Plastic Macbook. Do you want one? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys, i got this idea that my current MBP retina 15" is really heavy and getting hot sometimes.
Would it be a good idea to custom design a case (display cover, keyboard enclosure and bottom case) to be 100% plastic?
I'd like one and i was wondering if you'd want one as well. <comment><USER2> The Aluminum acts as a heat sink...

It's a dumb idea what you're suggesting. Sorry, I know this isn't what you want to hear but you need to hear it.

This is why HN shouldn't design a laptop.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes please, I'm a fanboy of apple but I have metal allegy, So I can't use macbook at all.

I've used white macbook, and after changed to metal macbook I got rash on my hand, so I gave up to use it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thought the the idea of the metal enclosure was heat dissipation? (i.e the whole thing is a giant heatsink)

</comment><comment><USER5> >my current MBP retina 15" is really heavy

Weight: 4.02 pounds. Did it gain weight since you bought it?

>and getting hot sometimes.

its designed to cook its internals instead of running loud fans - thats what users want, that and thin. Dont worry, both CPU and GPU will throttle around 80-100C and will not get damaged.

</comment><comment><USER6> Uh no. The rigid case helps keep the logic board from failing. The unibody and later ones only fail in other places (screen connector, keyboard) and was a great step in reliability over the plastic MacBooks. I had a rubber-like matte black one. Btw the 17" so-called-unibody model wasn't a single metal piece and failed more than all the others.

</comment><comment><USER7> Look into seeing what makes it run so hot. Ditch Chrome, Slack and any Electron apps and your laptop will be cool forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not running "so hot", it's just annoying. The weight problem is the one i want to get rid of. I recently got an ideapad that is partly plastic, it's not hot and it only weighs 1kg.

<comment><AUTHOR> While having a 4 core i7 8th gen, which i cannot get into a MBA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The heat has to go somewhere. If your machine is feeling hot, the heat is escaping. Trying to prevent that by using a less conductive material may not end well for your laptop.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't it melt?

<comment><USER10> Doubt it. A lot of windows laptops are made of cheap plastic. Thinkpads for example. It's only recently when they have switched to metal. Even MacBook used to be plastic a decade ago.

<comment><USER11> A case in point: kettles

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No.

<comment><USER13> You should at least expand why.

My thoughts:

\- Plastic will warp when heated.

\- The metal in the MBP is probably being used as a heatsink

\- It won't look good.

<comment><USER12> I don't want an MBP.

There are two contradictory things about Macers:

(1) They hate macs. They are always complaining about their computers, about how they waste time hanging around the "genius" bar. (e.g. maybe it is not smart to do!)

(2) They insist on buying macs no matter what and won't consider that you can get plastic computers, computers with good heat sinks, computers with more RAM, computers with NVIDIA graphics cards or AMD APUs, etc. if they just were willing to take their business elsewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> I cannot speak of other users but: 1\. never visited the genius bar in 9/9 years of multiple mac ownership 2\. it's the only platform where i can run 100% native windows, *nix and macos(need this for iOS development)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/139458-android-now-powers-75-of-all-smartphones-sold-are-we-heading-towards-a-google-monopoly <comment><USER2> Clay Christensen in the Innovators Solution lays out an explanation for what is happening here. Apple used vertical integration to make a giant leap forward with their iPhone that you couldn't have made in a non-integrated company. They ended up overshooting the typical consumer's needs though in the following iterations of the iPhone. And the technology that was at first difficult for competitors to reproduce became easier to replicate (thanks in part to Android). Samsung, HTC, and others were able then to provide good enough devices (and in certain ways, better devices) to consumers at a lower price point.

Apple's response has been to move up market towards tablets, and have been able to use their vertical integration to produce devices that no other Android manufacturer could match at first. Microsoft is building their own device to have similar quality, but they are doing it as a vertically integrated company. Amazon showed you could do a partial vertical integration (heavily customized Android and integration into their own media resources) to take away the low end of the tablet market from Apple. And slowly the Android tablet manufacturers are catching up to Apple.

So what this makes me ask is what will be next for Apple? They haven't been good at playing the high-volume, low-profit electronics game, so they'll need another "blockbuster", highly innovative device, and I am excited to see what that will be. It drives the industry forward, and creates exciting new technology we all get to benefit from eventually.

<comment><USER3> You are absolutely right in what you say regarding integration.

I disagree with your final analysis of where this leaves Apple. I think Apple will continue to hold a significant chunk of the "high-end" luxury market. iOS will maintain high price points and Apple will maintain its polish--and consumers with expendable income will keep their sales strong. I suspect their market share in Europe, USA, Japan, and wealthy Chinese won't drop too much (30% of market? 45%?). Android will claim the entire low-cost market--the rest of China, India, South America.

I think Apple will maintain its profits, but Android will secure the majority of the _world_ market. Apple is trying to maximize _percentage of industry profit_ rather than percentage of _industry sales_.

<comment><USER4> Sure, Apple is trying to maximize profit. But how does that help me?

We're developers right? We need to find the market with the most potential. If I'm developing for a platform where the platform holder is laser focused on maximizing their profit, but not their marketshare... it seems like I've made the wrong choice.

I see a lot of iPhone devs (not you specifically) try to justify Apple's shrinking marketshare by saying it's fine since Apple is still taking the total profit in the industry. Either they've heavily invested their earnings into AAPL, or they're trying to pull any stat they possibly can to justify their platform choice.

<comment><USER5> Simple: people who have the kind of income to pay a premium for Apple devices will also be more willing and able to pay a premium for good apps. There lies your profit. (Not to mention your costs will be lower since iOS ha no fragmentation.)

<comment><USER6> > iOS has no fragmentation

I think the correct statement would be iOS has "less" fragmentation. They still have fragmentation though. Not only through the devices but also the version of iOS running on the device. It can get pretty hairy trying to maintain support for multiple iOS devices with versions of even just 4.3 and up.

<comment><USER7> If you think iOS is hairy supporting 4.3 and up, you probably have no experience supporting Android apps. The fragmentation extends beyond the Android version. The differences between handsets are so big that one pretty much has to ignore the users who own phones that are impossible to test with. You'll get some random complaint from a user running your app on a device from a manufacturer you've never even heard of.

Look at Google's own wallet app -- it only runs on only 6 android devices. If you want to run google wallet on your Nexus S, you'll have to run a 3rd party "hacked" version of Google Wallet.

<comment><USER8> I've certainly had issues supporting iOS 4 vs 5/6. Most of the Android issues I run into have to do with WebViews behaving differently on different OEMs devices. Both forms of fragmentation can be a pain in the ass.

Probably games developers have it harder on Android, but for the average app it seems just about the same to me as a developer.

<comment><USER9> The key difference is if you cut out iOS 4 only users you're eliminating at most 2-3% of your market. If you were to try and do the same thing with Android and require ICS or higher you would be blocking off 50%+ of your market.

There is little expectation of iOS 4 support at this point, because users who purchased an iPhone in the last 4 years don't have to use it. The same is hardly true for Gingerbread. Most of the phones that shipped with that half- baked OS will have it until they're retired into a drawer somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is seriously good news. What many people don't realize is how powerful Android is. Open Source doesn't mean shitty quality software, contrary to popular belief. Android can do so many things that other Operating systems still cannot provide. All Android needs is some time, and some iterations and no one can even dream of killing it (like many plan to). Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will eventually win the war.

I own a 42" Sony Bravia LCD TV. When I first purchased it, I got a hard copy of the GNU/GPL license. Wondering, I did a quick search and found out that my TV runs on Linux! Now, here's the sad part - Since I'm somewhat techie, I know my TV is powered by Open Source software. But the average end consumer doesn't know and doesn't care much, he just wants a good TV. So, the main area where open Source is weak at is marketing. And this too, is only a matter of time, till it catches up, I believe.

Imagine if the Linux foundation advertised on TV like Apple did, for their Mac vs PC commercials? Then the average consumer would probably care. If you have a good product, you should let people know about it. Sadly, even the Nexus 10 and Nexus 4 have poor marketing in this context (Michael Arrington wrote a wonderful article on this[1]).

One day, Android will reach 95%+, and I will live to watch it happen and I will tell my kids and my grandchildren without hesitation - "This is the future."

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/hey-google-your- nexus-7-mar...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/hey-google-your- nexus-7-marketing-images-look-like-crap/)

<comment><USER9> > Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will eventually win > the war.

How does that work? Where is the open source OS that "won" the desktop war? Where is the open source codec that "won" the codec wars?

<comment><USER11> I am guessing the original poster is referring to GNU/Linux beating Solaris to win the server market.

EDIT: Regarding the desktop, just saw this: "Ubuntu will account for roughly 9% of all global PC shipments by 2014" [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/ubuntu-pc-sales- skyrocket...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/ubuntu-pc-sales-skyrocket- in-2011)

<comment><USER12> pro-tip: Every VP of sales for every company will tell you that their market share will increase in the next year. Half of them will be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What Apple does well: Take a nascent but exploding market and create a fantastically superior experience via vertical integration. Get way out of in front of the competition and own the consumer mindshare: PC/iPod/iPhone (almost Newton)

What Apple doesn't do well: Own the mass market. The one place they have - music players - has really collapsed as a stand alone market and merged in with smart phones. (ie no one in the right mind today would launch a stand alone music/video player)

Why Apple is in trouble: 47% of all revenue comes from the iPhone and it's clear that that market has moved past their sweet spot.

What Apple needs to do: Understand that (to them) this market is mature. It's not about fighting Android. It's about finding the next PC/Music Player/Phone where the potential is huge and the vertical integration of hardware and software will blow away the competition for 3 - 5 years. What is that? I don't know or I'd be running the place! My fear is Steve would have known but Tim does not seem like he would.

<comment><USER14> "Why Apple is in trouble: 47% of all revenue comes from the iPhone and it's clear that that market has moved past their sweet spot"

This is not clear at all. Selling tiny computers with mobile broadband is clearly going to be the biggest hardware business for the next 10+ years and 10 years from now the device that generates the bulk of Apple's revenues will probably still be called an iPhone. It may bear little similarity to the current slab/multitouch input phone of today but will serve all the same purposes. And Android based competitors may be 90% of the market then and Apple may still be the most profitable company in the world.

I have a hard time believing the story that 'Apple is in trouble' because they have the highest margins in one the biggest markets which is still rapidly growing.

<comment><USER13> Steko ask yourself this question. What portion of the smartphone market did they have 3 years ago? What % is that today? What happens when the pie stops growing in 3 years? It's feeling pretty much like PC vs Mac again where they're at less than 10% permanently. Anyway, the point is they need to go find another space now. They shouldn't exit phones they just should acknowledge that the vertical integrated offerings strengths become it's weakness.

<comment><USER14> "What portion of the smartphone market did they have 3 years ago?"

Around 17%.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/11/apple-grabs-17-of- smart...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/11/apple-grabs-17-of-smartphone- market-in-latest-quarter/)

"What % is that today?"

Somewhere between 14% (most recent quarter, this thread's article) and 24% (last year's launch quarter).

<http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=470976>

"What happens when the pie stops growing in 3 years?"

The whole point is that Apple's pie has a lot more than 3 years of growth left. We are talking about this arbitrary thing called "the smartphone market" but Apple doesn't really compete in "the smartphone market". Apple competes in a tiny corner of "the smartphone market" called "the $450+ smartphone market".

I remember when Apple competed in a space called "the $300+ music player market". And how it "felt pretty much like PC vs Mac again" when cheap mp3 players were taking market share. And then Apple brought out a $250 music player and then a $200 music player and then a $100 music player etc. Now Apple found a bigger market to play in then music players but I'm saying that I doubt there's a bigger market to play in then pocket computers with wireless broadband [1]. And Apple can keep having amazing success in that market by doing both (1) what they did in 2007 (make a much better pocket computer with wireless internet than what was currently in stores), and (2) what they did in the portable music player market (by continually addressing a larger share of that pie).

What's called the iphone in 5-10 years may look radically different, maybe it's Siri on steroids, maybe it's brain control, maybe it's holograms and haptics, maybe it's Kinect, maybe it's aug reality ala Glass, maybe it's smellovision... But what's essential about that product is that it will replace the functions of the current smartphone.

If you're asking me if Apple can keep growing at it's current rate the answer is clearly that they can't long term (law of large numbers). I do think Apple will enter other markets -- luxury watches, tv/console gaming, search and cloud services are the obvious areas. I don't think they will make as much money in all of those put together as they will in the pocket computers with wireless broadband category though.

[1] There are bigger markets of course (cars, houses, health care, education, etc) and there will be bigger new markets (girl robots lol?) but none of them play to Apple's strengths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apple has designed its business model to cede the mass market. It focuses on capturing the majority of industry profits, not sales. It should surprise no one that more phones ship with Android than iOS.

As a platform company, this strategy exposes a vulnerable flank since historically the platform company with the most market share attracts the best software and the most end users.

The greatest difference between mobile devices and PCs? There is no IBM, which essentially standardized a powerful alternative to the Apple PC within a year or two. Android is not a single alternative but more an umbrella term encompassing several alternatives. There is still too much fragmentation today in the Android ecosystem, and its structure fosters fragmentation -- not standardization. The device manufacturers saw how commoditization destroyed the PC manufacturers, and they are intent to avoid the same fate. Unless something changes, Android devices from one manufacturer will continue to vary from other Android devices in terms of size and functionality.

For developers, the right way to segment operating systems is not Android vs iOS vs Windows 8, but by code reach. In other words, how many devices can be reached with the same code base? My hunch is iOS will have an impressive lead in this metric, but I'm happy to be proven wrong if someone has contradicting data.

Apple is content to yield marginally profitable customers to "Android," provided Android remains as fragmented as it is today. If Android were to unite, or some other OS emerges, allowing devs to target 75% of the market with (fundamentally) the same code base, the threat to Apple becomes far more dangerous.

<comment><USER16> This was more true 2 years ago. I think they are trying to capture back some of that "mass market" where people expect a cheap or free phone as opposed to the high end where we are used to paying $200-400:

<http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/>

(4: free, 4S: $99)

<comment><USER14> These are contract prices. The unlocked iphone 4 still sells for $450+ which is around what carriers pay.

What we talk about when we talk about the "mass market" is the half a billion plus smartphones sold this year that range anywhere from less then $100 to $350. Apple has thus far refused to compete in this part of the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Actually, it powers 75% of all smartphones sold in the third quarter: [http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/01/android- grabs-75-0-m...](http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/01/android- grabs-75-0-market-share-in-q3-followed-by-14-9-for-ios-and-4-3-for- blackberry/)

<comment><USER18> Yeah, and 75% of all smartphones being sold today. And tomorrow :)

<comment><USER19> This feels a bit cheerleadery?

This is actual PHONE MARKETSHARE being delivered (not necessarily sold, as many of them are subsidized to $0).

Additionally, looking at just phones is a myopic view of the mobile landscape, when tablets and mini tablets (aka, iPodTouches and sub 6" android tablets) are a huge source of gaming revenue.

<comment><USER20> On the gaming revenue side, it's interesting that iOS accounts for about 85% of money spent on mobile games, and their share of the whole app revenue pie is similarly sized.

This suggests a very different picture than what we get from the raw handset shipment numbers. For the sake of argument, let's redefine how we subdivide the the mobile phone market market in terms of how people use their devices rather than what their devices are capable of. Considered that way, perhaps the app revenues suggest that Apple still completely dominates the smartphone market, and Android's handset shipment numbers simply reflect that the dumbphone market has been flooded with a smartphone OS because nowadays even the free phones are running Android.

<comment><USER21> All the basic apps that define a smartphone are free on Android (and on iOS, AFAIK), so your definition only makes sense if you redefine a smartphone as a tool that successfully forces you to spend money on software...

<comment><USER20> Yup. In fact, that's exactly how I was proposing we might redefine it.

It's a worthwhile way to look at it because simply having apps to do certain things isn't really what defines a smartphone - feature phones were letting users buy and install BREW or J2ME apps for a long time. This includes all the basic apps that people tend to expect on their phones nowadays, like Facebook.

So, apps being nothing new, the line's always been a bit blurry. Using what OS the phone runs as a distinguishing criterion works fine, of course, and it's probably the most sensible one overall. But distinguishing based on the way people interact with the device, regardless of what OS it runs is also illuminative.

In this case, for example, it would seem to explain why the market for 3rd- party software (the thing that's supposed to be the heart and soul of smartphones) is so tiny on Android despite it being far and away the biggest smartphone platform. Perhaps it's the case that, regardless of what they're capable of, a huge percentage of the Android devices out there are still being used as if they were feature phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This whole article reads like Google is announcing it's dominance, as if it's some Christian crusader claiming a conquered land in the name of the Pope and Christianity.

Here's my interpretation of some of what I read:

"If Google decides that HTML5 web apps are the way forward, making them a first-class citizen in future versions of Android, then other mobile OSes will have no other option than to follow suit."

(We claim absolute power)

"Conversely, Google could decide to cease development of the stock Android browser — much like Microsoft did with IE4 — and push alternative technologies like Native Client or Dart, forcing other mobile OSes to embrace Google's tech."

(You must all submit to our new power)

"And what about the other platforms? It seems like Apple is destined to occupy a tiny corner of the market — no doubt making fat profits, but losing control of the market and all-important mind share in the process."

(Your former leader has been dethroned and never had your interests in mind anyways)

"You may point to the fact that Android is open source, thus making such a monopoly rather toothless. This might be theoretically true, but in practice Google still holds all the keys."

(Don't question Google's power)

"Over the next few years, Google will develop unprecedented control of the fastest growing tech market in the world. Will Google use this power to gently steer and cajole the web and mobile computing markets towards green pastures, or will it cave like Microsoft and squeeze as much money as it can from Android?"

(Will Google be a benevolent leader or a ruthless dictator? You will find out.)

<comment><USER23> Apparently you're unaware that extremetech.com is not a part of Google (and unaffiliated with them, as far as I know). All of those quotations are from the article, which Google didn't write...so I fail to see how any of this is "Google announcing its dominance" (as opposed to ExtremeTech announcing their perception of Google's dominance, which is a VASTLY different thing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So now that one company is Google, that one man is Andy Rubin and that one phone is Android. Thats the future we wanted. Thank God Google acted.

<comment><USER25> Android is not a phone.

If we standardize on one operating system, I definitely prefer a future where we have thousands of phones to choose from and not just five.

Thank you Google for saving us from an Apple monopoly.

<comment><USER14> Talk of an Apple monopoly is silly. Apple has shown no interest in building budget smartphones. That market, which is hundreds of millions of phones per year, was always going to go to whichever competitor which managed to both copy the iphone the best and kowtow to the carriers. WebOS only met the first criteria, Nokia only the second, Android checked both boxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The title is misleading. It should read :

"Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold <b> in 3rd quarter of 2012 </b>"

</comment><comment><USER16> I keep thinking this will be a bit antitrust concern in future years. I'm not even going to get into the FTC's recommendation to sue over patents:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ftc-staff-said-to- for...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ftc-staff-said-to-formally- recommend-suing-google-over- patents/2012/11/02/830f8bb6-24a5-11e2-92f8-7f9c4daf276a_story.html)

1) To make use of many Android device features, you typically are required to have a Google account. (Ditto with the iPhone, but it's a bigger deal the more you control the market) 2) The pressure exerted on Aliyun 3) By default, Google search in the browser. How long before there's pressure for a "search engine ballot" screen?

<comment><USER27> Google already offers a ballot for desktop Chrome, I wouldn't be too surprised if they offer one for Android at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So if Apple has 70% of the market share, how does Android make up 75%? It can only be less than 30%. Can anyone clarify?

<comment><USER29> I _think_ that because the sentence includes "of all smartphones sold", the discrepency is describing a shift in market share. Apple could have 70% now, and 75% of all new devices sold _now_ could be Android. They were in the game first, and aggregated a huge market share, but now it is shifting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't think a monopoly made on top of an open-source platform makes any sense.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't see why they demonize this: "If Google decides that HTML5 web apps are the way forward, making them a first-class citizen in future versions of Android, then other mobile OSes will have no other option than to follow suit."

<comment><USER32> They don't demonize it, they are just showing how much power Google will have. Power that could be used for good or for bad from the world's perspective, but will always be used for Google's benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This title feels a bit cheerleadery?

This is actual phone handset market being delivered (not necessarily sold, as many of them are subsidized to $0).

Additionally, looking at just phones is a myopic view of the mobile landscape, when tablets and mini tablets (aka, iPodTouches and sub 6" android tablets) are a huge source of gaming revenue as well as advertisement revenue.

I think the ecosystem is still a vibrant multiplayer arena.

<comment><USER33> > This is actual phone handset market being delivered (not necessarily sold, > as many of them are subsidized to $0).

Sold is sold, subsidies just change who is doing the buying.

<comment><USER34> Alternatively, subsidies don't change who is doing the buying, but rather obscure the buying behind a built in camouflaged payment plan.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: manpages-tldr – short manpages with examples - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JIghtuse/manpages-tldr My small project similar to bropages and tldr, but (finally!) using manpages only. Manpages generated from Markdown files by Pandoc. <comment><USER2> Note that:

• Manpages _are_ short. The average length is around 4 pages printed, much of which is pro-forma. Some run longer. Shells in particular (bash(1) runs around 98 pages piped through 'pr').

• Manpages include an EXAMPLES section, though this isn't always filled. That should be considered a bug.

• Manpages suffer from various projects attempting to deprecate them in favor of other forms of documentation. I particularly fault the GNU project's attempt to shoehorn info in place of man (the availability of man to Web utilities such as Debian's dwww largely wholly supplants this: info and the WWW were born within months of each other, Stallman and the FSF should have conceded the battle decades ago). Red Hat and the GNOME project have also been notably lax in providing manpages for utilities and programs. The Debian project considers omission of a manpage for an executable to be a bug, though not a release-critical one (I wish this severity would be increased).

• Fixing the deficiencies of existing manpages (and beating upstreams over the head with these until they're accepted) would be preferable to creating numerous externally maintained nonstandard variants. [http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER3> I think stating that manpages are short is a little inaccurate. The average may very well be 4 pages, but the standard deviation is probably high (bash, gcc, ssh among others have long man pages). A few commands nowadays also have multiple man pages because people don't want to search through all the crap that's in a normal manpage (ie git, gittutorial, gittutorial-2, Everyday Git, ...).

People likely aren't going to use manpages-tldr for 4 page man pages. They may use it for gcc which is 17549 lines (without an examples section and examples are littered throughout the page, meaning you have to already know what you're looking for).

According to Wikipedia, man pages have been around since 1971[1]. Man pages were designed before a paradigm shift from systems oriented to user oriented design and are usually written in a manner that makes them easy to write, not easy to read. If you think about the first time you looked at man pages, they were likely difficult to look through and you just got used to it; that's what happened to me.

I would guess that most people would like examples of basic usage. The examples section of man pages is normally near the end but it's location isn't really standardized. I normally end up searching "/^[[:blank:]]*EXAMPLE" and if I don't find it I google it.

This doesn't mean that man pages are not useful when you know what you're looking for. They can be particularly useful for c code to supplement the headers themselves.

I think forcing man pages to be something that they are not isn't much better than having a bunch of nonstandard variants. I am not saying that the examples shouldn't be added, but man pages are very technical when most people probably want a layman example before the technical details.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page#History)

<comment><USER2> _I think stating that manpages are short is a little inaccurate._

You're arguing against the data. Care to continue doing so?

There are a few outliers, but really, the average page length is pretty low.

I'm running this right now, and what I'm getting is (5831 pages processed):

        mean:  3.9 pages
        median:  2 pages
        standard deviation:  11.06 pages

If you'd prefer precentiles:

        5th %ile:  1
        25th %ile: 1
        75th %ile: 3
        95th %ile: 12

Max is 476 pages (zshall(1)).

This is on a Debian GNU/Linux system with 3479 packages installed. I checked only English manpages under /usr/share/man (there are another dozen or so pages for openjdk under /usr/lib/jvm, max length 29 pages).

Obviously, mileage may vary.

Code:

        cd /usr/share/man
        time for f in $(find man[0-9] -type f -name \*.[0-9].gz); do echo -e "$f\t\c"; man $f 2>&1 | pr | grep '      Page [0-9][0-9]* *$' | tail -1 | sed 's/^.*\(Page \)//'; done

Takes about 4.5 minutes to run on my system.

Compute statistical moments with your preferred analysis tool (I've got one I wrote for the purpose).

There are 68 manpages 37 pages or longer in length (2 standard deviations over mean). I see several shells (zshall, bash, tcsh), many perl utilities, and a few complex tools (mutt, openvpn, wireshark, busybox) among them. Pretty small count, actually.

 _Man pages were designed before a paradigm shift from systems oriented to user oriented design and are usually written in a manner that makes them easy to write, not easy to read._

While understanding a manpage's format is useful, _ANY_ documentation which is "easy to write, not easy to read" is a bug.

As for alternatives to manual pages, I find the Linux Documentation Project's HOWTOs to be an excellent adjunct. GNU info pages, not so much.

<comment><USER3> I meant generalizing all manpages as short is inaccurate. The original statement was that the average is 4 pages which tells you almost nothing without some idea of the spread. You have provided that, thank you.

5831 is the number of manpages processed, or the number of total pages inside them processsed?

My system has 18,590 manpages. Running:

      cd /usr/share/man
      find ./man[0-9] -type f -exec zgrep '^[[:blank:]]*EXAMPLE' {} \;|wc -l

yields 17. While I admit that this may not be the best regular expression that would best match the pattern all the time, I think there is generally not an examples section. This may be because a lot of the documentation is for code that does not need examples.

      for i in $(seq 1 9);do echo $i $(ls man$i|wc -l);done
      1 2554
      2 454
      3 16014
      4 45
      5 346
      6 49
      7 284
      8 821

I don't have any man 9 pages, and cropped the error from that part.

While it may be true that documentation that is "easy to write, not easy to read" is a bug, I think it is very unlikely that the average person would file a bug report for documentation.

I did not know about The Linux Documentation Project's HOWTOs, very neat.

EDIT: I also wanted to point out that depending on what section you are looking at manpages for, you have different statistics.

      man1
       Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
      1.000   1.000   2.000   5.519   4.000 470.000

      man2
       Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
      1.000   2.000   2.000   3.018   3.000  31.000

      man3
       Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
      1.000   1.000   2.000   3.067   3.000 113.000

      man4
       Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
       1.00    1.00    2.00    3.95    5.00   21.00

      man5
       Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
      1.000   2.000   3.000   5.283   5.000 149.000

      man6
       Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
      1.000   1.000   2.000   2.306   2.000  15.000

      man7
       Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
      1.000   3.000   3.000   5.808   6.000  69.000

      man8
       Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max.
       1.00    1.00    2.00    3.06    3.00   77.00

<comment><USER2> _5831 is the number of manpages processed, or the number of total pages inside them processsed?_

I'm not sure I follow your question. A man file contains a single manpage. My 'find' command explicitly specified objects of type file rather than symlinks to avoid double-counting manfiles with multiple symlinks (I find 2527 symlinks under /usr/share/man/man _). That excludes hard links -- turns out that agetty.8 and getty.8 are hard linked:

        $ find man* -type f ! -links 1
        man8/agetty.8.gz
        man8/getty.8.gz

_My system has 18,590 manpages.*

Mind if I ask what OS you're running? How many installed packages? And have you de-duplicated the manpages?

 _I think it is very unlikely that the average person would file a bug report for documentation._

I've filed such bugs. It's difficult to search across all packages, but there are a few filed for bash under Debian:

[http://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/pkgreport.cgi?include=subject...](http://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/pkgreport.cgi?include=subject%3Amanpage;dist=unstable;package=bash)

Re: different manpage section have different statistics: Well, yes. As I said, YMMV, however the mean is still generally within 1-2 pages of the 4-page mean I'd first described.

Note that nowhere did I say that all manpages _have_ EXAMPLE sections. Many (most?) _don 't_. Hrm ...

Of 3066 manpages in man1, I find 519 contain lines beginning with "EXAMPLE" in formatted output. That's roughly 17%.

My bigger point is that addressing this deficiency rather than creating de novo documentation projects would be highly preferable. Much less glory, sadly.

<comment><USER3> I found the term page ambiguous just on the very first use, whether you meant printed pages, or manpages.

I am running archlinux which would normally be light, but unfortunately I work with a lot of different programming languages and prefer different tools for each. I did not deduplicate any of the manpages. The number of packages that I have installed, listed by `pacman -Q|wc -l` is 1241.

I agree that it would be nice to have a single place to go to get all of the details, but I think manpages suffer from more than just examples. I think that someone just starting *nix is likely to look online. While you can search manpages with apropos or man -k it doesn't search the whole document and people just starting don't know the terminal commands to search more.

I would rather have 2 commands and have all of the information than just manpages that don't get frequently updated.

<comment><USER2> _I found the term page ambiguous just on the very first use, whether you meant printed pages, or manpages._

"man page" == a given 'Nix feature's manual entry. I've tried to use "manpage" where this is being presented.

"Pages" without the "man" modifier indicates the number of printed pages produced (defaulting to one page per 56 lines of output using 'pr'). The page count is actually reduced somewhat when printing postscript: 72 vs. 98 pages for bash(1).

 _While you can search manpages with apropos or man -k..._

Again: this is where tools such as Debian's dwww (also available on Debian derivatives such as Ubuntu) come in very handy: the manpages are presented as Web pages on the localhost webserver, and with an installed search engine ("swish++"), _the full text of all documentation is indexed_.

And just to be clear: _Debian provides copious amounts of documentation packages_ : manpages, info pages, the Linux Documentation Project (in HTML or ASCII text: doc-linux-html / doc-linux-text), RFCs, and multiple guides and such. With dwww, all of this is presented locally as web documents, indexed, and searchable. Seems there's little reason Wikipedia couldn't be included as well, though you'd want to sync that regularly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why can't people just improve manpages so that they include a readable abstract and examples instead of coming up with projects with cute names?

<comment><USER5> From the readme:

> This project aims to make fast-updated, practical and precise manpages with > examples for everyday usage. Its idea based on similar projects, like > bropages and tldr, but written as part of real manpages (mostly converted > from Markdown with pandoc).

And if OP is reading this there's a couple of typos there.

Normally I don't care, but this is a do umentation project so it's important.

> Its idea based

Should be

> It's an idea based

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. English is not my native language. Of course, this can not be an excuse.

<comment><USER5> No worries! I hope I was polite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Elsewhere[0] I mentioned a shell alias called `eg` that jumps to the 'Examples' section in traditional man-pages.

I made great use of it with the excellently structured yet rather verbose git man-pages.

Anyways, here's the alias:

        alias eg='man --pager='\''less -p "^[A-Z]* ?EXAMPLES"'\'''

Try it out:

        eg git pull

(With older shells you might have to say `eg git-pull`).

Now as concerns the fine project submitted here, I'd suggest to try getting as much of those tldr's into actual man-pages. This will at least make the long- term survival of OP's labour more probable.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7167815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7167815)

</comment><comment><USER7> This was on here not long ago: [http://bropages.org/](http://bropages.org/)

<comment><USER8> Wow. It took me ten seconds to click the link and read the description where the difference is highlighted. Can't you spare ten seconds?

<comment><USER9> I can : "This was on here not long ago: [http://bropages.org/](http://bropages.org/) but don't check it if you don't have ten seconds spare."

Welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice to have an example that is viewable from the markdown/on github. I think it would make people more likely to build it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean screenshot of opened manpage?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's one way. Or a similar text formatting on html/md on the readme. If you look at the bropages one, it very concretely shows you what it is. Any way of doing this makes it easier for people to tell what exactly they're getting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the man I've been looking for my whole life.

</comment><comment><USER11> hf: if you see this, I think you are Hellbanned. All your posts come up as 'dead'.</comment>


AMD Debuts New 12- and 16-Core Opteron 6300 Series Processors - <AUTHOR> http://www.techpowerup.com/197114/amd-debuts-new-12-and-16-core-opteron-6300-series-processors.html <comment><USER2> I imagine these will be popular with CPU based mining such as primecoin?

I've heard there's a shortage of Xeon L5639 servers (6 core CPU, usually ex- lease) as people are using them to mine cryptocurrencies. I tried out a primecoin mining calculator and it claimed it was pretty profitable (don't think the calculator is very accurate however).

According to [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=255782.msg3025191#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=255782.msg3025191#msg3025191) a dual L5639 server does 3.77730295 chains per day, which actuates to 19XPM which is 58.55USD a day. I've seen these server being rented for $85/month, so it could be worth it.

Can't find out much about mining with the 6300 series, but I'm guessing it would be around the same, so I'm guessing if you built a mining box for under $1500, you can break even in under a month.

<comment><USER3> price performance wise the amd processor is in the lead, but if price is not an issue intel still leads. also check the memorycoin performance database: [http://agran.net/memorycoin2_calc.html](http://agran.net/memorycoin2_calc.html)

<comment><USER4> Does price performance count when talking about directly earning money from the computation?

<comment><USER5> In that case, performance/watt is more important. You still have to take the upfront cost, but first-order effects tend to dominate 0-order effects over time :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's one crazy wide heatspreader — [http://www.amd.com/PublishingImages/Public/Photograph_Produc...](http://www.amd.com/PublishingImages/Public/Photograph_ProductShots/PNG/AMD- OPTERON-6000-355W.png)

<comment><USER7> Note that these are MCMs, with multiple semiconductor die on the IC, so a large heatspreader is unsurprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Comes with a single PCIe 3.0 x16 link on die, good for 16Gbyte/s. Kaveri was the first PCIe3 capable chip, good to see that in server-land too.

There are a couple people out and about for whom 8GB/s just wasn't enough- dual port IB-FDR, & storage controllers are right at that threshold.

Apparently the PCIe competes with one of the HT channels? Kind of under the impression one is limited to 2P if using the on-chip PCIe, but not 100% on that.

<comment><USER9> _Comes with a single PCIe 3.0 x16 link on die, good for 16Gbyte /s._

This is the area where Intel is just killing it with their E5 chips, along with being able to write directly to the L3 from I/O. (I have no idea if AMD does this.)

The E5 is so good that it lets you do entirely different architectures from what came before it. Total game changer.

<comment><USER10> > The E5 is so good that it lets you do entirely different architectures from > what came before it.

As an example: Luke Gorrie is one such person who is actively talking about doing so by talking directly to Ethernet controllers via DMA from user space. Here he is in a 30 minute talk about exploiting 512 Gbit/s of PCIe in his project called Snabb Switch. He's even written a 10 Gbit/s Intel Ethernet driver in Lua. The idea, as far as I can tell, is you can turn a common Xeon server in to a very low latency, zero-copy, multi-gigabit, software defined, layer 2 network appliance.

[https://cast.switch.ch/vod/clips/26uo9i576i/](https://cast.switch.ch/vod/clips/26uo9i576i/)

[https://github.com/SnabbCo/snabbswitch/wiki](https://github.com/SnabbCo/snabbswitch/wiki)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I find most interesting is the TDP per core/speed with the TDP of both parts being 99W range. My old core2due 2.4ghz affair does 65W for only 2 cores at comparable raw clock speeds. So for 6-8x more cores it's only an extra 34W odd. Ok comparing yesteryear to todays cutting edge is unfair. But the point being whilst clock speeds have not changed and cores have gone up, they have been pretty fairly balanced of with power savings. This is excluding extra power saving levels and options in that 7 odd year timeframe.

Whilst electricty demand is still increaseing, I do wonder at what time we hit the point when we hit a tech usage apex when these power savings become measurable at the demand level. That said I still wonder at home much electricty is was used on the SETI client project and the search of extra life out in space whilst adding to the carbon footprint upon our own `intellegent` planet. Still I still wished the processing for bitcoins was based upon actualy useful computational units - that too me is a market - but cluster cloud computing and trust of running data on external unknown systems is a hurdle on that one. Though for medical/reasearch that becomes viable and if BOINC was to reward blocks of work with a virtual currency akin to BITCOIN then I and many would be happier I suspect.

But certainly good to see AMD still pulling them out to the market and keeping Intel in check, albeit a relay race being passed onto ARM. Though that is a more open and diverse area, so good times and however AMD plays the future, I thank them for being there and keeping Intel in check.

</comment><comment><USER12> AMD stock has been tanking (down 10% in pre-market today). Any opportunities here?

(Tanking bit strong... down from a recent high of 4.50 not long ago)

<comment><USER13> They just announced their financials, which is probably why it has been dropping.

Of course, the financials matched the projections, but the stock market is funny.

<comment><USER14> I feel like they have a strong portfolio going forward, though. Diversifying into ARM, Southern Islands is behind the door conquering the consumer compute space, focus on heterogeneous compute.

They are only in trouble in the spaces where their x86 processors have to compete with Intel. They don't have their own fabs anymore, they aren't a die node ahead like Intel, and they are also just in terms of raw revenue an order of magnitude smaller than Intel. That isn't a fight to win, and they have been stuck in this low-cost no-margins commodity cpu space for a while.

<comment><USER13> They are definitely a potential opportunity. To my understanding, many analysts are disturbed by falling gross margin, because in the Intel space high gross margin is important. But, according to some articles I've read, lower gross margin is a natural part of the semi-custom sort of work the company is doing now, like the Xbox & Playstation chips.

An article that explains the shift:

[http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/12/30/can-amds- se...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/12/30/can-amds-semi-custom- chips-save-its-2014.aspx) ("Semi-custom could be the answer")

So, depending on what you believe, the future of the stock could be rather undervalued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Piledriver, boring :/

<comment><USER16> Someone who knows what they're talking about. It may be boring, but the fact of the matter is that AMD doesn't have the resources to make a Steamroller- based Opteron.

Intel continues to make new architectures and revisions of their chip, but AMD is still stuck on a several-year old architecture. Granted, this one has a solid price/performance ratio... but being stuck on Piledriver is a real downer for AMD's server line.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure it's such a bad thing. Intel already does something similar to their server line; Ivy Bridge-EP came out after Haswell was released, Sandy Bridge-EP came out after Ivy Bridge was released. Thinking this could very well be a way for AMD to use the consumer line to get the arch out the door, and then give it over to the server team for fine tuning. In fact, it could give a good way for AMD to get back into the performance desktop market as well -- given the leaks on how the arch is going to have three sets of pcie 3 lanes for single/dual proc machines, I can very much see AMD leapfrogging in terms of getting 3+-way crossfire rigs for people who want ridiculous gaming machines. But, as you mentioned, the difficult part is seeing if AMD has the engineers to properly exploit all the groundwork they've made for ridiculously parallel system. I'm hoping so, because I like the direction AMD's going, I'm just hoping it's not a case of too little too late.

<comment><USER16> AMD has not "chosen" to do this strategy, they were forced to. With a $1 Billion shortfall in 2012, and millions of dollars shortfall in 2013 (despite cutting tons of staff and selling off their headquarters)... AMD is strapped for cash and their strategy proves it.

Its probably the best AMD can do for the moment. It will take them several years to build up the staff and resources to once again compete against Intel in the high-end CPU market, but the time is not now.

On the other hand, AMD is pushing very interesting technology in the form of APUs, which honestly are going to be the future of general purpose computing. APUs are good enough to serve as the primary CPU/GPU hybrid for XBox One and PS4... and while their Desktop / Laptop APUs aren't quite as powerful... the concept has been proven.

Anyway, Bulldozer was years ago. AMD has shown the world 12 and 16 core devices at lower GHz, but people prefer to buy Intel's 4 or 6 core devices at higher GHz and IPC. Waiting a few years... or even a decade, before another "high-core count" CPU is in the works.

The current market prefers high IPC devices at higher GHz still. Single threaded performance is king in current games. Only when games and applications take advantage of the _massive_ amounts of cores should AMD bet on heavy multi-core boxes again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anandtech review: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6508/the-new- opteron-6300-fina...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6508/the-new- opteron-6300-finally-tested)

<comment><USER19> Why is this review over one year old? Are they just releasing more cores of the same architecture?

<comment><USER20> The old one is code named Abu Dhabi, this new one is Warsaw. Looks like the parent was too quick to post.

According to [1] they are about the same but more energy efficient

[1] [http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton- shilov/amd-16-co...](http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton- shilov/amd-16-core-opteron-warsaw-already-available-for-663/)</comment></comment></comment>


Hiring for a Boostrapped Company - <AUTHOR> http://spencerfry.com/hiring-for-a-boostrapped-company

<comment><USER2> I'd also be careful about waiting too long before starting the search. Rather than looking once "your efficiency breaks down"; get started early speaking to candidates.

If you're bootstrapping and need to find the ideal person - you'll want to give yourself a lot of time to find them.

<comment><USER3> indeed. a lot of interesting ones, too. not just random letters. i was definitely surprised at some of the things available still.

<comment><USER4> huh? random letters in candidates' names?

<comment><USER3> well, that was supposed to be a response to a post in the 3 letter io TLD thread. sorry about that.

most likely my fault, of course, but i'm not sure how i did this. off chance of an HN bug perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree on the !friends. I've recently been looking for a contractor and was thinking about bringing a friend in to do it, but the more I thought about it, the more I wasn't sure if we'd still be friends when it was all said and done.</comment>


LuaTeX 1.0.0 - <AUTHOR> http://tug.org/pipermail/luatex/2016-September/006201.html <comment><USER2> LuaTeX has a great abilitiy compared to regular TeX: you are able to access the internal data structures of TeX. See my article about TeX without \TeX at [http://wiki.luatex.org/index.php/TeX_without_TeX](http://wiki.luatex.org/index.php/TeX_without_TeX).

With this access you can read and write (and create,...) these "nodes". This makes it possible to completely circumvent TeX's input language, which can be a pain to program with (sometimes it is very nice though). Now that easy access to data structures and the rather nice (simple) programming language of Lua makes it easy to build rather complex programs on top of TeX.

A shameless plug is my database Publishing software (see [https://speedata.github.io/publisher/index.html](https://speedata.github.io/publisher/index.html)) which I believe takes this approach to an extreme: I can use TeX's algorithms like paragraph building, hyphenation, PDF writing and such (they are of excellent quality) and build my own software around it. I don't say that this is done on a weekend or so, but the posibilities are much, much, much greater than they were before LuaTeX was available.

<comment><USER3> I've got a project where it would be really nice to plot some math formulae with *TeX typesetting and then outputting raster or vector data in memory (to be rendered in a graphics engine).

Do you think such a thing would be possible with LuaTeX? I did glance over the article you linked and it's showing that it works pretty nicely for basic text, but can anyone shed some light if this works nicely for outputting equations, etc?

<comment><USER2> (Lua)TeX only renders PDF and only on disc. The great typesetting (especially the math formulae) would make it feasible for such a job.

Depending on your need, LuaTeX can be quite fast. I have a project where I use a non-optimized version of LuaTeX to have a 'live' preview of a web form. It takes less than 1/2 second to run LuaTeX, generate a bitmap from the PDF and push it to the user. In most cases this will be too slow, but for me this was a good solution.

<comment><USER4> speeddata looks absolutely amazing as an alternative to (what's also an amazing piece of OSS) Scribus and (in my mind the paragon) Framemaker.

For technical documents, I've been using: TeknikCenter (for maintaining build scripts and asset management) + Bibtex + Tikz (for graphs/charts, etc) & I can get a final PDF that's fairly close to something I consider nicely laid out ([https://www.utdallas.edu/~herve/abdi- awPCA2010.pdf](https://www.utdallas.edu/~herve/abdi-awPCA2010.pdf) \- John Wiley & Sons, Inc's template done in some variant of TeX (apparently Wiley, Elsevier, Springer all use TeX for their masters which go to plate for press)). Scrbook, memoir and book all are 'almost there' but not quite.

Images have been pretty much the most difficult problem to render 'properly'. Using DOT has alignment/font aesthetic issues, especially if I use RST or DocBook as my 'base' document and want to output both to a blog in long-form, available in the classic TeX output (e.g. [https://www.mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-1....](https://www.mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-1.html)) as well as in the "one-page" long-form.

I guess this is a long-winded way of asking, if you have any suggestions (I've read your site and it lacks a "I'm a TeX power user, here are the idioms/conventions/best practices for speedata).

FYI, I'm perfectly okay with half a second (in fact, that's way faster than my TexNicCenter renders!) for what it's worth. Heck, I'm sure some of the old timers remember the troff wait times. Believe youme, it's no trivial feet to get typesetting correct and output in under half a second! Good on you + your team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see the trajectory of Lua adoption. The determining factor of the popularity of most languages was at the fate of large companies, (AT&T/C, Netscape/JavaScript, Microsoft/C++, Google/Python). On the flip side, Lua seems to slowly gain more and more popularity over the years. It's more "organic", for lack of a better term.

I really hope a big company doesn't pick Lua up, because I think the fact that it hasn't reached "Eternal September" yet is what makes it such a good language. It has room to breathe.

(The fact that it's beginner friendly, has an ANSI C89 implementation, and has the best/fastest JIT/FFI doesn't hurt either though :P)

<comment><USER6> >AT&T/C, Netscape/JavaScript, Microsoft/C++, Google/Python

I wonder if you can provide more background on that, particularly those last 2. And by AT&T, you mean Unix, right? :p

<comment><USER7> I am not the o.p. but: the success of Unix helped the success of C, JavaScript succeeded because Netscape made it the only one on the browser, C++ won the war against Objective-C as the "object-oriented successor of C" because Microsoft embraced it and they had a lot more power than Next (that embraced Obj-C). Python did sustain its fight with Ruby (and PHP) for the role of "sane successor of Perl" because Google provided so many libraries and frameworks.

<comment><USER8> Google's contribution to the success of Python was really minimal. Most of the top stuff was not from Google at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone shine a light on what LuaTex actually is?

"an extended version of pdfTeX using Lua as an embedded scripting language" doesn't help me that much.

What's the advantage over (La)Tex?

<comment><USER10> From [http://www.luatex.org/roadmap.html#tbp](http://www.luatex.org/roadmap.html#tbp):

There are currently three engines in use in the TeX community: pdfTeX, XeTeX and LuaTeX and they all serve an audience.

The pdfTeX engine is a stable extension to TeX that has eTeX on board as well as a few extensions. It provides hz and protruding and supports advanced PDF output. It is fast and reliable and sort of frozen with respect to functionality. It will stay around for ever but has only limited provisions for dealing with OpenType fonts.

Then there is XeTeX which supports Unicode as well as OpenType by means of third party libraries. It integrates nicely into the current infrastructure and support from macro packages is easy as there are no fundamental changes in interfaces and functionality. It uses the eTeX r2l typesetting while LuaTeX uses the Omega (Aleph) method. Support from macro packages does not demand changes in the core.

The LuaTeX project uses a different approach. Instead of using libraries it provides an extension mechanism. This keeps the program independent and permits the flexibility that we like so much. However, it comes at a price. First of all LuaTeX does not have the performance of its cousins, although for instance the average ConTeXt MkIV run can be faster in LuaTeX. LuaTeX also demands extensive support at the macro level if you want to profit from its benefits. Just adding some support for scripting is nice but the power of LuaTeX only shows when it's tightly integrated. This integration is also needed in order to provide macro users some stability as most of them are no TeX programmers. If such integration is not what you want, you might consider sticking to the other engines as there are no real advantages to using LuaTeX then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A brief introduction to what you can do with LuaTeX:

[http://lwn.net/Articles/657157/](http://lwn.net/Articles/657157/)

</comment><comment><USER12> If you think about it, TeX is just a compiler, right? It operates on trees, and translates some input to some output. I'd love to see the equivalent of LLVM for TeX: a modern, modular implementation that implements known best practices and is easy to integrate into other environments.

Maybe this is something like what LuaTeX is trying to do? It's hard to tell from their web page.

<comment><USER2> No, TeX is not a compiler by a common sense of a compiler (unless you say it compiles to PDF).

TeX's input grammer can change during the TeX run, so I believe it is impossible to make an equivalent of LLVM (unless I misunderstand the concept of LLVM).

<comment><USER12> > No, TeX is not a compiler by a common sense of a compiler (unless you say it > compiles to PDF).

That is exactly what I am saying.

> TeX's input grammer can change during the TeX run, so I believe it is > impossible to make an equivalent of LLVM

The important part is not the grammar, but the internal representation. I don't know enough about TeX to know much about its internal representation post-parsing.

<comment><USER13> _> I don't know enough about TeX to know much about its internal representation post-parsing._

IIRC it's a stream of tokens. A token can be a character, a built-in command, a macro etc. During processing of this token stream macros are "expanded", i.e. replaced with their definition (recursively). It is possible to control this expansion process using built-in commands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Project's website: [http://www.luatex.org/](http://www.luatex.org/)

<comment><USER15> The "more details here" link is broken, if the maintainer is reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great news.

BTW is there anyway to make LuaTeX compile faster?

<comment><USER17> You mean compiling LuaTeX itself or using LuaTeX to compile? I don't know about LuaTeX, but I've just noticed that pdftex gets magnitudes faster when you install it (including all fonts, etc.) on an SSD. It's very I/O intensive.

I was amazed about the speed increase. (although it's kind of obvious in retrospect..)

<comment><USER16> Well I mean LuaTeX (in fact LuaLaTeX) is too slow to compile tex files. I'm using a Mac and it has SSD. a simple slides takes 5 seconds to compile, which is very slow compare to things like pdfLaTeX.

<comment><USER4> Are you using Beamer? What CTAN packages are you using? Those long render times could have quite a few reasons but fonts are one reason for sure.

If you want absolutely instantaneous (on the order of ~100ms for full generation of entire thesis with multiple passes for TOC/index/list of figures proper enumeration) output, RAMdisks with _all of your content_ \- that means install, fonts, graphic assets, packages, etc is only the way to go (without re-writing large chunks of LuaTeX). When I needed a quick render loop for final alterations, I had ~6gb of RAM on a dedicated partition in /opt/tex/ on FreeBSD setup just for that and it was nothing short of a pleasure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I made a site that rings a bell every time you have a new customer - <AUTHOR> http://bellbot.com

<comment><USER2> From the landing page: "One of the programmers set up the computers so that a bell would ring every time an order came in."

Continuation of the quote in the WSJ source: "A great novelty at first, it quickly got annoying and had to be turned off."

<comment><AUTHOR> I love that. Though I think what the author was trying to say (I read an interview with Bezos somewhere) is that "[amazon orders started pouring in so rapidly that] it got annoying..."

Nevertheless, I think I could find a "softer" sound that would be less jarring. Maybe let users select from different sounds or upload their own. Or something.

I read somewhere about a company that did monitoring by playing white noise that corresponded with certain key metrics (such as the rate of new users). The noise was invisible until it changed slightly in pitch, which meant something unusual was happening.

<comment><USER3> The white noise idea is fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We used to have a computer play a gong noise when we sold something. It was just an email client that got a copy of all the receipts and played a sound when mail came in. That got really annoying so we killed it.

Now we have a physical gong in the office that our sales reps get to bang on. We don't learn from our mistakes.

<comment><USER5> We used to have emails that got sent to our inbox every time a user converted. But that got annoying during all of the peak times.

I can't imagine a bell or sound happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fair warning: a similar system nearly caused me to destroy my cellphone, the screen over my window, and the windshield of the Honda beneath it.

<comment><USER7> Patrick, I don't get this comment. Is there an inside joke I am missing?

<comment><USER8> He violently threw his phone when it wouldn't stop ringing and he was in a mental state that didn't want to experience said ringing.

In other words: understand that it will ding for all new users. all of them. Get a lot of dings. Get them at 3 in the morning. Get them during a date. All dings.

To relate: if you're the kind of person that turns off your IM sounds because they annoy you, this is not for you. I am one of those people: even a window blinking too frequently bothers me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Philip, just know that the rate at which you put out projects of all sizes really is inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reminded me of the Netscape FTP server rigging. They had an Indy play a cannon shot every time someone successfully finished a download. It's a small part of a much bigger story, and all of it is good as far as I am concerned.

<http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html>

<comment><USER11> Interesting looking back on the truthiness of "pushing bits around in ways only meaningful to other nerds", then-and-now.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Okay, having put Bellbot on one of my sites today I can see that the sound I chose can get irritating. So I just changed it.

Old sound: <http://bellbot.com/sounds/up.mp3>

New sound: <http://bellbot.com/sounds/bell.mp3>

</comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of Middle Men. "We just made $9.99..." [http://www.traileraddict.com/clip/middle-men/we-just- made-99...](http://www.traileraddict.com/clip/middle-men/we-just-made-999)

<comment><USER13> I was thinking the same thing. Now he can make different sounds based on type of customer...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A slightly less annoying suggestion: rig up a box to make a noise every time a build passes the tests on your CI server. I suggest a golf clap, or the sound of a slot machine paying out.

<comment><USER15> Instead, play a truly annoying sound (rickroll?) when the build fails…

…on the computer of the developer that broke the build.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have nothing useful to say, but I can't help but wonder if I'm the only one who read "Beeps when you've got customers" and immediately thought "Goes ding when there's stuff!"

<comment><AUTHOR> I had to Google that for the reference. I'm still not sure I get it but "Goes dint when there's stuff" would be a brilliant slogan - might have to appropriate it!

<comment><USER16> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LqmAQwHNA0>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice work! It would be very helpful if there was a special URL that could be shared with employees that want to receive the notice.

Perhaps also a small Win/Lin/Mac resident service, and mobile app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea about letting users send out a special (obscure) URL for public consumption.

Also good idea about an app.

As for Win/Lin/Mac resident service -- I just open a browser window, load bellbot, then minimize it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've worked with numerous retailers who use something like this. Usually an eMail server just makes a ping when a payment notification comes in.

During peak seasons (read: December) at an ecommerce company of mine a few years ago, we did pretty much exactly this. We used a cash register sound, though. Played it into the office and warehouse so everybody knew how fast things needed to be going. Totally worked, the faster the register went, the harder everyone worked.

</comment><comment><USER19> There was a pretty funny scene in Middle Men regarding this very topic. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1251757/>

</comment><comment><USER20> We just got a new system like that for Levion. It was fun initially when you have no customers but when accounts are being made non stop it gets impossible to work. It did give our employees energy initially until they made us turn it off.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521108>

</comment><comment><USER21> Last week I set up a heroku+twilio app to call me and yell whenever I curled its URL.

The idea was to use it to train myself to stop hitting ESC in vim, but I'm sure it's portable for other pavlovian needs.

<https://github.com/dpritchett/no-calls-please>

<comment><USER22> I'm somewhat curious- why were you trying to train yourself to stop using ESC, and why couldn't you just unmap that key?

<comment><USER21> I mapped <jk> to serve the same purpose (quit insert mode) - it's a common power user tip but I've never gotten used to it. Unmapping wouldn't have been so fun... I also display a `fortune -o | cowsay -f hello-kitty | lolcat` on screen for five seconds while the phone is ringing.

<comment><USER23> @dpritchett, how is your key mappings defined for this?

I have the following in my .vimrc, it's commented out because I had gotten some weird behavior:

inoremap <esc> <nop>

inoremap jk <esc>

When I'm in insert mode with these mappings un-commented, if I hit the arrow keys I get input like the following:

0A0D0B0C

(up, left, down, right keys). It prints the hex values into the editor instead of moving the cursor. And if I click with the mouse or drag in insert mode:

[M_M1[M@M2[M@N1[M#U ... etc.

With those mappings commented out I don't have this problem - of course I'm back to stretching my pinky 3 rows of keys up to the escape key :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How does it know when I've got a new customer... a new site visitor? So confused...

<comment><AUTHOR> When you sign up for bellbot.com, it gives you a small Javascript snippet. You embed that snippet in your "thank you!" page (or whatever page your users see after they do stuff on your site).

Every time a user hits that page, you'll hear a beep on your end if you're logged into bellbot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome. When blackberries were in use we were able to customize our ringtones, which created the same affect. We have downloaded iPhone apps and created additional email accounts to mimic the new sign up "gong."

</comment><comment><USER26> Hah, I remember seeing that quote from Bezos and wanting to do the same thing. At the moment, I make do with Jabber and a cron job, but a bit of semi- realtime feedback on positive activity is fun.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you are curious what it sounds like, just hit this url: <http://bellbot.com/sounds/up.mp3>

<comment><USER28> Gah! Made me jump!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> At Buffer we have the mario coin noise every time a user upgrades. It's just often enough to be pleasant rather than annoying!

</comment><comment><USER30> Great idea - nice when you've just launched. FYI, GetClicky does this as well as part of their Spy section.

</comment><comment><USER31> Clicking on bellbot.com with headphones in... not recommended. I almost crapped myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. I put the sound onload because I thought it was kinda funny -- and also as a demonstration in case some potential users were unaware that a website can make noises (thank you HTML5. no thank you to Chrome/Safari supporting only mp3 and Firefox for only supporting WAV).

Perhaps I should get rid of the onload sound. Or have a link that says "click here to hear a sound" or something.

Update: I just commented out the onload sound. In retrospect it was annoying. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You didn't include a button to hear the sound without signing up? Come on!

</comment><comment><USER33> A cash register sound would be appropriate!

</comment><comment><USER34> Pud, you make really useful and rad stuff

</comment><comment><USER35> Customer != Potential customer

</comment><comment><USER36> hey pud, did you do your own art?

</comment><comment><USER37> lolz

</comment><comment><USER38> If instead of a ring it taught you a new French word, then that would be something, but this would drive me insane.

Awesome landing page though!</comment>


Flappy Bird in 481 Bytes - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/Hurricane996/1f56c4d431ab0c42d5fe84657443f5b5 <comment><AUTHOR> Use left mouse click to play

Saw it on reddit, which has some more variations mentioned in comments: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ihuisz/flappy_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ihuisz/flappy_bird_in_481_bytes/)</comment>


GetReal, Meet people nearby – Beta launching today - <AUTHOR> https://getreal.ly

<comment><USER2> Is this iPhone only?</comment>


Zucchinis linked to rare poisonings in England - <AUTHOR> https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2020/07/zucchinis-linked-to-rare-poisonings-in-england/ <comment><USER2> I had the misfortune of eating one of these bitter Zucchini flowers. It was extremely bitter and I could not even swallow the single bite I took. But it was enough to make me sick for two days. I couldn't even drink plain water since it caused instant vomit and/or diarrhea. Those were some of the worst days I had ever been through.

The plant was from my own backyard, but it was stressed due to some insect / squirrel eating many leaves and buds. Possibly that triggered the plant to make the toxins that keep predators away.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you poisoned yourself trying to get rid of the bud eaters. Where you using a slugcide?

EDIT... nah, I'm reading about the compound and could be perfectly the plant. Today I learned that the Cucurbitaceae make some of the most bitter substances known among vegetables, wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This being England, the title should of course say "courgettes". Nobody calls them zucchinis over here!

<comment><USER5> This actually being the internet, shouldn't the title use whatever is most commonly used in the world at large? Someone who knows the word courgette, probably knows the word zucchini. While someone who knows the word zucchini, might not know courgette. I certainly didn't know about courgette until just one minute ago.

<comment><USER6> > Someone who knows the word courgette, probably knows the word zucchini. > While someone who knows the word zucchini, might not know courgette.

I don't see why this would be the case.

More accurate would be:

Someone who knows the word courgette, might not know the word zucchini. And someone who knows the word zucchini, might not know courgette.

<comment><USER3> Or Cucurbita pepo pepo, the Intergalactic, planetary, planetary, term

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Today I learned about cucurbitacins.

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

<comment><USER8> Even more interesting is Naringin.

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

This is a toxic flavonoid found in a variety of common fruits. It has been well known since the mid 80s when grapefruits became known for killing elderly people in nursing homes. Last year the FDA posted an advisory not to drink any fruit juice with powerful medications.

I remember this came up in conversation last year on HN when people were deeply offended when I pointed out that eating gold, an extreme heavy metal, is toxic especially with certain food combinations and then a week later reading about the FDA advisory on CNN.

<comment><USER9> "How to Use Edible Gold Leaf for Dishes That Are Fancy AF"

[https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/194092/edible-gold- leaf-...](https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/194092/edible-gold-leaf-how-to- use-it/)

<comment><USER8> Under ideal conditions pure gold is not toxic because the human GI tract does not chemically react with pure gold. Pure gold become reactive to human GI tract under a variety of conditions from certain food/drug combinations that alter GI tract chemical sensitivity, certain microbial interference, and reactive impurities in the metal. Once gold becomes poisonous it is extremely toxic due to its density and persistence in the body where gold poisoning is similar to lead poisoning but substantial more severe.

There was even a HouseMD show episode where a woman was poisoning her husband with trace amounts of gold. The show is complete fiction but the chemistry is accurate.

Why take that risk? If you want to knowingly eat poison I recommend cyanide. It has a wonderfully sweet and nutty flavor profile and is incredibly cheap and common. The most common nutritive source is peach and apricot nuts. Furthermore, the human body requires trace amounts of cyanide for microbial interactions to form vitamin B12. Gold has no nutritional value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Organic chemistry and neuroscience are complex. FWIW soursop has also been linked to causing Parkinson's like syndromes due to neuro toxicity.

<comment><USER11> Wow, for anyone else curious:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and- dentistry/...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and- dentistry/soursop)

> Fruits have high polyphenol content, and regular consumption is linked with > beneficial properties such as anticancer, anti-leishmanial, and antidiabetic > activities. Contradictorily, consumption of soursop fruit is correlated with > the development of neurodegenerative disease (Parkinson disease), which is > attributed to the presence of annonacin in the seeds.

<comment><USER12> But soursop seeds are not eaten?

FWIW, this French study concluded that there's no evidence to support a connection: [http://www.anses.fr/sites/default/files/documents/NUT2008sa0...](http://www.anses.fr/sites/default/files/documents/NUT2008sa0171.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is known to subsistence farmers in Asia. Often times, they see cucumbers grown off of seeds that are not planted. They taste it for bitterness, then eat; otherwise, throw them out. This 'knowledge' is passed between, down, generations and people. Hobby farming doesn't have that.

</comment><comment><USER14> I knew there was some scientific reason why I don't like zucchinis! I tried having this conversation with the parental units for years (40 years ago), but they'd never listen!

<comment><USER15> I just made zucchini fritters couple nights ago and I would bet most would like them. Shredded them with potatoes and squeezed most of the water out. Mixed with eggs, garbanzo bean flour and salt. Deep fried and served with yogurt as a dipping sauce. That was my first time making them, but it will be a regular addition to my summer menu.

<comment><USER16> Well yeah, anything is yummy if it is deep fried.

<comment><USER17> Disagree! I cannot stand seafood and I think it's a genetic setting of some sort (similar to those cilantro people) and deep frying doesn't help at all :(

It's only ever been palatable twice in my life - as plain white fish at a chinese restaurant with a lot of soy sauce and other stuff. It's probably neutralising a chemical that triggers my warning systems.

<comment><USER18> Side tangent: is it all seafood that you dislike?

My girlfriend finds all forms of fish and seafood distasteful - fresh water fish, salt water fish, shellfish, the lot. In almost all instances she finds it nauseating, even the smell from a distance.

I've not previously encountered anyone with such a broad dislike for seafood. I'm curious what your experiences are.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but other freshwater things (crocodile, frog) aren't bad. Shellfish is easily the worst. Ferment seafood ala belachan or SE Asian fish sauce and it's basically the worst thing I've ever smelled.

My personal belief is that I am extremely sensitive to one of the chemicals that shows up as fish gets old. I smell it much better and earlier than most people so even "fresh" fish smells like it should be thrown out. On the plus side, I can tell you which shops have the freshest fish :) One near us had nearly no smell, so it must have been good.

One of the stories my wife remembers is when we asked at a Chinese restaurant about whether the stir fried green beans had any seafood (they often have rice-sized dried shrimp). We were told no. I smelled it coming when they were a few tables away from us still, but the others at the table couldn't smell a thing and had to look very closely to confirm.

Editing to add: I'm not unadventurous or anything of the sort - I even like durian! But people seem to constantly think I just need to get used to an unfamiliar flavour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also happens to potatoes. Natural breeding can cause plants that produce too much glycoalkaloids.

<comment><USER20> Wasn't it the other way round - current varieties do not contain much solanine but are comparatively prone to mould and other plant pathogens? Defense against pathogens is why evolution developed these alkaloids in geological time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This can also happen with pumpkins FYI. Once poisoned my friends accidentally (it was a proper eating pumpkin not a carving pumpkin). Just a mouthful or two was enough.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel like it's important to get these seeds and test if this is actually true.

No one has done any tests and no one has been quoted saying they tasted bitter.

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8529641/Mother-38-r...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8529641/Mother-38-rushed- hospital-poisoned-courgettes-grew-lockdown.html)

<comment><USER23> I assume that before issuing a recall and destroying all their stock, the company would go to great lengths to confirm that their plants were at fault, rather than say being grown in toxic soil or being left to go mouldy and full of ecoli before being eaten.

<comment><USER22> Their official statement is they don't know and it's also possible for the growing conditions to cause this.

These seeds are probably worth $300 to them. They will destroy them and move on.

I've seen no evidence it's even known to be the Zucchinis.

This is a science issue and more boringly a public health issue. Like you say, what if it is the soil for instance.

<comment><USER23> If I were running this seed company, I would personally be driving to this customers house to taste the fruit for myself and dig up the plant. I'd document it all with pictures and video.

While the seeds might only be worth $300, the reputational damage is huge, the lawsuits are big, and the chance of prison is very real. I'm totally wanting solid evidence to exonerate myself and my company if it exists.

If I _do_ find the fruit to be extremely bitter, it's probably best to use language like "as a precaution" in my press releases anyway...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know why sequencing is not used to QC such seeds before releasing them?

<comment><USER25> Expensive and hard to know what you're looking for?

<comment><USER24> I'm wondering whether that's indeed the case. It seems that at least some genotype has been identified to cause such a phenotype ([https://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6213/1084](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6213/1084)). If you know what to look for it would just be a couple of bucks to Sanger sequence it. (Then you don't even have to sequence it by e.g. Illumina, which would still be just a couple of hundred bucks per batch). I don't know what margins they get for these kind of products, but I guess a recall will be quite expensive as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was taught that zucchinis and cucumbers should have their ends cut off and rubbed to make them less bitter. A quick search suggests that might be related to this, although opinions are inconclusive.

</comment><comment><USER27> Are the harmful components from the seeds of parent plant or the newly grown plant?

</comment><comment><USER28> So my neighbors _are_ trying to kill me.

I knew those zucchini lovers were sketchy.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yet chlorinated chicken is what we keep hearing all the moaning about coming our way. I'll pass on mad cow beef and now death zucchinis too. Maybe expanding transatlantic agricultural trade just doesn't make sense.</comment>


Ask YC: Is it time for the sugarcrm of word processors to compete with ms word? - <AUTHOR>

With openoffice sick and ms word overpriced and proprietary why doesn't somebody create a competitor that truly is open source? I think it is a huge opportunity for the right team. I dont have the numbers in front of me but the office market is <comment><AUTHOR> huge. Sugar crms model is great imo. Open source encouraging creativity and paid support encouraging enterprise adoption. Enterprise users need to pay so they have somebody to go after if something goes wrong.</comment>


Tell HN//Pg: The alternate red and green is annoying - <AUTHOR>

As a user of this community, and as a designer, I would with all due respect like to point out that the alternate red and green colors are annoying, if not provide a poor user-experience. When I first logged in today, at first I thought the red ones are something important, only after a few minutes did I discover that it was actually <i>simply</i> alternating. It would be great if you could use the red color for the top-stories alone, for example the ones that have got >200 points or so. Just a small feedback :) <comment><USER2> He should have added an ascii art Santa in a scrolling marquee as a background :)

</comment><comment><USER3> It took me no time at all to recognize the intent, I thought it was cute.

</comment><comment><USER4> But then they wouldn't look christmassy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bah! Humbug!</comment>


Google Should Deliver Its YouTube Data to Viacom in Paper Form - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/03/department-of-civil-disobedience-google-should-deliver-its-youtube-data-to-viacom-in-paper-form/ <comment><USER2> This is the sort of thing I would get yelled at for suggesting in elementary school.

Instead of acting like a small child, I think Google should just stall this in a higher court, or just not give it up at all. Nobody is going to go to jail, and Google has more than enough money to buy whoever they need.

Viacom lost a long time ago. Nobody is interested in traditional television anymore. We want it on-demand online, with comments and minimal advertising. You can sue whoever you want, it's not going to make anyone change the way they think. They can either slowly die, or they can embrace reality.

Have you watched traditional television lately? I made the mistake of doing so; there is about 25 minutes per hour of pure advertising. They play it several dB louder than the program, so you have to constantly play with the volume (I just muted it). Then, you pay $60/month to get it into your house! Why are they surprised that people are going elsewhere for the content? Who want to pay $25/month to watch advertisements!?

Anyway, this lawsuit shows that they are slowly dying. Google's data won't help them with anything other than "hey, people like our content, but yet they won't watch the ads!" They should already know that by now... so I don't see what anyone will gain.

<comment><USER3> I'm with you, but...

I just discovered that the average number of hours spent in front of a TV (per person, nation-wide) has increased again, and not just among adults, but among teens and even pre-teens.

Apparently people like that junk. Perhaps proliferation of HD picture contributes to this, because let's face it, internet-powered video looks like crap, even iTunes' $2.99 multi-gigabyte downloads aren't as crisp as TimeWarner's HD programming.

P.S. Apologies for being unable to provide a source, there were a few links here on HN, actually, confirming this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a nice thought, but it'd be a waste of trees and I doubt Google would do that. If they did only, say, a couple trucks' worth that way, that'd leave enough digital that Viacom could ignore the paper. Nice thought, though.</comment>


Networks Are Smart at the Edges - <AUTHOR> http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-at-the-edges/

<comment><USER2> Almost certainly made up (or hugely exaggerated). However, if it were true a better title would be: Hierarchies are Dumb at the Top.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if the author is aware that "lixo" means garbage/trash/rubbish in Portuguese.

<comment><AUTHOR> He is Brazilian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of something my dad taught me: "optimize at the center and innovate at the edges"

</comment><comment><USER5> Great story. Of course the expensive monitoring system did lead directly to the solution of the problem, so maybe the title should be "Networks are smart but blind at the edges."

<comment><USER6> Yeah except likely no one ever thought to go and ask the guy on the lines opinion on how to fix the problem in the first place.

<comment><USER5> Because most of the time asking a hypothetical doesn't produce the same results as an annoying @#$% buzzer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From a strategy point of view it's a problem of motivation. The moment the people on-site were motivated, even a bit, to solve the problem, the problem was solved.

</comment><comment><USER8> I really like this story.

It shows that simplicity rules and that simplicity often comes out of simple a situation not considered by the big planners.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sometimes innovation lies in what you did not build, instead of what you did.

</comment><comment><USER10> Compare to C++ templates, Java generics, etc. vs duck typing.</comment>


AI in Health Care: A Report from the National Academy of Medicine - <AUTHOR> https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2757958 <comment><AUTHOR> Full report: Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare [https://nam.edu/wp- content/uploads/2019/12/AI-in-Health-Care...](https://nam.edu/wp- content/uploads/2019/12/AI-in-Health-Care-PREPUB-FINAL.pdf)</comment>


SlideDeck 2 - The Web's Most Powerful Webslider - <AUTHOR> http://www.slidedeck.com/

<comment><USER2> I think the license is way overpriced - I can get pretty much any type slider either from github or codecanyon (for a couple of bucks).</comment>


Distributed Machine Learning Made Easy - <AUTHOR> http://mlbase.org/

<comment><USER2> another distributed open source ml library: [http://0xdata.com](http://0xdata.com)

ask if you have any questions</comment>


Are there morning rituals that rev you up for a productive day? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> (Note: I wake up a little later than I would normally. Due to COVID and working from home, my commute is effectively eliminated, so I get to sleep in a little bit later.)

Basically, I wake up at about 7:30am (pre-COVID, closer to 6am) and do the snooze thing until about 8am. Then I get out of bed and IMMEDIATELY put on my running gear. Only after I'm wearing my running gear do I go to the bathroom, drink some water, take meds, etc. Somewhere between 8:00-8:15am, I head out for a 5K run. I'm a moderate runner, so it takes me about 30 minutes to complete, in which case I'm back home by 8:45am, give or take a few minutes. I take the dog for a walk, then hop on the shower, and then I'm ready to roll for the day.

My productivity has skyrocketed since I started this routine. I'm no longer sleepily moseying through the morning half of the day. Instead, I'm energized and motivated. It stops becoming a matter of _if_ I will work out and instead a matter of _when_ , and if I do it first thing in the morning, then it's a matter of _done_ and I don't have to think about exercise for the rest of the day. It's a huge weight off my shoulders. My health comes first, so I don't skip this ever.

The reason I put my running gear on first is because it feels really freakin' stupid to put on clothes and then take them off because... because i'm lazy? I always tell myself, "You put on the running gear already. All you have to do is step outside and go. If you decide not to, you have to take these clothes OFF, and how dumb will you feel then?" It never fails.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see this mentioned. Either I'm a weirdo or other just don't admit it. I jack it, then shower.

<comment><USER4> This was one of my least productive habits for a long time.

<comment><USER3> I find it focuses me. Pound one out in the morning for a little clarity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wake up 4 AM. If I feel sleepy I go back to sleep and wake at 6. Sounds crazy but it's less crazy than sleeping at 2 AM, where I'm also prone to making dumb decisions like spending another hour on HN. Whatever I was doing late at night, I can do really early morning while the kids are asleep and my brain is awake.

I have a list of things I need to get done every day. It's usually really minor and takes 2 minutes. Like take notes of a book. Watch a technical video at least 2 minutes long. Work on my side project 2 minutes. Do 10 push ups.

All of these are completely doable by 7 AM regardless of when I wake up. But I never do.

Sometimes I'm in the mood for a run, so I end up spending the morning doing that. Sometimes I feel like doing some debugging and I do that. If I'm in the mood for gaming or a movie, I can just rush through all of them and still have a minimally productive day.

There are times I feel lazy and wake up late or miss out on a lot of these. I can do them later in the day - even on a busy day I can still read a book for 2 minutes. Sometimes I miss a lot.

The key is it keeps me from falling into a procrastination loop, where I can't start because it's too much effort to start and I'm in a bad mood because I've been unproductive all week.

I stick to this routine on weekends and rest days too, because it's too much effort to "fix" my schedule on weekdays. Some people like to sleep in on weekend mornings. I prefer to just get a nice cup of tea, do a few pull ups and read a chapter at 0430, and then play CS:GO from 5-8 AM while the kids are asleep.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have shifted to be more of a night person lately since COVID, but for the last several decades, I've been a morning person. Key things for me are showering and working out.

Wake up. Shower to wake up (critical for me). Get kids off to school. Work out for an hour or so. Maybe a second quick shower. At this point, the office starts to come alive and I can start any collaboration needed for the day.

Now that I've been staying up later, waking up later, and not having to get kids rushed out the door, I find myself moving my workout to lunch or evening. It's terrible. So easy to skip out on at that point.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've taken to pulling my shades down, turning on the kettle, and reading for 20 minutes... in the same order, every morning. It's odd, but somehow this calms me. Curious to know what others do.

<comment><USER6> Coffee in the shower listening to something like Royal Blood - Ten Tonne Skeleton.

As I go in bleary eye'd I'm a zombie on the other side I'm ready to face the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wake up early at 4AM, make a cup of coffee for myself, play 15 min of chess and study Spanish for another 15-20 min. This routine gets me ready to do intellectually intensive work like reading a hard technical book.

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPJU_6C4gK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPJU_6C4gK0)

</comment><comment><USER9> Wake up at 5:30 -> Meditate 15 minutes -> Run with dog -> Shower (last minute cold) -> Coffee -> Learn something new for 1 hour -> Work grind.

</comment><comment><USER10> drink a cup of coffee and take a shower.

i really cannot function without a shower in the morning, i keep feeling half- sleeping.

</comment><comment><USER11> Each morning.

1\. Take a shower 2\. Clean up the kitchen 3\. Make coffee 4\. Check email while coffee is brewing</comment>