At Colorado, a Breach in Football's Wall - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/sports/colorado-football.html <comment><USER2> I knew it was bad, but I had not realized that the CTE numbers were so high from the article "...read the work of the Boston University C.T.E. center, which found evidence of degenerative brain disease in 99 percent of brains obtained from deceased N.F.L. players and 91 percent of college football players and 21 percent of those who played high school football."

From BU's site, here was the methodology: "For the study, the researchers began with the donated brains of 202 football players. Pathologists, knowing nothing of a patient's history or symptoms, examined each brain for evidence of CTE. At the same time, clinicians—blinded to each brain's pathology—used medical records and interviews with family members to collect detailed information about each patient's medical history and symptoms. The group met for regular consensus meetings, where the pathologists and the clinicians presented their findings. They limited the study to football players, providing a somewhat homogeneous sample."

Stated another way (based on the study) 9 out of 10 college football players are going to leave with CTE.

<comment><USER3> It's clear that there is significant brain damage risk to participating in activities that knock your brain around. Why anyone would let their children or themselves box, MMA, hit soccer balls with their head, or play American football is beyond me.

<comment><USER4> Have there been any studies that attempt to rank the risks? I imagine boxing would be at the top. Followed by football.

MMA is a tricky one. A fight can get bloody, but because of the light weight gloves (and kicks), any single good blow typically ends the fight. Fights can also end by submission without having to knock someone out. A professional UFC fighter, and a professional NFL player would be an interesting comparison.

What about the board sports (wake/snow/skate)?

<comment><USER5> > What about the board sports (wake/snow/skate)?

I doubt they're anywhere near the others. Boxers and football players get hit every match as a matter of course. The whole point is to hit people.

Board sports, on the other hand, the entire point is not to fall down or run into things. A person can snowboard an entire lifetime and never take as many hits to the head as boxer gets in a single match.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a season ticket holder (for Berkeley). When all the CTE stuff started coming out, I felt a bit guilty but not enough to cancel the tickets. Now I'm not sure how I feel. On the one hand, these kids are aware of the risks and choosing to play anyway. On the other hand, many of them are choosing to play because they come from depressed backgrounds with no other way of paying for or in some cases even getting into college, and football offers a chance to completely change their entire family's situation.

But then again, I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast where they interviewed someone who played football and then went on to get an MBA from Harvard and worked in the executive ranks of both the NFL and NBA.

He's well aware of the CTE risks, but when they asked him if he'd do it all again knowing what he knows now, he said he would still do it, because he grew up poor and now has multiple lifetimes of money. But he would never let his son play, because his son doesn't need to play to get out of a bad life situation like he did. He said it was a sacrifice he'd make again for the sake of his kids and his family. Do we want to deny people that chance to get out of poverty even though they have to knowingly risk their life? I honestly don't know because I didn't grow up poor.

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds distrurbingly like gladiator / slave pit fighting. It's basically a horrible lottery ticket for poor players, most of whom get brain damage and a meaningless college degree, but maybe 2% of whom get life-changing amounts of money (and then some of them get fucked up on drugs or involved in crime anyway...).

It sure does not sound like a good way to distribute opportunity at life success to poor children..

<comment><USER6> I agree, it's a terrible way to distribute wealth. But it is _a way_ that currently exists. Do we take it away without a replacement?

Yes, long term I think football wouldn't exist if we had lots of wealth redistribution programs. But we don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure I follow you on this. For example state lotteries are widely known to function like a tax on poor people. Even though some people win the lottery, it's fairly uncontroversial that most people would be better off if the lottery was simply disallowed, and nobody wins. We don't need a replacement for the lottery, just to remove it.

I don't see why it's different for college football.

<comment><USER7> > _Even though some people win the lottery, it's fairly uncontroversial that > most people would be better off if the lottery was simply disallowed, and > nobody wins. We don't need a replacement for the lottery, just to remove > it._

There's a big difference between "disallowed" and "does not exist". The lottery as it stands distributes its poor tax proceeds to the state, often to education. It's heavily regulated, and advertisements contain warnings on the dangers of gambling, and I'd say it's common knowledge that it's a tax on the poor.

If it was removed, however, it would leave a vacuum. People are irrational, and the idea that they could get lucky and win is extremely tempting. I don't think you can say with confidence that whatever gambling would take its place would be less harmful than the lottery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems that repetitive head injuries are really something that has long term consequences. The issue is VERY complex and has a lot of factors. One thing to look at is the complex data on other sports[0]. It turns out that men's rugby and women's ice hockey are also big magnets, along with soccer/futbol. It seems to be that just about any hit to the head can be damaging, regardless of equipment. The 'violence' of American football may be a correlated factor, but not causative.

But we're just beginning to understand these things. More data is needed, unfortunately. It seems that these athletes really are suffering.

[0] [https://completeconcussions.com/2018/12/05/concussion- rates-...](https://completeconcussions.com/2018/12/05/concussion-rates-what- sport-most-concussions/)

P.S. I've also struggled with these issues. I've written on HN before about them and won't bore here. Suffice to say, though I've had deep struggles with concussions, and in the end I'd say I wish I'd not done those sports as a result, it is a _hard_ question to answer. If I could be back out on that pitch once more with my mates and be guaranteed to not get another head injury, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I loved that time and really do miss it everyday, even decades later, I love rugby. I wasn't an easy thing to quit, and it is still not easy to stay away from. The concussion epidemic is not going to be easy to solve.

<comment><USER9> > More data is needed, unfortunately.

I've slowly been convinced that more data isn't needed before we act on this. The only reason there's a call for more data is that these sports are very popular and drive revenue. We have enough data to say "yes, these sports pose a serious risk to the health of those playing them." That doesn't mean to have to stop playing them, but it does mean we can't throw our hands up and claim we just don't know why these kids keep getting brain injuries.

<comment><USER10> I think most programs admit and accept the physical risks of physical sports. Brain trauma is less understood than something like a knee injury, but that's exactly why these studies need to continue to gather data. We can continue to improve safety during play, detection of damage, and treatment after injury.

Anecdotally, most youth leagues I see for contact sports have changed their rules to better protect the players. I would be against any legislation doing the same for adults who are informed of the risk.

What other actions would you propose?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I played high school football, and my family is a "football family" with Dad and other relatives having played at the college level. I loved the game and had many great experiences. I'm sad to write it, but that tradition ends with me. I will absolutely not allow any children I might have to play this game.

I often wonder how badly my own brain is damaged.

Coincidentally, I also did my undergrad at CU.

<comment><USER12> Quite popular among middle schoolers in my city is Ultimate Frisbee [0]. It flows similarly to football, at least for an European eye, but without rushing or tackling.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_(sport)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_\(sport\))

<comment><USER13> It's more like rugby than American football.

The physicality of the linemen and other blockers is key to the whole game of American football. It's like you have a group sumo match and then a rugby game happening around it.

It adds strategy, tactics, misdirection, and specialization of abilities you don't see in other sports.

<comment><USER12> The sumo comparison is quite apt, and also present in rugby, at least in scrum situations. OTOH, in rugby passing forward is prohibited. Not so in ultimate or football, where passing forward is a defining characteristic of the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is entertaining, because football was almost eliminated from US universities in the early 20th century because it was too lethal. Teddy Roosevelt stepped into broker a rules change to remove the most lethal parts of the game.

> Cabral loves the band of brothers aspect of football

Or join ROTC if you want the real thing.

> We should move in the direction of offering lifelong insurance and medical > care for football players who become badly damaged," said John Kroll

The problem with this is that it's hard to say when the brain injury occurred, since its effects manifest down the road. So we should probably require high schools and Pop Warner leagues to carry lifelong insurance for players.

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope that American football does not exist in its current state in 10 years. Ideally, a test will be developed to detect CTE before you're dead. I was a lineman. I hit hard, and I was knocked out several times over the course of a decade or so of play. There's no way to play football in a 'safe' manner. The tactics and the equipment have evolved in a way that maximizes risk of brain injury.

<comment><USER16> What about going back to leather helmets and other less armor like equipment? Sure, there will probably be a steep injury spike as people try to play in current styles with less padding, but maybe they'll go back to actually tackling rather than trying to light someone up for the sake of it. Rugby seems to do alright without all of the body armor.

<comment><USER17> > Rugby seems to do alright without all of the body armor.

Rugby has very different rules on physical engagement, and has never seen the epidemic of deaths that American Football had.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm currently sitting in a Boulder Cafe at Galvanize reading this article, and wondering if a high school peer that I know -- Tennyson McCartney -- who also played for the CU team back in the day had CTE. He also committed suicide 10 years back. Remember him as a giant of a guy that was smart and kind.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why do we continue to allow our institutions of higher learning (namely high schools and colleges) to promote this sport? The very organizations charged with making our children smarter sponsor a sport proven to cause brain damage. At some point these institutions need to be held accountable for this, only when that happens will we see any change.

<comment><USER16> Simple: money. The money earned from football events pay for so much of that institution's budget. Friday Night Lights is a tradition that's not going to change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually this is not true. Many top athletics programs lose substantial amounts of money, even after accounting for TV deals,

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/runni...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/running- up-the-bills)

There's some unsubstantiated claim that constantly growing expenditure on sports is requires like a marketing arms race to advertise to potential students, but I haven't seen much data backing that.

My guessis that, just as with most professional sports clubs, college athletics programs by design are intrinsically huge loss leaders designed to be vehicles by which coaches & administrators extract money from the university.

For the tiny fraction of top teams with massive fan bases, they can get away with this while being profitable. For almost all other programs, they burn through money chasing success and profitability for a while, and after enough consecutive seasons of financial losses, they retreat to fiscal austerity and a decline in the athletics department while some other programs are on an upswing.

<comment><USER20> It doesn't have to be a surprising economic argument. People _like_ football. They're obsessed with it. Of course they have it at their schools.

<comment><USER21> People also like running, video games or chess to name a few. Football, even with its popularity, is unique in providing an enrichment pipeline from high school to the pros that a few benifet from quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Football is a sport where when I first saw it, I thought it was basically a sports analogy to war, including damaging soldiers. Like boxing, I simply cannot comprehend why people want to do sports where injury is a routine component of the activity.

<comment><USER23> > Like boxing, I simply cannot comprehend why people want to do sports where > injury is a routine component of the activity.

football is probably one of the more dangerous sports, and it's getting a lot of attention right now due to CTE concerns. that said, injury is a routine component of pretty much all sports at the highest level. you can't be the best in the world at a physical activity without pushing your body to its very limits.

<comment><USER22> yes, but there's a difference between running and causing self-injury, and a sport where people actually have to collide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > "My dad always told me the name of the game is hit, hit, H-I-T. There is > always a place on the field for someone who will hit."

This is just sad.

Would love to see data before and after "hitting" replaced "tackling".

</comment><comment><USER25> I've spoken with multi-generation football family coaches, players who say that the sport is headed for an end. I'm not sure I believe that.

It comes down to whether a safe helmet can be made or whether a CTE treatment can be created. (Both of those seem like very difficult goals.)

The number of participants in the kids leagues has been declining for a while: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/191658/participants- in-t...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/191658/participants-in-tackle- football-in-the-us-since-2006/) What parent would allow their high schooler to play if there is a 21% chance of lifelong disability, loss of earnings potential, etc.?

<comment><USER26> A safer helmet isn't the only way out, though. Rules can be changed to shape the game away from the big hits as well.

Change the rules so there isn't so long between plays and all the optimal players get smaller and more athletic, and they can't "rest and reset" for the next big play. All of a sudden, the magnitude of the collisions goes down substantially.

"Unfortunately" then an NFL game wouldn't be good for 3+ hours of TV advertisements, so there's a lot of incentive to keep the pace slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They should make the field slower.

<comment><USER28> Then we just get bigger offensive and defensive lines, who still take big hits. Making the field faster might be a solution - moving the game towards hockey rather than rugby speed.

<comment><USER27> Speed makes hits catastrophic. A slower field means those linemen (who are taking hits every play) are doing so with less impact. A faster field and those linemen launch into each other with even greater force and impact. The running backs up the middle are going even faster when they get stuffed by a faster linebacker.

Make the field slower. No three point stance. Extreme version would be no runs inside the tackles so we see mostly lateral movement and pass plays.

Step one is to stop funding football with the schools. Private clubs can show proof of insurance.

<comment><USER26> If you move the game along faster and reduce the resting time between plays, the average player is going to shrink back closer to something more closely resembling a normal human, so the reaction mass (and thus severity of collisions) will drop a lot as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It seems the way to make the game safer is, ironically, to reduce the safety equipment. After all, if you have more skin in the game, so to speak, the less you might make or take on risky maneuvers. Of course, there are always those who are going to go for broke and do it anyway,

So maybe the way to win is not to play,

A similar sport is rugby, but the incidence and possibility of injury is pretty high there, if you read the news. Plus, rugby is un-American, just as American football is un-Worldwide. So changing sports isn't really an answer, either. Basketball isn't the same kind of sport, though I took a few elbows in the face and a knee or two in a very unfortunate spot, so yeah, it rates up there.

I grew up in a small Texas town where football was practically a second church (technically, 4th, since there were three churches in town). I broke a couple of bones and sprained both ankles multiple times before I was out of elementary, plus I was rail-thin, so by the time football rolled around I was pretty risk-averse. However, I "managed" the team, which meant doing a lot of menial tasks the the coach didn't want to. I was also the cameraman.

There were several times I observed some pretty serious injuries. One of our tackles shattered his right thumb to the point where it was very difficult to reconstruct. I watched a running back go over the line and got pinned between two tackles, right at the hip, not only taking him out of the game, but putting him in serious condition in the hospital for a week (the term used at the time was "bone-bruise" and he was on crutches for the rest of the season, at least). During training, despite every precaution, I saw people suffer from heat-stroke and -exhaustion because we started training in the 110-degree August sun.

These weren't urban kids, either. They were small-town farmboys, used to working in heat and taking hits from the occasional obstreperous cow or a kick from a nervous horse (those were few and far between, thankfully). I once had my bell rung by a charging sheep desperate to get out of a trailer, so I know what a concussion feels like, after you wake up. No hospital trip, either. Just sucked it up and went back to work.

The point is: that these guys were were willing to take some damage just to play a sport. They were middle-school and high-school kids, ready to take on the world, without considering the potential risks. Their parents encouraged it (my grandparents were pretty much neutral about it) and when one of their kids got injured, it was just part of the game, even if the damage was fairly traumatic. None of these guys were particularly violent at the time, but if there was fight, they weren't going to back down and so the prospect of being padded up and charging the other guy wasn't that big of a deal.

How do you even begin to compete against that sort of mentality?

NOTE: Not to knock om people who grew up in an urban environment, but I think growing up in a rural farming community carries a higher risk of injury. When working around livestock you have to be on your game at all times, since you can't just take a break for a minor injury, that would otherwise entail a trip to the family doctor for a quick checkup. That was potentially a whole day lost. Anything above a minor sprain or a small cut could have some serious effects on production.

<comment><USER30> _> It seems the way to make the game safer is, ironically, to reduce the safety equipment. After all, if you have more skin in the game, so to speak, the less you might make or take on risky maneuvers._

This seems like saying the way to make the roads safer is to take seatbelts and airbags out of cars, because then people will be incentivized to drive more carefully.

And the football case is even worse, because on the roads nobody's future career hinges on how recklessly they're willing to drive. College football players on the other hand have huge financial motivations to be willing to ignore the risks and hit hard, since if they aren't, they are likely to lose their chance at one of the tiny number of jobs in professional football to someone else who is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If all kids could just sit on the sofa and play video games we'd all be much healthier.

<comment><USER32> False dichotomy. You can get strenuous, competitive, healthful physical activity without ever risking brain trauma. Swimming, tennis, track and field, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Weird to hear about my school in the news, mostly because I stay on the other side of campus and don't give a flying fuck about the D1 sports. Besides, we're usually not that competitive.

</comment><comment><USER34> > "My dad always told me the name of the game is hit, hit, H-I-T."

The article doesn't touch the board response beyond this quote, but this mindset seems problematic. In a sport marked by injuries at all levels, and in this concussion centric area, it says a lot about ignoring the issues that such would be a tagline. Why it's different from a Nascar team purposefully running people off the road is a question begging to be asked. And that a majority of the fans probably watch for the hits, much like Nascar fans in the 90s is problematic.

It's probably affecting society in other ways too - obesity epidemic, family violence, us vs them mentality

Basketball, Soccer, even "real" football fans are looking for the play development and strategy much more than the "hits".

<comment><USER34> One example is that "Hit, Hit Hit" is as extreme as "Chug Chug Chug" might be in alcohol consumption. There's speed, skill, strategy, player rotation, juking, wrapping up, deflecting --- but hit hit hit is the rallying cry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What's most important in this conversation is to remember that we're not talking about football. We're talking about college athletics as a whole. Just because degrees attained while playing college football are largely worthless because of how little time is able to be spent studying does not mean that degrees attained with less-demanding sports (say, gymnastics or soccer) are equally worthless.

<comment><USER28> For those unaware the above comment is likely about how american football programs fund almost entirely all athletics and some amount of academics at universities.

<comment><USER36> I don't think that's accurate. Many top-level football programs _lose_ money. See: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/runni...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/running- up-the-bills/?utm_term=.cf7073df0f5f)

<comment><USER34> Thanks for mentioning this, it's important; we're told, tv money, etc, but every bowl season schools not in the top 10 have to face a choice of making money or losing money</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is the name of that startup to hire locals? - <AUTHOR>

I remember looking at it a few months ago, but have completely forgotten the name. The idea is that you can hire people in your area to do an assortment of things: a handyman, maid, organizer, errand-runner, etc... I've been looking for it desperately but cannot remember the name for the life of me... Thanks!<p>(And no - it's not craigslist.. It's more akin to AirBNB) <comment><USER2> Do you mean Exec? [http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/31/exec-the-mobile-app-for- err...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/31/exec-the-mobile-app-for-errands-adds- messaging-oh-and-sam-altman-led-their-round/)</comment>


Extending The JavaScript Date Object with User Defined Methods - <AUTHOR> http://www.digital-web.com/articles/javascript_date_object_with_user_methods/ <comment><USER2> Boo! Hiss! When will folks learn that extending the prototypes of built-in JS classes is a _bad, bad idea_?

The problem comes when you try to build libraries on top of the extensions. You have your set of extensions to Date, somebody else has their set of extensions to Date (possibly with the same names), then two other folks each build libraries on top of those extensions. What happens when a poor app developer wants to use both libraries? Whose extensions win out?

Or what if the two library guys both just use your extensions, but in between library A's release and library B's release, you update the extensions with some subtle backwards-incompatible changes? One or both of the libraries will crash with unsatisfied dependencies.

Just say no. The right way to implement functionality like this is through a namespace object that holds a bunch of standalone functions. The namespace should expose only itself to the global namespace, and have a noConflict() method that restores the full state of the global environment on demand. Then any dependent libraries should close over the libraries they use, so that you can call noConflict after loading the dependent library and it'll use the bindings that were in effect at load time. There's a good example in the JQuery source code. It's a pain, it's cluttered, it's more verbose than pure prototype extension, but it ensures that your abstractions don't leak. You can be sure that adding a new JavaScript library won't suddenly break the libraries you're already using.

<comment><USER3> "The problem comes when you try to build libraries on top of the extensions. You have your set of extensions to Date, somebody else has their set of extensions to Date, then two other folks each build libraries on top of those extensions. What happens when a poor app developer wants to use both libraries? Whose extensions win out?"

How often does this actually happen with JavaScript projects, and why wouldn't unit tests and TDD catch this?

<comment><USER2> Often. At my last employer, we ran into it all the time with Prototype- dependent libraries. It was very common for us to rely on a single-developer open-source project or ISV for a component, find that they depended upon Prototype, then find that they depended upon different _versions_ of Prototype and adding one component would mysteriously make the other fail.

You can't unit-test every combination of libraries that your potential users may eventually install. And if you are a user, you have no feedback on which library caused the failure other than testing every combination of installed libraries, which can be literally _hundreds_ of possibilities.

For my recent projects, I just refuse to use libraries that modify built-in prototypes or dump lots of functions in the global namespace. I use JQuery and I'm willing to use YUI (though I haven't had a need for it...), because they play nicely together. I'll use anything else with similar care put into namespacing. But if it's not namespace-aware, I'll reimplement it rather than take the risk of it breaking other libraries down the road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out the dateJS[0] library if you want to do more with dates.

[0] <http://www.datejs.com/></comment>


What if: Deeply Nested SCSS Is Good - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lakesare/deeply-nested-scss-is-good-42fc7305f12b <comment><AUTHOR> In the current frontend ecosystem, I felt fairly alone with my love for structuring CSS in a deeply nested fashion. I have had numerous discussions with my coworkers about it, and now, finally, I laid out my main arguments pro-deep-nesting, in an organized way. Thank you for reading!

<comment><USER2> Makes sense. The idea that markup and CSS shouldn't be coupled has been thrown out in recent years, and using extremely specific selectors is sort of what CSS modules and CSS in JS is all about.

I wonder how flexible it is, though - you'd need to use the direct descendant selector or it all goes haywire, but that may not always be enough.</comment></comment>


New algorithm solves major problem with homomorphic encryption - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2013-06-cloud-algorithm-major-problem-homomorphic.html#inlRlv <comment><USER2> I wish this article wouldn't make silly statements like:

\--- Homomorphic encryption is one of the most exciting new research topics in cryptography, which promises to make cloud computing perfectly secure. \---

No, it won't. It just has the property that you can perform some operations on the ciphertext to produce a different, still valid, ciphertext.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget that when decrypted the result must match the operation performed on the corresponding plaintexts.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Kismet – get an e-mail introduction to a fellow HN member every day - <AUTHOR> https://findkismet.com <comment><USER2> Frankly, this is already a better social experience than Facebook. Text as a medium may be less "expressive" so to speak, but it communicates with such sincerity in letter-form applications.

The idea of listing "Help Needed" and "Can Help" is a good idea to facilitate conversations. Helps lubricate the otherwise awkward encounter with strangers.

I think the issue onwards will be similar to those of any community-based websites.

1) maintaining the quality of the community members. The usage of HN is a better source of demarcation compared to the low-barrier registration requirement of just signing up in typical social networks. So long as HN keeps attracting engagement from good people and weeds out undesirable usage, Kismet is likely to continue benefiting from HN's demographics.

2) retention of active users. People can get tired of using social apps once the novelty wears off. It would be prudent to encourage each interaction to be interesting and inspired so that users are happy to open messages from Kismet, especially since the app will reside in the email inbox that is typically inundated with other messages.

3) recruiting new users. Looks like Kismet had just come into existence, when users who provide the interaction amongst each other are lacking. It would be worthwhile considering how Kismet will make itself known among HNers without relying on posting a "Show HN" periodically. Promotions can aim for wider awareness but should be aware of 1) and still keep a reasonable barrier of entry to maintain userbase quality. Perhaps referrals for organic growth, but how?

Boy, I wish there were more ways to meet smart strangers.

Congrats and thanks for the launch.

P.S. Feature request: Location info (e.g. City) to find/match with users in proximity feasible for a coffee meetup

Bug: Can't seem to update user info after initial registration

<comment><USER3> > Boy, I wish there were more ways to meet smart strangers

This, 100%. Eventually every social media platform becomes overrun with people whom I have nothing in common with, causing me to eventually disengage.

Can any one suggest any online communities that are at the same cerebral level as HN?

Right now though, I'm signing up to this Kismet thing.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.metafilter.com](https://www.metafilter.com)

It leans left, and the userbase can be quite critical of information technology especially bro culture.

Last I checked, Metafilter has active meetups in different cities even outside the US.

The userbase comes from diverse backgrounds skewing toward the highly literate.

It costs US 5$ to create an account. Best 5$ I've ever spent.

EDIT: Fix typo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love the idea. But daily seems like quite a lot? I would sign up for a weekly version.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. The best solution would be a configurable scale. Something like daily / twice a week / weekly / twice a month / monthly. So I could set it to daily when I'm out looking for a job, and turn it way down when I'm not available (holidays etc).

Would love to have a version that goes "full tinder" even (no pics, just the same sort of simple bio as this, but with tinder's "swiping" approach for quick elaboration).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is in the works. In the meantime, there is a 5 day "snooze" feature to make it easy to keep the volume down. The link is in your welcome email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The landing page is great, you immediately know what's going on and what it's about but I agree with the comment saying that the name is not that great. I also though about the wifi scanner first.

<comment><USER8> The loading animation needs to be thrown in the garbage where such anti- patterns belong. The landing page isn't that complex - how much is it slowed down by having to load and execute the code to do the needless loading animation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed -- it's going away on the next update. The only reason it's there in the first place is that it's built in to the template.

<comment><USER9> Aside from the animation, I really liked the design.

What template/service did you use

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think you put a lot of effort in developing a quick and easy registration process. I loved how it was unveiling fields as you were progressing on the process. However, the email registration template contains stuff that is not mentioned on the homepage, such as a trial period. Here's what I got:

\----8<\---- For reference, here's your login information:

Login Page: Username:

You've started a day trial. You can upgrade to a paying account or cancel any time.

Trial Start Date: Trial End Date:

If you have any questions, feel free to email our customer success team ( firstname.lastname@example.com ). (We're lightning quick at replying.) We also offer live chat ( ) during business hours.

Thanks, Kismet and the Kismet Team

P.S. Need immediate help getting started? Check out our help documentation ( ). Or, just reply to this email, the Kismet support team is always ready to help!

If you're having trouble with the button above, copy and paste the URL below into your web browser. \----8<\----

<comment><AUTHOR> Ack, I forgot to update the plaintext version of the welcome email template -- there is no trial and Kismet is completely free. Thank you for pointing this out!

<comment><USER10> No problem, I supposed that would be the issue. Glad i could be of help!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kismet is also the name of a popular wifi scanner. 232,000 hits on google.

Consider a rename?

<comment><USER12> It also means "fate" or "destiny" in a couple of teeny-tiny languages.

<comment><USER13> Hindi, one of the teeniest languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Please do not change the name, it's great! Last week, I ran across kismet and declared it as my new favorite word. So, it must be, kismet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Really nice. I hate the network growth hack games that social media companies play, so I never signed up for Facebook, LinkedIn and their ilk. This seems like a concept with the right amount of personal control.

I hope Kismet won't eventually start spamming me with "fun", "personalized" mass messages that have emojis in the subject line and advertisements from partners in the message body, like so many others these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> No plans to do stuff like that. I built Kismet for fun, not trying to force it in to being the next billionty dollar startup or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like it! Including the name! Should wait until I fill out my Kismet profile before sending first intro though.

Clipboard copy link did not work on iOS/Chrome, had to go back and copy manually. Profile edit fields were hard to edit in iOS/Chrome, they don't scroll horizontally.

I'm fine with auth-by-email, but should be time limited, I feel a little odd about permanent-link-for-auth.

Auth-by-profile-edit should include an "X-Kismet" tag or something, to prevent another service using similar auth style but actually grabbing a Kismet token and serving that to the user without their knowledge that it's a Kismet token, see what I mean? Or maybe I'm just being overly paranoid. Which is an achievement, since I'm usually pretty cowboy about these things. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for pointing out the clipboard copy bug -- I should've caught that.

I have similar feelings about the link for auth. It'll almost certainly change on the next version!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, thanks for trying out Kismet. Happy to answer any questions, and I would love any feedback you might have!

<comment><USER17> Hey, I really like the idea of this, but I don't have time to network everyday, have you considered allowing custom intervals? I.E. 1/week?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! It's next on my list of updates to make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> zupa-hu I would encourage people during signup to keep kismet in their profile so as to spread the word about it. The kismet word + auth code may be enough to make me curious and look it up. Alternatively, a replacement string may be suggested once auth was done, like "I'm on Kismet, come join to meet random HNers like me."

</comment><comment> zupa-hu I' not sure the [just reply to this email] is a good idea when the unsubscribe link works with a single click.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is the introduction mutual? That is, if I get user X, does user X also get an email with the same intro for me?

I wouldn't want to feel obliged to contact every "match" if they don't seem interesting to me (and vice versa) but there might be such an obligation if they knew I'd got them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is! As you mentioned, that's by design, though if you're asking the question that means I'm not communicating it well enough :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great concept. I was just wondering Having an email address in profile is pretty common for HNers, so kismet can also send a verification email to any email it finds in profile for verification too. This might reduce the friction and encourage more people to signup.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great idea. Signed up. Intro'd to someone interesting.

For checking the profile, please use shorter codes or increase the size of the <input> that displays the code. I ran into a bug by accidentally selecting part of the code, not realizing that it scrolled on..

</comment><comment><USER21> I like it so far. The instant first email match is great, but it happens while I'm setting my info, so it leaves introductions to be a little.. barren?

</comment><comment><USER22> Neat idea!

Sadly, it doesn't seem to handle non-ASCII characters. I entered my name, _Cristi Burcă_ , and it got saved as _Cristi Burc?_.

</comment><comment><USER23> Pretty sure I know the answer to this, but: can I remove the code from my profile after it's been verified?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep!

<comment><USER24> Dumb question, is it a 'risk' to leave the code in your profile? As in someone could crawl profiles looking for Kismet codes and then altering random people's profiles. If so, maybe it would be worth it to add text suggesting that people remove the code from their profile after verification is complete? Cheers

<comment><AUTHOR> The verification code and the auth code for your profile are different and are generated in a different way, so it's pretty low risk to leave it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Immediately after I signed up for Kismet, while I was updating my profile, I was matched with another HN member. So basically, since nothing had been updated, they won't know anything about me from the intro. Not really a major problem, but I just wish it had waited for me to update my profile.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow what a brilliant idea! Thank you so much for making this project, signed up already =)

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there a specific bent to this? Business networking? Recruiting? Dating?

<comment><USER28> I am a woman. I have signed up. Anyone who uses this as an excuse to try to ask me for a date (or otherwise chat me up romantically) will not be well received.

I get too much of that as is. I am hoping this service is the solution to my problem that when I say to a guy "Let's talk!" or "You can email me", about 99% of the time that is interpreted as an opportunity to hit on me. No, me saying I would be willing to discuss X specific issue further is absolutely not code for "I am looking for romance and I especially enjoy being treated like an airhead and sex object." (There was a recent incident and I am still pretty wrapped around the axle about it.)

I have been here 8.5 years. There are about three people I can email occasionally. No, that distinctly does not include certain folks on the leaderboard magnanimously inviting anyone on HN to contact them, they would love to talk to you. And I am getting pretty fed up with being patient and wondering what I, personally, can do differently. That isn't getting sufficient results.

I strongly suspect most female members of HN will have similar feelings on the matter, which is the only reason I am mentioning it. So treating it as a dating service probably won't go well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's a great idea!

</comment><comment><USER30> Do two "matched users" both get an email pointing to each other, or does the other not know that they were matched to you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Matches are 1 to 1, so the person you see in your inbox gets an email just like it with your info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So, forgive the cynic in me, but if this is completely free, who pays for it?

We _know_ the model web social networks use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do. Server bills for something like this are incredibly low -- I might throw in a 'donate' button or charge a small amount for premium features in the future but in the meantime I'm happy just to have people using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> nice! is the matching random or is it based on mutual interests that users indicate in their profiles?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment it's simply random, but intelligent matching is on the roadmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cool, I tried it and it worked.

I do think a week would probably be a better default setting.

Can I take the hash out of my profile?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! I need to add that feedback to the form :)

Match interval settings are in the works; in the meantime there is a 'snooze' feature that will pause matches for 5 days. The link is in every message.

<comment><USER33> I don't think the snooze worked: Pretty sure I triggered it yesterday, but I got a match just now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that! Just squashed a bug related to this -- could you please send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com if it happens again or you see anything else strange happening?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> May I recommend making the links in the emails clickable? (i.e., HN Profile in the intro emails)

</comment><comment><USER35> A decade after social networks got popular people still do not understand how relationships are formed.

They think you can get a buddy, find friends, be not lonely anymore with a single click. FB, Instagram, Tinder and today's Show HN seem to be simple fixes to break out of loneliness.

They are all like sweets—they are tempting, tasty and shortly after consumed you are hungry again. Hungry for social encounters. So you consume them again and the vicious cycles starts.

Building real-life relationships is not easy. There are many ways to get there. A pure online play is not the answer.

<comment><USER36> > Building real-life relationships is not easy. There are many ways to get > there. A pure online play is not the answer.

I disagree. Personally I've found that real life friendships are much more fickle, many disintegrate because of distance, or time, or some other reason. On the contrary, the people whom I have made friends with through the internet, through for example, IRC or Slack. Have become much more long lasting, and quite lengthy. Even if one of us does not respond or get a response from the other for a couple of months, it does not matter. One of us eventually reconnects or bumps the conversation and we resume practically where we left off. Most of my real life friends have difficulty even responding online.

Sure, this is not a cure-all for loneliness, but such a thing does not exist in this world. At some point we shall all be lonely for some time, even the most devoted partner gets busy or has things to do. It is not the cure-all, but these 'pocket friends', like all friends, help.

<comment><USER37> > Even if one of us does not respond or get a response from the other for a > couple of months

This kind of interaction does not fit my description for a friendship.

>Most of my real life friends have difficulty even responding online

Is taking one month to reply on IRC not to "have difficulty even responding online?"

<comment><USER36> > This kind of interaction does not fit my description for a friendship.

It depends on your age. A huge chunk of my friends are in University right now, so they have very little time to dedicate to social interactions, and when they do, there is pressure for it to be physical interaction.

In addition, many of my friends are suffering with various forms of illnesses and depression, and a lot of them are makers, that delve into projects headfirst. All of which can sometimes create long gaps in contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Really cool idea, I look forward to my first intro ;)

</comment><comment><USER39> Wow, I love this! Great creativity and execution!!!

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice, will try it out.

</comment><comment><USER41> kis·met

ˈkizmit,-ˌmet/Submit

noun

destiny; fate.

"what chance did I stand against kismet?"

added the google search definition:

<comment><USER41> Although, it obviously doesn't.

I personally have always felt it had a romantic undertone to it.

<comment><USER42> I think the service may be far more interesting if it was a hackernews dating service.

<comment><USER16> 38/M/Santa Monica, email in profile ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> test

</comment><comment><USER44> An apt name ! There is a bollywood movie by the name "Kismet Konnection"

</comment><comment><USER45> This is dope.

I second a name change. How about [http://hn.chat](http://hn.chat)?</comment>


Show HN: Shape Type, bézier curves in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://shape.method.ac

<comment><USER2> Awesome, even better than the kerning one!</comment>


Open source / low-cost videoconferencing options? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working with a small non-profit to help them use technology to reduce costs, and one thing they are looking to do is implement some kind of web videoconferencing to enable remote meetings with a few partners. Skype would probably be fine for the one-to-one meetings, but I'm not sure how to tackle the one-to-many (specifically, one-to-three) conference scenarios.
Wondering if the HN community could advise on some decent low-cost solutions. I think this organization could probably spend a couple grand on a hardware/software solution, if that would even get them anywhere. My assumption is that the remote locations have a decent internet connection and a PC as a minimum baseline.
Thanks, Stacy <comment><USER2> Try the beta version of Skype (windows only), it does multi video chat.

[http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your- computer/w...](http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your- computer/windows/beta/)

iChat, if on Macs works well for multi and Desktop sharing. iChat can connect using gmail accounts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wasn't aware of that Skype option, thank you.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I learned PHP, MySql, Jquery. Now what? - <AUTHOR>

I am really really proficient in the above listed languages because I love web development, and I just hack with those all day. But I feel like I'm missing something...I feel like there's more to learn and more to do...Can you please enlighten me, and many other people in my position, and tell us what to do next? <comment><USER2> If you aren't already doing so I would suggest you to start developing web applications. Pick an idea that you find interesting and useful(not necessarily profitable, but it doesn't hurt to be so). Develop and launch it. Show it to HN. In the process you will learn many things like

1\. Feasibility analysis of idea

2\. Project planning

3\. UI/UX Design

4\. Front-end development using HTML5/CSS3/javascript/jQuery

5\. Server side programming using vanilla php and mysql, its freedom and headaches(then you'll understand the importance of frameworks).

6\. Testing - unit testing,stress testing,browser testing,resolution testing etc.

7\. Analytics and its importance.

8\. Performance optimization techniques.

9\. launching and marketing your application.

10\. and the fact that programming is fun in itself but it is even more fun to use it to actually make something.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> That depends on what you want to do with your life. If you want to build and sell startups, start building and selling them. You don't have to be a great developer to do that.

If you want to become the best developer you can be, then here's my advice:

Learn about the process of building software. Diligently practice various development systems (agile, scrum, kanban, etc.). Build a reliable, disciplined behaviour into your personal development process, so no matter what the task, you know exactly how to best take an idea through to completion efficiently and with as few headaches as possible.

After that: learn about architecture, algorithms, and hardware.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you didn't get on CakePHP, I'd definitely recommend CodeIgniter. It's got a much gentler learning curve than Cake, Zend, etc, and is a great introduction to MVC and frameworks. Also CodeIgniter has the best documentation of all the PHP frameworks I've tried.

Once you're comfortable in CodeIgniter you'll find other frameworks make a lot more sense, and you can choose which one suits you best.

I ended up sticking with CodeIgniter, but my own customised version with things like the awesome DataMapper ORM.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd really get in deep on the PHP platform, with an emphasis on performance. For example, if you have not looked at them already, take a look at the APC cache for opt code and user data, then distributed caching via Memcache (and the PHP clients for this), and I would also spend some time looking at PHP- FPM. Also HipHop if you're doing something really large scale. There is a lot more to modern PHP development than people realise.

</comment><comment><USER6> Work! go to freelanacer: <http://www.freelancer.com/affiliates/ahmed613/> and start searching for jobs under the php category. you will find many interesting jobs there, so sign up there and start seeing interesting projects that you can earn money with.

All what you can imagine is there.. so start! thats the proper step for you. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the next step for you to move on from web development is to jump to the native application development world.

This can either be mobile development or desktop development. There are many possible languages to use for this. Java is one of the most popular starting languages these days, but I would still suggest learning C or C++.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why move on from web development?

And I know both c++ and java. But all my ideas are all web apps, I can't think of anything for desktop development.

<comment><USER7> Anything you are developing for the web can be developed for the desktop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd say learn JavaScript not just jQuery.

</comment><comment><USER9> Languages are really tools — so what do you want to build?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well all my ideas are web apps...

<comment><USER9> Q. Are the tools that you know good enough to at least prototype your ideas?

I mean yes you can learn languages that are heavy duty like java — but so many things are done in PHP if you already know that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do you have a site of any sample work?

</comment><comment><USER10> Learn a good JS framework, like Backbone

Speaking of frameworks, how much of your current work to date in web development involves a framework?

<comment><AUTHOR> none. I tried learning cake once, but just thought it would be easier to just do straight up PHP. I know I'm wrong but, I guess I was just trying to get immediate gratification

<comment><USER11> You're not wrong, they're just trying to make you believe that.</comment></comment></comment>


Rename executable and/or package to something that doesn't conflict with AWS CLI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eofs/aws/issues/3 <comment><AUTHOR> Problem is that "pip install aws" installs this package. Sure, the author owns it, but how many people make the mistake of typing this in daily. He should relinquish the name

<comment><USER2> Why? Because you made a mistake?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. thats right.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you save 2FA "backup codes"? - <AUTHOR> <comment> core-questions I'm going to guess you just got one from Docker Hub today, because I did too. I saved the code, alongside the password in my password manager, which itself already requires 2FA to open. Still, seems like it defeats some of the point of the security to store it in the same place as the password...

<comment><USER2> It's no longer a second factor when stored along with the password. I just write them down in a notebook with the name of the service (no usernames etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I save mine here: [https://www.arcanus55.com/?trusted55=A55PV2](https://www.arcanus55.com/?trusted55=A55PV2)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes. I store them offline, in keepass or screenshots.

</comment><comment><USER5> Which app are you using?

Google Authenticator for Android, eg, will let you generate a QR code. Others can back up to the cloud.</comment>


Finally, IMAP for GMail - <AUTHOR> http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=gmail&hl=en&answer=75725

<comment><USER2> I was starting to wonder what 16,000 people were doing over there.

</comment><comment><USER3> The nice thing is that tags are folders and so you can use POPFile (<http://popfile.sf.net/>) to do automatic tagging.

John.

</comment><comment><USER4> this is great news for xobni - xobni for gmail!

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone else NOT see the IMAP options in the settings tab? Is this a feature that hasn't gone live yet?

<comment><USER2> I have the IMAP option (and using it on my iPhone and Mail.app), so it is live... though only to select accounts - dunno how they decide which ones get it first though.

Labels are seen as folders on the mail client, starred messages as flagged, etc... Google did a good job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finally indeed. Congrats to the Gmail team!

</comment><comment><USER7> now I just need to figure out if there's a way to do multiple label over IMAP

</comment><comment><USER8> wow!</comment>


Canvas-area – A lightweight HTML Controller for one or more canvas children - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/goessner/canvas-area <comment><USER2> Very cool! This looks really helpful for integrating canvas elements within a page.

I was thinking of making a similar library for doing smart, reasonably efficient drawing/graphical annotation relative to the positions and dimensions of DOM elements in screen space. Right now, my method has been to create a single canvas with fixed positioning and stretch it across the screen.

Then, I do the somewhat tedious work of translating between elements' bounding rectangles and positions into this space.

You can see the technique in action here: [https://micahscopes.github.io/tangled-web- components/example...](https://micahscopes.github.io/tangled-web- components/examples/)

The dogs are custom elements and the edges are drawn on a fixed canvas.

A big part of why it's so tedious to go from DOM coordinates to fixed canvas coordinates is that there's not an efficient way to get notified when a DOM object's position changes relative to the screen (e.g., because you're scrolling or resizing the window) or the body.

Right now, with MutationObservers, you can get notified when an objects bounding box changes (ResizeObserver), AFAIK there's not an efficient way listen for updates to an objects' screen-space position, so you have to poll getBoundingClientRect... and it's not scalable!

Check out the top comment on this discussion: [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/10/resizeobse...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/10/resizeobserver)

The question is "where's PositionObserver" at? Anybody know?

<comment><USER3> > Then, I do the somewhat tedious work of translating between elements' > bounding rectangles and positions into this space.

Having done something similar, it can be quite frustrating. Add in high DPI devices (window.devicePixelRatio > 1) and it gets even more complicated. All in all it would be nice if there were standard methods for doing the translations

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No support for touch events I'm afraid. Didn't pan or zoom on iOS 11 Safari.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't pan/zoom on Android (Chrome) either. I assume it's not supported. Bummer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks really interesting! What's the primary use case for this? I read the README and didn't see any discussion about why this was made.

<comment><USER7> I remember making something like this myself for a project involving video editor with a "premiere-pro" looking timeline in canvas. At the time I remember looking at other projects like this one but they would have jquery dependencies or a weird api. This one looks nice and would have saved time probably.

<comment><USER8> I'm building an editor like this right now. I'm wondering where you see the benefit of using a canvas for the timeline rather than html elements?

Would you be able to share any details?</comment></comment></comment>


How To Transition From A Free To A Paid Service - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/13/free-to-paid-tips/

<comment><USER2> I work at TeachStreet, and this has been a really dramatic change for us. By thinking through the transition and being as transparent as possible with our users throughout the process, it has worked out as least as well as any of us could have hoped.

Go checkout the article!

<comment><USER3> Awesome article. We will be killing off our free plan soon. This helped a lot.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, Rishi -- and, I just checked out FlyingCart.com (saw you mention it in your HN About Me section). Looks great. Do you white label that for other sites, too?

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Yes you can white label the store easily. Just use a custom domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really like seeing stories like this shared in such a transparent fashion. I wish there were more case studies from inside.

I will say that when we transitioned from free to paid, there was a little bit of negative feedback, but I agree with the article that the overwhelming majority of feedback was positive and supportive. It also enabled us to do much more remarkable things than what we did previously :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> An outstanding article. However, I'd love to understand further the business dynamics of handling a price increase for a service.

Five years ago I somewhat went through the same scenario..except we went from a _donation_ model to a subscription model.

Now it is time to evaluate a price increase and up against a five year established price I'm curious as to how it has been handled in the past.

<comment><USER4> I think the most of the tips apply to price increases as well. Most of your loyal customers will understand that prices go up over time, but if you communicate with them and explain the changes, offer some grandfather'd benefits, etc. etc you'll find that many will make the transition with you, especially if it's gradual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _4) Provide Grandfather'd Pricing for long-time customers, or give them exclusive benefits_

Something which seems to be missed by nearly every cell, internet, electronic, etc. company in existence. You'd think you'd want to _keep_ customers, not just incentivize new ones.

<comment><USER8> It's a problem with the division of strategy throughout a company. The job of sales is to turn people who don't pay into people who do. They have no incentive to keep current customers; in fact, it's sort of the opposite—every customer that quits, and then comes back later, counts as a new sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great idea to find other "currencies" from your clients/suppliers. What about the idea of having teachers provide you with free classes as their way of paying? You could then turn those freebies into promos/giveaways, etc..

<comment><USER4> The problem with teacher paying with free classes is that many of the free classes are just ways to get a first meeting with a customer. And then future transactions between the student and the teacher happen without TeachStreet being part of them. But, we're experimenting with some ideas in this space (helping teachers to offer promotional pricing, with additional featuring on TeachStreet.com itself).</comment></comment>


Your Patch Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.manamplified.org/archives/2011/02/your-patch-sucks.html

<comment><AUTHOR> A little...direct. But I think there's some good points.</comment>


LCA: How to destroy your community - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/370157/ <comment><USER2> Previously posted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060107></comment>


Schwarzenegger pushes for open source, online math and science textbooks.  - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Economy/story?id=7827997 <comment><USER2> I _really_ like the idea. However, there's a brief note in the article which isn't really addressed in detail: students need computer access to use an on- line text. Although computer access is increasing, poorer students wouldn't have the same amount of access (if any) as students from better-off families.

I can think of a few ways to lessen this problem. One would be to ensure that public libraries are freely accessible to students, and offer Internet access for students who don't have it at home. Another option would be to allow students to print out, at school, relevant materials from on-line texts. The second solution would be very expensive in the long run, so I'd say that some form of the first solution needs to be put into effect for the Governator's proposal to succeed.

<comment><USER3> Or just give every student an eReader ie: Kindle in 1st grade and they can use it through every grade. You break you kindle you are SOL.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about _that_.

My kindle seems pretty sturdy (okay, no it doesn't)...but have you ever seen how destructive a 3rd grader can be?

I predict that, if this was tried, not a single kindle would make it through elementary school.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention that many would be stolen.

<comment><USER6> OLPC has a solution to that, IIRC each unit needs to be regularly in contact with a base station at the school or it disables itself. Or you could just have remote disabling on-demand like BlackBerry.

<comment><USER7> I'm tempted to mention "that is hardware DRM". Why am I tempted? Because some of the audience will realize "Uh oh, doomed to failure" and some of the audience will say "NO, NO, IT ISN'T DRM. That is to prevent bad people from stealing stuff. DRM prevents _me_ from ... That isn't DRM!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Again this is an example of people who have no idea what is actually going on in schools trying to make policy without consulting those who do know what goes on in schools.

The problem with e-books in schools below the College level is the readers get broken. High School age and below kids tend to be careless. They throw their back packs down, play keep away with them, etc... So traditional e-book readers don't work.

That said, as someone responsible for the IT needs of a school, I've been experimenting with one of these: [http://www.peeweepc.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=70...](http://www.peeweepc.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=70&idcategory=2)

The Ruggedized nature and tablet mode seem to make it possible (again I'm still experimenting and am a little nervous about the hinge at this point). So don't get me wrong, I think a solution exists. But the Governor just wants an immediate cheap solution and that's not the way e-books are going to happen.

<comment><USER9> Textbooks aren't invincible either. A rugged education oriented e-book reader may end up costing less than replacing textbooks on a regular basis as they become damaged and outdated.

<comment><USER4> My biggest disappointment, when I got my kindle, was how flimsy the thing feels...

I was dreaming about a device that was going to travel with me everywhere I went (the way my old palm pilots, which are what I used to use for ebooks, did)...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sadly, I'm so cynical about anything that has to do with public education and state politics that whenever I read a story like this, the first thing I think of is how much money the vendor mentioned in the article is going to get paid for their shitty enterprise e-textbook software.

</comment><comment><USER11> Textbook publishing is a juggernaut, and California is one of its big movers. Here's a great article that appeared on HN a month ago explaining the industry's inner workings:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598523>

</comment><comment><USER12> Some of the comments here are about the excessive cost of ebook readers, or the fragility of the devices. But typical college textbooks cost US$100 or more. At that rate, a new EeePC costs 2.5 textbooks, and an OLPC XO would costs even less if they were available for sale. Even if elementary and high school textbooks cost less (down to US$50 maybe? They're still all-glossy four-color-printed quarto-sized hardcovers sewn in signatures, aren't they?) you could afford to buy a new netbook per year per student — assuming you can't make do with a used two-year-old smartphone.

That's assuming, of course, that the textbook costs are related to printing the things, not writing them or extracting rents from schools.

</comment><comment><USER13> See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648717>

</comment><comment><USER14> At first, I thought this was a great idea. Then I realized that not everyone has easy access to computers. Poorer kids might be left behind. One can print e-books, but that sometimes ends up costing quite a bit, too.

This might sound crazy, but didn't the Soviets solve this problem decades ago? The commies believed that education should be for all, and they had amazing math and physics books which were also really cheap!! And this were GREAT books. Stuff written by Landau & Lifschitz, Arnol'd, Gelfand, etc. These books were translated to Spanish so that the Cubans and other Latin-Americans could read them. They were translated to Portuguese so people in Brazil had access to good books at affordable prices. Why is it that only in the U.S. can't people have access to good books at affordable prices? Is the textbook cartel's lobbying that powerful???

<comment><USER15> And each book had three chapters about Marxist-Leninist theory at the beginning!

<comment><USER16> Actually, the amount of propaganda in Soviet hard-core science books was very small, in fact, math books didn't have any, that I can remember.</comment></comment></comment>


Virgin America using Android for next generation in-flight entertainment system - <AUTHOR> http://blog.virginamerica.com/blog/were-up-to-something-at-35000-feet/

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary:

Connectivity (existing) - WiFi, power outlets at every seat

Platform - Android fork in partnership with Panasonic

Storage - <USER2>

Video - full capacitive touch monitor with 720p resolution

Audio \- "Dysonics is encoding Red's content in order to create a 3D sound experience over headphones"</comment>


PHP is dead, long live PHP - <AUTHOR> https://www.symfony.fi/entry/php-is-dead-long-live-php

<comment><USER2> PHP is not dead. It remains about as popular now as it has been for some time, and shows no signs whatsoever of dying.

There's not a lot of new or interesting stuff being done in PHP, because of the limitations of the language, but it's still the main workhorse for a great deal of humdrum ordinary Web stuff: forums, blogs, wikis, smaller shopping sites, smaller content management systems. Most organizations simply don't need a bleeding edge solution, and for them something thrown together using off-the-shelf PHP-based solutions (WordPress, MediaWiki, phpBB, etc.) will be quite sufficient for their purposes.

Also, because PHP is so pervasive and so readily available, PHP developers are really easy to come by.

<comment><AUTHOR> PHP is far from dead, yes. But JavaScript and Node are the first case where in my history where an alternative seems to stick and have proper staying power in PHP devs minds.

This never happened with RoR, for example. It was a passing fad in the mainstream. I know it's probably still used by millions, but relatively to PHP.

<comment><USER3> It's ironic that PHP might be surpassed by the only language people seem to hate as much as it (javascript.)

<comment><AUTHOR> After 20 years of JavaScript - I've got no idea how it works.

And I think I'm not alone. There's been all kinds of layers on top, like CoffeeScript. And now ES6 brings us classes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jeff Bezos Biography - <AUTHOR> http://www.biography.com/people/jeff-bezos-9542209

<comment><USER2> So cool, great start up story. Nice that he had parents that could afford to invest $300K in his dream. Behind every great start up is some rich person who handed someone a pile of money to get started. Bill Gates Mom was on the board of directors of IBM. People forget that. Wouldn't it be interesting to see if you could take someone who grew up poor and see if the same thing would work.</comment>


Hacking Redis: Adding Interval Sets - <AUTHOR> http://www.starkiller.net/2013/05/03/hacking-redis-adding-interval-sets/ <comment><USER2> Just to add, the redis code base is pretty clean and straight forward. I was able to digest enough of it to implement a multi-user system based on the redis databases[1] (1 db per user; I've never seen more than one used anyway). antirez and co do a good job at keeping it readable and understandable, which is awesome and I'm sure is part of the reason it's as reliable as it is.

[1] <https://github.com/jimktrains/redis/tree/multiuser>

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. One of my more immediate projects is to possibly find a way to refactor some of the work I outlined in the article to make adding datatypes even more straightforward, but I am very concerned on adding complexity to the Redis codebase rather than removing it. Sal has done a great job of making it easy to understand the code of relatively powerful utility.

<comment><USER4> I thought this thread might be a good place to write about a little project I've been working on for the past few months (in the shadows so far):

I've written an experimental abstract database loosely based on redis (or its base concepts) that is entirely based on a plugin system; and it's written in Go.

I love redis to bits, but it always bothered me that it doesn't have and doesn't seem like it will ever have a proper plugin system. So what I did was take the redis protocol (you use it via redis-cli or any client) and a few of its basic ideas: key=><data struct>, snapshot persistence, the overall command syntax idioms, master/slave replication, pubsub - and stripped everything but the very basic system commands. Oh, and also the concept of single threadedness seemed to be wasted on Go.

The rest is implemented inside isolated plugins that do not need to know about network or disk, and are just responsible for managing creation, serialization and manipulation of data structs. PubSub and such are achieved via Go channels, and locking is done on a key level, with reader/writer locks. The rest is pretty straight forward.

Besides some basic commands (strings, hashes, pubsub, monitor), I've added prefix search and json storage with sub node manipulation, with (relatively) very few lines of code. Although Go doesn't support dynamic loading of libraries, the idea is that you compile the database with the plugins you want, since Go's compiler is amazingly fast.

I haven't opened it yet, and pressure at work prevents me from progressing lately, but if anyone is interested in collaborating on this, I'd be glad to write about it in more detail and/or put it out there.

<comment><USER3> Sounds interesting, to say the least. Bill (llimllib above) was actually considering writing a Redis implementation in Go as a learning exercise right after we finished with the interval tree stuff.

I personally would be interested in the progression of the project. But yes, finding time for yet another project is always fun...

<comment><USER4> Thanks. Yeah, it was a great learning experience about Go, and it also turns out to perform pretty well (50%-90% of the throughput of redis, using redis- benchmark). My hope is to use it for a work related project soon to put more development time into it.

But I'll try to write up some docs and put it out there, incomplete as it is, it beats having it sit in a closed repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool. Did you guys consider achieving the same functionality with Lua scripting that Redis 2.6 supports? I wonder what are the tradeoffs and if that was much slower.

<comment><USER6> Yup, Ken didn't mention it but we didn't undertake the work until we had shown that an implementation with sorted sets and an implementation with lua were too slow.</comment></comment>


Scientists discover 91 volcanoes below Antarctic ice sheet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/scientists-discover-91-volcanos-antarctica <comment><USER2> I get that the volcanoes could exacerbate climate change's effects, but how much effect might these volcanoes have on climate change already?

The following suggests that volcano activity followed from their uncovering by ice sheets, but might the causality of such be flipped?

> he pointed to one alarming trend: "The most volcanism that is going in the > world at present is in regions that have only recently lost their glacier > covering – after the end of the last ice age. These places include Iceland > and Alaska.

> "Theory suggests that this is occurring because, without ice sheets on top > of them, there is a release of pressure on the regions' volcanoes and they > become more active."

<comment><USER3> The causality is bidirectional; it's a positive feedback. Does that answer your question?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) Turns out there are a bunch of volcanoes, 91, underneath the west Antarctic ice sheet that we previously didn't know about. In fact:

(Excerpts are placed between square brackets.)

["We were amazed," Bingham said. "We had not expected to find anything like that number. We have almost trebled the number of volcanoes known to exist in west Antarctica. We also suspect there are even more on the bed of the sea that lies under the Ross ice shelf, so that I think it is very likely this region will turn out to be the densest region of volcanoes in the world, greater even than east Africa, where mounts Nyiragongo, Kilimanjaro, Longonot and all the other active volcanoes are concentrated."]

2) Furthermore, eruptions would cause the ice sheet to melt:

["Anything that causes the melting of ice – which an eruption certainly would – is likely to speed up the flow of ice into the sea.]

3) They could already be erupting and causing the ice to melt:

["We just don't know about how active these volcanoes have been in the past," Bingham said.]

4) Also, consider this quote:

[If one erupts, it could further destabilise some of the region's ice sheets, which have already been affected by global warming.]

I followed the link. The headline is:

[Although fracturing and surface melting on the Larsen C ice shelf might sound like indicators of climate change, these processes are natural]

The article links to a source, another article in the same paper, that actually contradicts the claim it is making. Another quote from the article:

[So, while ice fracturing and surface melting may sound like signs of climate change in action in Antarctica, they are really part of the background against which we must look for real change.]

</comment><comment><USER5> So, Permian-Triassic exctintion, anyone?

<comment><USER6> Let us do more than hope not. The more I learn, the less stable I realize is the earth.

<comment><USER7> In my opinion, we need simply to continue to build vessels to weather all we can encounter, on this planet on others, i.e. yes please, sign me up for the mother ship(s).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Echoes of Red Mars, although it was volcanoes under the Greenland ice sheet that did earth in then

<comment><USER9> Nope, Antartic ice shelf. Last chunk of Green Mars. The terrestrial panic it caused let the martians have a successful blitzkrieg revolution.

<comment><USER10> What a nice trilogy, when I read it I had the feeling that there was really a colony on Mars. I still have music which I listened at the time that trigger a martian feeling !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This story just keeps getting more alarming. When will someone do something to save our species? Is that question too unsophisticated?

<comment><USER12> No one person has that kind of power. Also, our species will be fine, but civilization may not be.

<comment><USER13> > our species will be fine

People keep saying that, but I wouldn't be so sure. From an earlier comment of mine (edited for clarity/formatting):

Most recent study of methane flux/storage in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf: [1]

Arctic temperatures are estimated to rise 1.9x compared to global average: [2]

During Holocene Climate Optimum (the warmest period in human history) the arctic is estimated to have been 4-6C warmer than baseline (yearly average): [3]

That's not all that much. We're now already at 400ppm CO2, and recent unmitigated projections to 2100 (538ppm) simulate an arctic yearly average of ~ plus 8C [4].

And that most probably doesn't take a positive methane feedback loop into account. This is a significant gamble. The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum boundary showed a global average warming of 5C, mostly from arctic methane _at a time where there wasn 't even a large ice shelf_, so with significantly lower capacity [5].

We can only guess what a global average temperature increase of 13C could do to the ecosystem that's currently feeding 7B people.

[1] [http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/2014...](http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/20140451)

[2] [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL025244/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL025244/full)

[3] [https://epic.awi.de/38441/1/Beierlein_2015_Holocene_page1.pd...](https://epic.awi.de/38441/1/Beierlein_2015_Holocene_page1.pdf)

[4] [http://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-is-set-to- reach-13c-by-...](http://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-is-set-to- reach-13c-by-2100/)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maxim...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maximum)

<comment><USER14> I would argue that the species will be fine. If your definition of 'fine' is the species surviving. If 99% of the human race were wiped out by Global Warming we would still have 70 million humans on the planet (approx one UK). That should be more than enough to repopulate given a long long time.

Obviously that would be a terrible disaster the likes of which our race has never seen. 100 times the death toll of WW2 and would destroy pretty much all our infrastructure etc as supply chains fail etc. This is something we should strive to avoid at all costs but I do think the species would survive. We are quite a hardy bunch actually.

<comment><USER12> Yes, that's what I meant by "fine". A darker part of me even desires a quick environmental cataclysm - but on balance I'd rather we colonised space pronto.

<comment><USER14> The backup planet strategy is one I approve of. Backup solar system would be better.

<comment><USER15> RAID 10 life</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nintendo Switch Lite: a smaller, cheaper Switch built for handheld play - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/7/10/20687801/nintendo-switch-lite-price-release-date-size-battery-life-motion-control-games <comment><USER2> As an avid Splatoon player, something I've come to learn is that there are players in the highest rank who play mobile and even can't/don't/won't play on a TV. This boggles my mind and should give you an idea that this isn't just for people trying to play simple 2d RPGs that the 3DS already offers. At the same time, it is quite the ploy to push people over from 3DS to Switch via Pokemon.

Since I don't see the Switch on here often, I'd love to bring some other points up about the original Switch that the HN community might find interesting:

* If I play over wifi and someone else is streaming Netflix/Hulu, I experience lag and disconnects. As soon as I plug in to ethernet, no problems at all. Seems bufferbloat and wireless noise are a real problem even on an up-to-date OpenWRT router with ~5 year old hardware.

* Joycons require only a few feet of signal travel and as few wireless devices in the area as possible as well. Also large surfaces like the TV can mess them up. I've found keeping the console in a drawer under the TV that slides out another foot really helps, and putting devices into airplane mode is sometimes necessary, but usually pushing them a couple feet away from the line of sight between devices is sufficient.

I've never experienced such obvious and impactful wireless problems before. I guess latency has never been something I cared so much about either though!

edit: and I should be clear, I'm not super salty about these issues. Maybe I should be, but I play this thing for fun and the engineer in me finds it interesting. Would love to see joycons made for adult hands with wireless signal that isn't awful, but I'm not holding my breath.

<comment><USER3> Nice points here. The real issues are the Joy-Con, because the Wireless can be solved with an ethernet adapter, but the Joy-Con get crazy drift on the left stick (3-for-3-pairs of them in my case) and the signal is horrific. I used to have the switch docked behind my TV on the stand, but the signal to the left one particularly was impossibly bad, in the end I ended up having to move the switch to line-of-sight which is slightly annoying when you have a nice tidy setup and the switch dock just randomly sitting off to the side, but the disconnects become really, really infuriating when you're 10 feet from the switch it the connection drops constantly.

I haven't noticed such issues with the Pro controller.

What I'd love to see are a more portable dock (I play almost always in TV mode) and a re-work of the Joy-Con that fixes the drift and signal issues.

<comment><USER4> My colleague doesn't use the dock anymore because it is nothing but a glorified USB-C power adapter combined with an input for the HDMI signal.

However, due to Nintendo messing up the USB-C standard, this is dangerous and can brick the system! Otherwise, what would work is a USB-C dongle that transmits enough juice to the Switch (but not too much!), has an HDMI input to get the signal to the TV and voila, portability solved.

But no, Nintendo basically ensured that this is Russian roulette which can end up bricking your system.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely, I've considered a bunch of adapters, I even own one for my laptop that _should_ work with the switch, but I don't dare use it having read about issues of the third-party HDMI adapters bricking consoles. If I recall, they're blowing the power fuse because Nintendo is incorrectly negotiating PD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kind of the opposite of what I would want. I only use mine while docked to a TV. If you cut off the controllers and the screen you could probably make a black box version for $150. Or make it more powerful and keep it at $200.

For a mobile only Switch to make sense for me it would need to be small enough to fit in a pocket.

<comment><USER6> There's games that only work handheld (because of the touchscreen), though. Removing the ability to dock (without removing the ability to connect more controllers) doesn't split the library the same way removing the non-docked mode would.

<comment><USER7> I can live with that. Sacrifices were made for the Switch Lite, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm confused by this. They took the Switch and removed everything that made it uniquely successful to make the Switch Lite. The naming doesn't even make sense anymore. The point is that you can "switch" between TV mode and portable mode, as well as "switch" between one player with two joycons and two players with a joycon each. And it's not particularly portable either for a device that has no TV connectivity. It's bigger than the 3DS XL, which itself is pretty big, and it won't fit comfortably in a pocket, due to the bulging joysticks on one side and the bulging trigger buttons on the other.

<comment><USER9> Although they keep denying it, Nintendo has made it pretty clear that the Switch is the replacement for both the Wii U and 3DS console lines. For people who want a portable experience, there's no reason to go for a full-size Switch when they won't use half of its functionality. That's who this is marketed toward, and the special edition for Pokemon Sword and Shield only seems to confirm that idea. This isn't for the people who want a family console but would rather have a personal one instead, so the lack of ability to switch to two players doesn't make as much of a difference.

I agree that it's not as portable as the 3DS. However, there's size comparisons that show that it's at least small enough to be pretty portable as long as you have a bag of some sort with you. This will still sell well especially if all the new titles shift from 3DS to Switch.

<comment><USER10> Has Nintendo ever denied that the Switch is the WiiU successor?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So the Switch cannot... switch anymore?

Not criticizing this system but that got really nonsensical with the naming pretty fast.

<comment><USER11> That's def not an issue. Who cares, really?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aw, I wish this had come out a launch. I haven't ever connected my switch to a TV. I guess I can sell mine and buy one of these. I wonder how they'll handle the motion controls and gestures that you can't do in handheld mode. I remember in Mario Odyssey in particular there being a couple of moons you could only get by detaching the joycons to do certain motions (the one I remember is that you could make the frog jump higher by using the joycons than by any other method).

<comment><USER10> You can still pair joycons with the unit, just can't plug it into a dock.

<comment><USER13> You can pair joycons with the unit, but they got rid of the kickstand? I guess you can lay the unit on its back, but that seems like an oversight...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Battery life is the number one reason I haven't gotten a regular Switch. But this doesn't allow for connecting to a TV at all...

I want a Switch that is juuuuust right :/

Perhaps they'll fix the firmware of the regular Switch and upgrade the battery at the same time?

<comment><USER15> I'm in your boat. Give me a download only small form factor Switch for use with a TV only. It'll save me countless discussions with the minions.

<comment><USER14> Since they're making a portable-only model, it would make sense to have a stationary-only model as well.

We'll see!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This doesn't compete with the 3DS, according to Nintendo, in the same way the Macbook doesn't compete with the Air.

* 3DS XL MSRP: $199

* Switch Lite MSRP: $199

Except for the 3DS' deep bench of games how exactly don't they compete.

<comment><USER17> Nintendo also said the DS didn't compete with the GBA and the Game Boy line would remain a third pillar.

The GBA was abandoned the day the DS launched. 3DS game releases have also almost entirely died with the Switch's success.

<comment><USER18> > The GBA was abandoned the day the DS launched.

Well, I think the GBA wasn't abandoned until the day it became clear that the DS was a mega-hit. They hedged their bets up until then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Alternate name, the "Nintendo Switch ^W" since it can't Switch any more (handheld only, can't dock with TV).

There's probably a term for the phenomenon of retaining a name past the point it actually applies. Vestigial product naming?

<comment><USER20> You can see this phenomenon in human family names too. Not too many folks named Baker are actually bakers anymore. Something about proper nouns makes them easy to drift away from their etymology I guess.

<comment><USER21> This reminds me of a joke a friend of mine made, saying that in a few decades 'Sysadmin' would be a valid last name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This looks a perfect 2nd Switch in the family.

Especially if it can be used just as a controller, that would be perfect. Splits creen gaming on screens that are actually split.

</comment><comment><USER23> > the built-in controls and their lack of detachable controllers, HD rumble, > and IR sensors creates some small compatibility issues.

No HD rumble ... does that mean no rumble at all?

Is there any use for IR when the controller is connected? Seems to me like you don't lose out, in this case [1]

I'm guessing it still has a USB-C at the bottom, so why not let it do video- out from a dock? Are there any savings in gutting that feature?

[1] All examples here, have the joycon detached [https://kotaku.com/the- switch-joy-con-s-infrared-sensor-is-c...](https://kotaku.com/the-switch-joy- con-s-infrared-sensor-is-cooler-than-we-1822669059)

<comment><USER24> I assume the lack of video out is a deliberate crippling to differentiate the offerings and their purposes

<comment><USER25> Agreed. I also assume it will be modded back in within days of people getting their hands on these.

<comment><USER26> I will be surprised if the signals are even physically routed to the USB port, no reason to do that and then disable it in software unless removing the feature was a last minute decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When the Switch was announced I thought it was trying to be too many things and wouldn't be able to do any of them well. I was right. However, what I underestimated is the Switch's ability to do each of those things _well enough_. My PS4 is a better console. My GBA was a better handheld. The Wii was a better party system. But the Switch is pretty good at all of those things, and since the "better" systems could only do one thing - the Switch has turned out to be pretty awesome!

If you're considering one, definitely think about a buying a second used dock, being able to pop it in a TV in another room with ease is pretty neat.

My biggest complaint is that in hand held mode I can only do turn-based games because otherwise it hurts my hands. (The joy cons cramp my thumbs.)

</comment><comment> m-p-3 It's also be okay with the opposite, a non-portable switch that act as a living room console, without the need to include a display, etc to make it even cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER28> A pretty logical iteration on the switch. I'm surprised its not a little smaller though, I'd like to compare it its dimensions to the vanilla switch.

<comment><USER29> Looks like it's a touch smaller, maybe to make it more portable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Basically what I want. Sweet.

</comment><comment><USER31> Finally. Something that removes the TV tax and I can give to the kids to play. I don't want something that takes over a TV, ever. So this is great. Seems like the Switch will be around for folks who want the TV stuff.

Maybe there are loads of people like me. Maybe a few. Sales will tell I guess.

</comment><comment><USER32> I recently picked up a PlayStation Vita which I think has just the right form factor for portability when playing on the bus. The Vita is a 5 inch display, and this makes a 5.5 inch display Switch very tempting.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't see what value Nintendo is providing this generation of gaming. Access to exclusive IP?

Between my laptop and cellphone, I have unlimited gaming for nearly free.

It really makes me wonder what the point of consoles are, they are inferior computers but heavily marketed.

<comment><USER34> I'll give you the laptop point but as for mobile, if you truly think that offers a comparable gaming experience you're not a gamer, and certainly not the type of gamer being marketed to here.

Nintendo holds some of the most valuable gaming IP in the world and their games sell consoles. It doesn't matter what crazy format they make, people will buy it if they make a smash and Mario game on it.

I unfortunately don't see them ever releasing Mario Cart 74 on steam or any other pc platform, it just goes against everything they believe in (gaming is a social and family activity). But Tbh, I probably wouldn't want them too either.

<comment><USER25> Part of the appeal of Nintendo are their unique control schemes that just don't translate very well to other systems.</comment></comment></comment>