Apple Design Awards 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/

<comment><USER2> I totally agree with Monument Valley. One of the most beautiful and unique games I've played in a long time, it's also a great example that you don't need to push a lot of pixels if you have good artists.

<comment><USER3> I agree it looks pretty but it took me 40 minutes to complete all ten levels. Thats not very good value for money.

<comment><USER4> 40 minutes for a couple of bucks, you ever been to an amusement arcade?

Not good value for money!! AN APP!!! And on HN as well. Unbelievable

<comment><USER3> I get your point but I think this is more about potential. After 40 minutes you feel slightly deflated that it was the end of the game.

If you compared it to Cut The Rope for example there's a lot more potential realised there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice to see an appearance for Threes - the developers deserve a bit of recognition after 2048 went crazy, and Threes is a really nice user experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> So happy about Threes. Such an underrated game. Almost addictive but not quite; slick, classy, fun, kinda cute game. Great work. Well done!

<comment><USER7> It is, but increasingly I've seen far, far more people playing 2048 than Threes. Which, IIRC, is a wrapped webapp.

Not that it's strictly relevant to the Apple Design Awards, but perhaps a reminder that it doesn't necessarily matter whether you win or not.

<comment><USER8> 2048 is free with ads. Of course more people are playing it.

This award (and all the others given out this year) was nevertheless a nice recovery from Apple (compared to last years' winners which were pretty crappy), showing what they value and telling the world about it.

I hope they continue to show off these values in the editorial decisions they will make in the App Store in the future (but they have been relatively good about that in the past, with a few missteps).

<comment><USER9> I have both on my phone. Honestly, I find 2048 to the better game.

<comment><USER8> It's an easier game. That makes it a better game for some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good to see Blek on there. One of the most interesting and unique games I've played in a while, and it's absolutely beautifully designed.

I haven't seen too many people talking about it on HN even though it's been near the top of the charts in the app store recently: definitely check it out if you have a chance!

<comment><USER11> just picked it up and it's quite good. super interesting game mechanic and not one that I have played before.

<comment><USER10> I love the mechanic and it actually took me a bit of time to fully grasp how it works (although perhaps I'm a bit slow).

Just in case you haven't realized, the line that you draw will continue the _exact_ pattern that you draw, no matter what you draw, until you release or connect the line with a dot. There is a time limit on drawing but you have a lot of time.

I had originally assumed that some kind of physics were applied to the line once you release it but this is not the case.

Once I realized how the game worked, I got really into finding elegant solutions for the later levels. You can "cheat" many of the levels with ugly solutions, but there's almost always a very simple pattern you can draw that will solve the level. Finding these simple patterns is extremely satisfying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Monument Valley and Yahoo News Digest are both really nicely done. Definitely deserving of the award (not that the others aren't, I just haven't used most of them).

</comment><comment><USER12> Monument Valley was one of the best mobile gaming experiences I have ever had. My jaw literally dropped a few times at the clever reveals.

</comment><comment><USER13> Monument Valley is one of the most beautiful and serene games I've ever played.

</comment><comment><USER14> I definitely recommend checking out the ADA winners if you're an app developer. It's really good to see what Apple deems award-winning, and can be very inspiring for your own work.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sky guide looks great. Hadn't heard of it before but can't wait to download and give it a try tonight. Anyone else using it?

<comment><USER8> It's excellent! The attention to detail is awesome, as is the thoughtfulness put into each and every feature (and the feature selection). Plus, the dev is super nice and friendly when you report bugs to them.

I have gained a much better understanding of what I see in the sky. It's nice to be able to pull up this app as soon as you see something in the sky and be able to tell what it is. Of course, other apps do that, too, but none do it as nicely.

I recommend going ISS watching with it. (Requires an IAP, I think, but as always app prices are disastrously low.) The ISS is really bright and easy to see, plus the thought of six people soaring by up there is quite uplifting. And without the app this would always be a thing you have to plan for, not a thing you accidentally see after dinner, then walk out to the big town square to see the ISS go by with the people you were eating with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's most interesting to me about this is that not a single one of these apps is a free-to-play app. Freemium apps have a lot of room to grow on the design front and this could be a serious differentiator for certain apps.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm no Apple fan, but seeing Threes in the list..

I have to admit, thumbs up

</comment><comment><USER18> Device 6 is amazing. Reminded me of a David Lynch movie.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Adding further polish are cClever sound effects and a catchy music score add > further polish.

Might want to have a look at that copyediting.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looking at the winners there doesn't seem to be anything massively inspiring and only one dedicated OSX app.

I'm not sure how much of a big deal these awards are.

<comment><USER20> I agree, they are kind of like the obvious choices. But then again, you can only innovate in the boundaries of the App Store approval.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but they are quite large boundaries, given that it has over 1 millions apps in all kinds of genres and ideas.

If you can't innovate within those boundaries then you might be Frank Zappa or The Residents but you're not Jimi Hendrix or The Beatles. That is, you might be too wild for your own good.</comment></comment></comment>


Parallel Haskell Digest #2: Haskell threading & concurrency primer - <AUTHOR> http://www.well-typed.com/blog/53

<comment><AUTHOR> That blog is actually up to Digest #6, but #2 was more accessible to people curious about Haskell but unfamiliar with its code. Lots of good stuff in all the Digests though, if you're interested in Haskell's concurrency & parallelism.</comment>


3D interactive anatomy - anatronica.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.anatronica.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to hear what you think about this?</comment>


Bitcoin drops below $9000 on Coinbase - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/01/bitcoin-drops-9-percent-nears-crucial-make-or-break-level-of-9000.html <comment><USER2> Dear lord, we haven't seen prices this low since...

...November... I think it was just last November.

<comment><USER3> Well it was nearly $20k in December, so I'd say having it fall below $9k less than 2 months later is pretty significant.

<comment><USER4> Not when it was that price 2 months earlier. Why wouldn't you expect a rapid decent immediately following a skyrocket?

<comment><USER5> Because currencies aren't supposed to fluctuate by 50% in a 1 month span.

<comment><USER4> I agree and following that reasoning a 50% upward trend should be very alarming because it screams manipulation.

When an event like that occurs you should very much expect a correction, and when that correction occurs it should be expected and not a surprise.

What baffles me is that everyone involved in BTC accepted the 50% upward fluctuation. When the obvious correction occurred they were all surprised and started saying just what you did, that currencies aren't suppose to fluctuate by 50% in a month.

How didn't you see this coming and why do you still consider BTC a currency in light of this event?

<comment><USER5> I saw it coming from a mile away. I've thought bitcoin is basically stupid back when it was under $0.01.

<comment><USER4> Why do you consider it a currency?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bitcoin is currently the world's reserve cryptocurrency - All cryptocurrencies can be exchanged for Bitcoin. But unfortunately in technical terms, it's not fit for this purpose.

The reserve cryptocurrency of the internet needs to be fast and offer cheap transactions so that it can easily and cheaply be moved between exchanges.

I think it will take some time before another cryptocurrency takes the place of Bitcoin. Part of the problem is that very few people currently have the skills to evaluate a cryptocurrency based on its technical merits. So exchanges are not currently in a position to agree about what the next reserve cryptocurrency should be.

I think that replacing Bitcoin with Ethereum right now would be a mistake. Ethereum has a lot of big scalability hurdles - I think that technically Ethereum actually has more hurdles to overcome than Bitcoin - Their community does seem a lot more motivated though; but I'm not sure that will be enough. Ethereum still needs to switch to Proof-of-Stake and THEN it needs to implement sharding.

Also, I don't think that pruning will be feasible for Ethereum. It wouldn't make sense to prune the Ethereum blockchain because that would entail pruning out smart contracts. Most no-smart-contract cryptocurrencies are not limited in this way.

<comment><USER7> I think Nano ([https://nano.org](https://nano.org) \-- just rebranded from RaiBlocks) will become one of the biggest arbitrage currencies due to zero fees and its highly scalable architecture (7k+ TPS tested). I've been working my butt off to make sure as many people as possible will be able to build with it as the documentation and ecosystem are currently lacking. See [https://www.nanode.co/node-api](https://www.nanode.co/node-api)

Prunability included.

<comment><USER8> Raiblocks aka Nano is a scam.

"Distribution is complete" \- how was the supply created and distributed?

[https://raiblocks.net/page/frontiers.php?limit=100](https://raiblocks.net/page/frontiers.php?limit=100)

Basically someone created Raiblocks by forking another DAG 'blockchain' database, and allocated themselves millions of coins spread across many addresses. A few thousand coins were given to the public if they clicked captchas.

These people who generated raiblocks / nano are now essentially multi-level marketeers trying to convince you to buy their beanie babies.

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captch...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captcha+)

Remember, anytime you buy a cryptocurrency means someone else is trying to cash out.

<comment><USER9> > anytime you buy a cryptocurrency means someone else is trying to cash out.

The reason people sell stuff is usually to optimize their portfolio construction, not because they think the price is going to go down. Just because you think something is going to go up 10x in the next year doesn't mean it's a good idea to hold onto it.

<comment><USER10> >Just because you think something is going to go up 10x in the next year doesn't mean it's a good idea to hold onto it.

Could you please explain this to me

<comment><USER9> I think Stellar is going to go up 10x by the end of next year. That doesn't make it a good life decision to mortgage my house and put my life savings into XLM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember balking when bitcoin increased from $20 to $30 as too expensive way back in the day. BTC has come so far and appreciated so fast. I find it pretty wild that people are acting like the price has plummeted. While it literally has fallen a non-trivial percentage from its high on the 3 year basis it would be really hard to find anything that had close to this sort of yield.

<comment><USER12> BTC crashed from 19k down to 9k. A lot of people lost a lot of money. Why are you discrediting this? Because BTC was even lower before? How is that related?

<comment><USER13> In the span of a few months....if you invested into BTC _needing_ to make a profit and only being able to hold for a few months you're just asking for it.

<comment><USER12> This is not saying much. Obviously short term positions in a volatile asset are bad. Are you implying that long term positions in BTC are good?

<comment><USER11> Yes, that was what I said exactly. The price was $20-30 dollars and if you were long on that with even a small position you would have made significant money over the long term. BTC has always fluctuated a lot but on average if you held the currency for long periods of time; >1 year, you would have more money than you had previously. It is short term speculators that have always driven volatility.

<comment><USER12> Past performance is not indicative of future returns. We will never again have the same climate for BTC as we had. It is absolutely "wild" for you to treat strong future BTC growth as a foregone conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> scalability is being solved by lightning network which is already seeing alpha testing on the Bitcoin main net (production) I am doing what I have done every big drop in Bitcoin and buying a little each week

just because it performed in the past doesn't mean it will in the future but the same reasons I liked it still exist and are getting stronger. the market will lag behind lightning because people don't realize what it is yet and it might take a year or two but it will be back even stronger than $20k (the first time it's bought by a countries reserve bank it's game over cryotos will beat fiat then)

<comment><USER15> Alternatively, people realize what it is and understand why it doesn't solve any meaningful problems with Bitcoin.

<comment><USER14> people are already using lightning to pay for VPN service instantly with less transaction fee than $0.01 USD, from my perspective this solves the problem of Bitcoin transactions being too expensive to pay for everyday items

<comment><USER15> In order to do that, you had to pay a large transaction fee to set up a Lightning channel in the first place. Since all transactions between you and TorGuard are one-way, you will have to do this repeatedly, paying large transaction fees each time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't worry keep HODLing [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg2oukQZ6dg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg2oukQZ6dg)

</comment><comment><USER17> As predicted in [1] we now have reversed the meme:

[https://i.imgur.com/cjnwruL.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/cjnwruL.jpg)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15987623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15987623)

<comment><USER18> Predictions without a specific timeframe aren't very useful. For a random variable on an infinite domain, all outcomes will eventually be true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Like a ball bouncing down a stairwell.

<comment><USER20> If it looks like a cat, and smells like a corpse...

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

 _Even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height_

That last step is going to be a doozy too. Hopefully this is happening before too many people lose more than they can afford, because of FOMO and the relentless hype.

<comment><USER21> I had considered jumping in if what appears to be support at $9K held. Looks like this cat, though, might not bounce but just drill its way into the earth's crust. Granted, I'm apply analysis that is questionable with stocks, and might be (probably is?) completely inappropriate for cryptocurrency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> At what price would Bitcoin be cheap? I'd be willing to take a flyer with a few $K if I had reason to think there was positive expectancy.

<comment><USER15> There is no floor on Bitcoin's value.

<comment><USER23> Well it probably isn't going to go negative. Probably.

<comment><USER8> Well, mining Bitcoins is a net negative of wasted energy.

Every bit of computer power beyond the minimum threshold of efficiency needed to operate the transactions and database is a net loss.

Peak efficiency of the Bitcoin mining network would be about 3-10 basic desktop computers. Instead Satoshi Nakomoto's Proof of Work will waste more and more energy with nothing to show as time goes on.

<comment><USER24> Do you have a proposal for a cryptocurrency without proof of work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> $9000 is nothing. During the Indian Budget yesterday, bitcoin price was close to $4000 on Zebpay.

[https://www.cryptoground.com/article/btc-price-4000-usd- indi...](https://www.cryptoground.com/article/btc-price-4000-usd-indian- exchange-zebpay)

</comment><comment><USER26> why is it "on Coinbase" ?

<comment><USER27> Because it's only worth what people are willing to pay, and that's how much Coinbase are paying at the moment.

<comment><USER28> Well there are more people that are willing to pay than just Coinbase. A more comprehensive answer would be that arbitrage is not that up to speed in the Bitcoin world, especially in KRW and JPY markets: [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets)

Used to be that crypto is massively overpriced there, now it looks like Korea and Japan are leading this price fall.

<comment><USER29> > A more comprehensive answer would be that arbitrage is not that up to speed > in the Bitcoin world...

Or that folks trust their ability to get money out of Coinbase more than the other exchanges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Patience, hold onto it for another few days lol

</comment><comment><USER31> Hodl? Or Fodl?

<comment><USER32> foldl?

<comment><USER33> foldl' is better

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> oooh .... a race to the door ...

</comment><comment><USER35> Ethereum has the most trading pairs after Bitcoin, and a pretty comprehensive multi-pronged scaling plan. It's the most likely successor to Bitcoin as the reserve cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER36> Why is a reserve cryptocurrency needed?

<comment><USER35> It is just what emerges, because people need a stable high-liquidity currency, for things like an intermediary for trading between lower liquidity currencies, and as a lower-volatility store of value.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple: Blocking Trust for WoSign CA Free SSL Certificate G2 - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202858 <comment><USER2> See also:

"Apple's response to the WoSign incidents" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12617659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12617659) (1 day ago, 38 comments)

"WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla's proposed conclusion" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12582534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12582534) (5 days ago, 247 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> Suppose I should get around to installing LetsEncrypt then</comment>


Tux3 Report: How fast can we fsync? - <AUTHOR> http://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg1977366.html

<comment><USER2> This really makes me hopeful for when they get things further along. From the responses it looks like it even does better right now than the existing FS for building lots of small files, even before they've got the optimizations to store them in their idata structure. BtrFS reaches similar performance by storing the files in the btree that they use it sounds like. This is the same kind of optimization done years ago by ReiserFS storing small files (<4k I think it was?) in the B+ tree they used for storing the file index. Great things ahead it looks like for the Tux3 FS. I wonder how long before they get a better allocator to avoid the fragmentation problems they have.

EDIT: I wonder how much the asyncronous design is affected by devices that support NCQ and/or NVMe? Anybody have anything to test that?

</comment><comment><USER3> The reply comparing with SSD is really interesting: [http://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg1978233.html](http://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg1978233.html) .

But i find the answer too negative with regards to tux3 and how all is better when you just use SSD. Most data is still put on HDD and will be for a while. Testing and showing a superior performance with spinning rust is totally valid, imo. I find it interesting that some "hobby" guys (at least that's my understanding from [https://lwn.net/Articles/531126/](https://lwn.net/Articles/531126/)) are programming and reviewing a file system and getting feedback. Overall i find the answer on the LKML just too unfriendly and rejecting a totally fine test with the nowadays standard answer "but if you just use faster hardware it's different!".

Now it would be interesting to do the Tux3 test with SSD and if that also shows performance improvements or at least the same performance as ext4, that'd be fun :)

<comment><USER4> If you haven't gotten to the much later comment by the same person (Dave Chinner, one of the developers working on XFS), I recommend reading it: he goes into much more depth on the issues involved with seek latency, expains why XFS is slower, and points out that as fragmentation increases (which he points out in the post you link is still entirely ignored by Tux3) the performance of the filesystem will first decrease to that of XFS and then continue past (so you can't say that Tux3 is optimized for usage on spindles vs XFS: it is simply benchmarking really really well on a "new" filesystem).

[http://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg1978216.html](http://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg1978216.html)

<comment><USER3> Well, he says himself "IOWS, XFS just hates your disk. Spend $50 and buy a cheap SSD and the problem goes away. :)". That's the wrong attitude. It's saying "yes, it's a slow car, but why don't you just buy a ferrari and it's fast again".

I got that Tux3 is not mature and has problems with fragmentation.

<comment><USER5> You should keep in mind that XFS is primarily intended (it does get used in other places thou) for big systems/large raid arrays, with high IO loads etc.

A kernel build is really a bad workload to benchmark a FS anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never heard of this filesystem before, and the homepage and Wikipedia don't have much detail.

How does it compare to other modern filesystems in development, like BTRFS?

What is the project's goal? Is it to be a general-purpose filesystem (ext4 replacement), or is it specialized for certain tasks (which?)?

<comment><AUTHOR> May be a good starting point:

[http://lwn.net/Articles/531126/](http://lwn.net/Articles/531126/)

tux3.org

<comment><USER7> tux3.org really needs to be updated, unless "Zumastor" is some interesting meeting point between NAS and online casinos.</comment></comment></comment>


Humble Mozilla Bundle - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/ <comment><USER2> With all these impressive advancement in browser technology, it looks like supporting non-qwerty keyboards in games is still a struggle. Or maybe developers aren't aware of the problem since no matter how big the game is, something as basic as keyboard controls is sometime completely wrong (at least on azerty keyboards). I don't know much about videogame development, but is it really difficult to somehow detect the user keyboard?

<comment><USER3> Time is a finite resource and even more precious for small/indie developers. Maybe they could write something to detect keyboard layouts (though I am not sure they could) or they could do what the other poster suggested and have configurable key layouts.

The problem is every second working on something that really matters, to what, <1% of the population is something that you aren't working on that is more important. Not to mention the extra overhead of testing and maintaining that system. It might be a valid gripe with a AAA game dev but complaining about your fairly rare corner case is just picking nits.

<comment><USER4> That 1% figure is hilariously wrong, but I agree with your point. Indie game dev is hard. If you "waste" too much time early on doing "the right thing" for tasks that can wait like localization, your game might not make it off the ground. So most accomplished English-speaking indie devs assume English and QWERTY layout to start because it's one less thing to think about while you're trying to get a barebones game running.

The less defensible outcome is when the QWERTY assumption remains 'til the end, and the devs just want to ship the damn thing already, so the proper alternate keyboard layout/non-360 controller/etc. support gets cut and the burden is pushed onto the users. This sucks, but is somewhat defensible because if you are a gamer in France or whatever, you are probably used to needing to switch your keyboard layout or rebind your keys in the same way that English players of Japanese PC games are used to needing to use a Japanese locale, or that people with non-360 controllers are used to needing to use an XInput wrapper: we hate it, but we've already dealt with the problem once, so doing it again isn't a big deal.

<comment><USER5> > we hate it, but we've already dealt with the problem once, so doing it again > isn't a big deal

Some of us hate it and just don't play these player-hostile games. I think that games that are meant to be played will respect the player and treat her dearly. Games that exist just for the buck though... oh well.

<comment><USER4> Would you really not play if they give you the option to rebind keys? I've jumped through many worse hoops trying to play Japanese games that I was under no delusions of being the target audience for.

<comment><USER5> If they _don 't_ give me the option to rebind keys...

I used to jump through hoops myself. For example, I rebound keys in some older Touhous by disassembling and modifying the binary.

These days I just can't be bothered. There are more games than I could play in a lifetime, so I have plenty to choose from. And if/when game developers treat me like shit (whether it be with DRM or something else), I'm principled against playing their game. _" Go away, you're not our target audience, we don't care about you."_

I try to focus the little time I have on games whose authors really want everyone to play and enjoy. The more effort they put into that, the more attention they deserve. If they respect my freedom, that's better still. And that is my idea of _humble_. I hate how the word is used to market a bundle of games on sale...

Truly caring about the player is one field where the indie scene could really shine, compared to the big corps who mass-produce big titles for the biggest market. Unfortunately even the indies seem to have other priorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you're using Firefox and can't see the promotional game for this on about:home yet, go to about:home and open up the Web Console. Run "gSnippetsMap.clear()" and then clear your cache. When you refresh about:home, you should download the promo. Otherwise it should hit all Firefox users' about:home page within the next 24 hours.

<comment><USER6> Hard link to the Humble Bundle snippet is here: [https://snippets.mozilla.com/show/4606/](https://snippets.mozilla.com/show/4606/)

<comment><USER6> (Only works in FF.)

<comment><USER7> uhm seems to be working on chorme for me

<comment><USER6> Ah! Was told it might lead to a 404 in Chrome. Good to know it doesn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> It won't 404, but that page was made by copy-pasting the source code of about:home from Firefox, including some image paths that are only valid on Firefox. I was too lazy to make it better since it's not _really_ meant for public consumption (it will 404 once this snippet is disabled in a week, for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've sunk countless hours into FTL, this bundle is worth getting for that alone.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, FTL is a rich and fun game where death is permanent and even a successful game could take little more than an hour, but the game still easily provides weeks worth of enjoyment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome! I love web games but the crap to quality ratio is really bad. It's hard to find good games. I hope Humble Bundle continues to create curated list of web games, not just 3D ones.

<comment><USER9> If you have recommendations for quality web-based games (I'm particularly interested in side-scrollers or RTS games) please let me know.

<comment> jim-greer My favorite side-scroller: Robot Wants Ice Cream

[http://www.kongregate.com/games/Hamumu/robot-wants-ice- cream](http://www.kongregate.com/games/Hamumu/robot-wants-ice-cream)

Or this meta-side scroller, Continuity [http://www.kongregate.com/games/glimajr/continuity](http://www.kongregate.com/games/glimajr/continuity)

Traditional RTSes are not well represented in web games...

<comment><USER10> And there goes an hour (with Continuity). Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OK, so how does it work. Native code compiled to asm.js somehow?

<comment><USER12> Yes, the ports use emscripten to convert to JavaScript/asm.js.

<comment> zal-any Do you know how much overhead it introduce? I'm curious.

<comment><USER12> Unity just launched a benchmark that can help answer that,

[http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/10/07/benchmarking-unity- perfo...](http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/10/07/benchmarking-unity-performance- in-webgl/)

It does run somewhat slower in a browser compared to native, but the difference is really not very big.

To put it another way, the differences between browsers are about the same size as the difference between the fastest browser and native. So it's in the right ballpark.

<comment><USER13> Programs might run a third as fast, but most of these games are not so taxing as to even use a third of a modern computer's resources. So they work fine in the browser.

<comment><USER14> Did you try the Voxatron one?

<comment><USER13> Yep, although my computer is fairly advanced, so maybe that would not work so well on a slow computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of these games use data files for user save data - what's the story with them? Do they migrate with, say, Firefox sync?

<comment><USER16> I believe the Humble Player handles this for many of these games.

From the related article about the process of porting Aaaaaa to asm.js;

"Lastly you'll want to think about ways to allow your data to persist across multiple browsers on different machines. Gamers don't always sit on the same machine to play their games, which is why many services allow for cloud save functionality. The same goes for the Web, and if you can build a system (like the wonderfully talented Edward Rudd created for the Humble Player, it will help the overall web experience for the player."

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/10/unity-games-in-webgl- owlch...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/10/unity-games-in-webgl-owlchemy- labs-conversion-of-aaaaa-to-asm-js/)

<comment><USER17> I did a quick read of the above link. Does it imply, for this bundle, that users have to be connected to play these games (due to the larger sizes and also to use the game save function)? To put it in other words, can users do a one-off download and play these games offline wherever and whenever they want to?

<comment><USER18> Don't know about game saves but a quick check in offline mode and playing works once downloaded. The data is stored in IndexedDB, which allows for storage up to 50MB before permission is required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm just glad Mozilla found an easy way to remind me that I like them and should give them some money.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's a great package, but what I don't get is why the "mozilla bundle" name if this works just as well on Chrome?

<comment><USER21> My guess is that, while the games technically run on chrome, they require the asm.js optimizations that only Firefox has atm in order to run at a decent speed.

<comment><USER22> Chrome (and Opera) optimised for asm.js a little while ago[1]. I would expect equivalent performance.

1\. [https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/11/26/chrome- an...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/11/26/chrome-and-opera- optimize-for-mozilla-pioneered-asm-js/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >> Pay more than the average of $4.56 to unlock!

I find that to be an interesting idea, since the average will only increase over time.

<comment><USER16> I've bought a number of humble bundles and have noticed that there is generally a steady rise in price over the first day of a bundle being announced. For example when I bought this bundle the unlock price was $4.18.

What works well for them is including another "premium" title at about twice the opening unlock price; Democracy 3 for $8 in this case.

I'd guess that the unlock price will rise to around $6 over the course of the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For some reason the _Aaaaaaa! for the awesome_ game has the screen blank out after a short while. I'm using Nightly, so that is probably expected. Anyone had similar problems?

<comment><USER18> Try having the web console (Ctrl+Shift+K) open and see if you get any hints there.

<comment><USER24> I'm getting a bunch of error. Main error seems to be out of memory exception (6 tabs take 1.2GB).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Anyone else unable to rename crew members in FTL? I can press backspace to delete characters in names, but not letters to add characters! (Firefox, OS X)

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know what javascript libraries they're using for games like voxeltron?

<comment><USER27> Not sure if this is what they're using but there is VoxelJS[1] - it has a very healthy plugin ecosystem so you can get a functioning game up and running quite quickly.

[http://voxeljs.com/](http://voxeljs.com/)

<comment><USER28> VoxelJS is really cool, but not quite really suited to building something like Voxatron. You could however probably use straight ThreeJS, or go lib-less and roll your own WebGL system.

These games are all compiled from native languages to asm.js.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Oh sweet there is a WebGL version of Osmos, loved that one on mobile a few years ago.</comment>


HN: Hire me? (Free btw) - <AUTHOR>

THE OFFER
I'm willing to do a few small (10-20 hours) iOS development jobs for a few HNers at no cost whatsoever. Bonus points if it's for your startup or you have work leading on in to the future.
WHAT I CAN DO
I love anything web-based. I'm primarily an iOS guy, but I love Ruby (Sinatra in particular and Rails is cool too). I've done some PHP too. I also do frontend work.
If you need something that I can't do yet, note that I love learning new things — how do you think I got myself into all this?
If you need more information on past projects, hook me up and I'll be able to show you.
WHY I'M DOING THIS
I've been teaching myself this stuff over the last few years, but I don't have too much to show for it. I want to freelance, so I'm trying to build up my portfolio, and doing some free work occurred to me as a great way to do so while making new contacts at the same time. I tried this approach with success a couple of weeks back and I'm trying it again at a larger scale now.
CAVEATS
I just ask that requests be very limited in scope (say, something that would take a decent developer a few days), and I should be able to show the work in my portfolio. Also, I'm only free the first time. Finally, if I get many requests somehow, I may have to turn some down. But I doubt that will happen.
YOU SHOULD CONTACT ME
Even if you're not sure, or don't need it until later. What do you have to lose? Not money. What might you gain? A competent coder, or at least some work done by one. Please contact me now!
Email: email@example.com <comment><USER2> What do I have to lose?

I have my time to lose and my time is precious.

You offer to work for free. Therefore there is always the risk of lack of commitment to the work.

By the way, I often receive similar offers from Indian consultancies, by phone or by email. Your offer puts you in competition with them and positions you in the same playing field. If you want to grow a successful high paying consultancy that is definitely not the place to put yourself in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see what you are trying to do here, and I wish you all the best for your freelancing career. But I am not sure if this is the right way to do it. I know, it's better to work for free than to be cheap. But still, I am in doubt.

I have tried something similar, and it did not work out. Not at all. I am a freelancer and I normally work alone, but in this case I was working together with a company. The company was offering a free day of consulting, and I was one of the consultants you could book for free. There was not a single response.

Later I read some posts from patio11 about how people will not value your time or service when you work for free, and I think this was exactly the problem in what we tried.

Anyway, good luck, maybe this works for you. I would love to read a follow-up story from you!

</comment><comment><USER4> Work on Open Source, build your own projects, do some work for a charitable cause.

I dont think I could recommend doing random jobs for some startup who is willing to take on someone for free work</comment>


Give Your Spirit Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://clojurescriptkoans.com/ Cute way to learn ClojureScript. <comment><USER2> Sweet...

One suggestion: take, for example, (= ___ (count [:a :b :c])), or anything similar. Check that the answer provided by the user isn't exactly the same as the value on the right. Trivial to pass all/many of these by copy/paste. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha it's not my product, but I'll be sure to pass that along!</comment></comment>


Typographic Illusions - <AUTHOR> https://www.typography.com/blog/typographic-illusions <comment><USER2> Overshoot looks obvious and terrible to me, and I often wish typographers would stop doing it.

For example, in the FedEx logo, the round parts of the lowercase "e" and "d" look misshapen and disproportionate. Is this perception unique to me, or do they look that way to anyone else?

Is the illusion that motivates overshoot real, or just a silly typographic superstition that no one has seriously questioned?

<comment><USER3> I go for superstition. In this case.

But these things described as "illusions" aren't, really. Type just looks better when it looks better. Making it look more like physical objects makes it look better.

The perception of a problem is entirely in the minds of typographers indulging a fetish for mathematically "pure" curves. There is nothing objectively better about a low-dimensional curve.

It is the same fetish that favors sans-serif faces because they are supposed to look "cleaner" or something. Only people not interested in actually reading the text could develop such a preference, because the "cleaner" it is, the harder it is to read. Perfectly circular letters would be cleanest of all, and entirely illegible.

We can each do our part to put down impositions of fetishism on people who never asked for it. Fetishistic graphic designers have a lot to apologize for.

<comment><USER2> Actually all the claims of illusions on this page look wrong to me.

1\. Enlarged curves look bad. The C is too big; it should match the height of the T.

2\. Points that overshoot look bad. Even at small size, the points of the N and M clearly stick out past the baseline and cap-height, making them look unbalanced.

3\. Things that are smaller look smaller. We make the top half of the B smaller because we like it that way, not because we're trying to make the two halves look the same size. If we want them to look the same size, we should make them the same size.

4\. We put the crossbar on the A lower because we like it there. It's not supposed to be centered.

5\. Things that are misaligned look misaligned. The middle bar on the E and F are visibly misaligned.

6\. Lines appear the same thickness regardless of orientation. The crossbar on the T is obviously thinner than the column holding it up. If you want them to look the same thickness, make them the same thickness.

7\. Ovals look like ovals. You don't need to turn a circle into an oval to make it look like a circle. If you want a circle, draw a circle. The O looks obviously wider than it is tall.

8\. Diagonal strokes do not look different thicknesses depending on their angle.

9\. (This isn't a new point, just an illustration of 6, 7, and 8 together.)

10\. Curved lines look the same thickness regardless of orientation. The middle stroke on the S is obviously thicker than the top and bottom. If you want it to look the same thickness, make it the same thickness.

<comment><USER3> Or, don't, because it looks better varied.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone here host a conference, event, workshop or any other gathering? - <AUTHOR>

If so, I'd love to chat with you to learn more about how you organize and sell tickets.<p>Looking for those who host in person events (not online) <comment><USER2> My wife does event planning professionally. I've organized a few hackathons. email me at amfarrell [at] mit [dot] edu.

</comment><comment><USER3> My team and I run a number of events each year - happy to share my experiences. Email address in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> emailed, thank you</comment></comment>


Call options used to bet that Bitcoin will go over $50K next year - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-million-dollar-bet-that-bitcoin-will-hit-50-000-1513809578 <comment> d--b People writing those article should know better, it's the wall street journal for god's sake. Buying a call option doesn't mean you're bullish that the future is going to trade up to that point. It could be a hedge for a short position or a way to go gamma-long or a way to make a structure cost-less, or really some other trading idea.

The point is that if the price goes up, the call option price goes up faster, and then the trader can sell it before it reaches 50k. Liquidity though may be an issue.

EDIT: what matters is that it is _possible_ that bitcoin goes to 50k next year. And since it is possible, people need to take that possibility into account in their strategies. It's like S&P option strike range for dec18, it goes from 1700 to 3100. Is it likely that SP price goes down to 1700 in the next year? no, but it's certainly possible.

<comment><USER2> A call option also means someones else took the other side of this trade. Who sold $1 million dollars worth of December 2018 Bitcoin $50K call options?

Also there's a back of the envelope implied volatility for Bitcoin here: on a $3k call option premium 12 months out (so breakeven on this "bet" is actually $53,000) Bitcoin implied volatility of around 120%? Not that equity option pricing model theories apply to Bitcoin, or even work as expected on equities for that matter, but it's interesting to see an implied volatility number regardless. Looks like Delta less than 10. With Futures already 3 months out at $17,000 it would seem like whoever sold this call option for $1 million could hedge (not perfectly hedge) the trade for less than $1 million. Oddly enough, both the buyer and the seller could end up profiting on this option trade.

I agree this article is very bad, it feels like a paid PR article advertising for the trading company not actual news.

<comment><USER3> Someone who's already long a ton of bitcoin could write those calls without adding any risk, collecting a little bit of yield and sacrificing only the extremely-far-out-of-the-money potential upside of $50k+ on his long bitcoin.

The implied volatility at which this option traded is pretty irrelevant for helping us understand the option market as a whole, since it's so far out of the money. We don't have much information about what the upside skew would look like. And due to vanna, that delta calculated off that implied volatility is irrelevant too.

<comment><USER2> You're right. And I agree, the missing info about the contracts and the overall derivatives market here plus the expiration and strike being so far away makes calculating IV or delta or vega or convexity or well calculating anything pretty irrelevant and has little to zero practical use.

Plus we are talking about Bitcoin! so none of this is relevant. The old option theory bullshit has even less rigor beyond fun mental exercise. I still think it's interesting and gota start somewhere, and we'll see how things develop in this market. I did try to qualify in my comment writing something how calculation not really applicable to Bitcoin and doesn't even work on equities properly. But again you're right and I should have worded my comment differently, probably a bad lazy old habit to even use weird finance terms on non-finance forum like HackNews, so maybe could have said something like 'wow interesting to see someone paid 20% of the current price for an option with a strike that has bitcoin gaining +200% in the next 12 months'?

I would guess this is some sort of covered call as you suggest. It's only 275 bitcoins and a 20% premium on the spot price seems like a decent yield for so far out the money. I'm not a bitcoin trader but it's my understanding from what I've read there was no short side price discovery until very recently when derivatives started trading so volatility has no historical nor frame of reference. Bitcoin options could be super inexpensive deal right now or way overpriced there's no basis to say either way but there does seem to be enough inefficiency across various markets for arbitrage if someone wants to make the effort.

<comment><USER4> > The old option theory bullshit has even less rigor beyond fun mental > exercise.

Well, it actually tells you how to hedge and thus replicate the option. That's quite valuable in practice (even if it needs modification from pure theory), despite Taleb's rants.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that the volatility of BTC should be priced off tail risk more than gaussian drift, and that's not a rigorous part of the theory. Black- Scholes certainly doesn't characterize the tails very well.

<comment><USER2> Nice comment, you seem like you know your stuff. My opinion is without fundamentals or historical or correlated assets here you can't price tail risk beyond throwing a dart. Look at the Futures margin reqs, it's like 40%. A ridiculously high number and that's probably still a compromise because they halt trading for the day around 20%, otherwise I imagine there would be almost no margin given. Price of tail risk is not being priced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A single call creates yet another far-fetched mass media piece to convince unsuspecting fools to spend their money pumping up the bubble. And so the pumping continues. The more far-fetched the story, the closer the burst is.

<comment><USER6> $50k is not really that far fetched... Bitcoin tripled in value so many times already, what's one more time?

<comment><USER5> > $50k is not really that far fetched...

No, it actually is a ludicrous bet. No rational investor would ever make this investment. The absolute max value stands at less than a third of that. This sort of call only makes sense if it's designed to manipulate fools into a buy spree to supply liquidity to mask a massive cashout.

> Bitcoin tripled in value

Ah yes, and lightning will certainly hit the same person again and again.

Do you happen to have any money on bitcoin by any chance?

<comment><USER7> The great thing about having a real futures market available is that when you're 100% certain that you're correct, as you seem to be, you can put your money where your mouth is and reap a big reward.

How many of these call options have you sold? And if the number is zero, then what are you waiting for? Why not take advantage of how much smarter you are than all of these sheep and make some easy money?

<comment><USER8> _The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent._

(attributed to John M. Keynes)

<comment><USER7> Yes, but he said "ludicrous bet" that no rational investor would make.

As a rational investor/gambler, when I hear that someone is willing to make a "ludicrous bet", I'm happy to book their action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bitcoin is currently not what Bitcoin was when it was created.

Slow peer-to-peer transactions High processing fees

Average fees are approaching 40 dollars. That's an average. Unconfirmed transactions are at an ATH of 260k... has been at over 100k for weeks. The mempool is also at an ATH. The Bitcoin is crippled and nothing more than a "store of value". Sentences like "store of value" are now the term used to describe Bitcoin. Very far from what the Bitcoin used to be.

I think there is a real possibility of a "death spiral of the blockchain". Fees will increase and it will become impossible to move coins on the blockchain besides the upper 10% of bitcoin holders.

The fork that occurred on 1st August created Bitcoin Cash. This fork is much closer to what the Bitcoin was. Bitcoin Cash is this today. Removal of the segwit code (which hasn't solved anything), disabling of RBF (replace-by-fees) enabling 0-confirmation transactions again. A new DAA (difficulty adjustment algorithm). Finally increase the block size to 8MiB.

The Bitcoin has been crippled on purpose by Blockstream deep in the pockets of bankers and insurance companies. Blockstream is the main contributor to the Bitcoin development. Look at the sponsors; [https://www.blockstream.com/about/#investors](https://www.blockstream.com/about/#investors)

Before the bankers, and their followers, got indirectly involved in Bitcoin development there never was any discussion about limiting the block size to 1MiB; in fact the opposite was discussed. See; [https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/636410827969421312?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/636410827969421312?lang=en) [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1314.msg15143#msg151...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1314.msg15143#msg15143) [https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/71h884/pieter_wuille_im...](https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/71h884/pieter_wuille_im_in_favor_of_increasing_the_block/)

Now all of this has led to a complete divide and clusterfuck of the community. It is an very ugly and toxic environment and is sad to look at. On top of that we now have thousands of alternative coins and blockchains.

Just my 2 cents ;) Happy Christmas and new year to all!

<comment><USER10> > Unconfirmed transactions are at an ATH of 260k... has been at over 100k for > weeks.

Statistics like these should be more prominent in the argumentation. Regardless of any technical discussion of the merits of SegWit vs. big blocks, there isn't any doubt in the usability of the system as is compared to as before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honestly at this point nobody can really make predictions for the short or medium term. There's not much in the way of underlying use of BTC as anything but a gamble here, and the tech enthusiasts/crypto-libertarians have been massively outnumbered by the bandwagoneers and FOMO.

The Bitcoin bubble could explode tomorrow or next year or just possibly it could find a way to become self sustaining (seems unlikely). It could repeat the crash-peak-crash pattern. It could do anything and analysis seems essentially pointless.

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks like an uninformed ad for LedgerX.

For god's sake, no one in their right mind trades naked options - neither the seller nor the buyer. Given the historical volaitity of bitcoin rising from 1000 to 16000, it shouldn't be surprising at all that someone wants to _hedge_ (a concept which seems alien to the writers) their positions.

The missing information is - what premium did it cost to secure the trade? Well, as per the data ~ $3600, which at current price is nearly 20% of the current price. Very costly premium for a very volatile product.

<comment><USER13> uh -- who does naked options at ledgerx?

and yes, the data says 3600 for the call, which is the definition of a premium. nothing missing, guys. seriously. do more thinking before you post.

seriously no joke, I am the CEO there, former trader at Goldman so I sort of know what I am talking about with this type of stuff. You guys do not. It's hilarious to watch this conversation.

<comment><USER14> It's not in your interest to be dismissive and insulting with others here, and it breaks the guidelines by being uncivil and unsubstantive. Could you please stop?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER13> in general, you are telling me to stop but I am telling you guys to stop. you do so much damage to companies with completely uninformed comments than you can possibly realize. if you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk. and yes, there are "facts" that companies cannot discuss in an open format. that's the nature of a regulated business. we do not do cat photo sharing. we hold money and assets for people. think on that.

<comment><USER12> Two things - One, it's not the comments on hn which is hurting you rather an adverse reaction to a story which is obviously raising a false flag in many people's mind. So, if this is story was a PR move, it was a bad one.

Second, you can't have it both ways. Get mad at people for saying wrong thing, as per you and then refuse to share information citing regulation. While people might forget the story they will remember the CEO who wanted to convince people but citing no evidence.

Lastly, you keep replying in a hostile manner to everyone. It is not helping your case.

<comment><USER13> it's absolutely my bad -- when you have been doing this for 4 years, and a team works incredibly hard to do a trade that makes a lot of sense, seeing comments like i've seen here on this thread just straight up hurts. and again, i simply cannot share certain pieces of information. i would literally go to jail, so it's frustrating to see the stuff that is posted about us (and I'm a YC alum on top of that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious about how people's arguing about Bitcoin's prospects correlates with their cryptocurrency holdings.

<comment><USER11> I'm highly sceptical about the entire cryptocurrency space, due to the weirdly gold-standard like underpinnings of most of the currencies. I don't like the idea of deflationary currency. I don't like the idea of decentralised currency; I think central banks play a useful role, even if they don't always do it well. I don't think BTC is a good payment mechanism because it requires exchange at each end, long confirmation times and burning a ton of energy. I don't consider putting money into cryptocurrency 'investment' because it's not like putting money into a company or venture - you're just buying a virtual asset to sit on it. I think a lot of the programmable stuff around ethereum is an overhyped solution looking for a problem, most/all ICOs are scams and a whole host of other negative things about the entire sector.

That all said, I got curious and started mining with my gaming machines, and apparently I now have around $1K in various cryptocurrencies (half an ether, half a ZEC, some SIA, some ETN, a tiny piece of a monero, a few other little bits and pieces). The only money I've put in is through the electricity bill. I may find a way to cash out eventually, but at the moment I'm just going to hang on to it all and see where it is a year down the line. I don't believe in any of it - but I know other people do so there might be an opportunity to make some money.

<comment><USER16> I've had a lot of those same objections since I first heard about Bitcoin.

Ironically, I've been looking to buy some Bitcoin in the last couple months to trade for Sia, because I was thinking about setting up a storage node that can earn enough to pay for my own cloud backup needs.

<comment><USER11> I mined sia and eth together because there was a dual mining program. The idea behind it is kinda nice, I'm not sure I actually need the service right now... but I'll hang on to the 1k SIA I mined in case that changes.

I'm not expecting a speculative leap in value as amounts of siacoin mined are huge compared to the likes of ether or btc...

Do you need Sia to start hosting? I think you can just go for it.

<comment><USER16> _Do you need Sia to start hosting? I think you can just go for it._

Yes, you need to put up collateral to start accepting storage contracts.

[https://support.sia.tech/knowledge_base/topics/how-do-i- star...](https://support.sia.tech/knowledge_base/topics/how-do-i-start- hosting)

<comment><USER11> Oh interesting, thanks for that. It puts up a bit of a barrier to entry... ooh, and suddenly things look a little bit complicated, as you have to manage your collateral levels optimally to get a good score and be an attractive storage option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it possible to rationally manipulate and speculate using bitcoin or do you have to be a believer?

Two year Bitcoin volume when measured in BTC seems relatively stable while the price goes up and up and new speculators come in. As long as the price goes up the same pace as demand, there is no upper limit to the price level that steady supply of bitcoin can support.

At the same time the market gets thinner and thinner relative to the bitcoin wealth. At some point the social mania around bitcoin peaks and speculators want to liquidate more than there is buyers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is this really a risky bet? I wouldn't be surprised if we hit $50k within a few months.

<comment><USER19> If I understood correctly the article, the bet expires this month so if by Jan 1st price hasn't hit the mark, he loses?

<comment><USER18> No, it expires December 2018.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So if you "thought" that Bitcoin will go over $50k - why not buy the Bitcoin itself now at $20k (or whatever it is today)? i.e. what is gained with the call option here?

<comment><USER21> Let's say you have $20k to invest and you're convinced Bitcoin will be $60k in one year. If you buy bitcoin for $20k and sell in a year for $60k, you've made $40k profit.

If on the other hand you buy 10 $50k call options at $2k each then if Bitcoin hits $60k you'll get ($60k-$50k)*10 or $80k profit ($100k - $20k initial investment). Basically you're doubled your profits without increasing your investment.

On the flip side if Bitcoin 'only' hits $40k, you'll have lost $20k if you bought the call (since calls are worthless if the asset doesn't reach the target price), but made $20k if you'd bought the bitcoin.

Basically calls allow you to take bigger bets with less money up front.

<comment><USER22> To close out the comment DAG, this is the ELI5 for cardmagic's answer "leverage".

<comment><USER4> Well, futures (or forwards) give you leverage.

Options give you convexity (optionality, as it were), additionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bitcoin is the new diamond, perhaps even more unethical and irrational.

<comment><USER24> Fair.

People forget about the drugs, guns and human-trafficking that built Bitcoin.

It may have started as a response to the corruption in the banking system, but that's not how it got to where it is now.

<comment><USER25> People will see what they want to see. Like one could see Internet as pretty much the sole thing that enables child pornography and causes immeasurable damage.

Also, pretty sure Cash and Banking trumps Bitcoin in all of the following: terrorism, human-trafficking, drugs. Shell companies and weird schemes having been used and are used for a long time.

Final note, I argue that a lot of Venezuelans and Zimbabweans are thankful Bitcoin exists and they are not destroyed by the irresponsibility of governments.

<comment><USER26> With 20+$ transaction fees nobody is using Bitcoin for day to day expenses.

On net people are also caught through the Banking system, so you need to look at the ratio of net good : net bad. In that context it's hard to see any real value in Bitcoin as it exists today.

<comment><USER27> Shockingly, it turns out that there are people in Venezuela and Zimbabwe who have demand for unconfiscatable/uninflatable stores of money beyond daily transactions.

<comment><USER26> It costs more than 40$ to store then retrieve value. That's unfavorable for the vast majority of people in those countries and not cost effective for those with means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Somebody bought these options. That person is betting that Bitcoin will go over $50k next year.

Somebody also sold these options. That person is betting that Bitcoin will NOT go over $50k next year.

</comment><comment><USER29> a bet... placed by a Bitcoin millionaire, to make the crypto-currency frenzies buy some more Bitcoin?

</comment><comment><USER30> Okay ... options discussed on a tech forum. The next crash can't be far away ...

</comment><comment><USER31> Can bitcoin be "damaged" by quantum computers?

<comment><USER32> Yes, a quantum computer with a few hundred error-corrected qubits (many more before error correction) would clean out all addresses with exposed public keys, by solving Elliptic Curve Discrete Log to recover the private key.

This includes many old addresses that didn't hash the public key, any re-used addresses, and, using replace by fee, even all new addresses in the time frame between broadcasting a spend transaction and that transaction being included in a block (which can currently take many hours).

<comment><USER33> It's actually closer to 2330 qubits and 126 billion Toffoli gates: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/598](https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/598)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Paywalled. How do I read the whole story?

<comment><USER35> Here is an archive of the article:

[http://archive.is/BE0Zm](http://archive.is/BE0Zm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> That's more like a billion-dollar bet. Ask the Winklevoss twins.</comment>


You Say What You Eat - <AUTHOR> https://www.archaeology.org/issues/346-1907/trenches/7748-trenches-physical-linguistic-development <comment><USER2> There are a lot of really challenging questions about how to count languages, so I'd need to read the actual study to determine how they counted. But this is a pretty cool result actually. I'm also interested in how they quantified 'ease of articulation' for bilabials vs labiodentals.

Also, for those who don't have an overbite, can you more easily make er... reverse labiodentals (dentalabials?) where you use your lower teeth and your upper lip? I have an overbite, but the sound seems largely indistinct from my 'v/f'. I guess I'd have to see it's effect on surrounding vowels a bit more too. But different articulation points for the same sound are not unheard of (there are two different ways of making 's' for example).

Quite cool.

<comment><USER3> They sound very distinct to me (with an overbite mind you). They would not be distinguishing in English, but they are very much different sounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Web devs, please don't do this:

        p { color: #707070 !important; }
        body {     color: #7b7b7b; }

This is a deeply hostile attack on your users, telling your users that you don't want them to read your site's primary content.

If you think you need this, UI development is not a good career choice for you.

<comment><USER5> Why? I can read the grey for the most part, which doesn't seem too hostile.

<comment><USER4> > for the most part,

is a terrible standard for main content. You should be able to read it for the _all_.

You can read it, but many people do not have high-performance monitor and high-performance eyes.

Users can configure monitor/browser defaults for contrast and text however they like; web devs shouldn't try to forcibly reduce constrast for the primary content that is supposed to be the main recipient of visual attention.

<comment><USER6> How about not trying to back your personal dislike with some army of phantom users?

<comment><USER7> Do you disagree that there exists people with bad eyesight?

<comment><USER6> I myself have bad eyesight. I can read that website perfectly fine. And author owns the original commenter nothing so does not really deserve this kind of attack. And most importantly — very high contrast (pure black on pure white) is actually _bad_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The agricultural revolution and its effects have been a disaster for the human race.

<comment><USER9> This seems to be one of Harari's arguments in _Sapiens_. In many ways, hunter- gatherers lived better lives, ate more varied foods, suffered fewer health problems, and left a much less lasting mark on their environment. But now that we've gotten to a point where much of the population lives in relative comfort, we can see that there was a long-term payoff from investing in agriculture.

<comment><USER10> Well, that and industrialization, technology and specialization of labor has enabled us to be able to travel to outer space, for example. So we may be able to be the first species to colonize another planet. Earth will probably be smashed by another huge meteorite at some point in the future, so it's an important feat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Weston A. Price did a lot of studies on nutrition and its impact on health, bone development, and growth, in particular, he focused on the impact of nutrition on dental health [1]. He noted that people who consumed meat and more primitive diets had superior dental health with few cavities (<1% of teeth impacted) and almost perfect dental arches (as opposed to folks nowadays who often require braces and extensive dental work in childhood or well into adulthood).

It's interesting to see the skulls of pre-Columbus native Americans, for example [2]. I'm not sure if we're "evolving" as the article says. I think evolution tends to only evolve for traits that promote survival to the next generation. In this case, I think modern agricultural diets promote underdevelopment of the jaw and teeth, and we've compensated for that by adding additional consonants to our language. The truth is though, the diet that our jaws evolved for still live on in our genes and we're just suffering from malnutrition to an extent.

[1] [https://healthwyze.org/archive/nutrition_and_physical_degene...](https://healthwyze.org/archive/nutrition_and_physical_degeneration_doctor_weston_a_price.pdf) [2] [http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch13](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch13)

<comment><USER11> I had to do some research to understand the downvotes. For anyone else, the Weston A. Price Foundation and Price's writing has a fair bit of criticism for its weak science (see Quackwatch [1], Science Based Medicine [2], Rational Wiki [3] among others).

It's hard to navigate their website, but it seems they're, among other things, pro-homeopathy, critical of vaccines, anti-soy, pro 'natural' foods, and advocate some controversial and potentially dangerous diets.

[1] [https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticd...](https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticdent.html) [2] [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sbm-weston-prices- appalling...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sbm-weston-prices-appalling- legacy/) [3] [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation)

<comment><USER10> Don't know about the foundation itself, it was founded almost half a century after his death (1999 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation)). But his research itself is highly cited.

As for "weak science" the book itself "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" is cited by 585 sources on Google Scholar, for example: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1184515186752252859...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=11845151867522528599&as_sdt=5,44&sciodt=0,44&hl=en)

It squares with the parent article that's posted, that diet affects jaw and dental development.

It's well documented that diet and nutrition drastically affect health, and plenty of other sources besides Weston Price's book attest to that:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14972061](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14972061)

The interesting thing about Price's book, is that he spent time traveling to every continent and met with aboriginal tribes and met with the modern (book was written in the 30's) tribes there. He took photos of their teeth. Keep in mind, this book was written in a time before television, before dental hygiene products were readily available in many countries, etc. The interesting thing about the book is the photo evidence itself. Maori, Chumu, Samoans, Melanesians, Gaelics, Aborigines, Inuit and many others are covered.

<comment><USER11> I spent some time looking through your Google Scholar link. Some of the citations were blanket "nutritionists have studied diet (1-6)" where Price is 4, but I did like this citation:

Nevertheless, since Price did not report his original measurements or statistical analyses, these observations need to be interpreted with some caution.

Which is to say, citation count is not a proxy for quality.

<comment><USER10> I've read the book and it's filled with cited sources, charts, photo evidence and logs. He was a published researcher and had over 150 publications on dentistry.

Guy was one of the foundational figures in modern dentistry: [https://books.google.com/books?id=pZnzxgEACAAJ&dq=weston+pri...](https://books.google.com/books?id=pZnzxgEACAAJ&dq=weston+price&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwimu_jM4t3jAhU7XhUIHbZnAlwQ6AEIOzAD)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104863643...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048636431870033)

He's also far from the only one to link nutrition with dental health (or health in general)...here's an article showing links between early carb consumers and dental caries: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903197/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903197/)

And another study confirming Price's assertions, with 34 Paleolithic skulls being inspected for dental and oral health: [https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.2536](https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.2536) (NPR interpretation here: [https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2013/02/24/1726888...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2013/02/24/172688806/ancient-chompers-were-healthier-than-ours))

Another study confirming link between sugar intake and cavities: [https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/4/881S/4690063](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/4/881S/4690063) (conclusion is that fluoride is a crutch for bad nutrition and doesn't fully solve the problem)

Suffice to say, criticism of some aspects of Price's works or opinions over his many decades of work, I'm not here to defend all of that. But the links between nutrition and dental health and development are well founded. And that's exactly what the OP article suggested as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gentlemen, we must do something about the memset function in C++ programs - <AUTHOR> https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0553/ <comment><USER2> The example of using a 4 byte hex "string" in an int argument... What compiler accepts that without a warning? Don't programmers read and understand (and fix) any warnings that their code introduces?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no reason for warning. The parameter has int type.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please fix title to remove "Gentlemen" reference, it comes across as gender exclusionary. Try "Everyone", "Folks" etc.

<comment><USER4> It is a direct quote from the article.

<comment><USER5> It's a little unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gentlemen?

<comment><AUTHOR> hat's wrong with "Gentlemen"? I wrote this just to attract attention.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gentlemen](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gentlemen)</comment></comment>


Trimming the Application Fat - <AUTHOR> http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/87044/Trimming-the-Application-Fat.aspx

<comment><USER2> Pretty thorough overview of one of the issues that befall Apps that have had time to live and mature, and as they tend - have been informed by a slew of changing factors.

Less can be more, if that results in whats left having the opportunity to become that much better.

I would say though that the 'teaser' at the end: "We will be removing some other features in the near future, we will always inform people as much as possible." either runs contrary to the rest of the article or embodies an approach that wasn't touched on in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can understand your point, we are not trying to relay any particular information here, I am stating that the Assembla users should be ready for upcoming articles that convey much more information about removal. After all, it was just a "teaser" - I really appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.

<comment><USER2> It seems I managed to completely overlook the very 2nd sentence of your blog post, whoopsies.

Looking forwards to seeing Assembla develop further, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excellent Article Legacy applications can be some of the hardest and most frustrating applications to support. But OldApps gives an opportunity to streamline business process and make it more efficient and less costly. Author of this article Michael gives very good approach to get rid of oldApps without impacting user base. It is a must read article.</comment>