Evidence Found for a New Fundamental Particle - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/evidence-found-for-a-new-fundamental-particle-20180601/ <comment><USER2> Neutrinos almost never interact with matter. The closet supernova in recent history[1] was detected via neutrinos with 11 observed. I can't imagine the number of photons from that event that would have hit a similar sized detector on the earths surface.

[1][https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.58...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.58.1490)

<comment><USER3> Knowing the relative energy carried away from the supernova by photons and by neutrinos (1:100), photon and neutrino energy spectra, neutrino cross section and the size of the IMB and Kamiokande detectors you can estimate the flux of photons through some hypothetical light detector (sometimes called a "telescope"). Probably some model for interstellar gas is needed to account for scatter or absorb the photons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Particle physics is just crazy land to me. I understand Newton's equations. I understand Maxwell's equations. Hey, I even understand Schroedinger's equation. But all these particles!?

<comment><USER5> Particles are 'just' perturbations in the underlying fields. If you understand field equations you should understand that.

<comment><USER6> What is a field?

<comment><USER7> It's a mathematical construct that is a core part of the theory physicists use to make highly accurate predictions about many of the low-level dynamics of reality.

It seems to usually be visualized as 2d plane-like sheet that can oscillate, and those oscillations represent particles. In reality it should be 3d, but that is much harder to draw.

<comment><USER6> So if objects are just perturbation in a field, and field is a mathematical construct, just like the concept of a number, or a line or a circle, then isn't it meaning less to look for a start for the existence of a field, and hence the whole universe?

<comment><USER8> No, for a couple of reasons. It's a mathematical construct used to describe observed phenomena, the phenomena itself isn't necessarily that similar to the construct. Further, it may be a terrible description.

<comment><USER9> A sinus is a field, deductively reduced to lower dimensions, e.g. a slice cut of a sound wave. Waves on the sea form a wave field, figuratively, and it extends to the bottom of the sea. Whereas a quantum field is a consequence of the Schroedinger Wave equation positing that the potential to observe a particle is distributed in space. As far as I know that's purely virtual, because observation of the particle collapses the potential. The crux is, the observation is not exact; The location of the particle is a probability distribution over a field as well. So ... it's fields all the way down. I'm not an expert, just stipulating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12028](https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12028) is the arxiv link.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like this comment (with the nice explanation of the experiment):

[http://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/miniboone_confirms_n...](http://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/miniboone_confirms_neutrino_anomaly-232739)

Author's take:

"The simple collecting more data and making the result stronger from a statistical standpoint in these cases does not help convince your peer: as I said, this is systematic in nature, so the problem has to be attacked by other means."

On one side he is "an experimental particle physicist who works for the INFN at the University of Padova, and collaborates with the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC" but also writes "I am not a true expert in these matters so my comments would probably be deceiving or plain fallacious."

For him, it seems there is still a need for some other kind of approach before something more specific than "the apparent excess was consistently measured through the years" can be claimed.

</comment><comment><USER12> > In its 15-year run, MiniBooNE has registered a few hundred more electron > neutrinos than expected.

Wow. How could this be significant? (Not arguing).

<comment><USER13> They were expecting to see about 1600 events, and instead they saw about 2000 events. The significance of the excess in miniboone is therefore around 4.5 sigma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The persistence of the neutrino anomaly is extremely exciting, said the > physicist Scott Dodelson of Carnegie Mellon University.

> The existence of a sterile neutrino would revolutionize physics from the > smallest to the largest scales. It would finally break the Standard Model of > particle physics that has reigned since the 1970s.

</comment><comment><USER15> My physics teacher used to say:

 _" Whenever physicists don't understand something - they invent a new particle"_

<comment><USER16> Indeed, it's been a pretty fruitful approach. Physicists propose new particles for a variety of reasons. Though they weren't fully recognized as "particles" at the time, gaps in the early periodic table could be thought of as missing particles in a sense.

An apparent consistent failure of conservation laws in a collision experiment could be described as a "particle" if the failure has a quantitative regularity that's consistent with an un-detected particle.

Particles can be proposed to identify a way that a new theory can be tested -- the Higgs and the graviton are in this category. Given a choice, physicists prefer to explore theories that can yield experimental predictions, and particle detection is an area where theories can be tested with decent sensitivity, albeit at some cost.

<comment><USER17> I don't know much about particle physics, but this is a really nice way to think about "particles". Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wonder what will it take for Deepak Chopra to stop his quantum psychobabble. Even this didn't do it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZXewVWUKAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZXewVWUKAM)

<comment><USER19> Oh god, watching that made me lose all faith in both sides. Maybe this is why he's so obsessed with the circle ;)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Extrovert. Double your social media presence, instantly. - <AUTHOR> http://getextrovert.com

<comment><USER2> I saw this on the page:

Repetition works.

I wasn't so sure... but then I read this:

Repetition works.

Now I'm convinced. I'll take 8!

</comment><comment><USER3> I was prepared to flag every April Fool's day story but this is side- splitting, hilarious copy that stands on its own any day of the year.

Great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you get all the way to the final feature on the lower right?

<comment><USER4> I missed it the first time, but oh man did I ever LOL when I saw how casual/oblivious it was written (in a "don't worry, you clicked the button so you're obviously okay with it" kind of way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know you use strikingly too much when you recognize all the templates immediately.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you considered using your own buttons at the bottom of your page?

</comment><comment><USER7> Finally, 4/1 is looking up.

Finally, 4/1 is looking up.

</comment><comment><USER8> +2</comment>


Machine Learning marketplace for onnx, pmml or pfa? - <AUTHOR> https://machine-learning1.sharetribe.com/infos/about <comment><AUTHOR> Do you think there is a market for onnx,pmml or pfa based machine learning models? I am trying to build one [https://machine- learning1.sharetribe.com/infos/about](https://machine- learning1.sharetribe.com/infos/about) What is your opinion on this topic? Would you sell your pre-trained machine-learning models as pfa, pmml or onnx if there existed such a market? Who would be your target audience? Thanks for your help.</comment>


App Engine Web Development On Your CR-48 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dustingetz.com/dev-etc/app-engine-web-development-on-your-cr-48

<comment><USER2> You can just install a web based ssh solution on your EC2 ubuntu:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_SSH>

<comment><USER3> you probably still want a proxy to keep your development site off the public internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't it just a "X Development Thru an SSH client"? Additionally, retail Chrome OS devices likely won't ship with native shell support. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> I predict you're right about ChromeOS devices, but I wouldn't be surprised if, like the CR-48, they will have "Developer Mode" options.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Rivyr – News timelines for specific products - <AUTHOR> https://www.rivyr.com/products/apple-iphone-6

<comment><AUTHOR> I made an web application and I'm trying to figure out if there is value in a service like this so I'm hoping to get some feedback. Rivyr.com is a site that provides timeline based news feeds for specific products. My hope is that if you are passionate about the iPhone 6 (for example) you can check back here to get news and updates about that product. You can also follow different products to get updates about various products in your own timeline.

The way it works is I monitor about 30 RSS feeds (TheVerge, DigitalTrends, etc. and adding more), and I reverse search the title against the product database using ElasticSearch. If I find a match, it suggests that article to me and attempts to categorize it. Once or twice a day I'll look over the suggested news stories and select which ones should enter the news stream (I do this by hand to avoid duplicate content, fix categorization mis-matches etc).

So I'm curious if you think a site like this would be valuable to readers / early adopters.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you measure your code quality? - <AUTHOR>

Do you or your team/company have a standard, objective way of measuring the quality of the code that you write, to track personal improvement over time? <comment><USER2> I haven't seen any code quality metrics that were worth anything. The most popular is cyclomatic complexity. You can also simply count lines of code and get a similar result for most real-world code.

The problem with these metrics is that they only detect bad code, and they're not very sensitive. In other words, a good score doesn't mean your code is good; it just means it's not hideous. They don't tell you anything that isn't obvious just by looking.

You're better off using collective ownership and pair programming or code reviews if you're interested in improving your skills.

 _Edit_ The issue is that "code quality," once you're past the novice level, is really about _design_. It's about how maintainable and understandable your entire system is to humans. It's very subjective and context-sensitive, and it's the kind of judgment question computers are bad at.

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked the ideas behind CRAP ([http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-code-is- crap....](http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-code-is-crap.html)) -- basically it combines Coverage with Complexity and highlights code that is both complex and has low test coverage.

It's kind of hard to game -- reducing CRAP is easiest with a test or refactoring.

On the last team I was on, we kept an eye on it, but didn't do anything systematic.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like to look not just at the code itself (simple measures such as nesting level and lemgth of method/function), but also at the frequency and correlation of file changes. Noticing that you often change the same files together is an indication of coupling that might be bad. You can also weight the code metric higher for files that change frequently and recently, because if it's an old file, or one that doesnt change much, the quality is probably good enough,

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not exactly a measure, but I recall Ken Thompson saying that good code makes it easy to change or extend a functionality. (I think it was in _Coders at work_ from Peter Seibel).

If you want to derive a quantitative metric from that, I guess you could take the average number of lines/time required to change or extend something.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is subjective, we've papers on this area but the industry is yet to find something concrete. Most of us measure code quality by different apparatus, such as: \- code coverage \- average number of bugs per kloc \- no. of bugs/faults reports per day/hour/per kloc etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> I measure the number of WTFs when the code is being reviewed

[http://www.osnews.com/images/comics/wtfm.jpg](http://www.osnews.com/images/comics/wtfm.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER8> In FPMs (or FPHs if the code is in acceptable condition).

Other coders user SPM/SPH but it is essentially the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Lines of code.

Oh, you said _quality_ , not _quantity_...

Same answer.</comment>


Announcing the Release of the HttpPlatformHandler Module for IIS 8+ - <AUTHOR> http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/02/04/announcing-the-release-of-the-httpplatformhandler-module-for-iis-8/

<comment><AUTHOR> A related post showing ruby running on IIS8 with this module

[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AnnouncingRunningRubyOnRailsOn...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AnnouncingRunningRubyOnRailsOnIIS8OrAnythingElseReallyWithTheNewHttpPlatformHandler.aspx)</comment>


Coming to U.S. For Baby, and Womb to Carry It: Foreign Couples (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/us/foreign-couples-heading-to-america-for-surrogate-pregnancies.html <comment><AUTHOR> The article discusses surrogacy in the US which is one of the few countries where it is legal. It mentions 3 potential mothers: egg donor, surrogate, and the mother rearing the child. But with today's technology, mitochondrial DNA can come from a separate maternal donor as well, so in theory 3 biology mothers are possible as well as a different mother rearing the child.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good case studies of companies for entrepreneurs? - <AUTHOR> I am planning to start my first venture, and I believe it's important to do good research before. It can in the form of books or articles or videos. Can you please comment best resources I can find case studies of companies for entrepreneurs ? One such I found was https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneur-Journeys-1-Sramana-Mitra/dp/1439206872 <comment><USER2> Depends on what your venture will be about, but there's a lot of books written specifically to help entrepreneurs.

The best ones IMO are the ones by Steve Blank and Alex Osterwalder:

\- "Business Model Generation", by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur

\- "The Startup Owner´s Manual", by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf (haven't read it yet)

\- "The Four Steps to the Epiphany", by Steve Blank

and others

These slides are pretty good too:

[http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/successful- entrepreneurship...](http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/successful- entrepreneurship-1)

Above all, execute. I have what I believe is a very good project and it's floundering because of lack of execution (cash would help, but I should be able to make it work anyways). I've seen crappy ideas pivot into success by sheer tenacity (coupled with flexibility).

Edit: more resources

Getting Real by the Basecamp guys

[https://gettingreal.37signals.com/](https://gettingreal.37signals.com/)

[http://web.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi- bin/winter/drupal/upl...](http://web.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi- bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdf)

[http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/Rework-by-Jason- Fried-a...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/Rework-by-Jason-Fried-and- David-Heinemeier-Hansson-Excerpts.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> You might have more luck looking for biographies of founders and company histories instead of _case studies._ It might be especially useful to look for biographies of founders who have something in common with you and histories of companies that do (or did) work that is in some way related to the kind of work you desire to do or that otherwise have some kind of connection or thing in common with your intended project.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would highly recommend "Founders at work",if you haven't read that yet. I liked Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull, which deals with challenges of managing a highly creative team and working towards tangible output.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses) is what you might interested in

</comment><comment><USER6> I have almost finished writing a kindle ebook on the same topic. Just my observations on interesting strategies of top companies. Please let me know (drop an email) if you are interested to join the waiting list. Akhil.karun[at]gmail[dot]com

</comment><comment><USER7> John Walker's _The Autodesk File_ is definitely worth reading. [https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/) has the book available in several formats.</comment>


One Answer to School Attendance: Washing Machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2016/08/school-attendance-washing-machines/496649/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark <comment><USER2> How are we supposed to fix higher order problems if something as simple as clean clothes requires grass roots mobilization to solve? This is a problem within the Maslow hierarchy for God's sake...

I'm just venting, but we should be able to extend basic social services to everyone who needs them, and that includes everything needed to give people dignity in public. This shouldn't be a "school attendance" problem. It should be a heath and human services problem, and they should be working to fix it, pronto...</comment>


Today is the last day for Ubuntu 12.04LTS support - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28operating_system%29#Releases <comment><USER2> Still 2 more days until EOL

[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases?_ga=1.36651104.196229112.14...](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases?_ga=1.36651104.196229112.1492066645)</comment>


Ask HN: How are you changing the world? - <AUTHOR> The Third World seems plagued by problems. Climate change, plastics, diseases etc are such clearly visible issues in those countries.
What are you doing that is having an impact on the issues that really matter? <comment><USER2> I'd imagine not many on HackerNews have something to do directly with the issues you listed. Measuring what is having _true_ impact on these large scale issues can be really difficult.</comment>


Ask Hn: Review needed for my Firefox chat extension  - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys!
Two things were really bugging me about online interaction with others. One is closed online communities, where one will need to pay for connecting others, and the other one is web forums, where online meets the "offline and silent".
I wrote a firefox extension, where website addresses/domains are simply names of comunication channels to which any user can join and interact with other -alike- visitors while she can continue surfing on the website(s).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13436/ is the address of my addon. other than that, http://www.visitrs.com/chat/ will provide the same interface, but without the easiness of the plugin.
I'd like to have some reviews, though there's not a page that explains the details of the application yet, so i 'd like to be your guide on your journey to my "yet another chat application" And i'll be doing the main page of the site at the meantime :)
Any sugesstions, bug reports are welcome.
thanks <comment><USER2> Great idea, but I can see few practical problems:

1) It has the same catch-22 problem like dating. Unless there are many users already chatting on the site Im visiting, theres no point for me to install this plugin.It maybe better if you target some small segment of people with similar browsing interests, like people who spend a lot of time in social networks, youtube etc.

2)<http://www.visitrs.com/> doesnt have any content other than a login screen and the screenshots on mozilla.org is minimal. Some more screenshots would help.

3) What will I chat with strangers on a site? or will I even see a list of users currently willing to chat? Will I see the stream of messages between other "chatters" like chat rooms?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks you for the feedback, sorry i was to be your guide,but fell asleep after hours of continuous coding :'(

1 - if user's main interest in it is chatting, then you're right, more people will grab interest of more people. somewhat similar to chicken-egg problem. spreading the word will mostly work with people from the closed communities, where users will need to pay for messaging and stuff.

2 - i was to finish the about page but nature didn't let me stay awake that much, will do it asap

3 - again this is related to number of people that will see some gain in using this application. i'll try to promote it and will see how much insterest it'll grab.

thanks for feedback :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> gah! timezone problems(gmt+2)! thanks for the visitors interested in my application, unfortunately i manage to be sleeping when anyone pings via the chatrooms :(

by the way, for it's initial release, i'm still fixing the bugs. so any kind of feedback, bug reports or enhancement requests are more than welcome..

thanks

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the rationale you are using. I would like to see the walled garden broken.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. using the plugin and spreading the word might help this much ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> socialbrowse.</comment>


Show HN: Video games for indoor biking and elliptical machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.gymgaming.com <comment><USER2> Advance wars is famous for being good to play in the gym.</comment>


Windows 8.1 Update 1: More interface concessions - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/windows-8-1-update-1-more-interface-concessions-that-still-wont-make-people-happy/ <comment><USER2> _And likewise, they 're still shutting down from software, perhaps unaware that the power switch will do the job, and are conditioned to do so after years of operating systems complaining when they weren't shut down properly. So maybe it's not just Windows 8 that Microsoft did a poor job of explaining to Windows users—maybe it's every version of Windows since 95._

Can't speak for Windows 8, but in Windows XP, Vista and 7 if you have an update that requires a shutdown, pressing the button won't install the update.

<comment><USER3> The author seems like someone who learned about a new feature in one version of the OS and thinks others are ignorant for not seeing the change. In this case the feature actually has a downside if used all the time.

<comment><USER4> I would hardly call Peter Bright ignorant. He is one of the most informed voices in tech journalism, and all of his articles are fairly detailed and useful.

<comment><USER3> I didn't call him ignorant, I believe he thinks it of others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Windows 8 on the desktop, while presenting some intriguing evolutionary possibilities, seems like an unstable transitional form. I do not use touch or tablet platform and consequently, I have not seen any compelling reasons for upgrading my fleet of Thinkpads from Windows 7.

My experience managing Windows servers is rapidly improving. More and more servers are running Core and I'm performing ever more administration remotely by command line using PowerShell.

I bring up Windows Server because, on that platform, Microsoft is clearly articulating a change in their philosophy of system administration. The interactive or scripted command-line is the future of Microsoft server administration. It exposes the underlying management and instrumenting capabilities of Windows in highly useful ways and allows consistent workflows for managing traditional deployments and virtual/cloud systems. They have been clear about this direction for years, and they have facilitated a long transition by continuing to provide the option to use full graphical installs, and by providing management consoles for their major products that simply execute PowerShell commands in the background.

Maybe I just haven't seen it because I don't follow the consumer facing groups at Microsoft very closely, but I wish Microsoft would take a similarly approach for the desktop.

Whenever I read these articles, I am thankful I am not an ISV developing for the Windows desktop.

<comment><USER5> I am actively against Windows 8 in a Domain environment as the system has severe permissions issues for workstations with multiple users. It seems that the first user to install items, create directories, etc. becomes the overall master of them and this makes even basic SysPrep difficult. I am tearing my hair out trying to get terminal servers and cloning projects done, stuff that was a breeze on Windows 7 in comparison. I wish Microsoft was smart enough to differentiate between their home consumers and their business consumers.

<comment><USER3> Our guess is that the issues will continue to keep us on Windows 7 into the next school year. I get the sick feeling we will skip 8 like we skipped Vista.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the only problem with the Windows 8 UI changes were that people had to learn a few new ways of doing things, it wouldn't be a big deal.

I think what really fuels a lot of the ongoing frustration over this stuff is that it's a new way of doing things that is much more awkward than the old way. So, not only are some of your old habits invalid, but the functionality has been replaced by something you would rather not use in the first place.

Adding insult to injury here is the fact that the main reason these changes were made in the first place was to get Windows users accustomed to the tablet interface, with the assumption that they would want to use the same OS on their tablet that they use on their desktop. It was to give Windows tablets a leg up in the market vs. iOS and Android devices; it doesn't appear to have been based on a desire to simply improve the desktop users' experience.

I'm sure they also wanted to create a market for touchscreen Windows PCs too. There were probably some marketing people that were convinced that a touchscreen would simply be a standard thing that every PC had in the future. Who knows, it could still happen I guess. If it goes that way they may look like geniuses in 10 years. I'm skeptical though.

<comment><USER7> Remember, Windows 8 was well underway by the RTM of 7 (July 2009). So, they made a guess that touch screens would be everywhere when they were done. Unlike Apple, until recently, never controlled the hardware they run on.

They spent a lot of the post-DOJ years trying to find a way to bully the hardware vendors without getting kicked in the teeth and never found a way. This is why "signature" failed, this is why touch screens failed, this you could even argue is why early tablets failed (way early, 6+ years ago).

MS seems to have learned this, and started building their own hardware. The Surface 2 Pro is a remarkably nice to use device (and I didn't even reinstall the OS, I am using stock... _gasp_ ), it is my primary mobile platform replacing a 2013 Macbook Air. Being able to swap it between a (very heavy, but usable) tablet, and a decent laptop is a nice combo for me... and I doodle and write notes on it in meeting, the pen is wonderful and pressure sensitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author doesn't seem to realize that what may be intuitive to people used to some are not intuitive to everyone. Restarting your computer/device isn't uncommon, and relying on people to use the device's power button isn't really a good idea. Plus, there's nothing in the interface that affords type-to- search.

<comment><USER9> Especially if you remote control the PC.

<comment><USER10> Brings to mind bad memories of hitting "shut down" accidentally instead of "restart" on a remote machine...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm an 8.1 user. Well sort of. My desktop is on 8.1 on my workstation and I usually have a high bandwidth connection between whatever client device I'm using and the desktop and use RDP. Over the last few months I've been using a 2011MBP as a client device and occasionally the wife's iPad. On a daily basis, I deal with Windows, Linux and FreeBSD platforms from both a development and administration perspective.

What has become apparent to me is that the only thing I still use on my windows desktop is Visual Studio, the MS dev stack and HyperV. Past that, I've slowly moved to a neutral ecosystem with standard formats.

When I look at this update, all I see for me is more pain to be honest. The 8.1 RDP experience is awful compared to windows 7 _because of the whole hot corners thing_. And they're adding more!! You have to run your desktop full screen in case you get stuck in a metro app. This is a royal pain. More than an hour on an RDP session is stressful and counterproductive. I've managed to reconfigure everything back to windows 7 levels but its still nowhere near as usable for a power user.

So, for me, I'm dumping all this crap. I'm spending the weekend moving to VMware fusion and windows 2008 r2 as a desktop (our target platform) just to run Visual Studio and I'll can the rest. I'll use the cash from workstation sale to buy a Retina MBP and just use that as a workstation.

Microsoft are really hanging themselves with this drive to change the UI. There are an awful lot of non windows machines appearing in the last two Microsoft consultancies I've worked at and I can see why.

I wont even go into the amount of relearning and churn that you have to put up with either.

<comment><USER12> Install a Start Menu replacement like StartIsBack ([http://www.startisback.com/](http://www.startisback.com/)) or Classic Shell ([http://www.classicshell.net/](http://www.classicshell.net/)) and voilà, you've got the productivity of the Windows Vista/7 desktop and the performance improvements of Windows 8/8.1. No hot corners to worry about.

Even if you don't use a third-party Start Menu replacement, this update will mean less pain - with power and search buttons on the Start Screen, there will be little reason to use the 'Charms bar', which eliminates two hot corners. With the Start button's return in Windows 8.1, the bottom left hot corner isn't an issue, either, and the top left hot corner is only necessary if you use Modern apps (and it sounds like you don't).

Changing the default file handlers for audio and video files back to desktop programs for non-touch users is a fantastic change and I hope heralds a small shift of focus away from Metro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The main problem with a major change to the GUI like Windows 8 is that it destroys a vast investment people have made in learning how to use a PC. A lot of user interface is comprised of arbitrary choices. It might be the case that a new way to do it (start screen vs start menu) is marginially better, but to be worth the change it really has to be significantly better, not just different.

It's amazing that Windows 8 was released like this when it seems like a basic amount of user testing would show that people are not going to be happy about having to learn a new interface. Most people who work with PCs are actually using them to get work done, and are very pressed for time and energy.

I'm sure it was very complicated in house, but from the outside it looks like management thought "if it's good for us, it must be good for the customer!"

<comment><USER14> I remember people complaining about GUIs, how CLIs were so much better and more powerful, how the mouse and cursor are so inefficient. When you change things people are used to, people are going to complain.

<comment><USER15> This kind of comment really annoys me.

CLI: You need to memorize at least a basic set of commands. There is contextual help once you know those commands, but there is no help to find out which commands do what in the first place. Clearly intended for what we now call power users.

Win9x/NT4+ GUI: All required operations are discoverable through reading what's on screen and going through the menus. No manual or googling required.

Mac since OS1/.Net GUIs: Even better, hotkey commands can be discovered in the Menus -> users can learn how to become faster while just using the programs.

OSX since 10.5: Any program on your HD, installed or not, and any operation within these programs can be discovered through system wide search, _clearly indicated by the search symbol staying in the top right of your screen_ as well as the _Help_ menu. Typing after clicking on _Help_ will even point out the command's placement in the menu such that you can memorize for next time.

Win8/Ubuntu: Trololo who needs discoverability - let's hide most of the functionality behind non trivial gestures (we heard people like them on Macs[1] so let's go all in on them) => the UI now has similar discoverability properties as a CLI - you need to read the manual or google a tutorial to get started.

[1]Note: There is currently exactly one gesture that is really needed in the default settings on OSX (which I find a bad idea btw.): Two finger scrolling.

<comment><USER16> You are absolutely right about discoverability. This is the major difference compared to CLIs. But what happened is that on mobile you have very popular UIs that have no discoverability whatsoever.

You can't even hover a mouse cursor over something you suspect might be a control because there is no mouse cursor and what is and isn't a control isn't always clear either. Lots of secret gestures and lots of change in every version (at least on Android).

I'm a bit baffled as well as to why this can work. I suspect it might be because people don't use these devices for productivity and hence they only use a relatively small number of features. They don't need to discover new stuff all the time and when they do it's for entertainment more than anything.

Or maybe it's because there's a new generation of mainstream users that sees everything as a kind of adventure game where discovering hard to find treasures is the whole point.

Maybe Microsoft's problem is that their technology people ignore the very message their marketing people are trying to get across: PCs are for productivity, for creating things. If you're at work trying to get things done you're not in the mood for figuring out obscure features and the latest UX fashions.

<comment><USER15> Your point basically boils down the whole issue of why Win8 is a failure: MS blindly followed Touch UI trends in a context where Touch UI is simply weaker than Mouse/Keyboard, and they threw away many of the advantages of a Mouse/Keyboard oriented UI in the process. Metro might have an advantage through its consistency across applications for Touch devices, but as long as it's being forced onto Desktop users it will continue to alienate a big chunk of Microsoft's core userbase. Considering the current developments I expect a full 180 for Win9 - even the Vista start menu might come back at one point.

<comment><USER16> I don't think touch and discoverability are mutually exclusive. I do think that discoverability is very difficult to do on 5" screens but that doesn't mean discoverability must be equally bad on a 10" or 20" or 24" screen.

Microsoft can't just do a u-turn and go back to the traditional desktop. What they need to do is to scrap the old desktop altogether and use the screen real estate that's there.

Why not implement a fully featured tiling window manager? On a small screen, you see only one or two tiles and you have no discoverability. On a larger screen you get extra tiles that show available commands and help text. Once you learned your shortcuts you can remove those tiles.

<comment><USER15> I like your idea of a new window manager. There are a few more aspects that need to be taken care of if one wants to bridge Touch and Desktop UIs IMO:

* contextual menus should still be available to speed up certain tasks. For touch screens these should be available through a simple gesture, for mouse/keyboard it's the right click as always. I'm thinking that for touch UI the menu entries could be placed in a circle around the point where the gesture has been initiated, without hiding anything behind the finger (the OS should recognize from what direction the finger has been placed on the screen).

* the concept of a program menu should be reimplemented. Every function should be accessible through this menu, even if there are contextual elements that implement them as well. However, this menu needs to be easily usable on touch screens as well.

* there's one element I'd propose to be always visible, no matter what screen size starting at 7 inch: The search. This search should be able to find application commands and data, OS commands, other applications as well as and system wide data (in that order).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm using Windows 8 (and 8.1) at work a lot and never joined the hate crowd. It's reasonably good and works for me.

My biggest gripe with the Metro (or whatever it's called now) stuff is using a machine via RDP. Imagine a crappy client constellation where Win+something doesn't work and now try to use that system (bonus points for 8, not 8.1).

On the other hand: I know that I don't represent the mass market. But for me, a power button actually makes a whole lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER18> 8.1 is amazing and these updates, like the task-bar metro icon for running apps, actually sound useful. You know Microsoft is still relevant when some unverified blog post gets 300 comments of complete anecdotal nonsense.

<comment><USER19> In what way is Windows 8 amazing?

<comment><USER20> Resource usage, responsiveness. They did a lot of good under the hood work with it. Just metro ... make all the good will that would have been won go to waste.

<comment><USER10> To do that, they've been removing features:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_8) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_7) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_Vista)

<comment><USER20> Probably the only real performance hog here is the Aero Glass and maybe backup. I doubt that the other have any meaningful impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I recently replaced Win7 with Win8 on my gaming rig. I get faster boots, and more disk space for games on my SSD. There's a setting for going to desktop instead of Metro when no apps are open. So the only time I use metro is when I mistakenly left click the start button - to shut down, you can _right_ click the start button to get a contextual menu with a shut down option.

Overall, I find Win8 better in every way, it's nothing new that you have to change a few options to make Windows usable :)

<comment><USER22> You just need to pin a lot of programs to the task-bar. And pretend there never was a start-menu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've really never understood the fuss about the Start Screen. Although I can use Windows 8.1 for days on end without ever seeing it, because I just use Win-Q. (The little stubs that come up when I press Win-Q and Win-P are the only parts of Metro that I see for weeks at a time, honestly.)

<comment><USER24> Well for what it's worth, what little time I have spent in win 8 has been infuriating, and apparently it has been because it has never occurred to me to try hitting win-q or win-p. Next time I'm sitting at a windows machine I'll try to remember to give them a try.

This doesn't seem like a winning UI paradigm, however.

<comment><USER25> I personally found win-c for the charms bar essential, also gonna try the win-q and win-p trick.

<comment><USER23> To be clear, Win-P is an old keyboard shortcut (it lets you switch monitor output -- I use it to disable my second monitor when I want to play a full- screen game, and enable it again when I'm done), it just has a Metro look now. Win-Q is insanely useful, though, pulls up search and you can just type the name of the application you want.

Metro in Windows 8 was entirely useless for desktop use, especially multi- monitor use, Metro apps could only use one monitor at a time (so you couldn't run, say, the Netflix app on one monitor and then pull up the Start menu or the Metro version of IE on the other) and putting multiple Metro apps on the same screen was clunky at best. Windows 8.1 made this much better -- you can put multiple Metro apps on a monitor, and run Metro on all your monitors at once. You can even run a mix of Metro apps and the desktop on a monitor, so you can run a Metro IM client in the side of the screen and have Word up in the rest of the screen. There's such a paucity of Metro apps right now that I haven't found much use for this, though, but if there WERE Metro apps I wanted Windows 8.1 makes it possible to actually enjoy working with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Start Screen still brings me nothing over the menu. The way I used to use the Start Menu, was Windows Key + Type. With Windows 8, the search interface eels all wrong: the search being in the top right (awkward), search results to left of search box (awkward), thinking that your search brought up no results, only to then arrow down (Ubuntu lens) and try again.

The mystery meat navigation/control of Windows 8 is the hardest part. I remember the first time I used a tablet with Win 8, and I felt totally lost. I had to Google how to use it. And I've since forgotten all the gestures.

Sure add power shortcuts, but let us have a discoverable user interface.

Also I have Win 8 on a 32inch TV, with fonts and tile sizes increased, and it's still not very usable. I always end up on the floor in front of it cursing.

Not to mention application switching (metro and desktop) etc. It just feels like a very beta interface, and the said plasters in the update don't sound as if they change much.

(Tip: Windows D, Alt + F4, Enter to shutdown lol.)

</comment><comment><USER26> "And likewise, they're still shutting down from software, perhaps unaware that the power switch will do the job, and are conditioned to do so after years of operating systems complaining when they weren't shut down properly."

Well, what about stuff like rebooting, switching users and the distinction between the three sleep modes - shutdown, s2disk and s2ram?

<comment><USER27> 1\. Press start 2\. Type "power butto" 3\. Press down, enter

Here you can change what the power button, the sleep button, and closing laptop lid will do, including the different sleep modes.

<comment><USER26> But I don't _always_ want to do the same stuff, especially depending on the circumstances (am I at home, how much battery is left,...).

I am not dumb, Microsoft, please do not take choice away from me. You ain't Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What i see diff 8.1 and 8 1\. Click at the start icon,right click can shutdown. 2\. Customize title at metro icon. 3\. Logout instead shutdown as arstechnica.com website. 4\. At the below bar,click at the property can boot directly to desktop without go to tile of metro application. 5\. Previous Version become File History ? i cannot on it.

</comment><comment><USER10> It still looks far too much like a "tabletisation" of the desktop.</comment>


Time Cube - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube <comment><USER2> If you are interested, I recommend this very well made, 45 minutes long, video documenting Time Cube history by Fredrik Knudsen: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7lWCqbgQnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7lWCqbgQnU)

<comment><USER3> Great recommendation, always wondered wtf was the story with Time Cube. Can't wait for mainstream physics to catch up.

<comment><USER3> To be clear it was a joke. Jeesh

<comment><USER4> Is it clear, though?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Help Me to Die, O Lord - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/century-magazine/help-me-to-die-o-lord-524aa0164b30#.rgwfa71dn <comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, my great-grandfather's older brother committed suicide with his own infantry rifle rather than go over the top of the trenches again.

The report from the military court of enquiry makes for some sobering reading - the statements of his platoon mates make it sound like he'd already been mentally ill for weeks.

</comment><comment><USER3> From todays perspective it's really hard for me to understand how different society must have valued their own young men to sacrifice 20.000 within 90 minutes without knowing for sure or at least having a high probability of succeeding. (Keep in mind that populations were generally everywhere much smaller than today)

Today even the strongest militaries in the world are terrified of the possibility that they could loose a few thousand men within a few years of war.

Maybe it's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more. If it is so then it'll mean that eventually as every society gets richer over time it'll see these mass killings and sacrifices as pure insanity and refrain from it.

I believe we would have less of a mess in the Middle East if there was economic stability and the young men there would have the means (and attitude which is often missing) to reach their goals without resorting to violence. After all it must be obvious even to the crazy people running ISIS that the state they are trying to build cannot be sustainable on the long run only through looting and killing their neighbours, even if they were to win every single battle.

Eventually they would run out of neighbours that they can loot and what then?

Edit: I criticise the attitude of men from the Middle East because since we have now many refugees and immigrants here I had the chance to meet many of them. I've not met a single one that didn't come across as a free loader to me so this leads me to believe that this is nothing unusual in their culture. So it's no wonder to me that they are generally poor over there while countries like Germany are rich.

<comment><USER4> _Maybe it 's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more_

I think it's less a matter of productiveness, and more a matter of connectedness: it's easier to send thousands to their death if they're not your peers. The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others.

Also, the increased transparency of wars and accountability of institutions plays an important role.

<comment><USER3> As far as I know the number of friends or connections a person has has been relatively stable in the last few centuries.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)

It is not absolutely uncontested but I haven't seen any evidence that the number of connections people have nowadays has increased.

> The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred > and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're > still working on removing others.

I see more of an atomisation of society into ever smaller groups of minorities that fight each other and more class divide than ever. One other symptom of this is the radicalisation that we see particularly with young people.

20 years ago it would have been unfathomable to me to even imagine that teenagers born in the West would decide to join some crazy group that cuts of heads and throws gays off tall buildings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An incredible essay. That closing poem moved me deeply. What a terrible, terrible time in the history of mankind.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. I heard some of the Somme Commemoration on the radio the other day, and I was moved deeply by Charles Dance's recital of Siegfried Sassoon's "Aftermath"[1]

> Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

It's impossible to imagine the horror - even pondering the numbers of fallen in the first day throttles the imagination, let alone the horrific ways in which these men were murdered in swathes.

All the more tragic that many of these young men left their homes to see the world and experience the adventure of war. They had no idea what was in store for them.

[1]: [http://www.potw.org/archive/potw160.html](http://www.potw.org/archive/potw160.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://celtic-lyrics.com/lyrics/225.html](http://celtic- lyrics.com/lyrics/225.html)

"For Willie McBride, it all happened again, / And again, and again, and again, and again."

And still humans choose war when we could have chosen peace, and follow war leaders when we could have impeached those leaders and thrown them in prison. Probably there is an anthropic selection effect in that this conversation only happens between descendants of killer apes, but that does not excuse us from the last stage of the Great Filter.

Will we learn in time?

<comment> james-watson Ah, but there is great payoff for the Kings and Queens.

Not so much for the pawns.

<comment><USER8> Raping and looting though. Couldn't you also be rewarded with land or was that only for the higher ups?

<comment><USER9> Every Roman legionary post-Marian reforms received a plot of land after their 25 year service [0], officers monetary rewards, and auxiliaries Roman citizenship for their children.

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

<comment><USER10> Incidentally, that was because before Gaius Marius every legionary had a plot of land. Marius introduced recruiting from the 'capite censi', the propertyless citizens.

Rome fought off Carthage with just its small farmers. Probably did not have many urban poor at the time, either.

<comment><USER9> Which shift in socio-economic demographics was only accelerated by the formation of latifundia [0], enormous aristocratic estates consolidated from small farmholds, at least partially due to the latter's failure when their owners were at war for more than a single planting/harvest season. This increased agricultural productivity employed slaves to fuel its economies of scale, at the expense of inflating the class of landless peasant citizen, who migrated to cities and became the urban poor. These were then recruited into the army, which conquered new territories and enslaved new peoples to work the lands from which their soldiers' lineages had been driven.

This same dynamic repeats itself in Byzantium [1], though with a more explicitly feudal flavor.

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

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

<comment><USER9> Edit: landless peasant citizens

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Moving essay.

</comment><comment><USER12> As a game developer, it saddens me that this[1] is our industry's interpretation of WWI.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ)

<comment><USER13> If no one got hurt or died in war, it actually would be really fun

<comment><USER14> Sitting in the mud? Wasting the best years of your life digging a tunnel by hand? Marching and malnutrition?

<comment><USER13> You're playing war to win, I'm playing it to have fun. Roll tanks around and shoot at stuff.

The internet has killed imagination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An (un)surprisingly great tribute to that madness is the last episode of Blackadder goes forth (Goodbyeee). I honestly think that the last 5 minutes of Goodbyeee are the greatest piece of television ever filmed.

<comment><USER5> +1. I enjoyed the first three Blackadder series as a rollicking laugh, but BA4 had an overall much darker theme - and that last episode, especially the last 5 minutes filled me with more sadness and tears than any other war drama movie ever did... The time lapse of the field at the end after everything falls silent...(excuse me, I have something in my eye!)

Captain Darling: "rather hoped I'd get through the whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris... Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says... 'Bugger...'"

<comment><USER16> Darling gets a couple of good bits in that episode. The part where a car comes to take him from his desk job at HQ to the front, and you see the driver only from the long shadow he casts on the office floor, is chilling.

<comment><USER15> I think that the best was - "We lived trough it - the great war of 1914 - 1917" ... and suddenly you feel like punched in the gut.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that brief glimpse of hope that was brutally torn away seconds later... The Cpt. Darling quote I mentioned earlier had that 'punch in the gut' feeling for me too, because it somehow brought to light how large his life was outside of the war...

I began to wonder about Pratt & Sons - did Pratt have sons or other employees in the trenches too? Same with the Croydon gentlemen - how many of their 11 will die in the war and never play cricket again? Who is Doris and is she waiting anxiously at home for him? What will she do when she gets the telegram telling her he will never come home?

After laughing at Darling as an idiotic, simpering, one dimensional character in the earlier episodes, it was awfully gut wrenching to see him here as a more complex personality with a full life, who was quite simply terrified at the inevitable prospect of having that very life ending in a few minutes time when they went over the top.

'Bugger' indeed...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Error Leads to a New Way to Draw, and Erase, Computing Circuits - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/science/an-error-leads-to-a-new-way-to-draw-and-erase-computing-circuits.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> TL;DR: they found that low-energy fluorescent's ultraviolet emissions allow "etching" circuits in topological insulators (material that is insulator inside, but conductive on the surface), and also deleting those patterns using another wavelength. The pattern stays for 16 hours at low temperatures, and "by refining the materials they might eventually be able to reproduce it at room temperature".</comment>


How to Filter Out Fake Referrals and Other Google Analytics Spam - <AUTHOR> https://megalytic.com/blog/how-to-filter-out-fake-referrals-and-other-google-analytics-spam

<comment><USER2> This has been discussed dbefore but anything the helps to rid the planet of semalt.com is always going to get my vote.</comment>


India Tries to Stem Migrant Worker Exodus Amid Coronavirus Lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-tries-to-stem-migrant-worker-exodus-amid-coronavirus-lockdown-11585499312 <comment><USER2> Sad to see a former tea-vendor could not Recognize/Understand/Anticipate/Act on sufferings of Common man in India [http://archive.vn/KqDZA](http://archive.vn/KqDZA)

Or is it #sadism (pleasure in suffering of others)</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project - ExpressionFace, record reaction images via webcam - <AUTHOR>

Here is a little app I made on the weekend (last Sunday and today). It allows users to capture frames from webcam and publish them as an animated jpg. Any feedback welcome. <comment><USER2> Hah this is pretty cool! Here's mine (<http://ExpressionFace.com/1e1yo16>). Only gripe is that it's not a .gif!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, yes with .gif I was getting larger file sizes and lower quality when converting with ImageMagick... and jpg had the lower file size for quality.

<comment><USER2> The problem remains I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://expressionface.com/496q917> \- Terribly, terribly shocked.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link: <http://expressionface.com/></comment>


Reddit year in review – Out with 2016, in with 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5q4qmg/out_with_2016_in_with_2017/ <comment><USER2> Reddit is a shark pool from my experience, the contrast to Hacker News is night and day. I pray that 2017 is the year when sharing ideas openly and expressing diverging opinions on Reddit leads to interesting discussions rather than bullying and insults.</comment>


Swedish Supermarkets Replace Sticky Labels with Laser Marking - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jan/16/ms-and-swedish-supermarkets-ditch-sticky-labels-for-natural-branding <comment> norea-armozel Being that I've worked in grocery I think this is a great idea. Mostly because the introduction of organic produce means there's entirely two different PLU codes for the same basic item (ex. organic (fda) tomatoes vs regular tomatoes). Oddly most people are honest enough to tell cashiers that the tomatoes were organic vs not but I have to wonder how many customers took advantage of that situation when stickers were missing or lost.</comment>


Tarantino // From Below (Video) - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/37540504

<comment><USER2> What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

<comment><USER3> Well, I found both of these interesting so thanks OP.</comment></comment>


This Oxford professor [Nick Bostrom] thinks AI will destroy us all - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/8/19/6031367/oxford-nick-bostrom-artificial-intelligence-superintelligence

<comment><USER2> I'll paraphrase the article:

        Suppose that one day your daughter will physically and
        mentally outclass you.  You'd better find a means to
        control her now that will still work even then.

...As you might have guessed, I disagree with the author. Here's how I would have done it:

        One day, you will be feeble in mind and body. You'd
        better raise your children well!</comment>


Book Review: 'Empire of the Summer Moon' (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://squid314.livejournal.com/340809.html <comment><USER2> I read the book. It's excellent, however it describes methods of torture (the Comanche used) that have really stayed with me. I wish it wouldn't.

If you are sensitive to that sort of thing, take a pass on this one.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for site feedback? - <AUTHOR> Draftss is a productized graphic design service on a subscription model. We have a team of graphic design experts with 10+ years of experience who can provide a detailed feedback in the design domain that can be valuable for startups and businesses. Would you be interested to pay for such a service?<p>Website URL: http://draftss.com <comment><USER2> There are a lot of online communities where you can ask for feedback. HackerNews may one. Because of the free feedback, such services may only work if there is more than just feedback. On the other hand, many companies have their own graphics and web designer, so they won't need feedback. I like your idea but as was said before, it would only work when you want to focus on special groups. You should think about offering just a few features for paying customers and the rest is for free. You could sell advertising on your website to cover the costs.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, I wouldn't, unless I was somehow building a product that exclusively targeted highly experienced graphics designers. And then, if I had to pay them, I'd scrap the startup before I paid because it was clearly a terrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> We are a service?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing it out. Corrected.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What does Trump mean to a prospective foreign masters student? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm currently in my junior year and I'm planning on joining a masters program in the US (at a reputed university like Stanford, Berkeley, ...) after my undergraduate.
With Trump being elected, I'm confused as to how this affects my chance of getting a selected and then eventually getting a job at a big company like Google.
From what I've seen, the supposed crackdown on H1B visas does not only apply to highly-skilled workers (like the IT industry). Would I qualify as a highly skilled worker if I graduate with a masters at a top school and work as a software engineer? (not IT) <comment><USER2> Here are a couple of articles about things he's said about H1B. From skimming them it sounds like he wants to raise the minimum prevailing wage an H1B would have to be paid and eliminate abuses like what happened at Disney recently where they fired their existing workforce and replaced them with lower paid H1B workers. Since you are shooting for a masters at a top school I wouldn't think these changes would affect your plans

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2973597/it- outsourcing/...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2973597/it- outsourcing/why-trump-believes-his-h-1b-plan-is-serious.html)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact- checker/wp/2016/03/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact- checker/wp/2016/03/21/donald-trump-flip-flops-then-flips-and-flops-more- on-h-1b-visas/)

[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/63369555990007398...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/633695559900073984)

</comment><comment><USER3> I doubt Trump will touch the H1B, if you read his 100 point plan, he makes it pretty explicit that he is in favor of the H1B. But he wants to make it hard to get a green card, so even if he is in favor of the H1B he may kill it accidentally. But if you can intern for Google in school they have overseas offices so even if you couldn't get a work visa here that doesn't mean you can't have a great career working in an overseas office for one of these big Silicon Valley companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why would anyone with to put up with the insanity that is US healthcare? It's byzantine, expensive, the cost of health insurance is completely out of control. On top of that comes the H1-B madness.

Why not Canada, Europe, even post-Brexit Britain? Immigration and healthcare in any of these is actually sane.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of late, I have been considering Europe more and more. This might sound a little shallow, but for a relatively similar cost of living, European wages are much less than the somewhere like the Bay Area. That is probably why I've been leaning towards the US.

But I really like Europe too, so that could be an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Impossible to say. It all depends what Trump does or doesn't do. There's a significant chance that nothing much will change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I understand. But what are his proposed policies? How would they affect me? Sorry, I haven't been able to follow the elections fully (I haven't been able to completely escape it either :D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At places like Stanford or Berkeley and in an area like the San Francisco Bay Area, you're good. California in general, you're gonna be just fine.

Depending on your accent and skin color, you might want to stay out of the Confederacy.

<comment><USER2> This isn't what the OP was asking about.

<comment><USER6> You're right. The idea that Berkeley, Stanford or Google's decision would be based on Trump's election is so plausible that I misread the question entirely.</comment></comment></comment>


Chilean Protesters Use Lasers to Bring Down a Police Drone - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/chilean-protesters-used-lasers-to-bring-down-police-drone-and-it-worked <comment><USER2> This was discredited:

[https://twitter.com/matiasojedam/status/1194665625278468096](https://twitter.com/matiasojedam/status/1194665625278468096)

It was a controlled descent... it landed right next to the owner in the crowd.

Which is amusing because it went viral on Reddit using 'police drone' in the title when it was a protestors drone. There was also a thousand comments speculating how the lasers 'brought it down' because of it blinded the cameras or CPUs or due to 'heat'.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I do after dropping off my laptop for repair? - <AUTHOR> I cracked the screen on my laptop and so dropped it off at a local shop for repair. I just realized I have now given someone full access to my unencrypted hard drive. When I get my laptop back what precautions should I take(e.g. update passwords, SSH keys, ...)? What should I do next time? <comment><USER2> Depends on how paranoid you are and how valuable the unprotected files are you might want to take action _right now_.

Do you have any reasons to believe the repair shop will look into your files and have the skill to be able to misuse the credentials or install malware on the machine?

Do you believe the repair shop knows who you are and how valuable your laptops's content is, or do you think they have the resources to go through every single laptop that gets dropped off in hopes of finding something valuable?

Do you believe someone else who might be after you and is willing to put significant effort to break into or bribe the repair shop into giving them your laptop knows where you dropped off your laptop and that it's unencrypted?

What is the worst that could happen should they get access to your credentials? Do these credentials allow access to anything important that could cause severe losses or harm to other people or businesses?

Can you easily rotate/temporarily disable those credentials?

\---

For next time consider full-disk encryption. Then your only risk becomes bruteforce (easily mitigated with a high-entropy password) or them installing malware to grab the password when you type it after they return it to you.</comment>


Sudo: CVE-2019-14287 – Fascinating reminder that security is hard - <AUTHOR> https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/10/14/1 <comment><USER2> Very interesting! I'm just reading the commit that fixes this to understand what exactly went wrong. [https://www.sudo.ws/repos/sudo/rev/83db8dba09e7](https://www.sudo.ws/repos/sudo/rev/83db8dba09e7)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not good... Haven't tried it yet, but it's a big security hole in "sudo". Patch up your Linux systems now!

</comment><comment><USER4> tried it on my centos and ubuntu systems... doesn't work

:/

<comment><USER5> It only works if you've got a specific, somewhat unlikely configuration. You need to have ALL in the user specifier, but not root (or else it's not a vuln, just a bug). So

> username ALL=(ALL, !root) ALL

would be vulnerable; this is trying to let username run commands as any other user _except_ root, but using this vuln the user can get around it.

You can duplicate it by running (as a user with sudo ALL privileges) `sudo -u#-1 id`; it'll show 0, for root.</comment></comment>


If the human eye was a digital camera, it would have 576 megapixels - <AUTHOR> http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html

<comment><USER2> Yeah, no.

The article actually explains that the human eye can be used over time to collect data for a 576 megapixel image.

> How many megapixels equivalent does the eye have?

> The eye is not a single frame snapshot camera. It is more like a video > stream [...]

> At any one moment, you actually do not perceive that many pixels, but your > eye moves around the scene to see all the detail you want. [...] > Then we > would see 120 * 120 * 60 * 60 / (0.3 * 0.3) = 576 megapixels.

<comment><USER3> So the original article title of "Notes on the Resolution and Other Details of the Human Eye" might should be used here.</comment></comment>


Linux #1 Operating System in Hollywood - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxmovies.org/

<comment><USER2> Can anyone confirm this is true? I find it surprising that Linux is widely used for production-type work.

What programs are used? I'm a bit skeptical when the author doesn't mention any specifics.

EDIT: Assortment of linux film production applications available, apparently: <http://www.linuxmovies.org/software.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not enough!</comment>


Show HN: Wagstarter – just launched after 6 wks dev, feedback needed - <AUTHOR> https://wagstarter.org <comment><AUTHOR> My cofounder and I were vet school classmates. Wagstarter is a labor of love that I've always wanted to build, so in August I finally got busy on it.

I would appreciate any and all feedback, no matter how harsh, especially on design, copy, and overall feeling you get from the site.

It's really hard getting initial traction on something like this, so if you like Wagstarter, I would appreciate you sharing it with your friends.

<comment><USER2> I think that donations could be much better spent buying insurance for low- income pet owners than for covering the costs of treatment.

For $40, I could cover a single exam fee for a single pet, or I could cover one month of premiums for the Healthy Paws plan with the lowest deductible. That's how I pay for my own pet's care, and my net savings are in the range of several thousand dollars.

With insurance, you're also able to save pets with time-sensitive (or even emergency) problems.

If that were combined with proper preventative care (similar to the Banfield plans, where people essentially pre-pay for checksup/vaccines/etc.), then you'd have comprehensive coverage for a pet at around $80/month.

Going one step further, if you raised enough money, you could pay for these things using the interest without touching the principal. Each ~$15k raised would cover one additional pet (assuming, let's say, high-dividend index funds).

I understand that your business model is to inspire people to donate by seeing sick pets, but I'm not sure many people go out looking for that kind of thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate you taking the time.

Pet insurance is certainly an option for low-income pet owners, but for whatever reason it hasn't taken hold in the US, where less than 1% of pets are covered. Vets have a somewhat negative impression of it, as it tends to be overly restrictive and, of course, doesn't cover pre-existing conditions.

Crowdfunding healthcare for pets is a fairly popular thing on GoFundMe (50M monthly users, only slightly lower traffic than Kickstarter), Indiegogo, and YouCaring. We think it's a unique and active enough niche to deserve its own, dedicated site, where the funds go directly to vets so as to better avoid scammers who just "claim" their pet is sick.

As with any crowdfunding model, most of our marketing is done by the pet owners (to their friends and family) and the vets providing the care (to their other clientele), so we're not dependent on inspiring strangers to donate.

<comment><USER2> > _tends to be overly restrictive and, of course, doesn 't cover pre-existing > conditions_

Shitty companies like VPI have those problems. I have Healthy Paws, and it's excellent. They cover everything without argument. They seem to have no problem paying out on the things their policy is supposed to cover. I've heard similar things about Trupanion. My friend is a vet and raves about both companies.

Charity is great, and I'm sure it could impact thousands of pets a year, but I have a hard time believing it's going to fix pet care in a meaningful way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't know anything about the space, so I won't comment on the concept, but on a very superficial level: too much text, not enough images above the fold! I can't exactly pinpoint what i don't like about the texts, but they somehow seem a bit complicated to me.

<comment><USER4> As an HN reader I'm obviously not representative for the majority of the population but I liked it the way it was: text, short and to the point (I looked at the mobile edition.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A structure that targets 100% payout directly to Vets/pets in need seems a lot more efficient than other options. I expect there's lots of animal lovers out there who appreciate an opportunity to 'share the love'. I like it.</comment>


YC Winter 2012 Applicants Live Web Chat - <AUTHOR>

Its announce day again. Last round, we had great conversations talking about our applications. It would be great to do the same thing again - meet other applicants and chat about your ideas.
This is not official and I'm not associated with YC.
The room is at http://wompt.com/chat/yc/ <comment><USER2> A group of my friends, from Oklahoma, claim to have been contacted by YC about their application a month ago, or so. I'm wondering if it's more common for the groups being considered for the invite out for the in-person interview to be contacted ahead of the 31st date.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I've heard, it is not uncommon for YC to send out clarification questions. However, I have no idea how that correlates to interview invites.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://wompt.com/chat/yc/>

</comment><comment><USER3> cool!</comment>


New lawsuit against "revenge porn" site also targets GoDaddy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/new-lawsuit-against-revenge-porn-site-also-targets-godaddy/ <comment><USER2> Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092097></comment>


SenCSs - CSS framework that doesn't provide a layout system (just everything else) - <AUTHOR> http://sencss.kilianvalkhof.com/ <comment><USER2> Can someone explain what a CSS framework is, and why I might want to use one?

<comment><USER3> That sort of depends, but for the most part CSS frameworks can provide:

\- Sensible defaults for sizing and other attributes that tend to differ across browsers, including typography and such (see Y! CSS Reset)

\- Helper classes for forms, info boxes, so on (see Blueprint's forms.css)

\- Grid-based layouts to cut down on dev time (see Y! Grids)

Basically, they attempt to cut down on CSS development time by making things equivalent across browsers as well as providing many common styles you would have made anyway. Some also provide various grid-based layouts and others go beyond these things to provide even more, effectively creating something that truly is a framework (I prefer to think of most of them as CSS libraries).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems to me that's a CSS framework without the useful parts. Looks like just a reset with "sensible" styles that look terrible in my browser and don't seem like anything I'd use myself. Why not make use of the "C" in CSS and separate "reset.css" and "sensible.css", or at least declare the styles twice to distinguish between removing styles vs. adding styles? I don't get mixing the two.

Oh, and putting Arial before Helvetica is just shameful. Not just because Arial is shameful, but because every system that has Helvetica (i.e. Macs, some Windows users) also has Arial. So as written, Helvetica will never be seen. Likewise for Courier New vs. Courier, or Times New Roman vs. Times. It's nice to declare fonts that look best on each platform, but only if it actually _works_.

</comment><comment><USER5> the text on that page doesn't fit properly inside the horizontal lines on firefox/unix, so it doesn't inspire much confidence in it as a css framework.

<comment><USER6> Looks good in FF3.0.4/Linux, lines up perfectly all the way down the page. I have no zoom, and I have zoom-text-only turned off. Can't tell which font it is (as I'm not a typeface nerd), but I think I have all the ones listed in font-family installed. But using a background image for those lines could be considered anti-accessibility and anti-readability anyway.

Edit: the sample HTML file gets unaligned after the table, but I think that's because there are some 0.375em paddings scattered around in there (turning those off seem to shore it up nicely).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not going to ditch Blueprint for it - I like being able to columnize very easily, and it's not a pain to change column size/number - but Blueprint (and 960gs) could definitely take some ideas from this, like not being redundant.

</comment><comment><USER8> Tempting. I never had the drive to get into formal typography. Eyeball everything instead.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice. Good work on styling the form elements, particularly.</comment>


OkCvpid - <AUTHOR> http://plui.es/OkCvpid/

<comment><USER2> Just be careful not to get sued. Now that OKCupid is owned by eharmony (or some other big company--I forgot), they're more likely to enforce their trademarks and such. Or else, they lose it.

Funny idea--how did you come up with it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just doing it for the fun; if OkCupid comes to know about it and ask me to remove it (through a courteous email, or something stronger like a DMCA notice or a Cease and Desist), I will comply asap.

I don't remember exactly how I came up with it. I was trying to find a better way to show my CV and browsing OkCupid at the same time I guess :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Pets projects

My cat is a master coder!

(the phrase is pet, not pets :p)

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn! The original OkCupid field was "Pets", I didn't change it carefully enough. Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like what you did here. I sincerely hope you'll find your dream-job (if I can call it that way)! Good luck! :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> The page has a small bug with JavaScript disabled.

</comment><comment><USER6> _slow clap_

</comment><comment><USER7> I wanted it to be in Latin...</comment>


Ask HN: Historically Important Code Snippets? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
I've been teaching an artist friend of mine how to code. She's been loving it and recently has started to incorporate programming concepts into her other art. She's planning on doing a series of paintings that incorporate code snippets.
Here's an early example: http://i.imgur.com/itPcm.jpg
I showed her Quake III's Fast InvSqrt() (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root#Overview_of_the_code). Do you have any other other interesting, important, historically significant, or just plain quirky code snippets? <comment><USER2> There's nothing as iconic as E=mc^2, but what a fun question! Here are some ideas.

\- How about the minimal ANSI C program "int main(int argc, char __argv) {return 0;}"?

\- You could look up the code designed by Ada Augusta, Countless Lovelace. It's much like a spreadsheet.

\- A few code snippets are of historical interest in that they have unfortunately caused satellites to fall out of orbit.

\- Some code snippets have been used as email signatures for political reasons, such as short implementations of RSA or DeCSS.

\- David A. Wheeler's website has a nice rundown of modern history's important software innovations, but only a couple of those, like RSA, can be implemented in a few (appropriately) cryptic lines.

\- There are a number of mathematical algorithms of interest, such as the Euclidean algorithm for greatest common divisor (GCD) and the Newton or Newton-Raphson method.

\- Some modern fundamental algorithms such as binary search and quicksort are compact.

\- You might like some variant of "the computus", the formula for calculating the date of Easter. It bores me, but I enjoy the similar Zeller's congruence.

\- The movie "The Social Network" features something like the tf-idf formula and the movie "A Beautiful Mind" features Nash equilibrium.

\- The Ackermann function is fun, being a brief and notably slow formula for practically all arithmetic. Going the other way around you get Peano axioms and perhaps computations with Church numerals.

\- A grammar for the lambda calculus can be three simple lines.

\- Our gracious host in "The Roots of Lisp" states Lisp "eval" somewhat briefly, based on McCarthy's original, which Alan Kay called "Maxwell's equations of software".

\- The truth table for NAND is a nice little graphic and the NAND function happens to be sufficient to implement all Boolean functions.

Now we could start to get into other diagrams from computer science and software engineering, but that's a vast area and you didn't actually ask for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duffs_device></comment>


Ask HN: What are my options for interviewing and negotiating advice? - <AUTHOR> I am currently approached by a startup who wary of working with me because of schedule conflicts from my university courses. They would like to know how much money I am expecting for this job. Of course I have many questions for approaching this. Should I offer to work hourly? Should I 'pro-rate' my salary accounting for the hours I would be available to work? What kinds of arrangements can I expect will be suitable for a similar company?<p>What I would really like to know is: Aside from posting here, I think the general audience would like to know what resources are available for working through this. Are there companies who provide this? People in the community? <comment><USER2> From a developer point of view one frequent advise is to never give a number first.

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary- negotiation/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/) has a chapter on that.

> Are there companies who provide this?

Yes, well, consultants and ebook writers. Most seem to target freelancers who want to raise their prices though, not job starters. For example [https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/](https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/)</comment>


On Folk Epistemology: How We Think and Talk about Knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/on-folk-epistemology-how-we-think-and-talk-about-knowledge/ <comment><USER2> I really wanted to enjoy this book review, but I could not penetrate the philosophical jargon and labyrinthine paragraph structure. I suspect it is for audiences more familiar with the relevant literature.

<comment><USER3> > _such as our inclination to deny that someone knows that p in the face of a > salient alternative, q_

Here is a small gripe with philosophical tradition that I'm sure many of us share: they easily could have phrased this without symbols[0], but ended up using them anyway. The only reason science and math papers use letters in body text is because they are about to be used in equations! After they are introduced at the expense of using "professional" grammar, _p_ and _q_ never show up again.

[0] "such as our inclination to deny that someone knows something in the face of a salient alternative."

<comment><USER4> That's an odd gripe. It was philosophers who first used logical form going all the way back to Aristotle.

Also, equations are not only reason symbols/letters are used in math and science. When speaking of logic, their usage is built on philosophical foundations. Math also didn't always use symbols as it does today. Symbolic math took root sometime in the 14th century.

<comment><USER3> There isn't a single reason to use symbols except that they save space. They aren't a magical spice that turns sentences into true proofs - the best they can do is let you write text that is already a proof in less space. Logical form is only worthwhile if you're doing so much logic that you can't print the word therefore that many times!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bounded rationality is very interesting and easy to understand if you have intuitions about computational complexity.

Breifly, it's the idea that being perfectly rational, is, in practice too resource intensive for us to do all the time - so the /actually/ rational thing for us to do is to use heuristics and folk-concepts in our day to day lives, rather than totally philosophically sound methods of reasoning.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Translated into simple English: For most things, common sense turns out to be fairly common and reliable.

<comment><USER7> That's not what the review says at all. The book maybe, I haven't read it</comment></comment>


Show HN: Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UTF8 and Windows (BSD) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arangodb/linenoise-ng <comment><USER2> I'm all for replacing readline. It's an ancient, very closely linked to the everyday experience of using the command line, and not very good. I want my REPLs to have things like syntax highlighting and decent tab completion UI, and readline has positioned itself to have a monopoly on the ability to implement these things but failed to deliver.

But this isn't addressing the real problem, which is that readline gets conjoined with the programs that use it. So if I want to write my own line editor, I have to significantly modify every program I want to use it in, which is enough of an obstacle that I won't do it (and neither will others). Nevermind more difficult architectural problems, like making editing local when on high-latency connections. Still, having a BSD-licensed line editor to start from may be helpful for whoever takes on that project some day.

<comment><USER3> "But this isn't addressing the real problem..."

Well, he addressed a real problem in my opinion: readline is too large and too complicated for many uses.

I used hping in the old days; while I'm not a Redis user (I use cdb and kdb+ for key/value stores), I really appreciate linenoise. I use it everyday.

I thank the author for a very useful contribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> there are a lot of forks of linenoise out there now.

this one looks good, but it's a big task to pick through all the divergent copies of the code and figure out which ones have genuine improvements and which ones are now rotting.

there's a rust one too which i recently added mingw/msvc support to. that's actually an example of how this splintering could be causing problems because we've just vendored some upstream version of the native c code and changes may be difficult to send back upstream.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is one of the reason, why I renamed it the LINENOISE NG. The interface is compatible with the original LINENOISE, but it works on linux, Mac and Windows and it supports UTF-8.

<comment><USER5> Too bad about the C++, though; my condolences.

(The original authors should have made the header comment "against the idea that a line editing lib needs to be 20,000 lines of C code, _or any quantity of C++_ ".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fork of linenoise in the TXR language:

[http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/log/linenoise](http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/log/linenoise)

Doc:

[http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-025AAA27](http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-025AAA27)

These changes are in a different direction. I don't have windows or UTF-8 support, though. I started a branch to convert it to use wchar_t. Maybe I can cherry pick some things out of NG.

</comment><comment><USER6> How about predictive typing? It would be helpful if something modern learned what I frequently type.

[http://papersdb.cs.ualberta.ca/~papersdb/uploaded_files/712/...](http://papersdb.cs.ualberta.ca/~papersdb/uploaded_files/712/paper_korvemaker00predicting.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> All of this to get around the GPL. Boo!

<comment><USER8> I wonder why that was necessary, since NetBSD's libedit exists in a portable form. It is (or was) the default on OS X.

[http://thrysoee.dk/editline/](http://thrysoee.dk/editline/)

Edit: libedit is mentioned in the readme, and it's implied that the reason for this other library is code size.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another reason is Windows. Even READLINE breaks when used on Windows with UTF-8 characters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can it switch between emacs and vi mode (like Deadline)?

<comment><USER10> Was that a typo? I've never heard of deadline and that's a pretty un-google- able word. GNU Readline has Emacs & Vi mode.

<comment><USER11> While replying to this thread, my browser keeps autocorrecting "readline" to "deadline". So a case where technology makes us write correctly spelled nonsense :).</comment></comment></comment>


The bloodiest, sickest game from EA - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2008/08/08/e/

<comment><USER2> _I asked several EA employees about working conditions (and even got rid of the PR people to have some good conversations) and they say that the attitude of management toward work hours has dramatically improved but still could be improved more_

That's the interesting part of this article.</comment>


'Ready Player One' is a terrible book and it will be a terrible movie - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/2076/ready-player-one-movie-bad <comment><USER2> 'Ready Player One' is 80's nostalgia porn. It was obvious from very early on in the book, and if you read more than a few chapters in the book and expected more, well, you would indeed be disappointed.

Knowing that the book is 80's nostalgia porn, and that this is what made it so popular, I would be disappointed to get anything else out of the movie. I don't want to get an in-depth story about lessons learned from using media to escape from pain... I want to watch a DeLorian race Akira's motorcycle while Voltron and Godzilla duke it out in the background.

</comment><comment><USER3> The book is meant as entertainment, I was entertained. Mission accomplished. I am not aware of any other requirements for books.

I'm sure the movie will be just as entertaining.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Some of the points just seem ridiculous and make me wonder what this person expected to get out of the book. For example:

> Halliday's character combines the worst traits of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg > and Kim Dotcom.

Do you think its purpose is to inspire you to be a better person? Since when are fiction books self help books? Since when are perfect characters the most interesting ones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was wondering if I was the only person who thought the trailer was terrible. I only watched it because the reviews were so hyperbolic. This article is right: the source material is supremely mediocre.

<comment><USER6> I was wondering if I was the only one who thought the book was terrible. Once I made it past the first third (it was tough, but I didn't pay for the book so I just read it on my phone when I was bored) I was able to enjoy it for what it was.. mediocre fanfiction.

<comment><USER7> > mediocre fanfiction

I think you might be giving Cline too much credit. I've read _much_ better fanfiction than "Ready Player One". Even the bad fanfiction chock-a-block full of nostalgiac references doesn't stop to explain it's references every other page. I literally hate-read through RPO on a transatlantic flight because the screen for my seat was broken and I had nothing better to do.

ETA another excellent review: [http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/ready-player- one-finds-the-...](http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/ready-player-one-finds- the-bleak-limits-of-nostalgia-1797497066)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a page from the book in case you're curious: [https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0085/59/1475081841319.jpg](https://i.warosu.org/data/lit/img/0085/59/1475081841319.jpg)

It's like American Psycho, only non-ironically.

</comment><comment><USER9> _" But, rather than take a stand against the apotheosis of self-satisfied male nerdism, the mainstream media made itself complicit in an atrocity."_

For how I have read it, the book starts with a guy that find in `self- satisfying male nerdism` his only way out of a depressed hopeless world and and up opening up, growing and making real friends over the digital world (while saving it).

Also since when nerdism is bad and why would the media not accomplice in `the atrocity`?

Regarding the quotes problem you talk about, `that's 70s show` and `Stranger Things` aren't staged in a distant future and their own zeitgeist is important to understand some things and to stage the show, but in `ready player one` the character is a `millennial from the future` that has to solve puzzles and riddles related to a far away in time culture (tbh good luck asking today to kids what `war games`, a nerd movie that came out 34 years ago, was.) and while recalling those movies (in a few lines) and having a thought process revolving around them (sure just to pull memories from his brain) he puts himself in hallyday's shoes as if it was an async tutorial setup by hallyday, a path towards world salvation that goes through the revival of a culture 'lost in time'.

The world doesn't spin around specific games and movies the author likes, I think the book delivers a simple story (classic hero journey [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey#Campbell.27s_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey#Campbell.27s_seventeen_stages)) with an interesting catch of being revolved around a specific time, culture and media.

 _" It simply constructs a world around the reader, where his comfort zone, his passively acquired knowledge of retro video games and Star Wars, is enough to effortlessly make him a Great Man of History."_

that is exactly what it takes to make someone `a great man of history` on the internet.

I didn't like the trailer, but i think the book is a nice and very easy to read.

ps i don't play videogames.</comment>