Azure is experiencing DNS issues in all regions - <AUTHOR> http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/<p>Looks to be a global outage across Americas, Europe, APAC, and Africa. Office 365 is still up for us, but colleagues are saying theirs is down as well. <comment><USER2> Gitlab is also currently reporting issues with GCE. I'm unable to push to their network right now.

Looks like all three major cloud platforms are experiencing problems right now. Could be internet related?

[https://downdetector.com/status/windows- azure](https://downdetector.com/status/windows-azure)

[https://downdetector.com/status/google- cloud](https://downdetector.com/status/google-cloud)

[https://downdetector.com/status/aws-amazon-web- services](https://downdetector.com/status/aws-amazon-web-services)

</comment><comment><USER3> Man... Azure seems to be an order of magnitude worse than AWS and GCP when it comes to reliability.

Seems like they have tons of global dependencies within their services which cause these cascading failures rather often... Seems like only a few months ago we were reading about a global outage that affected auth?

<comment><USER4> When it comes to outages, just recent Azure downtimes broke our SLA 5 times over for the whole year..

Tho for w/e reason i cannot convince higher ups, that the switch was a stupid idea. But hey! We got some credits to spend in Azure to compensate. (Too bad we had to pay our clients with real cash)

<comment><USER5> Sometimes I'm not sure how Azure makes any money with the amount of credits they give out.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but from my POV Azure looks subsidised.

<comment><USER6> Azure is subsidized by Microsoft so they retain customers and mindshare, they also seem to have a mix of talent working for them. In some areas like reporting dashboards and such, Azure is head and shoulders better than AWS and GCP, but few if any of their large clients use these features (missing the primary value you'd get from using Azure).

Our interaction with the GCP sales team has repeatedly been aggressive US based sales agents, whereas Microsoft sent us to deal with (incompetent) sales agents out of India after promising us significant startup credits when we crossed paths with them at a conference near Seattle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Azure has been magnitudes more expensive and magnitudes more unreliable for the one of our clients that demands we use it to host their stuff than either AWS, Digital Ocean, or Heroku.

Honestly, I can't think of a single reason why I would recommend them over anyone else at this point, no matter what your hosting or storage or computing needs were. Can't see a single area where they are better than the competition.

<comment><USER8> Azure does have the only HIPAA compliant media transcoding service (as far as I know). The API is terrible but it works.

<comment><USER9> Might I ask the use case. Didn't even realize that HIPAA compliant transcoding was a thing

<comment><USER10> I am guessing more than compliant it is just some corporate captive market thing where there is only one "compliant" transcoder

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm at a complete loss how in 2010's they can design build and implement a cloud provider, from the ground up that has so many "global outages"

This isn't "legacy" code that has migrated from cobol to vb to c#, this is modern code and to suffer this bs time and time again is unforgivable

<comment><USER12> That's actually exactly the reason why it's unstable: clean code from scratch that doesn't cover all the edge cases yet.

We SE keep whining about legacy code but forget that they made it to legacy for a reason...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not new. DNS queries didn't respond to Outlook (Hotmail) servers from within Azure. Thus the application I was responsible was unable to send emails via SMTP. And this issue appeared few times in the last few years.

Our customer was bashing us if they were unable to use our product for several minutes but when Azure was down for a day there were no complaints to Microsoft. (they were hosting our product at Azure)

I don't understand their love of Microsoft. I guess because they have Microsoft certificates like generals have.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if this DNS outage will cause data lose like the last one....

The entire "heres free ELA credits for Azure, please please Mr Sr Director/CIO use Azure" seems to be working, but then they go and do stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yep, we've just had one of our environments alert us. Services totally unresponsive - even the Azure portal was unresponsive. Affecting services we run in the US and Europe.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ok, many of these cloud platforms charge _more_ if you have things duplicated across regions/zones. EG. AWS has multiAZ. Why pay for this? When AWS has a major issue - all zones/regions are fucked in some way.

<comment><USER17> That's actually a point that AWS tried to hit on during their last re:Invent conference. When their competitors say multiple availability zones, read the fine print, and you'll see that it is far from being as resilient as AWS. Sometimes other cloud providers have even located the two AZs in the same building....

AWS AZs on the other hand are always geographically separated, and they even take into consideration the landscape to see if they need to be further away (earthquakes etc).

It's staggering how much of a lead AWS has on others when in comes to their AZs and global network infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Relevant: [https://blog.serverfault.com/2017/01/09/surviving-the- next-d...](https://blog.serverfault.com/2017/01/09/surviving-the-next-dns- attack/)

</comment><comment><USER19> This would explain why my app kept throwing this exception when attempting to call an Azure SQL instance:

      System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: No such host is known

<comment><USER20> Same here. Just keeping the uptime good on our stack is challenging enough. Now I have to add Azure's downtime to mine.

</comment></comment><comment> erikpt-work Looks like the core problem today was a DNS zone delegation issue during a migration off of legacy DNS servers. I'm not sure how this type of issue can easily be segmented by region due to the way the DNS service is designed and fundamentally zone replication works.

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/status/history/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/history/)

<comment><USER21> Yeah, DNS is pretty much an unavoidable single point of failure. Gotta do the best you can to keep global touches to it as light as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Forgive my ignorance, but how do things like this happen at such a massive scale? I would understand maybe one big area shutting down because of some sort if internet network issue, but then there should be some redundancies in place no? I don't get how it just all goes down across the globe, is there one master-computer that has just gone down, taking everything with it?

<comment><USER23> The saying goes, "complex systems fail in complex ways". Check out some of the cloud provider postmortems here for a few fascinating and detailed examples: [https://github.com/danluu/post-mortems](https://github.com/danluu/post- mortems)

You could say certain failures only occur and cascade under Special Circumstances. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> One would think after that 2016 Dyn outage people would strongly consider having an alternate DNS provider....

<comment><USER25> First of all, yes, people should be using multiple DNS providers for services that require very high uptime. Amazon.com itself notably uses Dyn and UltraDNS as its nameservers.

That said, I'm not sure this would have helped in this case. It seems like some or all of the problem was _internal_ Azure zones were failing to resolve. Which no third party DNS provider would be able to mitigate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Tons of people arguing one way or another here. Does anyone have actual statistiks on reliability og different cloud providers across different zones?

</comment><comment><USER27> Dupe(?): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19812578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19812578)

</comment><comment><USER28> My company is working on a project to move a customer web portal to Azure. This scenario was brought up and dismissed even though when events like this happen many of our customers would certainly come to our web portal as part of assessing the impact. I don't expect this to impact the project though. The decisions have already been made.

</comment><comment><USER29> All the big clouds regularly have outages.

<comment><USER30> In _all_ regions? No.

<comment><USER31> It's DNS, so it is somewhat inherently global. Route53 isn't region specific either, so I could see an issue with that having a global effect, too.

<comment><USER32> DNS is also inherently distributed. This should make it resilient to all of the most common outage scenarios, and is likely why AWS offers a 100% uptime SLA for Route 53.

I'll be interested in the post-mortem from Azure on this one.

<comment><USER31> > _likely why AWS offers a 100% uptime SLA for Route 53_

Well, that's interesting. We occasionally see getaddrinfo() calls fail claiming domains that we _know_ exist at the failure time (b/c the records are completely static) don't exist. (We've not got a reproducible case for this yet, and it's incredibly rare for any given VM/service. But across our fleet, it crops up fairly regularly.)

<comment><USER33> > We occasionally see getaddrinfo() calls fail claiming domains that we know > exist at the failure time (b/c the records are completely static) don't > exist.

That could be whatever resolvers you're hitting failing rather than an issue with Route 53 authoritative nameservers, though. The resolving DNS servers in EC2 are not actually part of Route 53, for example.

<comment><USER31> I'd think that would correspond to EAI_AGAIN or EAI_FAIL, whereas I'm pretty sure we're getting a EAI_NONAME.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Could this be causing Slack's downtime?

<comment><USER35> Slack uses AWS.

<comment><USER36> AWS was also down for a bit

<comment><USER33> What region/service? None of my customers called me complaining, so this seems a little unlikely :D

<comment><USER36> [https://downdetector.com/status/aws-amazon-web- services](https://downdetector.com/status/aws-amazon-web-services)

Around the same time as Microsoft. So it might have been a regional internet outage.

Here is screenshot for posterity: [https://i.imgur.com/dHnD6BO.png](https://i.imgur.com/dHnD6BO.png)

Also, see the top comment on the post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19814181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19814181)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if this is why www.cdc.gov is (was? appears to be back) offline.

<comment><USER38> As far as the status page was concerned, this didn't impact Azure Government

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Then someone or something is mining-a-like do congestion.</comment>


Do epic shit - <AUTHOR> http://matthew-sinclair.tumblr.com/post/15268473028/do-epic-shit

<comment><USER2> If you're going to post a link to your own blog that has no content, don't you think you should at least start a discussion on this page about it? I mean, the one post on your blog is about not reading blogs. What epic shit did you have in mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point, and don't worry, the irony of the whole thing wasn't lost on me. I kind of thought that the original post was amusing for exactly the same reason, but it was a start. For what it's worth, I'm sitting here now writing some code and specs for something that I hope to release later on in the year. Regards, M@

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So, taking the advice of @gerggerg above, I asked myself this: what was the best bit of "epic shit" that someone created in 2011?

For me, Khan Academy (<http://www.khanacademy.org/>) was one of the most amazing, world-changing things that I saw across the entire technology industry in 2011. In particular, the stuff on Cosmology and Astronomy (<http://www.khanacademy.org/#cosmology-and-astronomy>) is just fantastic.

What blew you away in 2011?</comment>


Take MySQL and strip out the fat with Drizzle - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Drizzle_Wants_to_Make_MySQL_Sizzle <comment><USER2> Not a bad idea considering some of those features are so inconvenient to maintain that it's almost better not to use them. However, can somebody explain what might be the logic behind removing query caches? Those typically increase performance.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Today's web apps are generally written with frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django and the like, all of which include things like sanitized database queries and more. So bother with prepared statements or other expensive (performance-wise) database server tools?"

Is it too much to ask that bloggers know what they are talking about?

Prepared statements are not expensive performance wise. In fact they usually result in a slight increase in speed because they factor out the time required to parse and plan the query and even if some performance is lost thorugh suboptimal planning (rare), the gains in security are well worth it.

For some reason, bloggers post excellent and insightful posts about everything CS until they hit databases where their common sense goes on vacation.</comment>


Ask HN: How large is your display, what's preferable for development? - <AUTHOR> I'm in the search for my next laptop. I've always had a 15" laptop and find it quite productive, but am considering a 14" for portability reasons. I don't watch movies or play games, I code, all day...
I've always wanted to be part of the three monitor club, but due to moving around I've never had the opportunity.
Bottom line, what monitor size would you recommend for productive coding?
For bonus points, if you have multiple monitors or a really large one, do you really find it more productive? or distracting? <comment><USER2> As for the monitors themselves, it's much much less about the size and more about the pixels. My primary monitor is a 1920x1200 and I love it. I have three other 'smaller' (in terms of pixels) and I honestly think the fourth one is more of a distraction than a help. I do frequently use the other three all at the same time (code on one, database tools on another, and browser for running/debugging the web pages I'm working on on the third).

My iMac display is an insane 2560x1440 (or something close to it) and I still am badly in need of a second monitor. But I feel that with that many pixels, just one additional monitor would be optimal. Particularly if it were that same size (not that I'm going to shell out the $1000 for that any time soon when the 1920x1080 monitors are so cheap now).

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been going somewhat retro on the monitors lately. I used to have a billion virtual desktops, two physical monitors, etc. But I now find I get more done with a single, relatively small monitor, in Linux console mode (!), running some reasonable but not huge resolution. I don't go all the way to 80x25, but 132x50 works nicely. The fact that it causes about a second pause when I ctrl+alt+f7 back to the X console (due to reinitializing the videomode) is also a nice deterrent from ADDish alt+tabbing.

The main time I find two monitors productive is if I'm doing a lot of iterations on something where I need to keep looking at the output, like webdev stuff. Then it's nice to have the webpage on one monitor, and the code on the other, instead of arranging two half-screens or alt+tabbing a lot.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've had many monitor configurations over the years, including a three monitor setup that included a 30" cinima display. To be honest, it was more distracting than it was worth. I'd go to the coffee shop with just my laptop and come back with tons of stuff done.

A single laptop screen (or single medium-sized desktop monitor) means you only have one place to focus. With two monitors, I always ended up having "distractions" like twitter, email, RSS, etc. there to pull me away.

I love my current 15" macbook pro but I also loved my 13" macbook pro when travelling. Depending on how much you travel, I'd go with either of those and no monitor and get into immersive environments instead of nailing yourself to a desk.

<comment><USER5> I agree with the distractions part. If I need to focus, email is closed as is twitter. Growl doesn't help either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> More monitors are more productive. Larger screens (only if good resolution, etc.) are also more productive. All monitors should typically be within peripheral vision, otherwise notifications coming up might not be noticed.

Consider a real keyboard and mouse. Consider synergy: <http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/>

If you are looking at a macbook/macbook pro - also consider glossy vs. matte screen (glare can be an issue).

Finally, if you're really trying to be productive, consider other visual and audible distractions, flow interruptions, taking breaks during work to increase mental stamina, length of time spent at work.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a single 30" monitor and use Spaces on the mac. It makes me much much more productive than smaller monitors.

The thing I like most about the 30" monitor is the HEIGHT -- I can see more lines of code. The width doesn't usually get used until I do side-by-side diffs.

The thing about one monitor is that I focus on one thing, and other things don't usually distract me from the sides. The notable exception is the red apple mail badge (small red numbers counting new mail). I sometimes have to turn down/off the mail check frequency.

I organize things with Spaces: 1) mail+organizer+chat 2) calendar 3) browser 4-7) main dev windows (terminal/xemacs) 8) itunes

</comment><comment><USER8> For me, monitor size is dependent on real estate needs. If I'm doing work that requires a lot of high-res visuals I can make use of two monitors; but if I'm working with plain text, an 80x25 character display is usually fine. I do not generally use monitor space to view things I am not working on - at most, I'll have one chat window going. In the past I felt an improvement from more monitors, but now I suspect that they are mostly band-aids for a lack of concentration.

I generally recommend to people to get smaller sized laptops because the lower bulk will help to absorb bumps and drops.

<comment><USER5> sorry to be pedantic, but the lower bulk won't absorb bumps and drops. It will however reduce the impulse, because the lower mass results in less force

impulse = F * dT F = m * a

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Currently working with two monitors and but I definitely need a third one. At any point in time, I have at least four different browsers open, two or three adobe apps, a few text editors, communications windows, terminals and so on.

I feel I am more productive, because it's all about viewing space. If I have to alt-tab, or exposé between windows back and forth, that's a time waste.

If you're going for maximum productivity, I don't think you can really achieve it on a laptop, unless you're in and out of the office on a daily basis. I'd say if you're looking to get the most work done, use multiple monitors.

<comment><USER10> _If I have to alt-tab, or exposé between windows back and forth, that's a time waste._

Only if your hands aren't already on the keyboard.

<comment><USER9> Heyoo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use a 17" MacBook Pro for coding with Divvy to manage the screen real estate. I keep a browser, TextMate and Terminal open. Occasionally I will have a PDF open as well if I am learning something from an eBook.

I also have a 30" Cinema Display that I use, but more often than not the portability of the laptop and the fact that I need to rearrange my windows when connecting the 30" display often prevents me from switching over to it.

I have found though that the 30" display works well for pair programming if you enlarge the text in Terminal and TextMate or if you lower the screen resolution to 1920x1200.

</comment><comment><USER11> I currently have two 22.6" monitors and a 15" laptop. I read a study once that found that dual monitors increased productivity over a single large monitor. Also, I believe that this effect increased with monitor size up to about 24", then declined, especially after 30".

EDIT: Here was the article I was referring to: [http://lifehacker.com/367391/do-larger-monitors-make-you- mor...](http://lifehacker.com/367391/do-larger-monitors-make-you-more- productive)

</comment><comment><USER12> I use a Dell XPSM1530. Dell's build quality has been, well, variable to say the least of late but the XPSM1530 although now discontinued is an awesome laptop. The best part though is the 16" 1920x1200 display. I do a lot of proposal and report writing and it allows me to have two documents side by side.

It's also good for coding, gives me plenty of space in PyDev, Immunity Debugger, plenty of terminals and everything else I need on the one screen and it's still portable too!

</comment><comment><USER13> I find a massive difference between mac and windows, I believe that's mostly thanks to exposé.

On Windows I have 3 monitors (of varying sizes unfortunately) and think I couldn't have enough of them (one for a full-screened version of each app I use). On a Mac I seem more comfortable with just 1.

But I am coding .Net apps on the Win box (with a seperate VS solution for server & client), whereas the Mac is more web development. Maybe that makes a difference too.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a 15" (1680x1050) laptop with a 24" (1920x1200) second monitor. KVM switched to my Mac as well.

This setup is great. I have background tasks on the laptop screen (email, system monitoring, directories) with my main dev work and auxiliaries on the big screen.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting sort-of-related article: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/08/the-large- display-p...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/08/the-large-display- paradox.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> By coincidence, I happen to be using a 55" touch screen right now (an LG HDTV 1920x1080 with a PQ Labs touch overlay). It's actually pretty usable but I do feel neck strain a the end of the day.

</comment><comment><USER16> Right now, I'm on a 19". I feel like having another monitor will be more productive. I'm not sure, though, If having 2 screens with different sizes/resolutions is usable, any thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER17> Have you made use of any of the virtual desktop solutions out there? I've found Spaces on Mac to be useful when I'm on a single 15" screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Been using them for years on Linux, can't live without them. I use three 1) email + timelog 2) journal + coding 3) reference + browser. With the help of the virtual desktops and keybindings, any app or desktop I need access to is a key combo away.</comment></comment>


Node.js Creator Blasts Node.js, Offers a Secure TypeScript-Based Alternative - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/node-js-creator-blasts-node-js-offers-a-secure-typescript-based-alternative/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17247135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17247135)

</comment><comment><USER3> PIling on to say this title sensationalizes what was a very reasonable and good-humored exhibition of one person's small project. Hardly an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel this title is a little extreme. Any project can be ripped to pieces, especially by the main person who wrote the code. This could apply to any industry. It's more of a thought experiment, an opportunity to think outside the box if you could begin again. I think it's valuable, and a good video still.

</comment><comment><USER5> EHhh he doesn't blast it so much as blast himself/his decisions. He is just being hard on himself, and he says in his interview DON'T use my new project yet. He's doing these experiments to see if they work, and in my opinion, to see if node should move in that direction. In some ways, he's like a Steve Jobs coming back to Apple to re-build what he made.

<comment><USER6> >he's like a Steve Jobs

How can you compare innovative engineers to low IQ bullies with connections?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Title is a bit extreme. It's more of retrospection than 'blasting'.

Also, I really like TS and wish Deno a speedy wide release.</comment>


Atomics in Objective-C - <AUTHOR> http://biasedbit.com/blog/objc-atomics/ <comment><USER2> This is called a semaphore, it's already implemented in GCD.

Also, why talk about performance and then make obj-c method calls...?

It's quite easy using NSProxy to create a throttler that will wrap any object, then you can abstract throttling from the behavior of the underlying object.

      @interface Throttler : NSProxy {
         dispatch_semaphore_t _semaphore;
         id _object;
      }
      - initWithObject:(id)obj concurrentOperations:(int)ops;

      @end
      @implementation Throttler

      - (id) initWithObject:(id)obj concurrentOperations:(int)ops {
         if(self = [super init]){
           _semaphore = dispatch_semaphore_create(ops)
           _object = obj;
         }
         return self;
      }

      - (void) forwardInvocation:(NSInvocation*)invocation {
         if(dispatch_semaphore_wait(_semaphore,0)){
            @try {
            [invocation setTarget: _object];
            [invocation invoke];

            }
            @catch (NSException* e){
              @throw e;
            }
            @finally {
            dispatch_semaphore_signal(_semaphore);
            }
            return;
         }
         @throw [NSException
              exceptionWithName:@"InsufficientResourceException"
              reason:@"Insufficient Resource"
              userInfo:nil];
      }

      @end

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Genera...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/General/Conceptual/ConcurrencyProgrammingGuide/OperationQueues/OperationQueues.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008091-CH102-SW24)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why no mention of GCD here? GCD is very, very good at synchronizing access to shared resources.

The most Cocoa-compatible way of handling background execution of expensive procedures is always going to be best executed, quickest, using Grand Central Dispatch.

For example:

        @interface Foo ()
        @property (nonatomic) dispatch_queue_t backgroundQueue;
        @end

        @implementation Foo

        - (BOOL) veryExpensiveMethod:(id)arg completion:(void (^)())completion {
            dispatch_async(self.backgroundQueue, ^{
                if (_counter++ > N) {
                    _counter--;
                    return NO;
                }
                // Critical section
                _counter--;
                return YES;
                dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), completion);
            };

That will ensure every call to -veryExpensiveMethod is run in sequence, and won't require waiting on your end.

These problems have been solved, better.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're missing the most important point of the entire Throttler goal: gracefully returning _fast_ , with success or failure. Nowhere is it stated that the goal is to enqueue tasks for execution.

If you had read 'til the end you would have found multiple statements that OSAtomic* is merely an alternative. Not a silver bullet. Not the fastest.

From the conclusion:

"It's very important to understand that every example in this article could have legitimately been solved with different concurrency primitives — like semaphores and locks — without any noticeable impact to a human playing around with your app."

Also, "(...) is always going to be best executed, quickest, using GCD." is kind of a blanket statement. I'd be careful around the use of "always".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > This post talks about the use of OS low level atomic functions

This is a pet peeve of mine, to call that an "OS" feature. In all recent CPUs I know of, atomic ops are _not_ a privileged operation, and there is absolutely nothing for the operating system to manage in a traditional sense. You don't trap into the kernel and have _it_ compare-and-swap, you just, um, compare and swap.

Maybe your OS provides a convenient C API, but it is not "OS" functionality. It's just instructions on your CPU. You could just as well write them inline. In many common uses, that's what ends up happening - the atomic ops are put inline with the rest of your code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair. I just didn't know how to rephrase that small sentence without unfolding into the two paragraphs you just wrote.

How would you rephrase that? Just "low level atomic", "atomic"?

<comment><USER5> If atomic operations were compatible across processor "families" then you'd have "the family atomics." (Obscure Dune reference.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That was worth 10 upvotes, good sir. Sadly, I can only provide one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is all claimed to do this for 'performance' but there's no figures in this document as to whether the incrementAndGet / decrementAndGet is any faster than @synchronize.

(I suspect it probably is, but fundamentally, @synchronize is implemented using compare and swap / other processor atomics, so it's probable that the difference is very slight - e.g. there's only a measurable difference if the thread is descheduled while holding a lock).

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal of the article isn't about sheer performance — there are plenty of notes about it. If it was about pure performance, it'd be recommending moving away from objc classes and methods and using C functions or C++ classes instead, like std::atomic<>.

It's meant to be a somewhat-easy-to-digest introduction to lock-free design, where applicable.

What @synchronized ends up doing is far more complex — it has to be, to ensure the correctness of its purposes: [https://github.com/opensource- apple/objc4/blob/master/runtim...](https://github.com/opensource- apple/objc4/blob/master/runtime/objc-sync.mm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Or just use std::atomic and other std::mutex in Objective-C++. Under Objective-C world, no memory semantics are well-defined, and all these are hacks on pile of other hacks.

<comment><USER8> Can you explain more about hacks piled on other hacks?</comment></comment>


Trying to Try & Yoda - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/10/trying-to-try.html

<comment><USER2> "Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, " I don't care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

</comment><comment><USER3> _Instead of asking what you could do, you ought to have been asking what needs to be done._

Effort and sacrifice is a big part of it, and there's also acknowledging the role that the unknown plays... luck... fortune, which favours the brave... that the universe is bigger than you can see... and if you act in faith, then opportunities will appear that you have not and could not have foreseen.

Because there are a great many more things in the world that you don't know than that you do, this is actually a pretty good way to bet...</comment>


In the Basement of the Ivory Tower (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/06/in-the-basement-of-the-ivory-tower/306810/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> _I teach young men who must amass a certain number of credits before they can become police officers or state troopers, lower-echelon health-care workers who need credits to qualify for raises, and municipal employees who require college-level certification to advance at work._

Credentialism to the core.

 _Some of them come to me at the conclusion of a course and matter-of-factly ask that I change a failing grade because they need to graduate this semester or because they worked really hard in the class or because they need to pass in order to receive tuition reimbursement from their employer._

This breaks my heart. Why are we doing this to people?

<comment><USER3> It's a combination of classism and cargo culting. Instead of embracing the lower middle class, and acknowledging that everyone performs a role and has value in society, we embrace our contempt for them and their work but convince ourselves that if they go through the same motions as Harvard or Yale grads they'll be able to rise above their circumstances.

<comment><USER4> Boy did you say it. The contempt for working people in this society is palpable: "You don't want to end up flipping burgers, do you?" Morever, if you choose to forgo that option and aim for a higher paying job, you get: "Why don't you get a job? You too good to flip burgers?" The working class can't win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This really resonates with me for reasons I find difficult to articulate.

Meritocracy seems to be similar to democracy in that it's better than the alternative (nepotism), but seemingly falls short of the mark.

A person who happens to be adept at mathematics, by whatever means (perhaps they've been taught well, perhaps they have innate talent, perhaps they had good nutrition as a child) will generally end up with a higher earning potential, and so generally will end up with a more comfortable life. A better life, for lack of more accurate terminology.

To me, that seems like a peculiar form of social darwinism. People do not control these traits to a huge extent. I... rather, we at HN, are better than some of our peers at mathematics, at algorithmic problem solving. No doubt about it. You can probably find someone in your life that you'll always be better than, in that particular field.

We will be richer than some people purely by virtue of history, by virtue of events no longer within our individual control (if they ever were). Human capital.

I struggle to reconcile that with wanting to reward people for the value they add to society.

This is one of the reasons I've been swayed towards supporting universal basic income. I just can't see that it's right for people to be thrown on the scrap heap simply because they happened to be born with the wrong talents, the wrong preferences, or simply an inferior toolset. It seems to me that it's just the logical progression from helping those with a disability.

It might be a necessary evil for the talented to earn more. I don't believe it's necessary for those less fortunate to struggle to meet basic requirements like shelter.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's very likely we'll see a post-labour society in our lifetimes, one where automation has eliminated the vast majority of jobs, and our society has hopefully transitioned into one where having a job is no longer necessary to achieve happiness or decent living conditions.

And here is yet another policy that goes in the opposite direction, that will make the transition worse, that drums into people that "College guarantees a great career!", with the unspoken backside that if you can't make it through college, you are a failure as a person.

I don't know what to do, how do we reverse all this damage?

I'm not sure replacing "college for everyone" with "or vocational school!" is a solution either, we'll automate all those jobs away, too!

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps a little too literary presentation for my liking but the basic thesis is as sound as it is sad.

As someone who taught in those "lucky" science departments, I must say that the experience was not that much different or better. Deficiencies in the basic skills and oversupply of the sense of entitlement.

Those inabilities to write a coherent sentence or a research paper are just as serious handicaps to computer scientists and professionals. Sometimes it extends even to an inability to write a coherent line of code.</comment>


Car insurance: why women face £300 rise in premiums - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/oct/05/car-insurance-women-rise-premiums-eu-ruling

<comment><USER2> It is about time that this sexual discrimination is ended

</comment><comment><USER3> This ruling is insane.

As a male, it's actually against my self-interest to defend higher premiums for men, but here goes:

It's an empirically observable fact that men are riskier than women. Deliberately refusing to use that knowledge distorts the free market and leads to a misallocation of resources.

Say that there's a young married couple who can only afford to insure one spouse as a driver. Say that both spouses work, and it would be equally (in)convenient for the husband or the wife to be chosen as the driver. With equal premiums, they could flip a coin to decide who will drive; they're indifferent. But with unequal premiums, they will always choose to let the wife be the driver, since that's the cheaper option and they're perfectly indifferent between the alternatives otherwise.

The latter situation is better for society because it reduces the expected monetary damage of accidents, since it's an empirically observable fact that this is lower for women. This fact would be reflected in free-market prices, except now the insurance market is distorted in the name of gender equality.

 _It's okay to discriminate based on observable facts._ Women's restrooms don't have urinals. This isn't because of some grand patriarchal conspiracy to make women use a sitting position to represent their subordination; rather, this furnishing decision is due to observable differences in male and female bodies' biological plumbing.

If some court decided to force women's restrooms to have urinals to make them "equal" to men's restrooms, it would simply lead to a waste of limited and valuable time, money, and indoor space to build fixtures that would never be used.

EDIT: Just read the end of the article, about life insurance. Under the new ruling, every married couple contributing equally to two life insurances should just stop putting money on the wife and instead double their bet on the husband dying. Life insurance will actually become more valuable -- maybe even a positive expected value bet -- for men or couples that can do this, with their profits being sucked out of single, divorced or widowed women's premiums. This effect might even be large enough to destroy the women's life insurance market altogether; unless she knows she's near death, it might become a better bet for a woman to just put her money in savings bonds, index funds, or cash under her mattress. (I.e., while a court can force women's premiums to increase to make them equal to mens', and an insurance company now can't legally "know" a customer's gender when it sets the premium/payout bet structure, a woman _does_ know her own gender and _can_ refuse to buy life insurance on that basis since her personal EV is now negative.) Whether this is a desirable result for a strong believer in gender equality is left as an exercise to the reader.</comment>


Apple is going to have a tough year - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-is-going-to-have-a-tough-year-2015-12?op=1 <comment><USER4> 'Smart, rational people in the media, like Nilay Patel of The Verge' ahh yeah.. Ok

Apple is going to be fine.. They carry very little /no debt and make the best phone in the world that magically becomes obsolete in 14 months..

I can't imagine a better business to be in and dominate.

<comment><USER5> Apple will have an alright year. Speculators in Apple common stock will have a tougher year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm no Apple fan or user, but these reasons are vapid:

\- iPhone in the "negative" which sounds, well, negative but actually means that GROWTH has stopped. However it remains one of the most profitable smartphones with a giant market share, so shareholders may wish to change their medium term valuations, but frankly any valuation which ignores market saturation isn't worth considering anyway.

\- Apple Watch isn't a hit... Alright, but Apple Watch 1.0 was NEVER going to be a hit. A lot of people skip the first gen because they look at history (iPhone 1, iPad 1, etc) and with a smartwatch in particular there's a lot of reason to think the technology can move forward (12 hours battery life?!). Apple Watch 2 is due out this year, and while I have no idea if that will be a hit, it COULD be.

\- "Apple's software and services — Apple Music, Maps, Health, Photos — are just OK." Maps, Health, and Photos were never profit makers. Everything I've read about Apple Music has been quite positive and they've already grabbed a large amount of market for being a relatively new player. Why is the article bundling profitable business avenues with unprofitable freebies? Why is it just "ok?"

I agree with the article that 2015 was a boring year for Apple, but I think they're jumping to a lot of conclusions about 2016, and if half the rumours about the next iPhone turn out to be true then it could be popular. With the 2016 Apple Watch, it needs at minimum to have better battery life, maybe round, maybe new functionality/sensors.

This entire article only exists because the market has a fetish for growth. Even if Apple becomes completely stagnant, it is stagnant for a HUGELY successful company that competes in multiple sectors. And it isn't like they're getting eaten by things like inflation (prices have risen) or actual decline (in real terms or not), so I think rumours of Apple's demise or even having a bad 2016 are greatly exaggerated.

PS - And don't get me started on how massively successful Apple has been with vertical integration as a growth vector.

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing about Apple is this: they _always_ have a plan. Count on it. It's not like Business Insider is uncovering something they don't know here. All this doomsaying is due to the fact that Apple does not pre-announce anything. This, understandably, drives mass media nuts, so they just make things up. But that doesn't change the basic truth of the issue: Apple always has a plan.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apple: always so beleaguered.

I do agree that their software has taken a huge nosedive. Their major attempts at initiatives have been poorly executed.

</comment><comment><USER9> The iPhone 6S is truly an amazing piece of hardware; there is so much internal enhancement over the iPhone 6. Yet Apple hardly hyped it in that way. I got my wife a 6S for Christmas and what convinced me was what I know about it _that didn 't come from Apple_.

<comment><USER10> My impression of the iPhone's tick-tock release cycle is that the number- increment releases are actually intentional efforts of product design... while the "S" releases are actually _forced_ on Apple by the extremely tight supply chain they've set up for themselves.

The moment it becomes more cost-efficient to buy a bunch of some new components early, Apple does so—but then the cost of having them sitting around doing nothing when they could be put to use steadily rises. Meanwhile, it can also become increasingly expensive to keep ordering "old" components for your existing design, because the rest of the industry has moved on from using that component and you're the only one the suppliers are still producing it for, and they really want you off it too so they can shut that line down. Together, these effects imply that it actually becomes cost-effective from an operational logistics perspective to refresh the iPhone's hardware each year, even if the "design plan" is written in terms of two-year milestone releases. Whatever ends up being cost-effective to put into the interim refresh gets advertised on stage, but—unlike the actual "planned" releases—it's effectively random, rather than a "curated" list of features that go together to form a whole.

Or, to put it another way—Apple likely went to the drawing board and designed the iPhone 7 right after the release of the iPhone 6. Some random subset of the components of the iPhone 7 ended up "resolving" early enough that they got "binned" together as the iPhone 6S. Whatever components _didn 't_ become available in time for the 6S release, are now waiting until the 7.

When you see a number-increment release like the 6 or the soon-to-be 7, imagine that all the features that went into the previous "S" release were also announced on stage at the same time that they announced whatever _did_ go into it. Because that's what Apple _intends_ to happen; together, the 6S's features and the 7's features (or the 5S's features and the 6's features, etc.) add up to a coherent and compelling product vision. The "S" release just takes a random bite out of that vision and sputters it out early, leaving the actual numbered release to say whatever's left over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Strange he quotes Ben Thompson as bearish on Apple. Ben says _exactly the opposite_ in his podcast. He has a very favorable outlook on Apple.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I was confused by this as well. I think this author was looking for something bearish, and went with Ben anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "iPhone sales could go negative for the first time in history."

Growth. You mean sales growth. So call it that. There's enough innumeracy and economic illiteracy out there -- let's not add to it, eh.

</comment><comment><USER14> It is obvious that eventually the sales of any product, even the iPhone would eventually plateau. This means of course, the stock value would be no longer determined by some fancy dreams of growth but the actual financials of the company. With the share price going down, the resulting hit might have already happened. But this still would mean that the most profitable company plateaus, not a bad place to be.

Also the outlook isn't so bad either. The iPhone 6 sold much better than all analysts predicted and I wouldn't be surprised if the 6s might not even beat it - a lot of the iPhone users who did not have a 6 were upgrading this year (including myself). And with the 7 we might get the 6 owners renew after 2 years.

The iPad sales have been slow - I myself haven't upgraded my iPad 3 yet - <USER2> if the Pencil technology comes to the full line up, it could drive a lot of interest into renewing.

And while the Apple Watch might not large by business volume yet, it owns the large part of the smartwatch market. There will be huge improvements with the next generations, so a lot of growth there. Also you cannot use the Apple Watch without a modern iPhone, so with the iPhone renewals there are more potential customers.

<comment><USER15> > It is obvious that eventually the sales of any product, even the iPhone > would eventually plateau.

Eventually, probably, if by "plateau" you mean "decelerate."

> This means of course, the stock value would be no longer determined by some > fancy dreams of growth but the actual financials of the company.

LOL. Apple's P/E is 11.45. Google's is 35.69. Microsoft's is 37.28. Facebook's is 105.14. Amazon's is 980.46. The S&P 500 average is 21.54.

Which of these has "fancy dreams of growth" again?

<comment><USER16> Not to speak of the fact that if you take out the cash, the p/e is 8.something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> am I the only one who considers the markets obsession of endless growth as absurd?

Both sides in the smart phone market have been growing thru beating down the weaker competitors then just by market growth, the smart phone market in developed countries is largely reaching saturation - where is the place to grow now?

I work in a market where volume matters little - margin is the key - <USER3> division for example produces a product with a gross margin of ~50%

<comment><USER18> > am I the only one who considers the markets obsession of endless growth as > absurd?

Likely not however we're only talking stock price here and the only thing that matters in investing in stocks in finding your way back to a return which typically happens when stock prices go up and you can sell higher or you get a dividend. Since Apple doesn't do the latter it has to do the former which means requires constantly growing the company.

So while in logic the endless growth is a bit absurd in the stock market it's either that or dividends (and even dividends may not keep it raising; all depends on how they're structured).

<comment><USER19> Actually AAPL starting issuing dividends in 2012 giving in to pressure from shareholders.

<comment><USER18> Oh look at that you're right. Damn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe iPhone growth stalls this year sure but I wouldn't bet a single dollar based just on "supply chain reports" which have turned out to be nothingburgers as often as not.

My own prediction for Apple in 2016 is that the iPad returns to growth this (calendar) year.

</comment><comment><USER21> Utter nonsense, pure clickbait froth. The watch is a great v1 product (read some iPhone v1 reviews and compare) and the new model should be announced soon. The new atv is FANTASTIC, and at $149 they will sell a ton of them. And the iPad Pro is getting rave reviews, though the price point means I think it'll be another generation before the new stuff makes it into the cheaper models and makes a big bump in the iPad numbers.

I'd say apple is poised for a great year, unless the world economy goes pop, which might well happen but can't be helped.

</comment><comment><USER22> Ah it's that time of year again; it's all over guys, time to go home.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is Business Insider. It's like the TMZ of tech news. Flagged.

<comment><USER24> Is "this publication reminds me of another publication I don't like" really a valid use of flagging an article?

<comment><USER23> no, you misunderstand: [https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=analogy...](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=analogy+definition&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

        a·nal·o·gy
        noun: analogy; plural noun: analogies
        a comparison between two things, typically
        on the basis of their structure and for
        the purpose of explanation or clarification.

p.s. you should pay Heroku the $7/month so that your business website doesn't sleep after _n_ minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The headline should be Apple stock will have a tough year not Apple. Although the future growth decline has already been priced into Apple stock onea of the reasons it P/E ratio is so low compared to many like Google.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've heard this almost every year, and almost every year it turns out to be an incorrect assumption and as Aloha pointed out here - what is the obsession with growth?

Growth does not equal stability.

<comment><USER18> > what is the obsession with growth

Growth means return on investment. You gotta go in the public markets if you want to make a good return. That or dividends or a company being sold (which is obviously not going to happen to Apple).

<comment><USER27> Apple doesn't necessarily need to grow its revenue in order to provide ROI.

They could merely decline/plateau at a slower rate than the market has priced it at. Or they could use their gobs of cash to continue the buyback program.

In fact, Apple's buyback program is expected to reach $200 billion by 2017. Even if Apple's revenue stopped growing tomorrow, they would throw off enough money to run a huge buyback program for years to come.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> apple stock will hit a high of $144.42 USD per share this year. You heard it here first.

 _EDIT_ add "this year"

<comment><USER6> A 40% increase over today's closing price? And a 10% increase over Apple's highest on record? There's no market reason to believe that.

Even if I had insider information that Apple had a "game changing" product or device, I still think $144.42 is unlikely, and there are no rumours to suggest that.

<comment><USER29> I have no reasons to believe I know anything about the markets/apple/stocks/investing, but who would have thought the market would actually value essentially iPhones more than oil (and this was before this whole oil-supply-crisis we're in)? If sales turn out to be growth (which, as other commenters have pointed out it probably will since it's doom/gloom every year and every time) then the market will rejoice and probably drive it up to that height. Some big-investors thought it'd get to $250(!) a share. I think they were full-of-it, but the market responds in strange ways and 144 isn't too far from their height to reach if there isn't a major economic event that changes things in the meantime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Again.

</comment><comment><USER31> Two points:

One, it's pretty absurd to say that the IPhone is the "best" smartphone on the market. It did a lot well as far as marketing and design, but the rest of the market has caught up and now surpassed Apple.

Two, it's well documented that Apple can't even execute on their strengths anymore. They've made a series of poor design choices, and they've been largely unable to create new markets with items like the Apple Watch.

Bubble or not, the economy as a whole is certainly up. There is plenty of room for it to go crashing down, and with it things like emerging markets and discretionary income to be spent on iphones. Despite the surprisingly reasonable P/E, I'm bearish on Apple on a timeframe of more than a year or two.</comment>


www.JobSearchMaps.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.JobSearchMaps.com <comment><AUTHOR> so do people think that if i get some famous actor, model, wwf wrestler to tattoo <http://www.JobSearchMaps.com> on their shoulder or thight that it will generate traffic or what??</comment>


Lenovo's Chief Technology Officer Discusses the Superfish Adware Fiasco - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/lenovos-chief-technology-officer-discusses-the-superfish-adware-fiasco/?ref=technology&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I'm still surprised anyone at any time thought Superfish was a good idea or something that customers would want. This was very obviously adware from the beginning and you can't tell me that not a single person raised any concerns about it inside the company.

Also,

> Q: I have to press you on that. What did the opt-in prose look like? Nobody > recalls anything about this being opt-in.

> A: I don't have it in front of me, but I will get it to you.

I would sincerely like to see that, because I've set up multiple Lenovo systems and I have never been given the opportunity to opt in to or out of any preloaded software.

<comment><USER3> > A. When you buy a Lenovo machine and turn it on, this was one of the > programs that was presented to you. At that point, you could click a button > that says, "I don't want to use this."

That is the very _definition_ of opt-OUT. He directly claims that user intervention was necessary or the adware would be installed by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surely Lenovo made money from superfish installs?

Such as a referral code on the alternate item purchase links etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a little surprised they didn't throw their CTO under the bus.

<comment><USER6> Then Lenovo would admit that they have seriously messed up. Now they are still trying to act as nothing serious happened, only small misunderstanding. "SSL certificate" doesn't tell much to a wider audience. I had difficulties explaining why this Lenovo malware is dangerous to my sister, who is quite smart overall. What most people get by reading articles on this topic is "Lenovo inserts ads", which is not that much of a concern for most users that are used to it anyway.</comment></comment>


Atom Editor or Sublime Text – which one to pick? - <AUTHOR> http://www.atomtips.com/atom-editor-vs-sublime-text/ <comment><USER2> You have to understand that Atom is repurposed webkit, with all the flaws and benefits that come with a browser engine.

I liked it, the dealbreaker (to say the least) for me was broken support for non-US keyboard layouts, it can't differentiate alt from alt-gr making it impossible for me to type most brackets and pipe.

This has been an open issue for months, with a couple of community contributed "solutions" that don't quite cut it. Considering they are pretty much ignoring the problem I won't be checking out Atom again soon.

<comment><USER3> I just downloaded the latest version (on ubuntu 14.04 with Atom 0.177.0) and was able to type "|" and "@" and "\" no without problems on a Spanish-layout keyboard.

Edit: in latest release notes it says "Atom now runs on top of Chrome 40 and io.js".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't really consider the site 'atomtips.com' to be an unbiased source on this issue!

All you need to know is that you can easily use both for free and decide if you like both, either, or neither. So basically, pick whatever one (or none of them!) that you prefer after using it for a bit.

Atom has the upside of being open-source, and being easier for people familiar with the web stack to modify. Sublime has the benefit of being much faster. You'll be able to achieve roughly the same with both, and it'll come down to individual use cases and preferences.

(Although I will say that I don't consider the replacement of a lovely JSON- formatted settings file with a GUI to be a benefit at all!)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think you should rely on other's opinions when picking an editor. Just try each one (really try) for a week or two and decide after that.

Everyone uses editors differently (hence the big vim/emacs/etc flame war) and it is where you'll spend time coding. A lot of time. I don't think reading someone else's opinion really helps.

When I chose my editor everyone was crazy about TextMate. I tried it out and didn't like it. I was completely afraid of Vim (and all of the jokes about how hard it was) and after I tried it I couldn't stop using it. It's a very personal choice.

Just try them out!

Edit: typo

<comment><USER6> So much this, and it applies to things other than editors too. I used to constantly look for people's opinions on all kinds of software to decide which one was best for me due to a belief that if I used something that I _didn 't_ end up liking then that time would have been wasted. I've now mostly reversed that habit because trying something out for yourself is the only way you'll know if _you_ will like it, and the time invested isn't a waste so long as you come out with a better idea of what you prefer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used both for a considerable amount of time and these are my unbiased thoughts about it. 1\. I don't think Atom is more of a web-editor. Think of dreamweaver, but completely stripped down, and dare I say, faster. I used to it write few of my NodeJs apps and was quite happy with it. But, compared to Submile, it is incredibly slow.

2\. Also, I'm not sure how others work, but I'm more of a one editor for everything person. Atom is not that editor. Vim, Emacs and to an extent, because of being native and having huge number of plugins, Sublime is quite one-ring-to-rule-them-all editor. I feel that Atom won't ever be that, nor does it want to be that.

3\. Time spent in learning the shortcuts of both these editors are negligent and both provide enough ways to tailor it to your needs. But I feel that Atom has better project management capabilities than Sublime. Github is a major help here.

That's about it. I'm a Sublime fan, and just don't feel to need to switch anything. I would rather spend that time building something fun than invest myself in learning another editor.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Atom 1.0 should greatly improve the performance, so let's judge it after that."

Oh yes. As fair and balanced as a guide from an Atom fanboy can be. The sort of article that deserves to be linked two or three times.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, it seems like wishful thinking that Atom will magically become quicker. One presumes that the easy optimisations have already been made. What else can be done, other than a complete rewrite using a different technology stack?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Atom just feels weird and broken. Make a new document - why is Edit -> Undo enabled when there's nothing to Undo? Press Command-Z - why doesn't the menubar flash to indicate that I typed a key equivalent? Control-click on an item in the tree view on the right - why does it only highlight after the menu is dismissed? Make the window bigger - why is there a flicker, as the content repaints after the window resizes?

Atom exists in an uncanny valley, and re-introduces tons of problems that the design of OS X has worked hard to avoid. I hope Atom doesn't succeed for that reason: it's a big regression in UI.

</comment><comment><USER11> Atom has an ambitious concept and is generally engineered well, but the performance is crippling it so far. I'm not sure whether it's possible in the current web-to-native implementation to actually reach native performance, especially for large files, but so far it's just not ready for the primetime.

</comment><comment><USER12> The biggest issue for me is startup speed. Atom simply takes too long for me. I'm often quickly having a look at large numerical csv files and Atom startup times plus csv load times are always large enough to immediately switch back to sublime. Still want to like Atom though.

<comment><USER13> I've settled on using Atom for my longer-term work, where I can just leave it open and am not too bothered by sluggishness here or there.

Then I use Sublime Text for big files, quick edits, and the occasional stuff that Atom can't do yet.

But after avoiding Atom initially, trying it again about a week a go was a nice surprise. It has almost any plugin that I used Sublime Text for, and a bunch more. It's good enough for me, and I'm pretty picky.

<comment><USER14> I don't know. If it's a big enough edit to warrant waiting for start up time, then why not just use an appropriate IDE which also has lots of additional convenience features in addition to just being an editor.

Atom takes about the same amount of time to start up as RubyMine but it only provides a fraction of the functionality.

The one thing a pure editor has over an IDE is start up time and Atom is not even having that.

<comment><USER13> > The one thing a pure editor has over an IDE is start up time and Atom is not > even having that.

Well, Atom does start significantly faster than WebStorm (and it's siblings). On top of that, actually using Atom is much less sluggish than WebStorm or other full-blown IDE's. This is on a MacBook Air though, with tons of apps and at least two browsers open.

That said, I'd probably use an IDE if I do more complex work. For my current web-development needs Atom is fine, and since I mostly work within one project, the startup time is not an issue.

Furthermore, since most of the keyboard shortcuts and interface is similar to Sublime, it's not a big deal to open ST every once in a while for bigger files.

The main reason I'm switching to Atom for now, though, is that I feel it has a stronger future than ST, and I might finally scratch some of my own itches by writing plugins. That's harder for me to do for ST.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Those of you who use Sublime or Atom exclusively for (code) work, does that mean you don't use an IDE?

There seems to be devs coming from at least three camps: the ones that came from the emacs/vi side that never really took to IDEs, those that once used (say) Eclipse and were burned by IDEs and now like the less-is-more of editors, and those that started developing in IDE's and can't imagine NOT having an integrated debugger and so on (Yes I know several text editors can be set up to have most IDE features, but for the sake of argument lets count IDEs as those that were built from the ground up as full IDEs).

Not sure what divides devs this way but the 2 main reasons should be platform: if you are used to linux of course you have huge benefits of having a console based editor, perhaps so much that you can forego a lot of the bells and whistles of a desktop based one, especially of you don't use graphical designers UI elements and such. The second reason I can think of would be language: If you are work on niche languages you are likely to find editor support in text editors, but not likely a good IDE. Likewise if you work in dynamic/weakly typed languages, the benefits of refactorings and navigation are much smaller than they are in a static/strongly typed langues.

So I'm curious: if you aren't a Haskell or js developer, are you using a non- IDE as your "main" editor? If so, why?

For me personally I want a full IDE for my dev work and can't imagine coding without full project support, integrated debugger, refactorings and so on, and I can't be bothered with configuring editor plugins for basic things such as auto-indentation, auto-complete or syntax highlighting, and I haven't seen any really good dev environents based on editors in neither Sublime, vi or emacs. I do use editors for viewing random files/logs, editing resources, making documentation and so on, but not as my main dev tool. As such, the requirements are very different from an editor that is a main dev environment from 8 to 5.

<comment><USER16> To me, an IDE basically just means "an editor with a built-in debugger". I really don't know where else you'd draw the line. However, for many languages, there's no such thing as a built-in debugger (most interpreted languages, for example).

I've used Visual Studio for C# and C++, and Eclipse for Java.

For Python, Javascript, Go, and editing random files, I prefer Sublime Text. It loads and runs way faster than VS or Eclipse. Setting up plugins is usually a one-time thing that only takes a few minutes to follow some directions off the web. There usually zero "configuration". Just install and you're done.

My guess is that your day job is using Java, C++, or a .Net language, and that's why you feel tied to an IDE (probably VS or Eclipse). Other languages don't really need that much integration into an IDE (unlike others, I don't think needing an IDE is really a bad thing, generally it means there's just a lot of stuff you can do with the language besides writing logic).

I mainly write Go at work, and Sublime is great for that. There's not really a Go debugger yet (there's a couple bad choices, but not ones I'd want to use on any kind of a regular basis), and there's not really a way to write GUIs either... so what's left is "write code, format code, run tests, run program". The last two are purely command line, and the first two are what my editor does.

<comment><USER15> > To me, an IDE basically just means "an editor with a built-in debugger"

Yes, at least an integrated project support, debugger and compiler (but could be more, such as profiler, testing, designer). You are correct I use the large OO langs, and I agree that IDEs are only really useful for languages with strict types, large class libraries and large projects (so for example C++, and the JVM and .NET languages).

> write code, format code, run tests, run program

But isn't there a frustrating number of unnecessary roundtrips involved here? At least in go, which is strictly typed, if you misspell a type or function name, when will you notice? Can you configure Sublime so that you at least get compiler support (so a typo will be noticed when you make it rather than later?). And can you make sublime help you with displaying documentation hints or with completing statements? If you have a compiler error, how do you navigate to where it is? Do you have to read the line number in the compiler output and then open the offending file/tab in Sublime and navigate manually to the line? At least for most langs in Emacs you get compiler message parsing so you can jump straight to the problem.

Coming from the IDE world, I'd just never get off the ground with a new language if I had to go from autocompletion and squigglies under typos, to having to remember type names and function names in my head (yes IDEs have basically done that to my head, I can no longer remember even the smallest bit of language trivia).

<comment><USER16> Sorry for the late reply. Yes, the plugin for Go for Sublime will tell you when you type something that won't compile. It has autocomplete for functions and types etc. It has go to definition. Some plugins will let you compile straight from sublime, though I don't use that, generally I just use the command line for that, I don't really find it to be a problem...

Integrated project support is not really needed for Go, at least. There's no project file that defines what's in a project, it's just the directory layout, and everything is embedded in the .go files themselves, so there's no need to parse something to know what's "in" or "not in" the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From a website called "atomtips", it seems kind of biased !

Anyway the dealbreaker for me was the very slow start of Atom (and I've got a very good machine). When every app loads instantly, I'm not going to wait 5 seconds for each new window of Atom I launch.

</comment><comment><USER18> Right now, ST. Somewhere in the future, hopefully Atom.

I don't even care about the startup speed, but Atom generally doesn't feel polished compared to ST. Starts with the terrible font rendering on Linux.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know it's "linux only" (not really, I'm using an old version from windows.kde.org), but, seriously, I always found kate[0] better suited as a "programmer editor". I recenlty at work switched to sublime, but it's inferior to kate in almost everything (the only thing I see it handle better - and it handle very better - is the opening of very big (>30Mb) text files)

.. [0]: [http://kate-editor.org/](http://kate-editor.org/)

<comment><USER20> Gedit is also very nice and has some pretty good plugins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Both are very good editors. The choice might well depend on which source language you're going to edit, and your average file as well as project size (how many files?). If any of the two is large enough, you just can't use Atom for that - it's noticeably slower, for obvious reasons. Though, I don't use a single editor for everything. You could just go with Sublime, and switch to Atom whenever you need some feature/plugin that you find more convenient there.

OT: does anybody know PSPad? It has a very interesting feature set, though it lacks more advanced things like collapsing, refactoring tools; I find it very useful sometimes - especially its columnar editing feature.

</comment><comment><USER22> UI inspired by Sublime? It practically copied most functionality, behaviour and UI style from Sublime. Atom wouldn't have existed without Sublime. Or at least wouldn't be as good.

Having said that, Atom's got my bet as the text editor of the near future.

</comment><comment><USER23> Try them both, for at least a week each - and any others you've heard of that seem interesting to you.

Your editor is a very personal choice, and something you'll use a lot, so it's worth putting the time in to try a few before you stick with one.

</comment><comment><USER24> The startup speed is incredibly painful. That said, I absolutely love working in Atom, and I use it whenever I'm doing a substantial session of coding.

For minor edits and quick referencing, I'll typically use Emacs. Then some Jetbrains IDE for work/specific school projects. I definitely think I've found a balance that works well for me, but the fact that I'm switching so much makes me unsure if it is best.

</comment><comment><USER25> Another day. Another editor comparison.

They're both good, powerful and accessible editors (alongside a pile of other editors that people will swear on their children's lives are the best)...

However, nobody else on this planet is you. None of us shares your exact likes, requirements and thoughts. What I like in Atom might really piss you off. What you need from ST might not even be on my radar.

If you want to pick, try both and decide for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER26> Code Browser [http://tibleiz.net/code-browser/](http://tibleiz.net/code- browser/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Can you do a Vim vs Emacs one too, please?

<comment><USER28> Seriously? Have you visited the internet?

<comment><USER27> I don't anymore, my daughter told me to use the orange mozzarella instead of the blue e because it has more ram speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The 2mb file limit is a deal breaker for me frankly. For now, I'm sticking with Sublime.

</comment><comment><USER30> One of the issue which I feel is the font rendering with these two editors. Text on ST3 looks crisp and beautiful.

For better look see, [http://imgur.com/a/yMexQ](http://imgur.com/a/yMexQ)

</comment><comment><USER9> Any serious developer will try both for at least a day, and choose the one that makes them most productive.

For me, Atom was "death by 1000 cuts", with it's interminable sluggishness eventually driving me insane.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use ST because it's faster.

But I would like to use Atom instead, because it has JavaScript plugins.

Also @ doesn't work out of the box on Atom, because "alt gr"+"q" is a hot key, lol

</comment><comment><USER32> It depends on OS integration too. On Linux I'll pick Atom, on OS X I'll pick Sublime Text, on Windows I'll probably use something else.

<comment><USER33> For OSX I would pick Textmate since it integrates better with the OSX ecosystem in terms of behaviour, keyboard shortcuts, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Gee, I wonder what atomtips.com will recommend!

</comment><comment><USER35> Has anyone used Brackets (brackets.io)? It seems to be similar to Atom in architecture/approach if I'm not mistaken.

</comment><comment><USER36> >Atom is free software(free as a free speech not free as a beer)

Atom is also, "free as in beer", is it not?

</comment><comment><USER26> I think we have to write more editors with Sublime architecture. I have no idea how to start.

</comment><comment><USER37> Speed...

</comment><comment><USER38> I would pick Atom editor, just for the free software philosophy.

<comment><USER39> Why not textmate then? Its been free for a while now [https://github.com/textmate/textmate](https://github.com/textmate/textmate)

<comment><USER40> Which requires a proprietary OS to run on....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Emacs?

</comment><comment><USER42> VIM

</comment><comment><USER43> Notepad++

Next question

<comment><USER43> Wow downvotes by the hipsters. Not surprising i guess..

<comment><USER12> No. Your previous comment is simply irelevant as a HN comment. Look at the other comments in a similar style to yours. All downvoted as well. Editor wars are so damn dull without any factual exchanges.

<comment><USER38> You are right, I had a lot of downvotes until I realized that I am not in reddit and that comments should be made to anrich the conversation, not to express a single word like 'notepad++' that means nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Emacs. Next question.

</comment><comment><USER45> Vim. Next question.

</comment><comment><USER46> OMG, another editor war! :]

</comment><comment> digital-rubber The editor imho, should not be that big of a choice. The more important thing is, you choose one and you stick with it so that you will master it and enjoy all the advantages there are for that editor.

I strongly doubt that there is much different (perhaps some limitations of the app itself which are described below in other comments), that a person that worked with atom editor for a long time and mastered it vs a sublime text user that mastered the editor will work at a different speed.

[ edit ]

And i stick with sublime :)</comment>


The Economics and Nostalgia of Dead Malls - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/business/the-economics-and-nostalgia-of-dead-malls.html

<comment><USER2> The simplified reason old malls are dying is the same reason fast food restaurants remodel, and the ones that don't die.

The experience that the mall provides is the core feature. If that experience is not attractive it has no features.

New malls beat the old mall trends, and the outlet mall format adds a second feature to the mix which extends their viability time before a remodel is required.

The catch 22 is that remodeling something the size of a mall is rarely feasible.

<comment><USER3> FYI, One of the malls in the linked article was extensively remodeled in 1998. Personally, I dislike the trend toward open-air, outlet style shopping since I live in an area that regularly gets below 15f in the winter.

<comment><USER2> Thats a good point, and I think the really difficult thing for the current C mall owners is that a remodel will probably only get you from a C to a B where the experience gain is still pretty low. Other smaller foot print B&Ms usually scrape and rebuild when they hit some age, which seems nearly impossible for something the size of a mall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sobering that income inequality is a driving force behind the death of a lot of the malls aimed at the middle class:

<< With income inequality continuing to widen, high-end malls are thriving, even as stolid retail chains like Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney falter, taking the middle- and working-class malls they anchored with them.

"It is very much a haves and have-nots situation," said D. J. Busch, a senior analyst at Green Street. Affluent Americans "will keep going to Short Hills Mall in New Jersey or other properties aimed at the top 5 or 10 percent of consumers. But there's been very little income growth in the belly of the economy." >>

</comment><comment><USER4> I won't miss (suburban) malls (shopping centers). I was never a mall rat, so maybe my perspective is skewed. That said, why not repurpose dying malls as living space for: homeless, hackerspaces, and those in more prime locations, raze and use the land to make into condominiums --malls typically have good transport connections. Make use of the land and buildings. That said some malls are built with expiration dates of 30 years or so, it would seem.

<comment><USER5> This is happening in some areas and it's a trend I hope will continue. For example, my hometown mall was dead (~3-4 open shops out of ~50 available) for the better part of the last decade but management has recently started renting out most of space to local colleges and other non-commercial entities.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are - <AUTHOR> http://davesapien.com/DaveSapien/2013DaveSapien.html <comment><USER4> Very nice work Dave - one thing thats probably a more interesting question - can you make a living on that? Making many small apps?

Have also been toying with an idea to start doing apps for a while now and rather than do a major idea, instead do many small apps. Like for example if 1 app brings 100$ per month - then making 20 could make 2000$ and so on - <USER3> does 1 app make 100$ on average at all?

<comment><USER5> Don't take this the wrong way, but please don't contribute to the flood of low quality apps in the app store(s) that serves to drown even the better apps out there.

I know of a person (via one of the local game dev groups I was part of in a previous city I lived in) that would just crap out a "new" app every couple of days by making a super simple game (like infinite runner) and then get some artist in Romania to reskin it 4-5 different ways for $10/hour, then SEO the title for popular keywords (names like "Runner Game for boys and girls with cute bunny! Christmas edition!").

If you have an idea for a genuinely useful app or good game, something you would enjoy working on and can imagine others enjoy using, then go for it. But don't do shotgun-dev of shit app. We have enough of those already.

<comment><USER6> This is a kind of naïveté. Experimenting at scale to sell apps and find what might be a viable business is pretty much all the AppStore offers developers. The lack of custom storefronts or advertising/marketing options makes this the only viable way to try to make money.

Just waiting til you've made the perfect app and only launching that would mean you were one of the most brilliant people in tech, having complete knowledge of your target market even before release.

And relative to your comment about not releasing 'low quality apps', you might as well tell people not to release their blogs on wordpress because all these 'low quality' websites are just re skinned versions of the same blog engine.

<comment><USER5> The value of the blog is not the engine it's the text. If their text is a blatant rehashing of someone else's content with SEO on top then yes, I would tell them to not put up crap online & try to find something of value to do.

I'm not saying don't try to release MVPs quicky to test the market, I'm saying don't log in to itunes, check out the top 10 games and then make cheap generic rip offs with different skins and optimized titles. The summery of what I'm trying to say is: do something you care about, in one way or another. It would be better for your mental health and probably also more likely to be a viable business. Don't be the ios equivalent of spammers & spyware-laden internet explorer toolbars.

I should say that I've been making a living as an independent developer for almost 3 years now so I'm not just talking out of my ass here.

<comment><USER7> Yeah but that is business. That is exactly how a good business man approaches business. Study the market, determine what is successful, emulate them but either more efficiently, to a new niche, or marketed better.

I mean the whole point of business is to maximize the return on your investment.

Now making absolute garbage may not be the right solution, and making incredible product that takes 5 years to develop is probably not the right solution either... finding the right mix is key

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's a good output but a little disingenuous to say 22 when several are just various themes on the same engine. (E.g. 4 paint apps)

Depending on your aim with these, next year would be a great year to focus less on dev and more on marketing. Many of these have zero reviews on the play store but are on par with other more established apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I totally agree. Many failures in marketing this year. Weird thing is, PooBarr the pooping bear has some great reviews out there but it dosen't seem to catch peoples attention. Disingenuous maybe, but the painting apps have changed dramatically through each release, my tech is now 5 times faster than at the beginning of the year. As I've been pushing ahead with new products I've been keeping the updates going with my older ones. Also I don't think 20+ illustrations for each one is a meaningless effort. But yes, I really need to come up with a better marketing strategy for my paint! ta!

<comment><USER9> Dave, love your productivity. I'd love to give you a few free pointers on the marketing front. Shoot me a tweet @bksenior and lets talk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazing Thanks!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations Dave, very nice work. I've been toying with the idea of starting to develop many small mobile and web apps during the course of next year, not really looking for revenue but for the sake of creating tools and games that might be useful for someone while helping me not to get creatively stuck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! I totally recommend it, a confidence builder if nothing else. My site is down at the moment so here is a mirror on pastebin [http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG](http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Edit, here is a pastebin link until my site is back online. Sorry about that guys. [http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG](http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG)

</comment><comment><USER11> Good for you for accomplishing and creating so much. Congrats on that. But good god, the background of your site is an eyesore. It literally hurt my eyes as I read through your list. You're going to deter a lot of people with such a bright background. Beyond that you're detracting so much attention away from your content. Feel free to completely ignore this, but I would change the background to something subtler or at least monotone if I were you. It will bring the focus back to where it belongs, your content, and it will give a far better first impression to new visitors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!! Yeah wasn't sure myself, changed it to something more blue sky. Thanks again for the feedback!

<comment><USER11> That's much better. You're welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats you've been very productive this year.

Concerning making money, I think you need to explore other ways of revenue streams than just paid apps. For example freemium or ad based. I'm currently making $0.07/download, with 20,000 downloads/month on Android using an in app purchase freemium model. I'll be adding more IAPs, so revenue should be going up in 2014.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Thats brilliant, I'm very wary of freemium myself and have tried it in the past. I just don't think its for me. Though I'm going to give it a go next year with one or two apps next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey Dave, are you in Edinburgh? You should enter make-a-game-month (#makgammon) [1] next year. Its hosted at Edinburgh Hacklab. I think you would really fit in

[http://edinburghhacklab.com/2013/12/make-a-game-month- result...](http://edinburghhacklab.com/2013/12/make-a-game-month-results/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, yes I am. Sadly I'll be moving on in January though. When is the next #makgammon? I may drop in and see you lot before I leave!

<comment><USER13> Urgh, #makgammon is every November :(

The lab has a public open night every Tue and Thurs though. General hacking then. The game things is a once a year special event. (check out the Doodle app for this year)

Join the mailing list, or just email me if you want to visit.

Oh there are bitcoin talks on the 3rd of Jan I think. (check the mailing list)

<comment><USER14> Maybe you can answer a question for me - why is that the hackerspaces in the UK are not open to the public all the time? I've been quite surprised at how difficult it is to get involved in the hackerspace scene in the UK - but I guess I'm kind of spoiled with the Metalab/Vienna situation. Is there some law in the UK that makes it difficult for hackerspaces to maintain an open door policy for the public, or is it more that the hackerspace is not as vibrant in the UK as it is on the Continent, and there aren't hackers there all the time?

<comment><USER15> Our funding model relies on subscriptions, and public access all the time would severely erode the value. In addition, we need to make sure that everyone using "dangerous" kit is properly trained, which is more practical with a closed door model.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for explaining it to me - I honestly thought it might have been some UK law or regulation regarding assemblies of people/membership taxes and so on.

The reason I wonder about it though is that the open nature of hackerspaces is one of the huge selling points. To be honest I can gain access to much better equipment than exists in your average hackerspace, elsewhere, but the fact that some random stranger coming in off the street might have something amazing to contribute is a big reason why I prefer to participate in the hackerspace scene. The truly open hackerspaces I've been to here on the continent, too many to list now, have always been very vibrant and alive - <USER3> my experience in the UK was, to put it frank, quite a lot more gloomy in that regard.

Anyway, I understand - each hackerspace has its own thing, and I'm glad its not a government-enforced situation, which had me wondering ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm starting to teach myself Android development after a semester of Java - can you recommend any tutorials or tools?

<comment><AUTHOR> Jayway is really good. [http://www.jayway.com/2013/05/09/opengl- es-2-0-tutorial-for-...](http://www.jayway.com/2013/05/09/opengl- es-2-0-tutorial-for-android-part-i-getting-started/) But apart from that, the usual suspects, www.stackoverflow.com and www.gamasutra.com are ace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very nice porfolio. Do you build all your games in Unity?

<comment><AUTHOR> Some of them, mostly I use Unity on the Me and the Giants(my kids games studio) games. I build my own engines to power my more quirky projects. My paint tech is leading to a few games next year for example. (opengl Objective C/C)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has the URL changed? I am just getting a 404.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, my site has went down. never had this happen before. cant even access my ftp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.davesapien.com/](http://www.davesapien.com/) seems to be 404'ing

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sorry about that. try this link for now: [http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG](http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congrats. I hope I can be this productive with my personal projects in 2014.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! It takes a lot of sacrifice, cant say I recommend this volume of work though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Beautiful and inspiring, great work Dave, keep it up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for taking a look!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Awesome job! Keep it up. Keep firing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Slowing down next year, but with much bigger projects!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> can you tell us some technical details of the painting "engine"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a bit of a secret sauce kinda thing (feel shitty saying that). Basically I'm doing a pigment/light equation and a heck of a lot of cheating to get it run fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 404?

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn, My server has been overloaded! Sorry guys, sorting it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> what was your total profit from releasing apps to this date?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ever? I couldn't say off hand, but its not much.

<comment><USER25> I hear so many developers jumping in on the mobile platforms but this seems to be the norm....

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, but there's still a lot of potential left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is not item #4 hacker news worthy.

<comment><USER27> every news site needs it's "feel good" item of the week ;)

<comment><USER26> What you mean to say is that all the hacker news bronies need their fill.</comment></comment></comment>


Are Index Funds Evil? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/are-index-funds-evil/534183/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> The article rightly talks about the conflict between investors and consumers, but neglects the conflict between investors and workers. Index funds returns are returns to capital. For the vast majority of people, even people with lots in their 401k, most of their income is from their labor. Most of the increased national income in recent decades has gone to capital, not labor. If that's going to continue, in order to maintain shared prosperity, capital will need to be redistributed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Eh, the problem is self-correcting. The more firms act collusively and cooperatively against the interests of consumers, the greater the potential returns for an entrepreneur willing to defect from that consensus and her backers. Then there's a massive wealth transfer from the collective shareholders of the old cartel into the new business.

...you could argue that there's evidence this is happening now. The economy seems to have bifurcated into large mutual fund ownership of public companies, and narrow private ownership of new startups that are aggressively disrupting those public companies. All that's needed are more arrogant assholes who believe they can up-end whole industries.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't even know where to start counterarguing this there were so many bits I took issue with. The first point I'd call out is the assertion that diversified investment will in some way distort corporate thinking in such a way that it's more beneficial for them to collude than to compete.

I'd argue; 1. that already happens, and is entirely tangential to index funds. I'd cite the west coast hiring collusion (apple et al.) a few years back. It's just a matter of when there is "enough benefit" to both parties, and as it turns out that happens relatively rarely; otherwise each corp seems to act in self-interest. (as makes sense)

2\. investment in an index is often proportional to the weight of the company within that strata. Similarly; a company can only be in certain indices by nature of certain properties. Are we supposed to accept that companies will suddenly stop trying to be the big dog in their particular pile? Driving revenue from non-investment sources will continue to be necessary and competition will continue to serve that end.

Now, I'm not a financier, thus my looking at the above from a primarily "incentives/psychology" angle. But someone could tell me why I'm wrong to ALSO say that I don't see why "index funds" are special. Diversification has existed long before the funds, it just became much easier. You can pry my diversification from my cold dead hands; even if I have to set up my allocations/buckets myself. So why should I see this as anything other than an attempt to make a powerful technique less accessible such that market inefficiencies can continue to be exploited by the financial elite?

I see many similar echoes in this to a debate in a video game I play (Path of Exile) at the risk of drawing a strange comparison. Trading in the game is _terrible_. If you want to trade effectively/diversify/etc you need your own tools, special skills, time and expertise. As a result many junior players get screwed/ripped off/scammed/blocked from progressing, where savvey players get unbelievably rich. Whenever improving trading is suggested, a vocal subset responds viscerally against it saying it'll ruin the game etc etc; but as someone who currently takes a good amount of advantage in the current information assymetry, I don't buy that argument. Plenty of other games have good trading; and in the same sense, I imagine large funds were all heavily diversified similarly to indices prior to the 1970's.

So someone who knows this shit: tear my arguments apart. Show me why I shouldn't see this as just another instance of financial misdirection.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree the title should be 'is common ownership evil'... because as is clear from the article itself, large individual shareholders like Berkshire Hathaway will still have these hypothetical incentives. Picking on index funds merely criticizes regular folks' only access to the power of diversification not diversification generally.

That said, I think diverse common ownership is probably less risky than concentrated common ownership due to collective action problems in the former that don't exist in the latter. E.g., if 10k people commonly own 25% of each airline, it's a lot harder for them to push for collision than if a single fund owns 25% of each airline.

Regardless, very interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is very similar to another article that recently hit the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14811054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14811054)</comment>


Half of the high-paying jobs in America now require this skill: coding - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-the-high-paying-jobs-in-america-now-require-this-skill-2016-06-21 <comment><USER2> Software is eating the world.

I can't put it better than the article, "Coding is the new literacy: Like the ability to read, what was once optional will soon be a basic requirement."

I can speak to my field: in the sciences, coding is ubiquitous across disciplines. Used in theory and experiment. Some have called it the 'third pillar of scientific inquiry'.

I can imagine coding will repace or at least become a useful skill in many more industries, such as medicine, law, business, even truck driving.

</comment><comment><USER3> > the number of jobs where the main task is to do computer programming is > projected to decline in the coming years, as companies hire overseas > computer programmers who may work for less, according to the Bureau of Labor > Statistics

I'm surprised by this. I've never had a good experience with outsourced programmers. Am I just in some unfortunate bubble of failure?</comment>


Nudity detection with JavaScript and HTMLCanvas - <AUTHOR> http://www.patrick-wied.at/static/nudejs/ <comment><USER2> Previous HN discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1926752>

</comment><comment><USER3> On your GitHub readme, the link to the paper is broken : <http://www.math.admu.edu.ph/~raf/pcsc05/proceedings/AI4.pdf>

Is the paper still available online ? Do you have an alternate URL ? Thanks :)

<comment><USER4> This is the paper: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/47871173/An-Algorithm-for- Nudity-D...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/47871173/An-Algorithm-for-Nudity- Detection)

<comment><USER3> Thank you !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anyone is interested in contributing: I'm currently implementing a more reliable and more complete implementation of nude.js, including a nodejs module for serverside nudity detection too. I'd appreciate any support ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> I really can't stand websites that force me to increase the width of my browser window in order to accomodate their layouts. This website is simply text, having a fluid layout is not terribly difficult.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would gladly crowdsource this task...</comment>


For $100 I Explain Why I Do Open Source (RailsApps Project) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.railsapps.org/post/18499961991/for-100-i-explain-why-i-do-open-source

<comment><AUTHOR> Does this resonate for you? How much does appreciation play a role in motivating you to develop open source projects?</comment>