One-Third of U.S. Museums May Not Survive the Year, Survey Finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/22/894049653/one-third-of-u-s-museums-may-not-survive-the-year-survey-finds <comment><AUTHOR> These words of CS Lewis seem appropriate in our time of COVID as well. Here's what he said in 1948 about the mental shift required by living with the threat of the atomic bomb:

> "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am tempted to reply: "Why, as you > would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London > almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders > from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you > are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of > paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor > accidents."

<comment><USER2> What a mediocre thought from a great mind. Generally we accept our own mortality even if we fear it, but we fear much more for our children. Most people are altruistic, and the fear of the end of the human species and most life on Earth (ie, fear of the atomic age) is much greater than that of dying of disease or accident.

Since it's not worth a separate comment - every single museum in the US could be kept afloat during COVID by a single rich person. Unless they want confiscatorily high tax rates in the future they should step up now.

<comment><USER3> > but we fear much more for our children

People did back then too, so I'm not sure what's mediocre about it.

We've had to live with situations outside of our hands for a long time. Our ability to alter the impact of adverse events isn't really driven by the magnitude of said events (e.g. family vs tribe vs city vs nation vs world).

No matter the age, you just have to accept that you might encounter very unhappy events.

<comment><USER2> Thought both are out of my hands and would result in my death, I fear a 100km diameter asteroid strike much more than being murdered.

"fear of the atomic age" is proxy for "fear of a thermonuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union" for a generation of people. It's not comparable to COVID-19 and it's not comparable to the other concerns he listed, and for someone so deeply rooted in moral and ethical philosophy as C.S. Lewis I'm surprised.

Anyway, it's off topic, this is my last word on it.

<comment><USER4> In 1948 thermonuclear weapons did not yet exist.

The bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were about 1000 times as powerful as the largest conventional bombs. Thermonuclear weapons came about in the 1950s. The thermonuclear bombs the USA and USSR had in 1958 were about 1000 times as powerful as the 1945 bombs. It was the development of thermonuclear bombs that made nuclear weaponry the swords of civilizational extinction.

C.S. Lewis was writing about weapons 1000 times less powerful than you're thinking of. He was also writing when the number of nuclear weapons that had been stockpiled was much smaller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My wife works at our local science museum. It's very tough for them, even in good times a lot of museums scramble for funding. They were able to reopen for a few days and then shut down again. They did PPE loans so all of the employees still have jobs for now, but its hard to know what will happen in the next few months, and will they be able to generate enough revenue. They do summer camp programs and have been switching those to virtual but I'm not sure how much revenue that will generate. Additionally they are kind of scrambling now to get more online content. In addition to donations, memberships and admission they have gotten some grant money in the past as well. Maybe when there is some clarity about when and how they can operate they might get some more donation money from local companies or philanthropists but I think the issue is how do the hang onto their staff. I think they were hoping the PPE loan could get them through but now its not so clear that was the best choice for them.

</comment><comment><USER6> End of April reporting, for comparison:

> All but about 5 to 7 percent of the world's museums are currently shuttered > because of the coronavirus pandemic, said Peter Keller, the general director > of the International Council of Museums. According to the council's > research, one in 10 may not reopen, he added.

More than 30 respondents to a 41-country survey, by the Network of European Museum Organizations, said they feared they would have to close permanently, among them the Museo de La Rioja and Museum of the Americas in Spain; Kornberg Castle in Austria, the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Hungary, and the National Historical Museum of Albania.

The gravity of the situation varies by country, depending on how much museums rely on ticket sales and tourism, and how much government funding they receive. Museums in the United States which survive from earned income and philanthropy are more vulnerable than government-subsidized European institutions. The American Alliance of Museums reported to Congress in March that as many as 30 percent of museums could fail in the crisis, if there was no immediate intervention.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been working with this team for the last ~18 months: [https://www.passitdown.com/](https://www.passitdown.com/)

Coming from the Library of Congress' digitization project, I knew the importance and complexity of putting collections online so was drawn to them.

Unfortunately, what was one venue for sharing collections became the _only_ venue for sharing collections. I hope they - or other efforts like them - manage to at least document the pieces that are going to disappear into storage or private collections. :(

</comment><comment><USER8> The headline is misleading. This quote tells the actual story:

"In a survey released Wednesday of 760 museum directors, 33% of them said there was either a "significant risk" of closing permanently by next fall or that they didn't know if their institutions would survive."

It still shows a high level of uncertainty, but 1/3rd of museums are not saying they may be shutting down in 2020, as the headline would imply. They do have short runways, but note the discrepancy between 33% saying they aren't sure if they will make it a year, yet 87% saying they do not have a year of runway. 44% therefore have short runways yet do not doubt incoming funding.

What we should do is help the funding return to the other 33% in the next 6-12 months.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how the headline is misleading. "One-third of U.S. Museums May Not Survive the Year" vs your version: 1/3 of museums are at "significant risk of closing permanently" within 12 months.

<comment><USER10> "May not survive the year" can be read as either "may close before the end of this calendar year," or "may close within 12 months." Unless it's January 1, those are quite different statements. English sucks sometimes.

Edit: inserted the word "calendar" to clarify a little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see a lot of doomsday predictions, but 4 months in, I'm barely seeing any signs of a protracted recession. Everyone seems to be doing okay, and when bars and businesses open up, they are jam packed. Am I the only one that is seeing a disparity between the speculations vs what I'm seeing around me? I truly believe we are in a crisis situation but why aren't I seeing more signs of these doomsday predications?

<comment><USER12> > I see a lot of doomsday predictions, but 4 months in, I'm barely seeing any > signs of a protracted recession.

Perhaps the trillions of dollars of stimulus money that has been distributed has something to do with it? Or maybe the generous unemployment benefits the federal government has passed out over the past four months to ensure people could pay their bills and purchase things to stimulate the economy?

Without those things we'd be in a completely different scenario. Things may get worse yet, we're not exactly winning the fight against COVID-19 in the US.

<comment><USER13> And those enhanced unemployment benefits expire next week, so far the Senate and White House are wanting them 'means tested', so it looks like they may fall off without renewal.

<comment><USER12> If they don't provide an extension, they lose the Senate and the White House. Trumpvilles, etc. I doubt they will gamble like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That reminds me: maybe I should renew some memberships early, or up my contributions.

</comment><comment><USER14> More fallout from the ineptness of our government I presume. Its forecasts like this that start to mount as we continue the downward trend. Truly a pandemic in every sense.

</comment><comment><USER15> And here I am working to open a new science museum with no funding whatsoever... I'm currently living in a tent outside

Maybe I'm enough of a cheapskate to survive!

<comment><USER16> Where?

<comment><USER15> I just bought a 220,000 sqft building in Pine Bluff Arkansas.

The website is Serendipic.org

I'm currently just funding everything myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I guess the silver lining here is that the "employees" are already generally unpaid.

<comment><USER18> The cruel exception is in military museums where all the military funded museums are paid somewhat decent wages but of course these wages pale in comparison to the military intelligence trainers getting paid $650k+ / year mostly tax-free due to being overseas.

The NBLS statistics for museum workers is highly skewed for federally funded museums and those with long career tenures which makes it look like they're paid nearly as much as most other white collar workers but this doesn't mean there's actually jobs in the field. And this was all pre-COVID.

OPM has been desperately trying to get people to retire earlier by offering huge lump sums but with healthcare the way it is, people are not retiring which puts a drag on a strapped public sector in headcount and requisitions, but the implication to me is that when museum persons are retiring nowadays in public sector they're being replaced with cheaper contractors or simply not being filled in at all. I'm familiar with entire libraries being shut down after a single librarian retired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Museum Museum

</comment><comment><USER20> What percentage of restaurants might not survive?

What other types of establishments are likely to have a high percentage not surviving?

<comment><USER10> Something like 20% of restaurants that were open in February are now permanently closed. It might be even a little more than that — I don't have the data right in front of me. Extend that timeline to next fall, as in the article, and probably almost all the non-chain restaurants would be done for.

Edit: it's worse than I thought. Data from Yelp suggest about half of restaurants may be permanently closed. I have no idea how that breaks down into national and regional chains vs independently owned restaurants, however.

See [https://www.eater.com/2020/6/26/21304219/over-50-percent- of-...](https://www.eater.com/2020/6/26/21304219/over-50-percent-of-yelp- restaurants-have-closed-permanently)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Museum directors all agree that anyone who sells museum holdings to meet operating expenses is blacklisted from future visiting collections. Let them sell some of their holdings and all will be well. Many of them are sitting on a vast inventory of items that are never seen by anyone.

<comment><USER22> The purpose of a museum is to share knowledge, and selling objects into private collection is a direct violation of that mission. They might as well set the stuff on fire; the effect would be the same.

Edit to add: it's a myth that objects not currently on public display are "never seen by anyone." Some get seen by the public when used or loaned out for temporary, traveling, or themed exhibits. The rest are generally made available to researchers with interest in that field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What happens to the collections...

<comment><USER24> the same as with other assets - we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution (it would for example definitely beat the one triggered by 2008). The smaller and more vulnerable get distressed, and are going to be scooped up on the cheap by the big ones who have access to liquidity.

<comment><USER25> > we're entering the greatest wealth redistribution

I can confidently say: this is nothing compared to the fall of the USSR or the aftermath of the Plague.

<comment><USER26> I saw BBC article having title "How the Black Death made the rich richer" [https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the- black-...](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-black-death- make-the-rich-richer)

But what I remember from economic history and what the article actually says is mostly opposite.

>Before the plague erupted, several centuries of population growth had produced a labour surplus, which was abruptly replaced with a labour shortage when many serfs and free peasants died. Historians have argued that this labour shortage allowed those peasants that survived the pandemic to demand better pay or to seek employment elsewhere. Despite government resistance, serfdom and the feudal system itself were ultimately eroded.

This was the main effect of the plague. The wealth concentration BBC talks about affected much fewer people.

This time the same is not going to happens because covid just increases demand for automation.

<comment><USER27> This time the same is not going to happen because the plague killed ~50% of the population in Europe over a four year period, while covid won't kill even 1%, with most of the covid deaths being among retirees.

If 50% of working age people died, both wages and automation would increase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm puzzled by today's news on the vaccine. They were saying they would not make it available until it was proven "safe and effective". They said the vaccine may not be effective.

But my understanding is the previous trials demonstrated it was safe. If it turns out to be ineffective, at least no harm is done. So why not make it available? If it works, and is even only partially effective, it would be a big help.

I recall they said the vaccine would be considered "ineffective" if it worked something like less than 50% of the time. But wouldn't a 25% effective vaccine be a vast improvement over nothing?

<comment><USER29> Something may seem safe when you give to 20 people and less safe when you give it to 20'000 or 20'000'000 people. If it has 1% chance of severe complications that will probably by missed in the phase 1 study.

<comment><USER10> Also, some harmful effects take time to show up.

<comment><USER28> Set that possibility against the predictable deaths of 100,000+ people due to waiting.

<comment><USER30> The bulk of deaths in the US were due to forcing sick into nursing homes. That mistake is unlikely to be made again. Risk of death has thus been significantly reduced and still on the downswing.

<comment><USER28> We're losing a thousand a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is exactly why I created: [https://randomdailyart.com](https://randomdailyart.com)

To bring art to people who can't go see it in person. I haven't been able to visit any museums or art galleries in the past few months. I would really like to.

</comment><comment><USER32> Just end the shutdown, its never a good strategy in the first place, its doing more harm than good.

<comment><USER33> As you may have noticed, many states have attempted to end the shutdown, and then quickly reinstated it when death tolls increased dramatically.

<comment><USER32> The case raise dramatically but not the death tolls.

<comment><USER34> Death tolls require some time to go up.

If you lift lockdown, lots of people get infects. It takes a few days, maybe a week to show symptoms bad enough to go to a doctor for testing. This is the point in time when cases begin to go up. Imagine if you lifted the lockdown for a day and went back.

One to two weeks after that, people will get more seriously ill, requiring hospitalization. Initially this can be treated easy at a (presumably) low-load hospital with no issue, the death toll is low.

One more week and you have the majority of cases in the hospital, this is where most people will die. A month after you lifted the lockdown.

Now imagine not locking down after that one day. After 1 month, you're at the peak of Day 1 infections, the next day the peak of day 2 infections etc. It compounds fast and can overwhelm a hospital.

Once a hospital is unable to care for all patients properly, triage will be applied. People with good recovery chances will receive treatment, those who are risk groups will not.

That's when your death toll will explode very suddenly.

<comment><USER32> Of course, the death require some time to show up, some time in 2 weeks, some time in 70 years...

Hospital are frequently overwhelmed even before this particular virus, its not new and yet we didn't require shutdown back then.

<comment><USER35> > Hospital are frequently overwhelmed even before this particular virus

Not on the level of local, or even less statewide, hospital systems. It's true that the US is particularly vulnerable to things like this because the structure of the healthcare system leaves very little slack capacity, but healthcare systems at, say, the county level are not routinely exceeding all available ICU, ventilator, etc., capacity (because of the insurance-network based way that hospital preferences are often driven, rather than intelligent capacity-and-location-based distribution, it's probably more common that individual hospitals hit capacity when the local system as a whole is in fine shape, though.)

> its not new and yet we didn't require shutdown back then

Even if the premise was true, which as noted it's not, this argument overlooks that if capacity exhaustion wasn't driven by a particular easily communicable disease, a shutdown wouldn't do anything to manage it.

The shutdown is not due to the healthcare system situation _alone_ , but the combination of situation _and_ the contribution of COVID-19 to the situation.

<comment><USER32> >Not on the level of local, or even less statewide, hospital systems

In 2018 :

[https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu- patie...](https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/)

<comment><USER35> That the only example you can find is the worst US flu season in recent history with about double the impact on most measures of a typical year pretty much disproves your "frequeently" claim all by itself.

[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past- seasons.html](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html)

Given the nature of seasonal flu, it's quite likely that by the time that was noticed, the impact lag time of any control measures would have made them pointless, but maybe there is an argument that control measures would also have been warranted in 2017-2018. But, in any case, health systems in the US being overwhelmed, at the local community—at least urban and suburban, the rural situation can be worse because of the impact of variations when small numbers are involved—is not, contrary to your claim, a frequent occurrence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If only the directors of museums could sell or take out loans on some vanishingly small percentage of their collections...

When you don't put your most valuable assets on your balance sheet (but do place the cost of acquiring them as expenses) [0], you can't reasonably expect to be financially stable.

Implicitly, these museums are saying that they'd rather lay off all their staff, than count their art towards their assets [1]. In my opinion, this has always been the real story with financial hardship in the museum world. They have been suffering financially for decades now. Every time membership declines or attendance stalls, they are doomed to teeter closer to the edge.

[0]: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262403](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262403)

[1]: see, for example, this financial audit of the museum of Boston. "In accordance with current practice generally followed by museums, collections are generally not recorded as assets in the accompanying financial statements. Purchased additions to the collections are recorded as expenses at the time acquired." ... " Museum policy specifies that proceeds from the deaccessioning of an item may only be used for the conservation or acquisition of other collections items." [https://www.mos.org/sites/dev- elvis.mos.org/files/docs/about...](https://www.mos.org/sites/dev- elvis.mos.org/files/docs/about-us/mos_financial-statement_2016.pdf)

<comment><USER37> Business logic that works in tech doesn't apply to museums. The ancients aren't making more and better history every year.

If you sell an irreplaceable object to make a profit at the end of the quarter, you can't just buy a new one when times are better. On the other hand, the ancients aren't making more history, so your collection never goes out of date. If you lay off all your staff, _as long as you keep the collection in good storage conditions,_ you can hire new staff a century later and reopen just fine.

Museum policy that prevents dumping of assets is good policy. A museum that sells its collection is no longer a museum.

<comment><USER38> Amazing how HN frequently complains about Private Equity buying up tech companies and killing the golden goose for the sake of short term gains, yet the top comment suggests museums do exactly that. _(Shrugs)_

<comment><USER39> As opposed to the museum shutting down completely?

I mean, look, I agree, the idea of a museum selling an art piece to make ends meet leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. But I'd rather the museums stay open.

<comment><USER38> > As opposed to the museum shutting down completely?

Yes. Shutting down temporary for the short or even medium term is better for humanity,if that is the cost to maintain long-term public access

The primary purpose of museums is not profit or employment, but housing cultural artefacts. IMO it is better (for humanity) if all employees are furloughed or even fired, and the buildings shuttered until a time they are viable again - even if it's a whole new organisation that rises from the ashes or if collections have to be transferred to a different surviving museum.

<comment><USER39> ...I think I may have been misunderstanding something here. If a museum goes bankrupt, what happens to their collection? Is there some legal avenue where they can keep everything in storage until they (hopefully) get more funding down the road?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How GitHub Uses GitHub to Document GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1939-how-github-uses-github-to-document-github

<comment><USER2> I personally found this write up extremely interesting and exciting.

I have always been interested in documentation and its order in the priority list of tasks which a development team has to tackle. It is not an original observation that documentation is critically important to the success of a project/code-base and yet it is often the last artifact produced (and many skip it altogether). I have recently been extremely interested in the idea that documentation should be moved to the top of the priority list and, rather than being a duplicative post-processing step, should be the "ground-truth" for generating lots of the follow on artifacts. For example, write API documentation first and use that to generate client side libraries, an API test suite, and server boiler plate code/skeleton.

In my search for existing projects and approaches, I came across many interesting things.

Swagger: [https://helloreverb.com/developers/swagger](https://helloreverb.com/developers/swagger)

API Doc: [http://apidoc.me/doc/gettingStarted](http://apidoc.me/doc/gettingStarted)

Slate: [https://github.com/tripit/slate](https://github.com/tripit/slate)

Write the Docs: [http://docs.writethedocs.org/](http://docs.writethedocs.org/)

It was very interesting to read this GitHub post because they presented yet another approach to treating documentation as a first class citizen with different methods to write docs, host docs, and keep the docs updated.

I recently updated the API docs at my workplace to use the Slate tool I referenced above. We manually write docs in a Markdown file, manually use Slate to compile the MD file into HTML, and then manually deploy it to our host. This is approach is incredibly basic and non-scalable, but is light years better than what we had previously, which was API docs directly in the repo's README file.

I hope to learn more about the projects listed above (and many others!) as I explore different approaches for treating docs as a first class citizen and pick the approach which meets the requirements of my current team.

[EDIT] I am also anxiously awaiting a beta invite for [http://readthedocs.com](http://readthedocs.com)

<comment><USER3> I always thought it would be a good idea to generate API documentation from tests. Kind of the same idea you have but the other way around.

The problem I used to have is that if you write your documentation by hand it tends to get out of sync with the code. You make a quick change to the code and forget to update the docs. After a while it's a mess unless you stay vigilant.

But if you generate documentation from tests they can't get out of sync. The example output that gets written to the docs comes from the application so it can't be wrong. And if a test fails, documentation doesn't get written. It also forces you to write tests which is a good thing. If you don't, you don't have docs.

I don't know if there are tools like this. I created one for Ruby/Rack apps that I have used in some of my projects. I think this approach works pretty well.

<comment><USER4> I wholeheartedly agree with everything above. Two additional and related thoughts:

1\. The original documentation tool I wrote for Atom, Biscotto, kept track of the number of undocumented classes / methods: [https://github.com/gjtorikian/biscotto/blob/59f48ba2621a92ae...](https://github.com/gjtorikian/biscotto/blob/59f48ba2621a92aefec0774844c9d4fa4993307e/src/parser.coffee#L300-L302) . It was hooked up to CI, and if the count fell below a certain threshold, the test failed.

2\. Right now, we're exploring into working with JSON schema as a means of providing both testing validation and accurate documentation. If the schema says "This REST method expects a parameter of this type," it becomes very easy to write a test to enforce that behavior; documentation can be easily generated from it; and of course your production code is safer for it.

I'm a huge fan of introducing more cross-overs between testing and documentation. I think a lot of time is spent on "clever" (and subjective) validations like [http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/), but not enough time is spent on basic content checks. It's very easy to drift code, tests, and docs apart. We need to start thinking about all three of them working together.

<comment><USER2> I could not agree more strongly that working on code, docs, and tests as a single unit is an excellent approach to development. I think the best way to convince most developers of doing this is to create tools which make it as automated as possible. If using a tool actually makes their lives easier to accomplish something they already do (write tests? write docs?) and they get the other for free, then that is a huge selling point.

I had a similar idea about using JSON Schema to validate my API. However, a few issues that I thought of and a few I discovered while researching:

1) I am not aware of a decent JSON Schema editor. It has been on my wishlist/TODO list for a looong time to write one myself which has similar capability to something like Oxygen for XML [1], but I have not had the time. Do you plan to write and update the JSON Schema by hand?

2) I have not researched them in great detail yet, but Swagger [2] and API Doc [3] seem to have already defined something similar to what I had in mind with JSON Schema. Have you looked into those tools yet?

[1] [http://www.oxygenxml.com/index.html](http://www.oxygenxml.com/index.html) [2] [https://helloreverb.com/developers/swagger](https://helloreverb.com/developers/swagger) [3] [http://apidoc.me/doc/gettingStarted](http://apidoc.me/doc/gettingStarted)

<comment><USER4> > Do you plan to write and update the JSON Schema by hand?

Currently, yes, unfortunately. ;____; We've talked about doing it in an intermediate format, like YAML, which is slightly less painful, but....ugh. Years ago I wrote a very badly-coded-but-essentially-functional tool called Panino, which converted Markdown-to-JSON: [https://github.com/gjtorikian/panino- docs/tree/master/lib/pa...](https://github.com/gjtorikian/panino- docs/tree/master/lib/panino/plugins).

I see that some people have picked up on that and ran along with it, too: [https://github.com/apiaryio/mson](https://github.com/apiaryio/mson). So there might be something there to explore.

2\. I've never looked into either. I know Swagger is used by several companies, like Twitter, but API Doc is new to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious, how they write internal-facing documentation and how that effects the development experience for new github engineers.

Source diving through open source libraries, I've often wished for a "spelunker's guide": a text file laying out where things were and what I should read first to build a mental model I could use in understanding the rest of the source. I'm currently trying to figure out what the best way is for someone to write a spelunker's guide, especially if they've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner.

<comment><USER4> > I'm curious, how they write internal-facing documentation and how that > effects the development experience for new github engineers.

I wish I could show up a sample, but I can't, because it's internal. ;)

Honestly, I think a lot of the engineering documentation started organically. When you have a small team working on a feature, it's difficult to scale explanations to the rest of the company. One day someone sits down and starts writing all their thoughts out in Markdown, and just checks it into a _docs_ folder. That's it. It's easy-to-read, short on code, and usually full of ASCII, like this: [https://i.imgur.com/KTbyhyq.png](https://i.imgur.com/KTbyhyq.png)

Writing documentation is the best way to get outside contributors involved with minimal investment on your part. It also forces you to try and explain what you've built.

If you can't pretend to go back and look at things like a beginner, grab someone unfamiliar with the project, and have them describe to you what they would expect, and how they think they should proceed. They may be able to provide you with insights on what needs to be described.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm planning to build a stack for internal company domain knowledge, and I've been thinking about middleman ([http://middlemanapp.com](http://middlemanapp.com)) instead of Jekyll.

Middleman has impressive workflows and markdown processing (I'm guessing parallel to that of the Github/Jekyll solution or better). Also conrefs can be implemented by simple partials (which makes less contention for the probably huge conref file)

Though I have to be convinced by trying the Github/Jekyll stack, this does open my mind regarding Jekyll 2.0. I'm happy to see Github tell us their Jekyll story :)

<comment><USER7> you probably mean [https://middlemanapp.com/](https://middlemanapp.com/)

<comment><USER6> Much thanks, fixed :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately the repository (as suggested by the screenshot[1]) seems to be private: [https://github.com/github/help-docs](https://github.com/github/help- docs)

I assume that's because they may be documenting upcoming features before they are announced.

1\. [https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/64050/5449088/7ad...](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/64050/5449088/7adf83be-84a3-11e4-8c41-1b3448a2f7df.png)

<comment><USER9> I wonder if they host everything on their own site (Github.com) or their own Github Enterprise site, which is inaccessible from outside network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Github's convention that web pages for a project are in a different branch of the same project is kind of strange.

Also, those things they call "conrefs" are just "macros".

<comment><USER4> I think a macro implies something that can be executed, and (rightly) ought to cause security-minded folks to double-take.

Conref isn't something we invented, it's straight out of DITA: [http://dita.xml.org/arch-conref](http://dita.xml.org/arch-conref)

<comment><USER11> > _I think a macro implies something that can be executed_

That isn't true... Traditionally a macro just refers to a substitution, maybe (but not necessarily) with parameter replacement, rescanning, etc. I'd say that lisp-style macros which can execute arbitrary code are actually rather rare historically....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't the three second load page they list on the slow side?

<comment><USER4> I wasn't super thrilled with it either, until I dug in and discovered that it's the global average. We have a ton of international and mobile traffic, which factors into this sum:

1\. United States (average load: 1.97 s) 2\. United Kingdom (average load: 2.29 s) 3\. India (average load: 7.48 s) 4\. China (average load: 12.11 s)

Average load of these countries is 6 seconds, which seems absolutely horrid...until I tell you that the US has about seven times more traffic than the UK.

I didn't want to fudge the graph and take out those slow outliers--the truth's the truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yo dawg!

<comment><USER13> Awe, negative points? Really? You know you were thinking it when you saw the link title.

<comment><USER14> If everyone was already thinking it, what makes you think they want to see it in the comments?

<comment><USER13> Well, given that I imagine only mods can set negative value to a post, I'm going to infer that the mods didn't like seeing it in the comments.

You know, sometimes it's ok to find humor in things.

<comment><USER15> Comment scores decrease when users downvote them. Moderators don't give comments negative scores.

<comment><USER13> I now understand about how the system works after someone else explained. But, thank-you for the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> GitHub Pages is one of the most shocking hacks I've ever come across. Not the worst mind you, just the most shocking. Most of GitHub is clean and good. But making a magic gh-pages branches is simply horrific. I'm still somewhat dumb founded that's the best method they could come up with.

</comment><comment><USER17> This title alone is gitception!

<comment><USER18> If you like this, also see the talk titled "How Github uses Github to build Github".

[http://zachholman.com/talk/how-github-uses-github-to- build-g...](http://zachholman.com/talk/how-github-uses-github-to-build- github/)</comment></comment>


Google SketchUp and Team Being Acquired by Trimble - <AUTHOR> http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-home-for-sketchup.html

<comment><USER2> Is this a first for google? I don't think I've ever heard of them selling a product/team to another company before. If not a first, certainly a rarity.

<comment><USER3> You're correct, it's rare but it happened before: Google sold its Radio Automation business to WideOrbit Inc. But usually, Google (as any other large tech company) is where acquired tech goes to die - never to be heard from again.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have worked with a Trimble distributor for many years, and find this acquisition interesting. Over the last few years Trimble, traditionally a hardware company, has been acquiring various software companies. Internally, they are developing a virtual jobsite platform and I can see SketchUp fitting in with their other BIM technologies. Saying that though, I think the real motivation here is a talent acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thank God.

Sketchup development has been neglible since Google acquired the company years ago. Aside from adding a kludged presentation capability to the "Pro" version there hasn't been a significant improvement to the core product in years (and I suspect that the presentation capabilities were in process at acquisition).

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't expect much in the way of improvements (read additional functionality) because of the acquisition. Google is a company for the masses, Trimble is sector and market specific. The only changes I would expect for a while are integrations with Trimble's current software and hardware.

<comment><USER4> Sketchup is a market specific product in the same way that Google App Engine is. I strongly suspect that Trimble's products already interface with Sketchup either directly or through standard ESRI or Autodesk file formats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SketchUp is such a great tool. I use it for - furniture design! There's a healthy community of furniture design geeks out there.

Sadly, I can't see much synergy between GPS hardware and furniture design. I wish the acquirer was a CAD/design company. Hope we don't lose a great resource.

<comment><USER6> You could probably take a second look at Trimble. They've been pivoting recently to do more software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is definitely a good move by Google to Shed some weight and let a promising product keep flourishing. I'm impressed.

Does anyone have an estimate on the price/term of this deal?

</comment><comment><USER8> Any armchair CEOs have suggestions for other Google products that should be sold or spun out?

Wikipedia has an interesting list of discontinued Google products. There might be some interesting product ideas that didn't work at Google scale, but might still be worthwhile for a smaller company.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services)

<comment><USER9> The problem is that most of the products on that list are probably tightly integrated with the Google infrastructure. The standalone product of SketchUp was sold off, but now the question is what will happen to the SketchUp 3D Warehouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> SketchUp was the basis for Google's Boulder office, which has since grown a _lot_. I wonder if they'll move out and where.

<comment><AUTHOR> Trimble has a large office in Westminster, CO, which is just outside of Boulder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how many people are left at SketchUp from the original company, before it was acquired by Google.

I bet they would have some interesting stories to tell, after going through a Google acquisition and now being sold by Googl

</comment><comment><USER12> I am really worried... getting people to trust the capabilities of Sketchup was really easy mainly to the Google brand. Now I really hope that Trimble can convince me. Long time Sketchup user here, since Sketchup 2, good @Last days.

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://www.pointclouds.org/blog/trcs/>

Trimble is sponsoring development of several projects in different research areas involving 3D perception, as part of the second PCL code sprint.

PCL is the Point Cloud Library from Willowgarage that also created ROS, PR2 and Turtlebot. These guys are surely trying to do some good stuff for 3D. Hope the sketchup community benefits from this acquisition

</comment><comment><USER14> This is an interesting development. I have a lot of colleagues in the architecture industry who are heavily dependant on SketchUp for early-stage conceptual work. I wonder if Trimble, a company with focus on hardware and BIM will push sketchup away from its easy to use, conceptual design origins.

</comment><comment><USER15> Neat idea, instead of discontinuing the product. Too bad they didn't have the foresight to do this with Dodgeball.

</comment><comment><USER16> Aside from SketchUp, anyone know what other projects/products are being worked on at the Boulder Google office?

<comment><USER17> I hear that some work on Apps/Docs and Chrome happens there. This morning's Google Drive SDK hangout featured at least one person in Boulder... he had a sweet view of the Flatirons behind him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is strange. Can someone explain how this would work for Google or why it would be a good move?

<comment><USER19> Google gets money in exchange for ditching a potentially distracting side project that's likely to remain a small niche item.

<comment><USER20> And people get to keep their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting. As a long time AutoCAD and SolidWorks user I have never thought of Trimble as a 3D CAD company. Not even a software company. One has to wonder if SketchUp could have found a better home than Trimble.

I can see an established 3D CAD company really enhancing it as a potential bridge onto their bigger tools and providing more interoperability with other platforms. I can't justify buying a license of SolidWorks for my kid's PC but if SketchUp were a SW product with a ramp up to SW I would definitely consider it and even pay for it.

Time will tell.

<comment> excuse-me GPS is commodity now, Trimble are looking to add value

It's hard to sell a $500 ruggadised GPS unit when it's built into someones iPhone, and people are beginning to wonder why they are paying quite so much even for RTK systems when the actual HW is so cheap.

But if even small scale housing construction started could be persuaded to use the same 3D mapping/GPS technology that big civil engineering projects do then you could tie up a nice market.

From the prospective concept design of the street of houses, the planning permission filings with 3D height modelling, sight lines, light rights, the cad drawings, then the automated layout of roads and foundations with GPS equipped machines - all with an integrated Trimble system.

<comment><USER22> Didn't know your iphone gps was accurate at millimeter level just like the $500 trimble GPS which is used for precision.

<comment> excuse-me A $500 Trimble is still the same 12channel + WAAS unit you have in your phone or buy in a sports store.

A Real Time Kinematic system can do mm (on a good day with a following wind) but they cost 20x as much!

My post wasn't totally clear - I meant people ALSO wonder why an RTK is $10,000 when you can build your own for a lot less ([http://blog.makezine.com/2009/11/12/diy-real-time- kinematic-...](http://blog.makezine.com/2009/11/12/diy-real-time-kinematic- gps/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really really hope they keep develop sketch up and keep it at par with google's simplicity and speed and price. One more down.</comment>


How to Use Generators – batching, cancellation, pause/resume - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bloomca.me/2017/12/19/how-to-use-generators.html <comment><USER2> I find it interesting that the concepts of generators being added to languages after the fact (that is not a fundamental part of the language) leads to such complex difficulties in their use.

Icon and UnIcon are examples where generators and co-expressions are fundamental to the language and so are used throughout most of your programs as a natural part of writing solutions to the problems being solved.

I find it interesting that iterators are such a big thing when they are just generators in Icon/UnIcon. I have seen many examples written in JS where map and lambda functions are used and the equivalent in Icon/UnIcon is a simple generator to get the same results.

Icon has been around since the early 80's (as the successor of SNOBOL4) and UnIcon as a separate project since around 2000. I should remark that the UnIcon translates UnIcon programs to Icon.

Goes to show that there is still much life in some of these older languages.</comment>


Ask HN: simple computer for less-tech-savvy elders - <AUTHOR>

What would it look like?
Longer version: If you've helped your parents or grandparents set up a computer...
1) What have you found they need help with most (e.g. setting up wifi, dealing with malware, installing SW, generally understanding UIs)?
2) What apps or features do they use or would like to use most (e.g. photo sharing, video chat, email, news, web browsing, prescription reminders, personal finance SW)?
3) What form factor do you think they'd find most convenient (e.g. desktop, laptop, phone, photo frame, set-top box+TV)? Any other opinions on the HW? <comment><USER2> I did this recently. What i did was just get them a macbook pro 15 inches (easier to see the larger screen). Increase the default font sizes until they are comfortable. Setup USB based speakers into a hub and plug as much as you can into that one hub so there is only ONE cable connection other than power that they need to remember to connect the laptop once it is on the desk. I then labeled that end with one of those small labeling machines so they don't get confused. Using a weirdly colored usb cable also helps, so you can say did you plug in the RED one over the phone?

Wireless setup as easy as it is on the mac was done by me to make sure they are secure. Make sure to configure the guest account if you get the more expensive airport router extreme, this way they can allow anyone to surf without having to open up the entire network.

They were setup on a gmail account that tied into the standard apple Mail software via IMAP so that they can check their mail from anywhere.

Their small digital camera was setup to import into Iphoto and they seemed to really like that. I removed any icons from the desktop and dock that they did not use. So basically they have finder, safari, mail, iphoto, ical, itunes, and chat.

I advised them not to use personal finance software on this thing due to their lack of experience with it. They prefer paper statements and going into the bank. Some of the spam emails look so authentic that they might get confused and make a mistake if I tried to have them start using online banking.

I also installed logmein software (they have a free version) that allows you to show them remotely how to do certain things and they seem to appreciate that quite a bit.

Backups are done via superduper, I am still considering an online backup service for them but have not gotten around to that just yet.

Games to occupy the grandchildren were also added so they can enjoy that with the kids. Adding a remote wireless apple keyboard is probably going to be a good idea since the kids tend to bang on things they should not.

Importing their music into Itunes also made them happy.

Behind the scenes with their permission you can also probably setup an automated rsync or rsnapshot to a remote server.

<comment><USER3> Time Machine is a great solution for local backup, and it's built-in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) What the internet is, how to use it, how to protect themselves, how to find what they want.

2) Email, crafty/informational websites, getting pictures onto/off of cameras and adding annotations to pictures.

3) Screen size, resolution and DPI is absolutely important. Nothing smaller than 17" 4:3. The other important thing is input devices. Trackballs are difficult to use, and the biggest thing I had to help with was "accidental clicks." They would be able to move the mouse around fine, but resting their hand on it, they would accidentally rest too hard on the mouse and click when they really didn't want/mean to be. Apple mice seemed to be much worse for them since there was no clear button. Ideally, a button on the side that could be hit with the thumb would probably be the best fix, but I'm not sure how comfortable it would be for extended use.

My entire family, and extended family, are very much not on the techy side of things. I've slowly been getting everyone who cares to set up and running, and for most of them it's been a matter of showing them how to get what they want to get. My grandma actually ended up starting her own mailing list sending out daily information she found about knitting/quilting/oil painting. I'm in the process of helping her get familiar with running a blog, and she's actually really excited about it.

The absolute biggest thing that is needed is just education. Not how to use the computer, that can be picked up, but how to try to do things they don't know (ie, what's not safe, what is probably safe and how to restore to a reasonable state if it all breaks). And the most important educational piece...how to get help with a problem. From what they did intentionally, what they saw, the current status, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://pawpawmail.com/about/PPMIntro.html?utm_source=google&...](http://pawpawmail.com/about/PPMIntro.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=managed&utm_term=grandparents+email&gclid=CIuo_qG2sZ0CFRnyDAoddH5e8g) is an interesting idea.</comment>


Yale Climate Opinion Maps - <AUTHOR> https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/ <comment><USER2> Select "Global warming is mostly caused by human activities" if you want to see disagreement.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really amazing visualization; very encouraging to see.</comment>


Write your own - <AUTHOR> http://www.federicopereiro.com/write/ <comment><USER2> "... in programming there is a widespread first order theory that one shouldn't build one's own tools, languages, and especially operating systems. This is true --- an incredible amount of time and energy has gone down these ratholes. On the second hand, if you can build your own tools, languages, and operating systems you absolutely should because the leverage that can be obtained (and often the time not wasted in trying to fix other people's not quite right tools) can be incredible."

\- Alan Kay, in [http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting perspective.

Thanks for sharing!</comment></comment>


Let the Cooking Robot Handle Your Dinner Today - <AUTHOR> Announcing OneCook, which is launched on Kickstarter. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tech-no-logic/onecook-the-robotic-private-chef-to-free-your-cook/description)
OneCook is the world first consumer-centered robotic personal chef with patented advanced technology and online ingredient delivery platform. OneCook will allow users to be health conscious without the cooking headache.  The smart software programmed into OneCook uses data about food nutrients and the cooking process to guide the user into reaching their restaurant quality expectations as well as health goals.
Back the project on Kickstarter if you like it.
Or just give a hug by upvoting OneCook on Product Hunt. (Steps: 1. search for "OneCook" on PH. 2.Click "view all" on the right column of search list 3. Go to OneCook and upvote. Done!!!) <comment><USER2> I found your rewards levels pretty interesting. For anyone who didn't look at the page:

Similar to smart phone's data plan, OneCook offers meal plan if you want. Generally, the more food packages and longer period you purchase from our platform, the lesser cost your device will be. For example an unlocked device is $299 but a 12-month meal plan makes the device cost only $99. We recommend you to use our food packages because they come paired with our ready-to-use recipe programs. It saves your time to shop, chop and prepare food. However this is optional, you can still use your own ingredients. If you select a meal plan, each week you will spend at least $25 on our food packages, which equals to 3-4 one serving meals. Of course, similar to your data plan, you can cancel your meal plan to have an unlocked device anytime you want, as long as you pay the cancellation fee depending on the rest period of your meal plan.

Is it not possible to cancel your meal plan?

<comment> tnl-hanlin Hi, thanks for being interested in OneCook!

It is OK to cancel your meal plan. As said, it's like your smart phone's data plan. It's cheaper to get your phone with a data plan, and you can cancel the data plan by paying a cancellation fee.

The cancellation fee is the number of remained weeks of your meal plan * 4. For example, you purchased the $99 with a 12-month plan, it's 52 weeks. So, if you can cancel your plan in the 30th week, then there would be 22 weeks remaining, which means 22 * 4 = 88 dollars as your cancellatioin fee. So the total of your device is 99 + 88 = 187 dollars.</comment></comment>


Implementing a Render Queue for Games - <AUTHOR> http://ploobs.com.br/?p=2378

<comment><USER2> Looks like the page is 500'ing

<comment><AUTHOR> has been fixed</comment></comment>


Microsoft Azure SQL Database provides unparalleled data security in the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-azure-sql-database-provides-unparalleled-data-security-in-the-cloud-with-always-encrypted/ <comment><USER2> Cool!</comment>


Transcriptic - outsourcing basic biology research work - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/13/transcriptics-wild-seed-round-the-internet-was-just-trying-to-throw-money-at-us/

<comment><USER2> At my last wet-bench lab, I was responsible for dissecting and culturing cortical neurons. Sounds cool, right?

The dissection day protocol took 5 hours, start to finish. The largest gap was about 15 minutes as samples trypsonized in a water bath. I could sneak out to the bathroom or grab a snack during this period. The rest of the time was spent stacking, unstacking, pipetting, sloshing, scraping, mixing various liquids inside of sterile bio-safety cabinet.

Every wednesday I would perform this identical protocol and effectively space out for 5 hours at a time, listening to podcasts. Sometimes I would just dream about a robot doing my job. Much of my other duties during the week revolved around these little culture dishes. Neurons require a pretty obnoxious feeding schedule.

I was effectively being paid 30k a year to be a robot. A single purchase of 30k would have saved my lab a lot of money, since it would have replaced me as a tech.

I considered starting a business trying to sell robots to do just this, but decided I didnt have enough robotics knowledge to do it, or capital to start.

Best wishes to these guys!

</comment><comment><USER3> frisco: "This is not a local, social, mobile photosharing app. It's really frustrating to see someone get a PhD in chemistry and decide what the world really needs is a better way to share photos in real time to music."

Clearly a lot of investors thought the same.

<comment><USER4> Companies like transcriptic remind us of why many of us got into tech in the first place. These guys are definitely on the flying cars side of the flying cars vs. 140 characters spectrum.

<comment><USER5> I interviewed at transcriptic but ended up at twitter...so the next time my boss walks by & asks why I'm cranky, I'll say I was supposed to be flying cars instead of manning this giant 140 character machine :))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ps we're _very_ actively hiring! If you're interested, send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com! More info here: <https://www.transcriptic.com/about/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER7> This is exciting. Finally, the Tech world seems to be growing beyond social media (ect...) and moving toward developing actually useful businesses!

It looks like all that Transcriptic does right now is simply put plasmids together. Hopefully, that will change in the future, and they will offer additional services :-)

<comment><USER8> Absolutely! We're excited about opening the whole platform up so that the only limitations on what can be done are the physical capabilities of the robots. Cloning is a small piece of the gigantic array of possibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> @frisco Besides the manual robotic tasks, I could envision workflows that require the worker to do some basic identification in order to proceed. Sounds like something a trained Mechanical Turk or a oDesk worker could do. I have extensive experience with complex crowdsourcing workflows; shoot me an email at my website ( www.aantix.com ) if you ever want bounce ideas off of me..

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember also hearing about a company that was trying to outsource molecular cloning, but with people, not robots. Basically you sent them your DNA and told them what you wanted done and they would bust their ass to do it and send it back to you. Does anyone have a link for this? I can't for the life of me remember the name of the company.

</comment><comment><USER11> Way to go guys!

<comment><USER6> thanks!</comment></comment>


Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens Retiring - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/09/stevens.biography/

<comment><USER2> When talking about Supreme Court nominees it is often repeated that the person has to be a lawyer. Every possible nominee that is being mentioned is a lawyer.

IANAL, but there is nothing that I can find in the constitution to support this. Article 2. Section 2. [the president] "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint... Judges of the supreme Court". This is the only qualification I can find in the constitution for a member of the Supreme Court.

It would be a good idea to have someone with other knowledge and experience on the court. How about a governor or a legislator? What would be good qualifications for a justice who is not a lawyer?</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do if you could live for a 1000 years? - <AUTHOR> I am wondering how we would spend our lives if it became significantly longer, like 1000 years long.<p>Shoot! <comment> T-A I was going to pass on this as "too personal", but thought better of it and dug it out again, mainly due to the "curse" answer, to mention that I could easily spend 1000 years just _reading_ all the books I've bookmarked as "would like to read someday".

Multiply by 5-10x to properly understand the subject matter (it's not fiction I'm talking about). And that's just what's available right now, not counting all the stuff that would keep pouring out while I'm reading.

Along the way, I would obviously want to use my suitably enhanced mind (brain- computer interface, maybe genetic manipulation down the road) to apply what I've learned, and contribute to the subjects I've found most interesting. And go places, obviously - with centuries to burn, the solar system would be well within reach, maybe even the stars.

1000 years is not nearly enough.

</comment><comment><USER2> What a horrible curse!

At 50, life is already borderline boring -- even another 50 years would be almost unbearable. So another 950 years? Damn.

I'd probably spend most of it counseling younger people not to have too much fun -- lest they lose the capacity for it.

And maybe finish my book. With that much time I wouldn't really have any legit excuses left.

</comment><comment><USER3> My priority would be acquiring and amassing power through politics. Why? Right now, I don't worry too much about the politicians who screw things up because a few more years, I'm gone.

However, for hundreds of years... Living under the capricious whims of often thoughtless people? It'll be torture.</comment>


Ask HN: Good idea to save journalism? - <AUTHOR>

I just had this thought. Journalism is about bringing answers to people. Right now, journalism makes money through advertising, so they have to find the questions everyone wants or the ideas that are so new, people don't know to ask the questions.
But there are lots of valuable answers to questions that aren't asked by the masses.  For example, I want to know everything there is about a particular competitor or business leader.  A journalist could go do the research and compile an article that answers my question.
Would this end-to-end journalism, where individuals or companies have questions they are willing to pay to be answered help journalists provide their information in a more valuable way?
Is this being done already?  I know you can pay for reports from companies like Gartner, Forrester, etc.  Perhaps bringing that business model to the individual journalist could help...
I don't know if this is even the right forum for figuring this sort of thing out, but I know the topic of saving journalism has been in the air around here.  Thoughts? <comment><USER2> You aren't talking about Journalism you're talking about research and you can already hire a researcher.

Journalism isn't about finding answers it's about finding truth. Despite what people think of him now Richard Nixon was a tremendously popular President (the electoral vote count in '72 was 570 to 17) so most were not asking for him to be exposed. But Journalists did and it was exactly what they should have been doing.

The problem with Journalism now is it's been corrupted. Now we have Liberal MSNBC and Conservative Fox News and they both are just spin machines for their side's agenda. That's where tech comes in because people simply don't trust Journalists anymore so they are looking more and more to other sources.

As for saving journalism I don't think true journalism needs it. My favorite modern example of true journalism is Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack". During the 2004 election it was recommeneded by both the Bush and Kerry camps and it was a best seller because of it.

Because truth appeals to everyone.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the truth does appeal to everyone. If it did, then most people would view a mix of media from different viewpoints.

But that just isn't what people do. Most liberals read the NYT and NPR while conservatives watch Fox and listen to Rush. I think most people just want their viewpoints confirmed.

<comment><USER2> I don't think that's true. To give an example of what I mean look at Fox News. FN maintained their support for George W. Bush throughout his Presidency. But most Conservatives started to turn during the last half of his fourth quarter. That wouldn't happen if people weren't looking for the truth beyond their bias.

As a matter of fact, if you got the Fox News viewership together I think you'd find most would say they seek out FN because they feel the regular media is biased and want to hear the other side of things (they might subconciously be seeking out like minded news but at least their concious mind is looking for unbiased news). The fact that they need to seek out another biased source to get information indicates to me that they're seeking truth and just can't find it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think journalists should be treated like most other professions and have certificications and standards that must be maintained. I'm sick of turning on Fox News (or CNN, for that matter) and watching their anchors spew out factually inaccurate commentary that gets passed off as "news". I think that if journalists make false statements then they should get "disbarred" or lose their license to practice journalism.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd define journalism (not cynically at all) as having the objective of filtering through all the stuff that is going on and telling us what is important AND what is not important.

In essence it's not what was not in the paper at all but what was in the 2" article on D4 that makes the strongest statement about journalistic values. We know what's on page A1 -- it's the big story that everyone would hear about even w/o journalists. But the stuff that is buried is where the paper pats us on the head and says "let someone else worry about that little detail".

I'm thinking of trying to figure out a way to make some sort of tag cloud view based on the above -- maybe showing "important" stuff on the left and "unimportant" stuff on the right. Both statements are equally significant and subject to the same editorial discretion.

</comment><comment><USER6> IMHO, the way to "save journalism", for journalists to make money, is for journalists to actually do good, unique, and valuable. (Yup, all three. If they can't do all three, then the last two.) You know, the stuff that chin- tuggers always talk about but rarely do.

I recommend www.buzzmachine.com for discussion on this topic.

BTW - Journalism isn't suffering from a shortage of ideas. It's suffering from a shortage of folks willing to actually do. (Part of the problem is that many of the powers that be "paid their dues" during a golden age as far as money and power goes.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Niche journalism. I like it.

I'm not an expert on journalism, but I think this is happening to some degree already. Major TV stations have industry analysts covering their industries. I suspect that any more drilling down would result in journalists not having enough 'good' stories to be economical for them. Journalism works for the journalists because they can gravitate towards the stories wherever they are happening. Journalism for hire is probably closer to private investigators, corporate spies, or market research firms.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right, niche journalism. Could be called research. Perhaps a community of people could ask questions and they could contribute a certain amount of funds to the answer. When the amount of money people are willing to pay for the answer gets to the right amount, then a journalist "adopts" the question and finds the answer.

The community who wants the answer could evaluate the truthiness of the article/research and the article writer could gain credibility. Perhaps they could even leave the article up and people in the future could pay to see what was written.

It's not unlike the situation now with custom web development. Hackers are paid to write code. These journalists would be paid to write articles. Similarly, lots of problems the Hacker will solve require research and analysis becore the problem can be solved effectively.

Seems like a marketplace problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem that journalism is facing is that their market is over saturated. You can get the same news from thousands of sources

<comment><USER9> There'll be huge consolidation in the "generic" news market that's for sure.

But there IS still a market for in depth quality journalism, you just have to pay for it. The atlantic, new yorker are examples. People will pay for high quality journalism. The problem is that most journalism is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

To give an example of high quality journalism Here's what I subscribe to: <http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/>

_\- Laphams quarterly._ Quarterly journal that covers a topic through essays/letters/speeches of those from the past. The war issue has churchill, patton, george orwell, sun tzu, etc. The money issue henry ford, aristophanes, jane austin. The insight is excellent.

<http://www.economist.com>

 _\- The economist._ A classic that covers business and the world in a no bullshit way. They. Don't. Do. Gimmicks.

<http://www.monocle.com>

 _\- Monocle_ a briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design. This magazine has me addicted and paying $150/Yr. Why? The first issue had an interview with the ceo of lego on innovation. Every single issue there's thoughtful intelligent reportage on some interesting but non-obvious subject. (Like Lego, or japanese retail, or the falkland islands). There's something intangible about the magazine, it deserves a look.

In summary, is journalism dead? No. Most are just incompetent at it. Become competent at creating a quality product and you can make money.

<comment><USER10> _The economist. A classic that covers business and the world in a no bullshit way._

I have to say, the podcast "Global Forecast from the Economist Intelligence Unit" is insightful, dares to make predictions, and seems to know what the heck they are talking about.

(BTW: "speeches" - no 'a')

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _A journalist could go do the research and compile an article that answers my question._

I think the position you're looking for is "librarian"

<comment><AUTHOR> A librarian is close and I love them and use them a lot. It still takes time for me to read the books and comb through that info to find what is relevant to the particular question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why save journalism at all? It's not in any danger. Some big companies that used to have monopolies on journalism _are_ in danger, that's all.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not journalism I'm trying to save, but rather the journalists. I suppose in any industry, the cream of the crop will always have jobs. I was trying to think of a way to help journalists continue doing what they love: writing, researching, finding truth... while aligning that desire with something of value to the world.

I think the value of traditional journalism is declining. What we traditionally label journalism is actually just entertainment these days. Their goal is lots of eyeballs, not truth or any of that.

But there are people who do need truth or answers and would be willing to pay someone to help them find it. I saw a "Market Research" category at elance, that might be the ticket...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://spot.us> is trying something interesting but I simply dont know if their scope is large enough

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is quite in line with the idea actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> the problem with journalism is the disruptive technology of the internet to its old distribution system and how it changed the way we consume news.</comment>


Ask HN: Any YC W2011 applicants heard back yet? - <AUTHOR>

post your results here if so ... I hope we can get a working list of who/what got accepted to an interview and who got turned down ... could be a great post to archive and check again in 5-10 years :) <comment><USER2> We'll tell people this evening.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can also view many of the applicant videos over at WikiTorrents.org: <http://wikitorrents.org/wiki/ycombinator_applicants>

<comment><AUTHOR> saw the site ... like the idea but could not find how to edit the page and add my link even after i signed up

<comment><USER3> There is a login button next to the top logo. You need to login separately for the wiki as for the rest of the site. It's an integration issue we're working on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not as of yet - we have a form/spreadsheet going that keeps track of this, go fill it in here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1862266>

</comment><comment><USER5> I have rejected.. There's always next year. KEEP ON HACKING! :P

</comment><comment><USER6> I have - rejected.</comment>


Technical Debt Doesn't Disappear - <AUTHOR> http://caseysoftware.com/blog/technical-debt-doesn039t-disappear <comment><USER2> Legacy systems are hard. Being able to work effectively with them is something they don't really teach you in school. Probably because it's entirely frustrating, complicated, and a big turn off even for seasoned programmers. It's a bit of a black art and there's little joy or glory in being good at it. Except perhaps that the job market for your specialty is pretty small and will always be in demand.

For a good read on the subject, try "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Micheal C. Feathers.

I prefer the term "technical baggage," over "technical debt." This is mainly because debt refers to an economic means of borrowing a sum of future purchasing power. This breaks down when referring to the cost of engineering decisions. The cost of maintaining legacy systems tends to increase with time and you cannot calculate any sum to borrow based on assets or secured revenue. The decisions you make now will haunt your business for a long time to come. Poor technical decisions are simply something you will have to learn to live with.

When dealing with legacy systems from a business perspective, the question one has to ask is, "how valuable is it to maintain and enhance the existing system going forward?" In other words, when will the costs of continuing development of your legacy system outweigh the revenue it generates? For large systems found in banks and insurance companies it can be a very long time. For small businesses it is much shorter than you think.

FWIW, it seemed to me that Netscape simply made the decision to start from scratch too late. The revenue they were generating from their old code base had trickled off too long and dipped below their operating costs before the warning signs went up. I don't think it makes a compelling argument against re-writing.

As someone supporting a legacy system, it sometimes makes sense to re-write the system. Treat the existing system as a prototype and derive the minimum viable product from it to start with. Spin it off as a new product, set an shut-off date for the old software, and convert your customers. Obviously this doesn't work for every scenario; so YMMV. Just be smart about it and use evidence to back up your assumptions. Sometimes simply writing a legacy compatibility layer and porting the most painful bits of code slowly is the key. Re-writing certainly isn't for everyone.

<comment><USER3> _I prefer the term "technical baggage," over "technical debt."_

Yes, but sometimes, this stuff actually compounds!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to work for a startup that rewrote its products all the time. It was a huge mess with all the consequences outlines in the article.

The problem was not the rewriting itself but the lack of understanding how things went wrong the first time. From my experience it is absolutely mandatory to have many deeply introspective and self-critical thought sessions to figure out how you got into the mess. Only if you have clearly identified what went wrong in the past, you will be able to successfully rewrite a project and avoid the mistakes.

For some of the products we did this and rewriting was a huge success. For some others we did not and the rewrite turned out to be just as terrible as the original version. Then we rewrote it again and it was still a mess.

<comment><USER3> _For some of the products we did this and rewriting was a huge success. For some others we did not and the rewrite turned out to be just as terrible as the original version. Then we rewrote it again and it was still a mess._

Assume you're going to get it wrong, and leave yourself an out.

Often the cost of refactoring is much less than the cost of a rewrite. If this isn't the case, then I suggest you look at your language/toolset/coding standards.

Is it possible to get yourself to the point where you no longer have to pay the cost of a complete rewrite? It might even be possible and worth doing a rewrite for the purpose of avoiding future rewrites. (And if you say this is like "a war to end wars," I'll just say that's cute, but wrong.)

Was there ever a "Five Whys" asked about the rewrite?

<comment><USER4> The one product I was mostly involved in needed to be rewritten because it was the result of a quick proof of concept hack that kept growing because people actually bought it. There was literally no separation between GUI, model, or DB backend. Adding to the code was like swimming through molasses.

I took the product over as lead developer and saw no way to save it. It helped that only maybe about 10% of the features we wanted to have were implemented, so two of us managed to do the rewrite in less than six months.

The main focus of this rewrite was indeed to make sure that we would never have to rewrite the product ever again. We kept a very close eye on identifying what went wrong, what design principles can help us to avoid doing things wrong in the future, and how to design for extensibility considering that 90% of the features still have to be added.

In the end the rewrite turned out to be very successful. Until the day I left the company (three years after) no rewrite was ever necessary again. Rather, we managed to keep up the good principles laid down during the rewrite so we could just work on the code incrementally. The product was also the commercially most successful piece of software the startup sold.

<comment><USER3> Yay! Sometimes sanity wins!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A book that I would recommend for refactoring object oriented code (Java in particular) is Refactoring-Improve the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler (a friend to the Go4). Written well and in a simliar format at Design Patterns-Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Go4 (Gang of Four).

</comment><comment><USER6> At my current job I was tasked with making a new framework and transitioning our code over to it. The reason that we decided to actually work on technical debt is because we are growing very rapidly and the old setup is too slow so the customers are actually affected. It was extremely useful to have every technical stakeholder in the design discussion to figure out what features we really need, where we went wrong with the old design, and how to transition properly without spending 10 months. So far so good, we are transitioning a bunch of our code over to the framework and it seems to be working well. Im sure mistakes will be made along the way, but planning with people who made the original mistakes (and subsequently have manned up to them) should help prevent remaking original mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's really about sustainability. Technical debt isn't sustainable. Getting into a situation where you're afraid to fix the old thing because of opportunity costs isn't sustainable. Most often, this is because the cost of testing is too high and/or the cost of the bugs that would probably happen/escape testing would be too high. Quick fixes that get you through the next month at the cost of more technical debt going forward aren't sustainable.

Sustainable practices are smart practices.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do we really need all these articles that urge people to never, ever rewrite anything? (Classic example being Joel's article, which also uses Netscape as an example: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html> .)

Managers and business users hate rewerites as it is. That's part of the reason there is so much horrendous legacy code out there. Often, people who have the authority to make decisions about rewriting something don't interaface with the code, don't understand undetlying issues, don't see what was changed in technological context since the code was written.

In my own experience, most of the rewrites were totally worth it. It wasn't just because the code became better, it was because the understanding of the problem has matured. People were able to understand the problem better, so were were able to write better code to solve it.

<comment><USER8> I've found the opposite to be true: Managers and Business Users LOVE the re- write, because it's easy to tell themselves the calming little lies.

Lies like "We already know what it should do!" and "We don't need to maintain the legacy, your issue will be fixed in the New System" and "There won't need to be any changes to business processes!"

I have never seen a re-write done with a greater understanding of the problem. In every case I've observed, the non-developer stakeholders start insisting on features working exactly as before OR start adding new, wonderful features from the get go. It results in a mess that solves NOTHING.

The debt metaphor is very apt. You can declare bankruptcy on your technical debt and walk away... But your tech credit history (IE your business systems) are a mess, your creditors (users) start to hate and mistrust you, and starting anything fresh becomes complicated beyond belief.

Re-writes suck. They SUUUUUCK. And people persist in doing them. That's why we keep needing these articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that architects and developers often forget the basics software development when planning rewrites. Because they've been working on the product for so long, they think the normal rules of working iteratively and getting feedback don't apply. They try to replicate the entire existing system at a point in time, turning the rewrite into a waterfall project. Then they're surprised when things they fall behind and can't adjust. You're better off in almost all cases to break it up and approach the problem as refactoring instead.

When I was an "e-business" consultant, we had a saying: "Six month projects take nine months, twelve month projects take eighteen months, and two year projects get canceled." If your rewrite is projected to take over a year, you're in huge trouble.

</comment><comment><USER10> > The scariest problem is our project_list_data function with Cyclomatic > Complexity of 145 million.. which is down from 195 million. It "passes" data > in via a series of globals and "returns" data the same way. Don't worry, > we're working on it.

Is this meant to be sarcasm? Because if not, thats an insanely huge function. I imagine most compilers would choke on it...

<comment><USER11> No... it's not sarcasm at all. It's a ridiculously complex function with nested-nested-nested conditionals in nested-nested loops.

It makes puppies cry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This hits home. I was brought into a company to work on a product together with an other new hire, and the company decided that we would go and do a rewrite – for this decision I was partially to blame. Six months later we were stuck with a failing 'classic' site that had barely been maintained, angry customers and nothing to show for it. Lessons learnt.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone know of a link to the mentioned talk? The one given ( <http://joind.in/talk/view/2418> ) is just the conference description.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is rather concerning the presentation of the text: Did anyone else find the black font of this size on green background disturbing for the eyes? Selecting the text helps, though...</comment>


Video: Notion Ink Adam, iPad alternative - <AUTHOR> http://www.technoholik.com/news/sneak-peek-video-notion-ink-adam/

<comment><USER2> When there is a device like this that I can walk into a store and play with before buying as well as have access to thousands of quality applications that make my life easier or more fun then I'll consider it a competitor to the iPad. Until then this is nothing more then a cool gadget that likely won't see the light of day inside any major retailer.

The iPad is currently the only "tablet" that will ever see mass consumer adoption for a few reasons: 1. Apple is releasing it (meaning it's hyped up, has that cool factor, and you can go play with one in any Apple store first), 2. The app store is unlike anything else out there, and 3. The user experience on the iPad/iPhone is superior to anything else out there right now.

This doesn't mean the Adam won't be cool, but why would any "regular" consumer (meaning not Hacker News readers or anyone like us) consider buying one, or hell, how would they even know it exists?

<comment><USER3> >The app store is unlike anything else out there,

If you run Ubuntu on the Adam, I'm pretty sure the internet w/o limitations > the app store.

<comment><USER4> It's always been amazing to me that Apple has managed to convince a sizable number of otherwise intelligent people that a walled garden, tightly controlled by an overbearing schoolmarm, is preferable to the Internet and a totally free market.

The app store is a huge bug, not a feature. It's just plain bad for developers (because Apple owns yours customers and the pipeline to those customers, and can cut you off without warning if you happen to compete with them or do something they don't like), and bad for consumers (because the approval process slows updates, puts a filter in the relationship between developer and user, keeps useful applications out of users hands, and insures that Open Source applications have almost no room in the market). If consumers (and developers) were smarter, it would be a killer bug; one that prevented anyone from ever buying an iPhone or iPad or developing for it. But, people don't always act in their own best long-term interest, if the packaging is pretty enough.

<comment><USER5> What amazes me is the number of otherwise-apparently-intelligent people who appear to honestly believe that Apple users are just vapid trendoids who are fooled by all the pretty colors. Strangely, none of them seem to have figured out how to slap the same pretty colors onto their otherwise-superior products/platforms and carve out a chunk of the vapid trendoid market for themselves. How hard can it be?

<comment><USER4> _Apple users are just vapid trendoids who are fooled by all the pretty colors._

You said it, not me.

I never said anything about the quality of Apple products. I mentioned one very specific, but serious, bug in the Apple iPhone/iPad products. I'm not saying Apple doesn't make beautiful products, or even that their products are poor quality (with a pretty face). I said that the App Market is a bug, not a feature, and that I'm surprised that anyone would consider it a positive market trend. I also implied that I'm disappointed that many people who I otherwise respect, have fallen into the trap of being sharecroppers on Apple's land. I'm disappointed because they're enabling what I consider a power shift in the wrong direction (back towards big corporations, and away from consumers and independent developers).

Your argument is not relevant to my comment, and I don't have any opinion on vapid trendoids and their choice of computer, phone, or tablet. You can argue with someone else about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks like it's going to be technically quite impressive versus the iPad: Pixel Qi screen[1024x600], multi-touch (plus a backside trackpad!), camera, 3 USB ports, running Android, Ubuntu, or Chromium, with a dual-core 1Ghz Tegra CPU + GPU.

More specs: [http://www.technoholik.com/news/exclusive-a-sneak-peek-at- th...](http://www.technoholik.com/news/exclusive-a-sneak-peek-at-the-notion- ink-adam-tablet-specs-pics/)

<comment><USER7> _running Android, Ubuntu, or Chromium_

Then its not an iPad competitor or alternative. It might be a tablet, but it is not in the same market as Apple is in with the iPad. None of these three OS's is a drastic change from what a computer is or how a computer is currently used, which the iPad is shaping up to be.

<comment><USER8> In what way is the iPad OS so different from a traditional desktop OS that Android or Chrome are not?

<comment><USER7> Android has a file browser. Plus, it seems to be designed around small, portable devices. Which the iPad (and the tablet in the video) isn't.

And are there any devices with ChromeOS available or about to be available in the next month or two? It was announced months and months ago. Can you write apps specifically targeting it yet? Do you even want to? What kind of device is Google targeting with ChromeOS? Whatever it can fit on? How is a ChromeOS app different from an HTML5 app on the iPad?

I don't even know what Google's intentions with ChromeOS are. At least with Android, theres some sort of direction, even if it does get hijacked and thrown away by other companies. With the iPad, you know what market the OS is aimed at. Not so with ChromeOS or Android, to a lesser degree.

<comment><USER9> Android does _not_ come with a file browser, although there are third party file browsers available in the Android Market. By default, all access to files on the SD card are through the individual that manage those types of files. For example, there's a built in service that index's all media files (mp3s, AAC's, etc) and presents them, with metadata, to any app that wants them. Same goes for pictures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> WOW, a real computer actually.

This is pretty much what I was expecting the iPad was going to be instead of just an oversized ipod touch that doesn't run real applications but a bunch of jokes from the app store.

After the iPad was officially announced I thought I was going to have to get a joojoo instead but this looks way more promising.I think I will wait a few months then.

<comment><USER11> > I thought I was going to have to get a joojoo instead

You could always just not get a tablet thing and make do with whatever technology you already have. The stuff we have now seems to work OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The camera is one of those things that makes you say "why didn't I think of that first."

I was kinda allergic to all the tablet hype that is surrounding the tech scene lately, but this really makes me consider one. I want one, actually.

<comment><USER13> Swiveling cameras are not a new idea, Sony picture books had one at least ten years ago: [http://www.transmetazone.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=381&#...</a>

<comment><USER14> He mentions in the video that he filed a patent for it not so long ago.

I suppose there might prove to be a few problems there that may ultimately end up delaying its release, or worse, killing it altogether.

<comment><USER15> Filing a patent != having a patent. The Sony device is clearly prior art. I had one of those Sony's, BTW.

I can't believe anyone would compare this device favorably vs. an iPad. That's willful ignorance, I guess.

<comment><USER16> I will happily compare it favorably vs the iPad for two simple reasons. 1. Better screen for what I'll be using it for and 2. more open and thus easier to make it work the way I want a tablet to work.

Will it outsell the iPad? No. To want this device more than an iPad? Very much so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is _exactly_ what I was hoping for from the Apple Tablet.

<comment><USER18> I agree with you to a degree. I would like the Apple Tablet to have those features except I want the Apple tablet to have the same screen that it does now. I know that a good portion of HN readers appreciate the difference between a TN Screen and the IPS screen that Apple is putting in the iPad. The epaper screen in this tablet is just not the way that apple wants to go with a tablet. It's also a direction that I don't think that apple should go because battery life and readability in direct sunlight are the only real draws to the epaper screen.

The real thing that makes an ebook readable on a computer screen is dpi and the dpi on the iPhone is good and they continued this with the iPad. This is not to say that the kindle et al are not readable but they give up a lot just to be good book readers. The iPad is not aiming to be just a ebook reader. It's aiming to be a portable media device.

<comment><USER19> This has a Pixel Qi screen not a e-ink screen. (The OLPC screen has the same technology.)

It has the same reaction speed as a LCD. I'm not sure how good the colour mode is (probably TN level). The monochrome mode has 3 times the DPI (because of each RGB sub-pixel).

About e-ink readers: it's not the DPI. They generally have 160dpi which is lower than many mobile LCDs. For example the N770 I used to read on had a 225 dpi screen but I'm still faster on e-ink. I'm not sure what it is, it might just be the lack of backlight.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the clarification on the Qi screen. There are a few factors that make ebook screens usable in my opinion. I would say that you need a certain level of dpi to handle small font rendering well. After a certain threshold I don't know if it benefits you as much. The second factor is screen size the n770 had a 4.1" screen which leads to a lot of context switches. The kindle has 167ppi on a 6" screen. The kindle screen allows for much less context switches which are jarring to the mind. (context switch in this example would be turning the page) With the iPad's 10" screen the context switches will be much less even still. (Though the iPad has the least ppi of all the devices I mentioned I think it should be over the minimum threshold for readability)

<comment><USER20> I hold a 24" monitor in my lap and read e-books in a 6 pt font. I context switch far less than I would with an iPad ergo my lap monitor > your iPad.

I do not understand what your point is beyond fanboyism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The swivel camera is a good idea.

It's tough to really love the thing without more information.

Oh, I love the comparison in sunlight to a macbook ... whose brightness was clearly turned down quite a bit.

<comment><USER22> Why do you think the brightness was turned down? Have you ever tried to use a macbook in bright sunlight? It's unreadable. In fact I was surprised by how clear the macbook screen was so I'd guess they had the brightness jacked right up.

Cameras don't always accurately reflect what the human eye would see but an LCD backlight simply can't compete with bright sunlight. The Pixel Qi is effectively acting as a mirror for that light.

edit: this video from last June has a good comparison with the kindle and a transflective screen right at the start and a standard LCD touchscreen at 5:20

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oawX3wenxNc>

<comment><USER21> I didn't think that the MacBook was actually in direct light. In fact from the angles it actually seemed to be shilouetted. The one time I did try to use a MacBook in direct sunlight, I found that turning the brightness off completely sort of worked ok. But then I just got up and moved somewhere else in the shadows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like the touchscreen on the back side. I can see that catching on with other tablets.

The screen that works in direct sunlight is nice too. I'm looking forward to the day I can get one of those on my laptop.

</comment><comment><USER24> What I'd like is a device that can fold (but has a seamless screen when unfolded) so it fits more easily in small places. Also you can type and have part of the screen angled up at you (this would still be an ergonomic nightmare for as a 6'4" guy wanting to improve his posture, but less of one than a purely flat item).

I'd also like one I can set up as a small tv screen (in-built stand) and remote mouse/trackpad so I can surf you-tube without having to hold it up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> More links <http://www.slashgear.com/notion-ink-adam-hands-on-0969281/>

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/notion-ink-adam- stripped-...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/notion-ink-adam-stripped- bare-and-our-in-depth-video-hands-on/)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9fPc1yGSU>

</comment><comment><USER20> I really really like how they actually spent time thinking about how people will use the device instead of spending man years being concerned about how the bezel looks with aluminum hi-lights.

Trackpad on the back? Brilliant!

Pixel Qi display so I can read in sunlight? Awesome!

3 USB ports, why? 1 for keyboard, 1 for mouse and 1 for a thumb drive. Fantastic!

Now sell it for $250 and I'll have it in my backpack tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you're interested in more behind the display interaction check out the LucidTouch project. [http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects/lucidtouch/index.htm...](http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects/lucidtouch/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> Prima facie, the key feature of the Adam seems to be that it's much more Open than the iPad. That sounds awesome! Plain Ubuntu + touchscreen + whatever I can do == wow.

</comment><comment><USER27> That swivel camera would be a nice addition to the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is awesome, I can read books, watch videos in my backyard under the sun. I want this tablet</comment>