Macintosh in the 90s.

It looks extremely relevant to me, so I'd love to hear a more substantiated rebuttal from you. The market seems to be poised to become a 70% Android lead and the rest split among Apple, Microsoft and Nokia in quantities to be determined.

I'm not even sure Apple will be able to get second place, to be honest, which makes the comparison to the Windows market even more relevant.

<comment><USER10> In the 90s Apple went for maximizing profits without any regards to market share, and they had bunch of CEOs who didn't understand computers.

Todays Apple has a fantastic production and supply chain, and a CEO who is way way better.

Instead of looking at Macs in the 90s, the pundits should look at the iPod domination in the last 10 years and how the iPad currently completely outsells the very few competitors.

Look at how MS tried to enter the mp3 player market, and have completely failed. Their latest phones failed too. Why do anybody expect them to be able to get anywhere when they have a CEO who doesn't understand consumers but only enterprise sales?

tl;dr: the pundits should talk with their kids and teenagers.

<comment><USER9> > Look at how MS tried to enter the mp3 player market, and have completely > failed. Their latest phones failed too. Why do anybody expect them to be > able to get anywhere when they have a CEO who doesn't understand consumers > but only enterprise sales?

We're talking about Android, not Microsoft.

In terms of market share, all the numbers indicate that Android will most likely be #1 in the world (even passing Nokia) while Apple will struggle to be #4 or maybe #3 if they can keep ahead of Microsoft.

Again, I'm talking about market share, not profits (where Apple is the indisputable #1).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Money quote. If Android were serious about their developers, they would bake in standard animations. Make it easier for developers to build good-looking and good-feeling apps, fragmentation issues aside. The beauty of UIKit is if you think like an Apple Engineer (see WWDC10 'Designing Apps with Scrollviews'), you can build almost all of the user interfaces and apps that are standard. Even iMovie. They give you the tools to succeed. No other conference I've been to (WWDC10) was it so apparent they want to give you the framework and knowledge and expert advice to build apps that look good. Apple loves its developers. Not sure about Google's love for their Android developers.

> Emotion is a huge factor when people choose what to buy — I'd say maybe even > the biggest one. Apple understands this. All iOS devices — all Apple > devices, for that matter — are designed with the emotional experience in > mind. Why does almost everything in iOS animate? Why did Apple create > CoreAnimation, and base UIKit app development so heavily upon it? Because > animation, even in small unobtrusive doses, has an emotional affect. It > results in a feeling.

<comment><USER12> >If Android were serious about their developers, they would bake in standard animations.

Why do you presume that they haven't? Every View has intrinsic full animation support, and of course there's a full simile of CoreAnimation in android.view.animation.

So why don't Android apps make use of it? Generally as a function of time, care, and craftsmanship. Too often Android apps were second tier, and many Android app writers were doing it to scratch an itch (versus for the iPhone where it is typically productized).

Android apps have the potential to be just as slick, just as polished, and just as nuanced and emotional as any iphone app. The state today is that they _aren't_ , but that isn't any intrinsic failure of the platform.

Honestly, though, I find that sort of observation superficial and just incredibly boring. Every iphone user when they touch an Android device will immediately comment on the lack of slickness of the non-GPU using transitions. As a day to day Android user, using my phone for virtually everything and anything, this has absolutely ZERO impact on my enjoyment of the device. To say it is unnoticed is still giving it too much credit. It's superficial bedazzling that differentiates based upon the utterly irrelevant.

<comment><USER10> Looking only at the functionality and completely ignoring the design is superficial.

Animations are a core part of the design, they make it much easier for normal people to understand transitions and spatial interfaces in the UI, e.g. when going from one screen to another in a hierarchy. And they make it look nicer. (When was the last time a consumer bought a car by specs instead of by looks?)

First we had text-based UIs (hello /bin/sh). Then we had static GUIs. Now we have animated GUIs. Many old-school unix gurus couldn't see the need for GUIs, e.g. BrianK said "What You See Is All You Get" about WYSIWYG because he thought GUIs were more limited than text-based UIs. But for normal people, the 'G' in GUI was the important letter and is what enables them to use the computer.

edit: added missing word: 'limited'

<comment><USER12> >Looking only at the functionality and completely ignoring the design is superficial.

Who is completely ignoring the design? My comment was specifically and only about essentially spurious, extraneous chrome -- literally interface bedazzling. It has nothing whatsoever to do with usability, and actually little to do with design.

You know I still marvel that Apple is held as the gold standard of design. The iPhones notification system is truly _terrible_. The messaging system is a god awful sin of design (for the longest time I simply could not believe that the screenshots posted were actually from the esteemed iPhone). Many of the transition effects stink of excess.

<comment><USER13> I downvoted you for asserting that animations have nothing to do with usability or design, and that they are "nothing more than interface bedazzling." Animations and movement can communicate a lot. They can give a sense of place and aid navigation, especially in "Navigation-based" apps (those with that left-pointing button in the top-left). They can enhance the perceived speed of the software. They can be annoying if abused, and on iOS I do not believe they are. They can lend a touch of consistency and increase the perceived value of the software or entire device. And that's off the top of my head.

<comment><USER12> I actually said "My comment was specifically and only about essentially spurious, extraneous chrome", which you extrapolated, and got upvotes, for misrepresenting as "animations have nothing to do with usability or design". Kudos on your misdirection.

<comment><USER13> What "spurious, extraneous chrome" are you referencing, and are you really attempting to claim said chrome has no effect on the user experience?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article doesn't have much substance.

"Can iOS remain the leading mobile platform without being the leading platform measured by device unit sales? "

Well give us another metric! If Android triples their sales in 2011 (as forecast by HTC) by what measurement will iOS still be the leader?

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's called Gruber Statistics. Here is another example, just a few hours later:

<http://beust.com/weblog/2010/12/27/fragment-this/>

At the end of the day, the only metric by which Apple will be ahead of the competition for a while is profit. They have already lost on all other axes that I can count on, so get ready to hear "profit" trumpeted left and right by Apple sycophants for the next five years.

<comment><USER15> Did you really just put the word 'profit' in scare quotes?

<comment><USER9> Yes, because I didn't mean you will hear profit (which makes no sense) but you will read the word 'profit' a lot.

Quotes are necessary here, apologies if they scared you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Gotta love Gruber. He makes good points, but at the end of the day he falls back on the intangibles like emotion. Apple does consistently make superior products and have succeeded in cultivating an emotional fanbase, but emotion don't mean much. There has been plenty of companies with rabid fans who have died before.

Plus, linking to a Nexus S "line" that the photographer admits was posed? Here's some numbers. There are 323 Apple Stores in the world. There are over 1,150 Best Buys. That is Apple's real problem. They can evoke all the emotion they want, but they picked a battle against the entire industry. I doubt they can remain the profit leader for long.

<comment><USER17> "but they picked a battle against the entire industry" - That's an excellent point which is often ignored. When you set yourself up to do everything on your own (OS, CPU, Other hardware design etc. in case of Apple) that poses serious scalability challenges and it of course exposes you to more and more competition from all directions.

They are basically pissing off everyone - so they still don't have a free navigation app with turn-by-turn to compete with Google and they will struggle for some time to get that done. Now they got to do their own ads too. Own CPU too - so it's going to be longer than competitors to get a great dual core ARM CPU out. I understand there are different teams and Apple can hire as many people as they want but in reality it just doesn't scale in the long term. (They still need to shuffle teams between OS X and iOS as far as I can tell.)

But Apple knows they cannot play the numbers game - so they will stay a #2 or #3 and get away with it by increasing their profitability - that's a no brainer. But how it affects their competence in delivering new features and hardware advances against competitors - that remains to be seen.

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't be so quick to discount the idea of doing everything on your own. (Besides, they aren't exactly making all of the components on their own...just ones they believe they can improve upon)

Judging by Apple's rapid increase in portable computer sales in the last decade, I think many would say "picking a battle against the entire industry" hasn't worked out too terribly for them. Apple's one-model approach for mobile devices (with a small set of possible hardware configurations) has and will continue to pay off big for development purposes and will allow for more advanced features to be integrated thoroughly and simply across the platform more quickly (examples - GPS & gyro now & touch sensitive back & NFC technologies in the future).

The bottom line is that I would expect Android to continue to push the industry forward on many specification style features like high quality cameras, speedy hardware, and storage space while the iPhone will have more "leapfrogging" features like the examples listed above. Android software implementations will probably continue to be piecemeal while the iPhone implementations will be more thoughtful yet limited. (example - <USER2> notifications & UI)

There's a great article about Apple and vertical integration (specifically the PA Semi acquisition) here: [http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/24/mitra-apple- pasemi-tech-ent...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/24/mitra-apple-pasemi-tech- enter-cx_sm_0425mitra.html)

<comment><USER17> Just to be sure, I wasn't discounting them - as I said it remains to be seen how they scale to the DIY challenges that I mentioned. Also the impact of any limitations resulting from these scale issues (if they prove to be a problem) may not be that much in terms of lost sales - as more than anything Apple's success lies in building brand loyalty and the Apple customers may choose to live with those limits. But it will pose problems for them if they target rapid sales growth outside the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have a friend who is an avid apple user, however she got a super cheap deal from her wireless company for an android phone. And as she says she can install the apps she really cares about (facebook e.t.c.) so sure she might prefer an iphone but cost wise as far as she's concerned she'd be mad to turn down the android because it's "good enough".

And from a development point of view, it's not as if we can easily cross compile apps from one platform to another so with limited resources we have to choose. iPhone or Android, at the moment the calculation is iPhone first Android second, if that changes, and with sheer weight of numbers on Androids side it might, Apple should probably be worried about drifting into irrelevancy.

<comment><USER20> So she has an Android phone, but wants an Apple phone. This should tell you why Apple has nothing to worry about.

<comment><USER21> I don't understand the logic here. An "avid apple user" went with an Android phone despite the apparent strong emotional connection she has with the Apple experience. How is that not something to worry about?

<comment><USER20> Because in the end Apple can always lower their price to Android level and own the entire market, because they have the better product. Beyond that, the public sees Apple as the coveted device, and Android as the "good enough" device. Apple is the leader, Android is the follower. A company in this position is going to have the most success introducing new products and new variations of products, since they have the most goodwill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my opinion Apple does need to worry about Android. Android is improving at a faster rate than iOS and is gaining faster momentum. Developers are catching on and more are starting to see the potential behind Android. However the biggest advantage for Android is price and variety. At Virgin Mobile you can get an Android device, Samsung Interceptor, for under $200 with no contract and pay just $25/month for unlimited data and 300 minutes, taxes included. That's amazing. I love my iPhone 4, but if Virgin Mobile had a slightly better Android phone like a Droid than I'd be tempted to switch. Sure Apple has the emotional appeal, but how can you argue with saving $1000+ over 2 years? Apple needs a stronger argument with the iPhone. The iPod touch and iPad are priced very aggressively. That's why it's difficult for competition to get a hold. But in my opinion the iPhone is overpriced and Apple is raking in the profits. Why is the iPhone priced $400 more than a iPod touch? Doesn't make sense. Its price abuse. Apple should price the iPhone more aggressively. And get some variety out there.

</comment><comment><USER23> Warning: I'm an Apple fanboy, so take my opinion for what it's worth...

I wasn't always a fanboy. In fact, prior to my iPhone 3G purchase last year, I'd never owned an Apple product. At present, my family has 2 3G's, a 4 (probably another in a week), an iPad, a Mac Mini, and an iMac.

Why do I say this? Apple converted me into an Apple buyer for life because of the experience they provide from purchase to use. It's more expensive, but I willingly pay it because I know what I'm getting, each and every time.

The iPhone works because you can't see it without being impressed. The Android is good, possibly really good (at the higher price range), but it's not great, and with the fragmentation, bloatware, and lack of controlled user experience, I don't think it can ever be great. This is why the iPhone won't go away.

Should Apple be worried? Probably...I think they'll need a few tricks up their sleeves in order to a) keep their casual users and b) keep some semblance of their current market share.

Google isn't in this for apps in the same way that Apple is, they're in it for search, which is what makes the game a bit lopsided. However, I think that's the same reason that Apple will prevail.

I can't say how it will shake out, but there's got to be something said for devotion, both from a producer and consumer side of things.

<comment><USER24> similar story here...

I'd been a Windows dev for years. Never touched anything Apple (never really thought about them at all, to be honest), until 5 years ago when I got sick of my wife complaining about me always fiddling with the computer ("I never know where anything is 'cause you keep changing everything all the time") so I decided to buy her a Mac. Idea being I'd heard they were pretty simple so she'd be ok on it, and I wouldn't touch it because, well... it was a Mac

Then I decided that I'd better figure out hoe to use it in preparation for the inevitable "How do I do [some task]?"

Fast forward to now, and that iMac is still out main machine but we've also got a macbook, an iPod Nano, a 1st gen iPod touch, 2nd gen iPhone, 3rd gen iPhone, 4th gen iPod Touch and an old Apple TV.

Oh, and my using the Mac has developed in me an appreciation for unix which has led to a love for Linux

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's some kind of Zeno's Paradox that applies to competing with Apple.

Android (for example) can start off with ugly hardware that's missing vital components and a half-finished OS and no apps and Apple fans will, quite rightly, point out these flaws. They'll maybe go further and assume the platform will fail because of these things.

Fast-forward a couple of years and Android sales are soaring, often despite these issues, which while mostly solved, may not have trickled down to the actual Android using masses yet.

You would assume that with that rate of change, it's only a matter of time before Android will surpass iPhone which doesn't seem to have changed quite as much. Instead you find that _now_ the reasons they will never pass Apple are actually subjective and non-quantifiable notions of _elegance_ , _emotion_ and _class_ (also, oddly, the ability to get geeks lining up to be the first to buy mass-produced devices sold in the tens of millions per year). And despite butt-ugly hardware and software not stopping Android in its 1.5 days, the near imperceptible (if not actually preferable) differences between 2.3 and iOS4 will forever hold them back.

</comment><comment><USER26> Another great article by John Gruber. It makes me laugh when people thinks Apple is going to fail based solely on % numbers without considering the growth of the market itself.

<comment><USER27> It happened in the 90's.

<comment><USER28> Apple didn't single-handedly invigorate (if not invent) two forms of consumer- class electronics in the 90's, and they didn't have strong leadership to continually innovate on their leads.

Android could be the new 1995-era Windows; but who's saying Apple is the same Apple?

<comment><USER27> I don't think Apple is going to get into the same situation they got into in the 90's. I was just replying to his argument, that growth of the overall market makes up for loss of percentage, with a counterexample. I personally think you have to consider a lot of other factors.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tracking GPS chip with SIM card to put inside Macbook Pro - <AUTHOR>

Anyone knows what's the smallest GPS tracker in the world that could fit inside a Macbook Pro? I guess this GPS tracker would have to use a nano SIM card and I there should be a way to hook MB battery to power the tracker.<p>I live in one of world's 10th most dangerous cities in the world and MacBooks here are about 4x more expensive than in US, so investing some money on a good tracker for it is worth it. <comment><USER2> Which is the world's 10th most dangerous city in the world?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1st source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-violent-cities-in- th...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-violent-cities-in-the- world-2014-11?op=1)

2st source: [http://www.statista.com/statistics/243797/ranking-of-the- mos...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/243797/ranking-of-the-most- dangerous-cities-in-the-world-by-murder-rate-per-capita/)

I live in Brazil</comment></comment>


Futurecam.app is now open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kartickvad/Futurecam <comment><AUTHOR> Futurecam is a computational photography camera app for iOS that process 1Gb of image data per second on an iPhone 7. It can do things that SLR's can't, like changing shutter speed after capture. Check out [http://futurecam.app](http://futurecam.app) to find out about more features and how it works. I ran Futurecam as a startup for 3 years and now I'm moving on, so I'm making it open source, under the MIT license. [https://github.com/kartickvad/Futurecam](https://github.com/kartickvad/Futurecam)</comment>


D.C. Public Schools annual graduation rate on track to decline from 73% to 42% - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-public-schools-graduation-rate-on-track-to-decline-this-year/2018/03/01/3429790a-1cdc-11e8-b2d9-08e748f892c0_story.html <comment><USER2> Just read part of the article but, why does attendance really matter for graduation.

"Those students had walked across the graduation stage despite missing too many classes or improperly taking makeup classes."</comment>


Positive Fantasies About the Future Predict Symptoms of Depression - <AUTHOR> http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/14/0956797615620783.abstract <comment><USER2> I've only read the abstract, but here is my guess. There is a phenomenon where some people vividly fantasize about the "great results" of some yet-to-be- taken action or set of actions. The fantasizing itself brings them satisfaction. This satisfaction, then, in a sense undermines the sense of dissatisfaction that is necessary to motivation. Thus, the person never puts his plans into action. I would think that the resulting failure to achieve then triggers depression.

In plainer terms, for some people daydreaming is its own reward, but it's a short-term reward that undermines the effort needed to achieve reward in the long-term. When the dream fades and you're still where you are, that's depressing.

<comment><USER3> It could also be high expectations:

Woman: I'm going to marry a rich guy that I love and have three children and live happily ever after

Man: I'm going to change the world with my non-profit start-up and be a rockstar programmer. Later, I'll sell it for billions and spend time with family.

Reality: Man and woman have a relationship that ends after 5 years, no children, and both have a standard peon job in a big company without any influence or reponsibility.

<comment><USER4> High expectations for a woman is to get married? Not sure you realized what you wrote

<comment><USER5> I think it's more about the high level of happiness, not the specific situation.

<comment><USER4> Person Creates model, the go to is marriage for a woman. I'm sure he meant nothing bad, still unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow! This seems related to [self-discrepancy theory]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- discrepancy_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-discrepancy_theory)), which posits that the gap between the "ideal self" and the "actual self" creates inner conflict.

</comment><comment><USER7> If I might extrapolate with anecdotes, I know some people who are prone to extensive storytelling about every event. This leads them tremendously astray at times, because to make a better, more truthful story they weave in their hopes, fears, and biases. A short news item becomes another data point in making the myth of conspiracy, invasion, or the inherent failures of the other. And self-encouragement to act on a task tends to take the form of saying out loud, "it'll be better _when it 's done_."

But in both cases, talking it up does nobody any good. It's the mind being directed towards rationalizations about the future as a destination, a place to arrive at with a tidy fairy tale ending, and life doesn't really have those. What life has a lot of is journeys conducted by routine, accented with pivotal chance events. Whatever happens, you wake up the next day and continue. And _that_ is depressing if you're convinced that an ending should take place!

</comment><comment><USER8> Behind a subscription model for the journal, so unable to read the article but:

I would love to read what the definition of positive fantasies in this case would be.

I'm probably mostly curious because I've always been a day-dreamer and curious what the difference from mind wandering to positive self fantasies might be.

<comment><USER9> It's not defined very clearly in the article, but they seem to use the definition from an earlier article:

> _" Positive fantasies about the future are positively experienced mental > images of future desired events that emerge in the stream of thought ... > They depict an idealized version of the future that may include the > attainment of desired future outcomes, as well as smooth, idealized > processes of working toward these outcomes."_ Kappes, H. B., & Oettingen, G. > (2011). Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy

<comment><USER10> Do they define idealized? It seems the key aspect was just pushed off into another word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How big is the effect?

<comment><USER12> Really big actually:

>As expected, the more positively participants fantasized, the fewer symptoms of depression they showed at Time 1, r = −.29, p < .02, but the more symptoms they showed a month later, r = .45, p < .001 (see Table 2). The same patterns emerged when we analyzed the positive- and negative-fantasies scores separately (at Time 1: ps < .07; change between Times 1 and 2: ps ≤ .002).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am reminded of how the stoics believed that imagining the worst outcome made you a happier individual.

[http://www.philosophizethis.org/10-things-the-stoics-can- tea...](http://www.philosophizethis.org/10-things-the-stoics-can-teach-you- about-being-a-happier-person/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone have a link to the full text that's outside of paywall?

</comment><comment><USER15> In the case where depression is caused by life events, I think a better solution is to make changes to fix the problems in your life rather than just engage in wishful thinking.

<comment><USER16> Oh yea, my friend should have just fixed that incident where he found his sisters body instead of being depressed about it.

<comment><USER15> Why do people have to post dickish comments like this when there is any discussion of depression? It should have been obvious from my comment that I was referring to life events such as stressful jobs, bad relationships, etc. and not traumatic events over which you have no control.

<comment><USER17> I understood and agree with what you intended to say, but perhaps "life events" may have been a bit ambiguous, and some people tend to define "depression caused by life events" as depression caused by tragedies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is another manifestation of delusional disorder.

</comment><comment><USER19> What findings! Now go study why proving the obvious gives meaning to one's life.

<comment><USER20> Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN, especially of new work. Substantive criticism is fine, of course, but snarky dismissals lower the quality of the discussion.

<comment><USER19> Here's a hypothesis: People that use positive reenforcement tend to need positive reenforcement to right themselves and are obviously more susceptible toward tipping over toward depression than individuals who are simply too balanced and happy to even consider it as part of their daily routine. The study is not obvious but rather obviously incorrect with a tainted initial state of subjects leaning toward long term depression. Therapy is a symptom of discontent. This is a case of intellectuals being outsmarted by their own process.

I can't even joke on this forum. Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil thought of humor as a higher form of intelligence so what gives?</comment></comment></comment>


Quikly Jump to Your Favorite Directories with HyperJump Shell Script - <AUTHOR> http://sdbr.net/post/HyperJump/

<comment><USER2> Similar to the tool written about here, FASD is also awesome! [https://github.com/clvv/fasd](https://github.com/clvv/fasd)

It remembers where you go and which files you open. These days I just do "z gn" (for example) and it'll go to the project directory I've most recently been working in containing the letters "gn". ("zz gn" gives me a list, sorted in order of probability)</comment>


Gavin King: Ceylon is no Java killer - <AUTHOR> http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Ceylon

<comment><USER2> So he is unhappy with the libraries and he's building a new language to fix this ? Some of the problems and ingrained at the JVM level (broken generics implementation for instance) so creating a new language and new libraries cobbled over Java ones won't really fix the problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> "There is simply no good way to define a user interface in Java, and that is a language problem"

I'm curious what he really means by this. Language-level GUI implementations? Or perhaps he's referring to language support for validating user input.

<comment><USER4> I don't know what he means by it, but I'd make the same statement. If I did, I'd be referring to a number of things. First off, the basic Swing and AWT UI stuff all suffers from a number of issues, but core to the language is the way interfaces/anonymous inner classes proliferate necessarily. Core user- interface concepts like event dispatching/handling really benefit from language features built with them in mind. Portable functions on some level.. like C#'s delegates, or any of the closure proposals..

And then yeah, all of the alternatives.. defining UIs in XML, literally ANY of the Java web frameworks. They all suffer from core problems: Writing Java code can be frankly kinda slow and cumbersome compared to other (more dynamic) languages. That's a totally reasonable tradeoff for the benefits you get back when, say.. you're building out some business logic, or implementing a network protocol... but in the land of declarative user-interfaces (including web ones).. more often than not the frameworks mortgage away loads of the compile- time niceness without giving you the benefit of a dynamic language framework's velocity or brevity.

I do think writing user interfaces (of any kind) in Java pretty much sucks. I've thought for some time that the big win here would probably be to see more tools that allow you to write your presentation layer stuff in a dynamic language that runs on the JVM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Site seems unreachable, does anyone have a cached version?

<comment><USER6> I asked the guy that runs it, the server is being restarted

<comment><USER7> tl;dr (prolly longer than blog you can't access

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/goxux/redhat_an...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/goxux/redhat_announce_2yo_skunkworks_projects_ceylon_a/)</comment></comment></comment>


Apollo Client 0.5 - <AUTHOR> https://dev-blog.apollodata.com/apollo-client-0-5-f1eb3f122ace <comment><USER2> Having worked with a lot of Javascript frameworks aimed at creating web applications/SPAs (used Cappuccino to build a wireframing tool, Backbone.js to build a dashboard for a payments provider, React/Relay to build a phone calling tool and events platform, and now React/Apollo to build a peer-to-peer texting tool), I can say that React/Apollo/GraphQL is my new go-to stack for new JS projects. It's a pleasure to work with, and a lot of the pain points of creating large apps with JS in the past are handled very well. Congrats to the Apollo team!

<comment><USER3> What are the pros and cons between Relay and Apollo?

<comment><USER4> Before we started building Apollo Client, we actually tried Relay, but found it difficult to adopt, so we started a community effort to build a more flexible GraphQL client. Our main goals were to make incrementally adoptable, compatible with all view layers and easy to understand/debug.

While Apollo is easier to adopt and use, it's still under active development, so it's not as stable as Relay, and hasn't been optimized for performance the way that Relay has.

disclaimer: I work on Apollo Client

<comment><USER5> /disclaimer/disclosure/ \- when you disclose something, it's a disclosure. (Sorry, personal bugbear, along with e.g. / i.e. confusion. Both are rampant on HN! :) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I started a new Ember.js project recently and got frustrated with Ember Data and JSON API. In my experience, it's the weakest part of Ember by far. Out of curiosity, I tried wiring up Apollo Client to my backend instead. Turned out to be very easy to get going.

So far I like apollo-client and GraphQL much more than Ember Data. I get full control over what data is being loaded on each route and only fetch exactly what's needed. Mutations with explicit arguments are also much better than the blob.save() / save-everything style encouraged by ember-data.

With client-side resolves in the next release, this integration should get even better. Hopefully they'll also switch to using GETs for non-mutation queries to enable some much better caching options.

</comment><comment><USER7> I spent a day or so with relay and kept being blocked by mysteries or tired out from the amount of code you need to set up for a mutation. Branched and tried it with Apollo and everything has been pretty easy going.

Merging Fragments in the style of relay were my main concern with Apollo but they do have this now.

All in all much more flexible and readable than relay.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of the developers working on Apollo GraphQL stuff here, happy answer any questions! So exciting to see this on HN.

<comment><USER9> Do you plan to make an integration with Meteor ? My main frustration with Meteor have been than it is tied to mongo (and not a relational db). I see Apollo as a way to plug Meteor with any data backend. If I'm not mistaken, that was the original sales pitch of Apollo.

So my question is: should I have high hopes of being able to work with Meteor and Postgres with the help of Apollo?

<comment><USER8> A lot of people are doing that already! You can use Meteor as the build and deployment system for your app, and use Apollo for data. The main remaining blocker is the accounts system, since it is still tied to a particular MongoDB schema. We're working with people in the community on some ideas about how to make Meteor Accounts database-agnostic, so once that is possible it will truly be possible to build a Meteor app on top of any backend.

<comment><USER9> Can I find any moderate-size app that uses Meteor with Appolo and Postgres as an example? The Meteor guide and tutorials, as well as most well-known Meteor open source apps (wekan, telescope...) use mongo collections.

And since Meteor is a full stack framework, I would love to see a guide about how to best structure an app with Meteor and Apollo (I'm in the camp where I don't like to fiddle around with what's the best js stack. I'm happy to have the framework authors decide that for me, and get down writing my goddamn app)

<comment><USER8> It's meant to be part of a decoupled stack where you can pick and choose different options for UI, backend, etc. We're constantly working towards having clearer integrations and patterns. If you just want to get a thing built without making decisions and putting in some work for integration, I'd just go with the built-in Meteor stuff for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been wanting to try out vue.js and have a GraphQL endpoint. Apollo seems like a Relay alternative that's not tied to React. Can anyone compare the two (Vue.js+Apollo and React+Relay)?

<comment><USER8> I haven't used Vue.js yet (but really want to try!) There's a community integration with Apollo here: [https://github.com/Akryum/vue- apollo](https://github.com/Akryum/vue-apollo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks really cool.

The name is completely unrelated to its function; I thought this was NASA's code. Imagine my disappointment when I saw a javascript library for working with GraphQL!

<comment><USER12> and then your excitement after checking it out?

<comment><USER11> Well it's a nice client! Just had to alter my expectations.

<comment><USER8> Thanks - we went through a ton of different names, and almost all of them had some sort of collision. We try to mention GraphQL up front on all of the content to avoid extended confusion :]

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably should have included the fact that it's a JS GraphQL client in the title, but I wasn't sure if that would violate HN's "editorializing" rule.

On the bright side, we apparently got a few people who thought it had something to do with NASA. Muahaha!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The State of CSS 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://2019.stateofcss.com/ <comment><USER2> > CSS on the other hand has always been the studious, well-behaved kid who > always stays polite and never makes a rash decision

This is such a strange picture to paint!

CSS has always been the dim-witted kid. For a long time, it couldn't do math. For a long time, it couldn't have varibles. For a long time, it did not have a reasonable syntax for page layout. Its rules have global visibility (if we don't consider shadow DOM). And those vendor prefixes! This is one hell of a kid!

<comment><USER3> For a long time, it didn't need any of those things. It's only been a recent need for marketing, mainly.

<comment><USER4> Not even close. Marketing has lead to some absurd uses of CSS but it's more about adaptive/responsive design.

When you need to handle an almost unlimited range of screen sizes having your visual system able to handle a little math is critical.

<comment><USER3> First there was marketing. Then there was adaptive design. And variables are new compared to almost everything else.

<comment><USER5> There's a CSS & FP Working Group note that listed variables--or more specifically, symbolic constants--as a proposed future extension to CSS2 back in 1998,[0] and I'd assume that there are even earlier discussions on the matter as well. The idea of using variables in CSS isn't new by any means. If you read this 2008 essay by Bert Bos[1] against extending CSS to include variables Bos makes a really intriguing comment that "macros help for authors, not for the semantic Web" in his conclusion.

Perhaps I'm reading into things, but it seems rather illuminative in terms of understanding how at least some key figures in the development of CSS may have viewed things. If you consider CSS in terms of two distinct audiences-- authors/maintainers and users who consume CSS-styled documents--then at least some of the decisions with the CSS specifications seem to make a bit more sense. In which case, it's not so much that CSS didn't need the listed functionality as it is that other goals for the specifications were prioritized over the benefits of variables and other functionality. Reusability, modularity, and simplicity were some of the main priorities. They still are, but I think we've seen a redefinition of those terms with the direction front-end development has taken in the past decade; I also think that improvements in the uniformization of browser implementations and development of better debugging tools has helped erase some of the concerns given in the essay.

0\. [https://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-CSS- potential#id05684046681](https://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-CSS- potential#id05684046681)

1\. [https://www.w3.org/People/Bos/CSS- variables](https://www.w3.org/People/Bos/CSS-variables)

<comment><USER3> > other goals for the specifications were prioritized over the benefits of > variables and other functionality.

That's what I said. Until marketing forces clamored for such things, other less interesting things that weren't sparkles and lollipops took precedence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> hornet-run There's a missing feature. Look at a css page and know how the site will behave. Every programing language you look at code (if well written) and u know what it will do. In css you know what are the attributes set but it doesn't really tell you what is going you happen. That's the only thing I don't like in css.

<comment><USER6> This is the killer reason why I hate doing anything with CSS. There's close to zero predictability.

CSS has no isolation / encapsulation, no control flow and no local state. Every line of code can modify and affect every other line. And even then, what happens is then dependent on an independently defined DOM object.

Yes, it's possible to write CSS in a way that helps ease the problems that the missing features above cause, but that's working harder to work around the language.

The raison d'etre of CSS, "style independently of the semantic document" is a failed project. It works for DOM trees that can be legitimately considered documents but fails horribly for what can be considered 'applications'. For that reason, I think an overhaul of web document styling is much needed.

The purists will cry that most of what is delivered on the web are "applications" and not "documents", especially when it comes to the morning news, but pretending that isn't the case isn't helpful.

<comment><USER7> > It works for DOM trees that can be legitimately considered documents

That's because this is what the web was built for. But then everyone wanted to turn it into an application platform by building on top of a document model. Of course CSS was designed to style documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unsurprisingly Stylus is one of the preprocessors that people want to avoid the most (beating less by 1% in user satisfaction). The preprocessor is very apathetic to what style you use - it's the antithesis of a linter. Want to use a semicolon on this line, and not one on the next? Go for it! Not the best when you want to write something production worthy.

That said I've found it phenomenal for prototyping, simple codepen examples, and teaching css. I run the prototyping efforts at Atlassian and I've built a large amount of code prototyping tools focused on allowing designers to quickly build something out. The standard template I give to designers and students uses stylus by default because _it allows them to make mistakes_. People who are unfamiliar with code feel defeated when a small syntax error was the one thing holding them back - it makes them question their understanding of the intention of what they wrote, even when the meaning of what they had was correct. Stylus fixes so many of these things for me. I'd highly recommend doing any of your exploratory phases in Stylus.

<comment><USER2> > Want to use a semicolon on this line, and not one on the next? Go for it! > Not the best when you want to write something production worthy.

What do semicolons - or braces, for that matter - have to do with production worthiness? Style inconsistencies do not cause bugs. Poor CSS rules do.

<comment><USER8> Inconsistencies in the source file do not affect production worthiness in the moment, but they do affect maintainability down the line. If for instance your team wants to move to a new css preprocessor that's the next big thing in 10 years, a consistent style means you can programatically convert to the new syntax. Or maybe there's a tool that can help you write better css and detect where rules are unused -variable syntax will be sand in the gears for something like that. Mishmoshed syntax everywhere is a nightmare for programatic accessibility, though is excellent for simply trying things out.

I love stylus, don't get me wrong. I use it for all my projects - even in production. But if I were the head engineer of say, google.com, I wouldn't allow it in production for a codebase that large due to the potential for problems down the line.

<comment><USER9> Clear and consistent code formatting guidelines (and ideally automatic formatting for this) is also great for reducing the thought required in formatting code you push while reducing noise and code formatting debates in code reviews.

<comment><USER10> Can't second this enough

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The HTML in the report tells me as much about the state of CSS as what is in the report.

Sure a lot of people know lots of clever CSS things, but are we over- complicating things and forgetting the basics of HTML?

This report does not use HTML properly. It is a sea of divs which is all well and good for CSS but not what this whole thing is ultimately about.

The document structure has a main element but this is in the wrong place. According to the HTML spec the main element should be directly below the body element with no extra div wrappers.

Then the page has one nav element. Beyond that it uses none of the sensible HTML5 elements for the content. Nothing is broken down into sections, articles and asides. Graphs are not in figures.

These elements are important, otherwise we might as well just give up and just post images with imagemaps.

Surely some content on the report must be a 'header' or part of what you might call a 'footer'?

I don't get this complacency when it comes to writing HTML, why everything always has to be in a div when the spec says you should only being divs when there are no better elements.

Since this report is entirely written in div soup with one nav element and one badly placed main, they don't know HTML so why should I take seriously what the report says about CSS? It is going to be the same cargo cult stuff.

<comment><USER12> It looks like a <main> element is allowed to have div ancestors: [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/grouping- content.html...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/grouping- content.html#hierarchically-correct-main-element)

<comment><USER11> True, you can have as many divs as you want. But it can't be in a more sensible element and there is no good reason with today's CSS layout to want to put it in untold wrappers. Maybe it is a react thing where everything has to be in div wrappers.

Anyway, if the spec matters more than the toolchain it should not be anywhere but directly under the body element.

<comment><USER13> The comment you replied to points out that "main" can be inside a div according to the spec.

Also, React doesn't require the wrappers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just can't take this website serious. Is it a parody or a joke? It looks awful and it doesn't even fit on mobile ([https://i.imgur.com/6GD8yfD.png](https://i.imgur.com/6GD8yfD.png) && [https://i.imgur.com/lxs0gVG.png](https://i.imgur.com/lxs0gVG.png))

What happened to keeping it simple? [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) or [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

<comment><USER15> Won't comment about whether it looks awful or not, but in terms of the mobile experience it seems to work fine for me on my OnePlus 6T with Firefox Focus, and subsequent tests on desktop using the Responsive Design Mode in Firefox with various size also worked as expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well.. as a developer who probably works more with CSS and HTML than anything else, I really enjoyed this report. I found the visualizations and even the overall design provocative, and I even learned a few things in the process (overscroll-behavior?!)

</comment><comment><USER17> If this was a photo pasted into word that was then printed and faxed it wouldn't make the content any less meaningful.

Thanks for sharing the interesting results into various usages of css; I learnt about some new things, and found the usage of different things (especially units!) very interesting.

As an aside, the site worked great for me on mobile. Some images were big and slightly awkward to scroll around, but worked just fine.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why is my laptop suddenly cooking when I'm just reading that page?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious about the 8% of people using cm as a unit in css...

<comment><USER20> The same people doing print stylesheets?

<comment><USER21> Doing metric print stylesheets.

<comment><USER22> Even more absurd than metric is those using imperial units.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > JavaScript has developed a bit of a reputation as the angry, rebellious > teenager going through a new phase every year and telling you you're just > too old to understand.

Couldn't agree more.

I imagine one of the many reasons is because CSS features can't be transpiled but many of JS can.

</comment><comment><USER24> Given the results on layout tools:

Grid - 54.5% have used it, 43.2% heard of it, but haven't used it

Flexbox - 94.4% have used it, 4.64% heard of it, but haven't used it

...I wonder how the adoption of CSS grid will play out over time. Are people comfortable enough with flexbox that they don't feel the need to use CSS grid?

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the most offensive thing here is that 6.2% of people use inches as a unit of measure in their css.

The thought of 𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚛: 𝟶.𝟸𝚒𝚗 𝚋𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚔; sitting in someone's css is terrifying.

<comment><USER25> As someone who hasn't done CSS in a while, with a 4K monitor and the knowledge how old pixel-based desktop apps look on it (VERY small), what's wrong with inches?

From my own non-CSS based graphics experience, the only problem with layouts specified in absolute sizes is that small lines look really bad on standard (<100dpi) monitors if not aligned to the physical screen pixels. (Not saying that's not bad!)

<comment><USER8> Inches in css aren't in any way related to physical inches. CSS has no knowledge of your physical screen dimensions. Rather an inch was defined early on in the history of css as "1 inch in pixels of a 17 inch screen at 1280x1024 resolution" This happens to be 96.42 pixels, which rounded down to 96. So not only is it an obscure unit, it's also a misleading one.

On your 4k monitor 96 pixels is more than likely not an inch (unless your monitor is slightly over 42 inches), so it wont solve your small app problem in any form, it will just make things more obscure.

In addition to this, you'll also end up with many subpixel values. While this wont matter for 𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚛 in the example I posted above (as border always snaps to the nearest dp unit), it will create blurry effects on lower DPI screens for other css rules that do respect subpixel values (i.e. 𝚋𝚘𝚡-𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚍𝚘𝚠: 𝟶 𝟶 𝟶 𝟶.𝟸𝚒𝚗 #𝟶𝟶𝟶; will create a blurred border effect).

<comment><USER26> That said, Mozilla did use to have the experimental `mozmm` unit that attempted to accurate represent the millimetre. However it was removed a few versions back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Kinda all you need to know about the state of CSS in 2019: the menu's bottom items cannot be accessed on mobile Safari. Also: the scrolling is awkward/broken.

<comment><USER28> If half the effort put into shitting on CSS went instead to improving it, maybe it would be perfect by now. The requirements of CSS as a language are insanely complicated - open source, implemented by different browsers, on all different devices, for applications doing a huge variety of things, working with 20 years of legacy code. I defy anyone to explain how they would do it better and still satisfy all the constraints.

<comment><USER27> > If half the effort put into shitting on CSS went instead to improving it, > maybe it would be perfect by now.

More than half of effort is put into improving it. Too little reaches the final stages.

> I defy anyone to explain how they would do it better and still satisfy all > the constraints.

I had a rant or two about this in the past: [https://medium.com/@dmitriid/ok-w3c-and-whatwg-dont-die- but-...](https://medium.com/@dmitriid/ok-w3c-and-whatwg-dont-die- but-7952221fcbe4) :)

CSS and HTML still pretend they are just text and images on a paper (or a 2D plane). And this hasn't been the case for over 10 years. As a layout engine CSS still has less capabilities than Delphi or Qt from early 2000.

<comment><USER29> And you can't run Delphi or QT based projects on Windows, macOS, Linux and Haiku, in most of the browsers that run on all those operating systems.

<comment><USER27> You can definitely run Qt on various platforms. That's the whole point of Qt to begin with :)

The ability to have CSS in most browsers (a total of three of them as of 2019 since IE is switching to Chromium) is not really an excuse for the state of CSS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>