The lactose-tolerance mutation - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/evolution_of_lactose_tolerance_why_do_humans_keep_drinking_milk.single.html <comment><USER2> Access to milk is a great thing, because you get the calories and many nutrients needed to sustain life, and all you need is a cow, goat or sheep (which is mobile) and pasture.

Compare that to cereal crops like wheat or maize or vegetable crops, which require long uninterrupted growing seasons and irrigation.

Why is this important? When a troop of rampaging soldiers cuts through your village and pillages everything in sight, you grab your cows and family and boogey out of there. Essentially, you have a mobile food supply.

In the event of a drought, you have options as well. With wheat or vegetables, no rain == no food. With a dairy animal, you go kill the guy who controls the next pasture and let Old Bessie the cow feast on the grass. (The other key development was the introduction of potatoes, which remain buried under the ground safe from the rampaging army above -- my Irish ancestors subsisted on potatoes hidden from the English taxman and a cow that lived in the house.)

In Europe and the Near East, these things were really important, because there was always pillaging armies marching across the continent. Today, it's unlikely that some Mongol horde is going to loot my supermarket, so I drink milk and eat cheese because they are really tasty.

<comment><USER3> The importance of Milk/Cows has been recognized in other cultures as well. My ancestors found cows to be so important that they deemed it sacred

Today, India is the largest producer of Milk in the world, and that goes a long way in providing nutrition to its masses.

<comment><USER4> In India, Cow is more of divine than Bovine. As author rightly mentioned "Agriculture-plus-dairying became the backbone", in Indian civilization, it has been imbibed in culture that they both go hand in hand.Their interdependence is well known Cow eats Grass/waste crops, Cow dung/urine is used as manure for the crop and mosquito repellants etc. And outputs of both are enjoyed by the farmer - Crop and Milk products :)

<comment><USER5> Why not eat the bulls for meat as well?

<comment><USER6> Bulls make more cows?

<comment><USER7> You only need one to impregnate lots of cows.

I wonder what happens to the male offspring of Cows in India?

<comment><USER8> not if you want a reasonably distributed gene pool, diversity of genes is always a good idea

<comment><USER7> Well, yes. You don't want one bull to do 100% of cows, but one bull can easily do an entire herd, and using In Vitro methods the most valuable bulls fertilise thousands of cows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> Various ideas are being kicked around to explain why natural selection promoted milk-drinking, but evolutionary biologists are still puzzled. [...] Those who couldn't drink milk were apt to die before they could reproduce._

The success of the lactose tolerance mutation may be partly due to sexual selection[1]. It's been proposed that neoteny[2] is a key feature of human evolution. The ability to drink milk as an adult is a neotenous trait, and it may have been "accidentally" selected for when other beautiful features were sexually selected.

David Rothenberg's book, _Survival of the Beautiful_ [3], argues that biologists are sometimes "blinded" by natural selection and ignore sexual selection.

\---

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection>

[2] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny>

[3] - [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtomics/2012/10/25/...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtomics/2012/10/25/book- review-survival-of-the-beautiful/)

<comment><USER10> How, specifically, can sexual selection operate in this case? It would seem necessary that the lactase-production gene, which the article mentions, must have some external effect that's peculiarly attractive. But I don't think it's possible to tell apart lactose-tolerant people by their appearance.

<comment><USER11> Milk consumption makes males taller and broader [1]. So the sheilas want to breed with the tall milk-fed hottie and not his short, weedy and flatulent lactose-intolerant friend.

[1] [http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nutr.26...](http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nutr.26.010506.103757)

<comment><USER12> This is incorrect in its context. While milk consumption does aid growth, lactose intolerance in most cases develops during late adolescence and early adulthood. By that time, most of the growth in height has stopped.

<comment><USER11> You're going to need a citation for "lactose intolerance in most cases develops during late adolescence and early adulthood".

According to this indirect citation [1], lactose intolerance varies by age and race, eg 85% of Chinese are lactose intolerant by age 10.

If a significant percentage of a genetic group develops lactose intolerance by age 10, then yes - it would most definitely affect growth.

[1] <http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=485313>

<comment><USER12> Citation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Terminology>

Relevant quote - emphasis mine: "Primary lactase deficiency is genetic, _only affects adults_ and is caused by the absence of a lactase persistence allele.[9][10] It is the most common cause of lactose intolerance as a majority of the world's population lacks these alleles.[11]"

edit: Also, I can't believe you linked to some forum called "The Straight Dope" as your citation.

<comment><USER11> Did you even bother to follow the link? Here, I extracted the reference for you [1].

"Chinese and Japanese populations typically lose between 80 and 90 percent of their ability to digest lactose within three to four years of weaning." (Swagerty et al, 2002)

Ergo, lactose intolerance is a factor in children in some genetic groups. Your citation (sourced from the same wikipedia page) does not refute that.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lactose_intoleranc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lactose_intolerance&oldid=236949155#Lactose_intolerance_by_group)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know what it is, but I frickin love milk. It's one of my 4 main liquids (water, milk, coffee, beer) I put down a gallon about every 4 days. In college, I'd drink a half gallon a day. Usually when I eat anything that makes me thristy/is a little salty, like red meat, I"ll crush the milk too. Pasta? it's so carby, I've got to have milk to get some protein to level out the glucose release. Hungover? not only does milk rehydrate me, it gives me much needed calories/energy. Why I'm so dependent, I have no idea. Friends and family know to stock up on extra milk when I visit. It's like water to me. I can't explain why, or how I got to this point.

edit: Growing up, we always had 2% in the house. From college on I drink skim, occasionally (once every few months) I get 1 or 2%, just to up the fat content (I'm a runner, not terribly concerned with weight gain, more or less trying to maintain body mass...)

<comment><USER14> Why did you convert to skim? I don't have any viable sources, but I thought skim was not only tasteless, but not any more healthy than other milk. At least one study has shown skim increases cardiovascular plaque.

I don't really like to stand on the stump of "nutritional science," but I always find food choices interesting.

<comment><USER15> In general, reducing fat (especially the animal kind) is good for modern people, since we tend to get too much of it.

<comment><USER16> What you said was gospel in 1990, but nowadays there is much dispute over the role of fat in a healthy diet.

<comment><USER13> Agreed, I thought the optimal ratios of calorie intake is 30% from fat, 30% from protein, and 40% from carbs. fat is 9 calories/gram, and 4 calories/gram for carbs and fat. At least that's what I try to go by when backpacking. but still, at the rate I drink milk, I'd be consuming way too much fat if I upped it to whole...

<comment><USER17> I believe that the 30/30/40 ratio comes from the zone diet. To my knowledge there hasn't been any scientific verification on why this is the desired ratio. I've seen lots of other people claiming different ratios work better (e.g. some people claiming that 60%+ fat is best). I'm of the opinion that the ratios don't matter nearly as much as food quality. Does anyone have studies/references that can prove me wrong?

Eating non-sick/happy animals and animal products just seems to make more sense to me. Garbage in garbage out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess I must be missing something, because there's a rather obvious explanation of the article's central paradox: lactose has calories. To wit, it takes about 10kg of milk to make 1kg of hard cheese, i.e. 6000 vs 4000 calories. So if you have milk directly, instead of cheese, you get ~50% more calories. This would presumably make quite a difference for semi-starving pastoral populations in 10,000 BC.

<comment><USER18> Sorry didn't understand your statement. If it takes 10kg of milk to make 1 kg of cheese. Than eating 1 kg cheese is like drinking 10kgs of milk. How then does milk give you more calories than equivalent quantity(in kgs) of cheese?

<comment><USER19> The weight difference is water. But if you loose a third of the calories when converting to cheese then I assume they're in the whey. I doubt that people who were hard up for calories would discard the whey unless they had some cultural objection or superstition.

<comment><USER20> That may be part of it, but another large part of the difference is that, as previously stated, turning milk into cheese _destroys lactose_. You get fewer calories from the cheese because microbes already used up some of the calories that were originally in the milk in order to turn it into cheese, and thus those calories are no longer available for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm slightly lactose intolerant.

Here's a tip for others - you can buy Lactase pills at a pharmacy and take them just before you eat any meal that contains milk. This gives you the enzymes you need without your body producing in it.

And it's really awesome. I only started doing this a year ago, but now I can eat many more cheeses, drink milkshakes, etc., without feeling bad. And it happens surprisingly often - every time you want to eat pizza, pastas, etc.

Seriously, is you're lactose intolerant, give it a try - it improved my life considerably.

<comment><USER12> There are also brands of milk that include the enzyme. Even easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well, as another datapoint to study, asians are said to have a near 90% adult lactose intolerance rate. So whatever beneficial natural selection for Europeans that propagated the always-on lactase mutation, the same cultural/agricultural circumstances didn't hold true for asians.

<comment><USER23> > _"asians are said to have a near 90% adult lactose intolerance rate"_

I'm very skeptical of this. I was born and raised in Asia, and all of my peers were raised on a diet with regular milk consumption. So either we were a huge cohort of statistical outliers or that number is way, way off.

I do know that lactose intolerance rates for Asians is much higher (and consequently, less socially troublesome due to the fact that dairy is generally not a core part of cuisine), but 90% is way, way, way out there.

<comment><USER24> +1 to that. Among all the people I've ever known (in India) only 2 people are lactose intolerant. Indian society has, historically, placed a lot of importance on the cow and milk. Indian mythology has rich references to milk and other dairy products for eg. Samudra Manthan [1], Krishna the cowherd [2]. If we were to consider the level of medicine practiced in India (see [3] and [4], for eg.), one would imagine that any real problem of such widespread nature would be heavily studied and discussed about.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samudra_manthan>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Krishna_with_flute.jpg>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charaka_Samhita>

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sushruta_Samhita>

<comment><USER25> This is an American usage of the word "asian", which excludes subcontinentals.

Interestingly, my wife and I grew up on milk in India (to adulthood), but found ourselves mildly lactose-intolerant to American milk.

Edit: changed "includes" to "excludes".

<comment><USER26> And Australian. "Asian" to me has always meant: China/Japan/Malaysia/Indonesia/Korea(s)/Thailand/Vietnam/Phillipines/PNG/Timor/Laos/Cambodia and maybe Burma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Everywhere that agriculture and civilization went, lactose tolerance came > along.

Odd that they don't mention physical displacement: invasion, dispossession, death. The gene would likely have coincided with other developments of civilization, such as weapon technology, greater numbers, greater cooperation, specialised soldiers etc. Maybe there's evidence against it, but odd it's not addressed, with a puzzlingly high "selection differential". Another factor might have been sexual selection, if the new folk were healthier looking etc.

Note they are talking specifically about the West - agriculture and civilization spread throughout the East without this gene.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's an interesting article, on a topic I've read about before. I think the answer is that is no one answer - maybe milk became fashionable, and the guys who had a regular supply of milk attracted more females, and thus more offspring. Maybe it was fashionable and, if being consumed as yoghurt, somehow acted as medicine to a bacteria getting around at the time. Maybe it was fasionable, had medicinal qualities and gave you stronger bones, so you were more able to survive childbirth and things like battles or hardships.

I'm just glad I'm not lactose intolerant, so thanks to whoever in my billions of ancestors decided to keep at it.

<comment><USER29> I wonder how much of it is due to having cows and harsh winters.

(as someone with lots of northern European ancestry and lactose intolerance, it's a fun subject. I can still eat cheese and yoghurt and half-digested milk, so it isn't much bother)

<comment><USER28> Well, the start of dairy wasn't in a cold climate, so I don't know about that. There was clearly some advantage in being able to digest lactose. Maybe it was the occasional winter that had to be lasted through, and having a cow or goat to milk helped out. Anything that weeded out the competition would have done.

<comment><USER29> I was thinking about it in two stages; among the people that are using dairy, the ones that can easily consume fresh milk have better access to calories during a cold winter (which might be a difficult time to make yoghurt or such).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> _> Heart disease, diabetes, alcoholism, celiac disease, and perhaps even acne are direct results of the switch to agriculture._

Really? A plant-based whole foods diet is probably the best cure out there for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. (google Dean Ornish, Neil Barnard, John McDougall)

The author tells a good story but his bashing of agriculture is unsupported.

<comment><USER31> I am no expert but another linked story ([http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake- in...](http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the- history-of-the-human-race/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=)) explains it better why Agriculture had overall deteriorating effect on human health:

1\. Early farmers had less access to variety of diet compared to hunter- gatherers. It is hard to disagree with this one. For a lot of Asia, Rice is still the main food and rice on its own contain little more than carbohydrates.

2\. Risk of starvation if crops failed.

3\. Encouraged crowded societies and deterioration in position of Women. Agriculture forced women to have children often and that in turn impacted their health. I don't know much about Europe but in India Govt. still runs advertisement encouraging Women to have kids at a gap of 3 years or more. I think it is widely held that healthier Mother in general means healthier baby.

<comment><USER32> There is no way 'Agriculture' has had an " _overall deteriorating effect on human health_ ".

I believe the massive population explosion of humans can not be explained without agriculture.

<comment><USER33> Think about this. Those two statements are not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER32> Think about what? Your sentence ends right there.

So billions more people are able to survive somehow now...but our "health" has gone down?

There is the health of the human species...which has gone up undeniably, evidenced by the billions more people being fed...and then there is the health of the individual human.

So you were referring to the health of an individual when discussing agriculture's impact? Sample size seems kinda small. Also...seems that most of us wouldn't be around for that discussion as the non-agricultural food supply would not allow us to be born.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's because it's delicious and goes really well in lots of foods.

It moderates strong flavors, smooths out acidic drinks, fluffs up eggs among many other thousands of beneficial food uses.

Other dairy products like butter and cheese are key to an immense palette of flavors and cooking techniques.

Dairy is so delicious that I've even seen people with violent milk allergies put up with the consequences just to scarf down a few bites of custard or ice cream.

<comment><USER35> They can get Lactase pills...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Calories. Cheese has only about 60% the calories of a starting volume of milk. [1]

Plus, animals can graze on land you can't farm, and they're very portable.

[1] [http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/the-indo- european-a...](http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/the-indo-european- advantage/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I read once a theory that the enzyme that splits lactose in the body is destroyed by sunlight. People living near the equator have a much higher lactose intolerance because the constant sunshine destroys the enzyme.

Likewise, people in Sweden for example have a 100x higher lactose tolerance, because there's less sunlight throughout the year.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow, mampires...

"We became, in the coinage of one paleoanthropologist, "mampires" who feed on the fluids of other animals."

<comment><USER39> The real irony for me is the instinctual revulsion that many feel about drinking human milk! (As adults, of course, babies sure seem to love it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It really sucks living in norway with lactose intolerance. Just about every kind of processed food got milk in some form or another in it. Bread, hot dogs, caviar, potati chips. It's mad cow milk disease!

</comment><comment><USER41> I do value the importance of milk from a survival standpoint, but I think today's milk is a bastardized version of milk our ancestors survived on that they drank directly from the cow. With the whole factory farm system and terrible diets most (American) cows eat, not to mention the steroids and antibiotics that a lot of cows are given, I don't believe the idea that milk is a nutrient packed elixir.

Not hating for those who want to feel good about their love for milk, but I don't think today's milk is much more than a treat and baking ingredient.

</comment><comment><USER42> Man was drinking milk long before there was a western civilization.

</comment><comment><USER43> Perhaps people who tolerated milk reared cows. Given that those who were exposed to cowpox survive smallpox, the advantage conferred would have been huge.

</comment><comment><USER44> The ties between agriculture and herding are not clear. Mongols are nomads and have a diet that is basically just milk.

I believe the benefit of drinking milk is obvious. A herd can take calories from grass and drink mud, while the human enjoys a source of clean, caloric, nutrient rich drink that can go anywhere. Farmers, on the other hand, can just be ran over, pilled or sieged by enemies.

</comment><comment><USER45> It could be a lot more simple, such as a bacteria that grew on cheese, or a virus that milk protected you from.

This would support massive switch to tolerance (simple survival of the fittest).

It also supports the spread, as a bacteria or virus would not have made it out of the "islands" (himalayas, oceans) and so tolerance wouldn't have been an advantage.

</comment><comment><USER46> _though not in the Americas, Australia, or the Far East._

Does anyone know why some East Asians (such as myself) are lactose tolerant? Is that evidence of interbreeding in the past?

<comment><USER45> Could be the same mutation, or lack of mutation (depending on the original state of tolerance). However if there is no advantage/disadvantage at a certain point (such as our brains taking over to stop young suckling too long, or ample supply of other foods) then it would remain relatively rare in the gene pool.

Perhaps the opposite was true in Asia and your genes managed to survive where the tolerance was an disadvantage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have an obvious bias here (I have a cow milk allergy) but I will be very happy when the use of cow milk becomes nonexistant!

<comment><USER48> Not trying to be obnoxious, but why?

I'm allergic to cats, and while I might often joke that they're beasts from hell (seriously, have you ever paid attention to cats? They're preternaturally Satanic,) I don't actually wish them any harm.

I know nothing of milk allergies or their severity -- is it so bad that just being _near_ milk will cause you troubles, or is it only ingestion/contact. If the former, I suppose I get it. If the latter, why would it bother you that other people choose to consume it?

<comment><USER49> As one of the 75% of blacks who is lactose intolerant, I can certainly sympathize with bifrost's post, although I don't want to deprive others of milk products if they enjoy it.

As I was growing up, milk, being recognized as healthy part of a diet, was basically forced on me during school - okay, not literally, but the school lunches only provided milk or chocolate milk, the water fountains didn't work reliability, and the cafeteria staff would always look down on my if I brought my own juice. Sometimes it was easier to just gulp down the milk and then deal with stomach cramps/diarrhea during my afternoon classes followed by rushing home to use the bathroom before I exploded.

One of the best parts about going away to college was being able to select my own beverages with my meal. If you want to have milk, that's fine with me, just don't force me to have to consume it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I hate the taste of milk. Pour yourself a glass of milk and drink some of it. Now go away and come back 5 minutes later. Drink again. It tastes bad now. I quickly changed to Soy Milk and I drank a lot of that instead. However, recently I have stopped all soy products because of the estrogen catalysers in them. I'm now on Almond Milk, I hope I'm good now.

<comment><USER51> Then why not finish the whole glass?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Would pasteurization (or lack thereof pre-1862) have any effect on the research?

</comment><comment><USER53> I feel a little odd drinking this while I drink a glass of milk >_>

</comment><comment><USER54> The title sounds like the name of a Big Bang Theory episode

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm lactose intolerant. I guess I'm a caveman :(

</comment><comment><USER56> WOW - I cannot believe the false premise this entire article is based on. This is Epigenetics, not mutation or evolution!!! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics> <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/epigenetics.html>

The article itself says _> Two hundred thousand years later, around 10,000 B.C., this began to change. A genetic mutation appeared, somewhere near modern-day Turkey, that jammed the lactase-production gene permanently in the "on" position._

This is NOT a genetic mutation. The gene was already there but not turned on past the toddler years. I searched this entire page of comments and no one knows or points this out?

</comment><comment><USER57> Because cereal tastes terrible with water?

Because the dairy industry in the US alone gets $4 billion per year in subsidies from taxpayers?

<comment><USER58> I've found almond milk to be an excellent replacement for cereal. Better than soy anyways.

<comment><USER59> It's weird how almond, soy or coconut liquids can legally be called "milk" none of those sources have nipples. Coffee is liquid from fermented beans similar to soy it's no more milk than soy is.

I know here in Canada for decades margarine had to be smuggled into the country, when it was legal it couldn't be yellow like butter (but even butter has artificial yellow colour added), it certainly couldn't be called butter.

<comment><USER60> > I know here in Canada for decades margarine had to be smuggled into the > country

Sounds like anticompetitive political corruption by the dairy industry; I can't imagine how that protects consumers.

Do you also have a problem with ground peanut spread being called "peanut butter"?

<comment><USER59> I don't think it was anticompetitive reasons although the end result was that I believe it was farmers created a market for butter that margarine would benefit from.

As for PB I'm not a dairy farmer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bad Free Trial Etiquette (Dropbox) - <AUTHOR> Is it amoral for services not to notify users that their trials are ending? Found out Dropbox Business does this today ... as well as removing already paid-for services if you downgrade during the billing cycle. <comment><USER2> IMHO, it's not right to cut off something that someone has bought, until the next billing cycle.

Whether it's amoral, immoral, or whatever, it seems pretty silly to not notify users that their trials are ending.</comment>


Has a rampaging AI algorithm really killed thousands in Pakistan? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2016/feb/18/has-a-rampaging-ai-algorithm-really-killed-thousands-in-pakistan <comment><AUTHOR> Note that this is an article debunking a Arstechica article previously discussed on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11108738](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11108738)</comment>


Here's an idea for Facebook. Get rid of subject lines in messages - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tlb.org/subject-142

<comment><USER2> I always write useful subjects in Facebook messages and so do all of my friends. Taking them away would make my Inbox unusable because of my primary use case: organizing groups of people for some future activity or series of activities.

Right now I have recent messages in my Facebook inbox about a fundraiser this weekend, a series of local concerts happening this fall, a class reunion next summer, and several group activities from the past few weeks. Additionally, I have ongoing one-on-one conversations with two different people.

Since some of these conversations include the same people, not having a subject to identify which thread is which would make them unusable. I'd just see a list of messages and have no way to contextualize them in conversations.

I think the real key here is that my Facebook messages are almost always a part of long-term conversations, not individual messages.

<comment><USER3> It appears you are using the subject line as more of a meta-data type tool to organize your events. Wouldn't it be better to have the ability to organize and message events rather than manage all this through the messaging services?

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure adding more structure is always useful. When I'm throwing a party for 30 people at a set date and time, I use event organization software, like Facebook events. If I want to get a feeling for my friends' thoughts on the local concert schedule this fall, I want to have a conversation with them. And the subject, as in email, is meta-data about a conversation, not (necessarily) the content of the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google wave is trying this, see preview video

</comment><comment><USER5> They could also make the darned "Reply" link easier to find! It takes me way too long to find it every time I want to reply to a message.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do many people use messages on facebook? Most of the activity I see is wall status updates, or wall->wall.

<comment><USER7> The point of messages is that you can't see them, unless they're to/from you.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but then the only advantage over email is if you don't know someone's email address but have them as a friend on fb.

So I can really see the value of status updates, wall->wall posts etc, but messages? meh

<comment><USER8> i'd say that's a pretty good advantage when you have a few hundred friends from throughout the years and don't have their email, or they don't have yours, or perhaps you don't want to disclose yours

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it. Ideally the title would be optional, and if left blank would replaced by a snippet of the message.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like messages mean to be tweets.

<comment><USER2> In some cases that might be true, but I'm observing a lot of communication among people my age (mid/late twenties) that used to happen over email is moving to Facebook. I'm Facebook friends with a number of people that I spend time with regularly, but I don't have their email addresses.

Here's why: it's harder to give someone your email address than to become Facebook friends with them. For email, you have to write down a long string, keep track of it until you get home, and correctly type it into a computer. For Facebook, you just say, "Are you on Facebook? Are you friends with Jon? Just look me up on his friends list."

<comment><USER11> Facebook is a resource for contact information. Most people put it on their profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I get this same problem in playstation 3. Everyone just sends messages in the title cause it shows up on their screen.

I don't think we don't do it to look like we're not trying to hard. I think we don't do it cause we're too lazy to come up with a title for a quick message.

The title should just be automatically made from the first few characters</comment>


Show HN: Take notes with org-mode, parse with orgajs, render with React - <AUTHOR> https://tricks.tonyaldon.com/ <comment><USER2> Cool. I make my org notes into a Hugo blog like this, but with a search box too. My Questions as headings have lately been becoming, what was that thing you saw?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I don't catch the question. Can you share the link of your blog, I'm interesting in?

<comment><USER2> oh sorry, no question. I just was mentioning that i also keep my note headings in quedtion format, e.g "What is a makefile?" , but my questions have become vauge.

I used [https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/](https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/) and followed this example [https://mstempl.netlify.com/post/static-website-with- emacs-a...](https://mstempl.netlify.com/post/static-website-with-emacs-and- hugo/) i use the hugo book theme

<comment><AUTHOR> :) I don't know why I ended with headings in question format, but It seems to fit how "my" brain works. Thank you for the links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice idea. Any plans for search/filtering? Also, how do you update/deploy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Yes I planned to add search/filtering. As soon as I've a moment I'll add it.

To deploy, so far I'm using github pages with gh-pages and I just have to run: npm run deploy. There is a section on how I do it in the README ([https://github.com/tonyaldon/tricks- app](https://github.com/tonyaldon/tricks-app)).

To update (the content), I do it manually by copy/past the content of my org file into the string orgContent in the file src/orgContent.js ([https://github.com/tonyaldon/tricks- app/blob/master/src/orgC...](https://github.com/tonyaldon/tricks- app/blob/master/src/orgContent.js)).

If you have any idea to improve the update, let me know :)</comment></comment>


Microsoft to Unveil Big Management Reorganization Thursday: Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/07/09/business/09reuters-microsoft-reorganization.html?hp&_r=0

<comment><USER2> Damn, I was hoping Balmer was out. No such luck.</comment>


Gravitational Waves Exist: The Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gravitational-waves-exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them <comment><USER2> Could somebody explain what this discovery means for science? Are there any functional applications for this?

Note that I'm more of an innovator than a scientist, so I always like to think about applications for new scientific discoveries.

<comment><USER3> As the end of the article discusses, this means that scientists have a whole new way of observing the universe. What we saw before was mostly along the EM spectrum—radio waves, visible light, etc. This is a way of looking at distortions in the actual fabric of spacetime.

Hard to say what the practical applications will be, but it's akin to asking Galileo what the practical applications of a telescope are. There probably aren't any if you're a 17th-century merchant or something, but a few decades down the line…

<comment><USER4> It seems to my understanding that the power needed for us measure the gravitational waves needs to be enormous - so big in fact that these colliding events only happen once every 10000 years. Can we use gravitational waves also to measure other stuff and not just super powerful rare events?

<comment><USER5> > so big in fact that these colliding events only happen once every 10000 > years.

If you read the article you would see that they expect to see events daily within a few years. It will become similar to optical observations with telescopes.

<comment><USER6> Exactly, and the big thing there is that these accelerations happen conveniently before the interesting events.

When 2 neutron stars circle each other, they'll start sending out gravitational waves. This will start to occur centuries before they collide, but they increase exponentially until the collision happens. Today they cross the detection threshold a few minutes before the actual collision, depending on their size. If we can get that up to a few hours or a few weeks we can use this to point every telescope in the world in the right direction before the flash of the collision happens.

So an immediate application is simple : it gives us advance warnings of large events in the cosmos. This means a lot of instruments dedicated to studying huge-energy events no longer has to look at the entire night sky, or get lucky, but we can actually get a signal before they happen.

In theory, if we can get the instruments accurate enough, we should be able to detect even smaller events like a supernova. A gravitational wave should be generated a few hours before the flash.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: I will build a functioning prototype of your idea in 1 week for $500 - <AUTHOR> I'm a Rails developer (2+ years experience), and I'm trying to do something fun.
This could be your minimum viable product. This could be what you link to in incubator applications (DreamIt's deadline is July 8!). Don't expect anything too fancy--just a web application that closely matches your basic vision.
Examples of things I can build:
-Integrations with 3rd party APIs (eg Twitter, Facebook etc.)
-Real-time web apps (eg, if a certain person tweets, send a push notification to users)
-An application that sends custom emails
-A/B tests
-A basic search engine, content management system, blog, or social network
-A back-end for a mobile app (not the mobile application itself)
-A Simple Bayes classification system
Be creative!
What I want from you:
-A phone call explaining your vision
-Mockups, sketches and descriptions of your idea
-Any graphics and copy text you want me to include
-Seven days of patience
-$500 (US)
What you get from me:
-A Ruby on Rails web application with a MySQL or Sqlite database
-Very basic design. If you want something pretty, buy a design from themeforest or 99designs and I'll be glad integrate it (No PSDs, just HTML and CSS)
-Hosting on Heroku (free tier only)
-Full ownership of the code (upon completion and full payment)
Leave questions or ideas in the comments below, or feel free to email me: [my HN username]@gmail.com. I hope to get started in the next 1-2 days. <comment><USER2> I'm looking for someone that can make me something like a simple version of facebook, but the thing is that instead of linking people to their friends, it would link them to their enemies. An anti-social network. I think if it even gets half the users of faceboook, it will be a huge success.

"Keep your fiends close but your enemies closer." That should be the tagline, and it should be black.... dark colors. Red or white fonts, maybe a little animation of flames, like in hell. (Because who doesn't want their enemies to burn in hell.. amiright?)

But the key thing, ok this is mint... is that people will have to pay to sign up. So money will be rolling in as it grows. And you would get paid as the money comes in, rather than getting screwed with just $500 up front. I would cut you in, is what I'm saying, and you'd cash out l8er.

Let's talk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty convincing value proposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey, without disclosing names, come back and tell us how many emails you got from this posting in a few days, yeah? :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I will too, but I do hardware, specifically RISC processors like PIC and AVR. I program in C, and will put your project in an enclosure.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great marketing strategy for getting your career rolling.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have a portfolio? What have you done before?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://github.com/adelevie>

<http://www.linkedin.com/in/adelevie>

<http://www.alandelevie.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Intriguing post. Is there a back story to this?

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really. PG says that just seeing if people will pay you for a certain product is the best validation of it. I want to see if people will pay for a simple MVP.

<comment><USER7> They will. Prototypes of web sites with rudimentary systems for logging in and changing things can be sold. You can also sell for considerably more than $500. Aim for $3k or more.

Many people would love to get a working but not very good version of their site live so they can start raising funds from other people to develop the full service. It's far more convincing when you have a draft than just an idea. People will pay for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well if you can refer anyone willing to pay that, let me know :)

<comment><USER7> Ha! Nah, I need the business instead :).

It's hard to find paying clients, especially when you're just starting out but it can't hurt to attend a conference or two. Follow up with some of those people and start meeting people who need websites... There are a million posts about marketing yourself by far more qualified people, but you might be on to the right track for building up work. A lot of my work is by word of mouth from people I've built other projects for.

$500 is a good deal though for decent work. I'll actually keep you in mind if something comes up and I'm too busy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Responded. Can you give us a sense of your timing in responding to the inquiries?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm emailing you at gmail tonight re: a cooking/recipe related site.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think probably you should increase the price to $1000 :)

</comment><comment><USER11> What state are you in?</comment>


Show HN: Implementation of DJB Redo in Bourne Shell - <AUTHOR> http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/bin/redo-sh.html <comment><AUTHOR> I have implemented the build system redo as designed by DJB in around 400 lines of code. redo is simpler, more flexible, more powerful, and more reliable than make. The original redo design notes can be found on DJB's web site: [http://cr.yp.to/redo.html](http://cr.yp.to/redo.html)

I am interested in extending the F.A.Q. on the linked page.</comment>


Secrets of the Mathematical Ninja: The Sine Of Small Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flyingcoloursmaths.co.uk/secrets-of-the-mathematical-ninja-the-sine-of-small-numbers <comment><AUTHOR> Those who have read "How to Read Mathematics", <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4030812>, here's some practice. You might never need to do these sorts of approximations or calculations from memory on- the-fly, but knowing they exist is half the battle, and they can be surprisingly useful.</comment>


Today is the one year anniversary of The Big Hack - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jashkenas/status/1180175198969942016 <comment><USER2> Several months after the story was published someone actually presented a proof of concept demonstrating the practical feasibility of the claimed hack[1]. See presentation at [https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9597-modchips_of_the_state](https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9597-modchips_of_the_state) ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7H3V7tkxeA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7H3V7tkxeA)), and project website at [https://trmm.net/Modchips](https://trmm.net/Modchips)

There's irony in how people repeat and share the technical rebuttals long after those rebuttals have been conclusively rebutted themselves. That in no way absolves Bloomberg, but the indignation of their critics is tiresome.

[1] Of course the specific details of the claimed hack were never reported, but the proof-of-concept fits the claims, and in any event is more than sufficient to rebut the rebuttals.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I offer a security bug bounty for my SAAS app? - <AUTHOR> I'm concerned about security.
Would it help to make it more secure if I offered say a $1,000 security bug bounty?
Is there a "wrong way" and a "right way" to offer security bug bounties?  Are there pitfalls to be avoided? <comment><USER2> I report a lot of bugs and I am not a fan of hacker one or bugcrowd. I also triage bugs through h1 sometimes at work and I really don't enjoy the quality of bugs or the platform.

If you are a smallish company my advice is to have a security page and a specific security contact with a corresponding gpg key, offer smallish reward, and respond quickly. 100 is plenty, even though a lot of people will disagree with me and it's way way better than most.

</comment><comment><USER3> Setting up a bug bounty may send more work your way than you expect. Nothing worse than offering bounties, getting submissions, and not having the resources to investigate and fix. I still think they can be a great idea, just be careful to support it (you really don't want a bunch of angry hackers waiting 90 days to get a response to the RCE exploit they found on your app...).

</comment><comment><USER4> Great to see you're willing to spend money on bounties.

[https://hackerone.com/resources](https://hackerone.com/resources) is advertising for their service but a good introduction on how to run a bug bounty program. Maybe using them also solves the marketing issue (how to tell security hackers that you have bug bounty program in the first place?)

</comment><comment><USER5> Even if you don't have the budget for a cash bounty, offering up some amount of free swag (e.g. t-shirts) is a cheap but effective way of attracting researchers. Great example of this is CloudFlare's bounty which is a pretty cool t-shirt and a 1 year subscription.</comment>


Is Best Buy Really Finished? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/05/is-best-buy-really-finished/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

<comment><USER2> One of the comments says that BB is Amazon's showroom.

So, here's what they do: officially become an Amazon outlet/showroom.

Cut the number of Best Buy's in any large area, and replace them with really big showrooms. They get money from Amazon to act as the showroom, and they get a cut anytime anyone orders "from Amazon" right in the store. "We can ship that to you from Amazon today ..."

Remove all media. You don't have to see a physical DVD or game to buy it.

One innovation they could enact is to be able to get any item not already in the showroom at the moment to the floor tomorrow. You can't have _everything_ on the floor, but you can combine Amazon's warehouse/shipping expertise with Best Buy's sitting on the floor expertise to have a super showroom.

Maybe they keep the name Best Buy. Maybe it becomes BestBuy/Amazon, or maybe the name disappears and they just become Amazon.

They're already really good at being Amazon's showroom, they may as well get paid for it.

<comment><USER3> Or they could act as Amazon's showroom, as they are now, and get nothing. What are they gonna do, throw out customers for price shopping?

What's Amazon's incentive for this?

<comment><USER2> Customers can be lost on the trip home from the store. "Nah, I guess I don't really need that."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really see that BB is inevitably headed for bankruptcy. They've had some bad financial results lately and some embarrassing service problems, but they still have a near-monopoly on retail electronics. Their larger problem is a poor economy and the end of a period of very rapid growth in consumer electronics.

It's very hard to argue that electronics retailers are necessarily doomed by the Internet when there's probably an Apple store ten minutes from any given BB doing more sales per square foot than anyone in the business, selling a tiny selection you can view in detail and order directly from Apple's own website. BB just needs to adjust the retail experience to suit higher-margin customers, as Apple did.

</comment><comment><USER5> Amazon's running a television ad that shows a guy use the Amazon smartphone app to scan a package of diapers and then _put the diapers back on the shelf_.

I'm hard-pressed to see a way for physical retailers to offer any sort of competitive advantage, especially since Amazon's customer service is so much better than everyone besides Apple, despite being online only.

</comment><comment><USER6> What a rambling, useless piece. Downes wrote an article about Best Buy's problems from a _consumer_ point of view, and Biggs spends half the article going on about how Downes must have a misconception of what _employees_ think of it. Then he sadly acknowledges that Downes is pretty much right, anyway.</comment>


Experiment: Cold emailing businesses - <AUTHOR> http://citrusy.com/blog/experiment-1-results-cold-emailing-businesses/

<comment><USER2> I highly recommend the book Nail it Then scale it.

[http://www.amazon.com/Nail-then-Scale-Entrepreneurs- ebook/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Nail-then-Scale-Entrepreneurs- ebook/dp/B0055D7O1U/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1330546622&sr=1-1)

There's some interesting discussion in there about cold emails and cold calls. It proposes that you should be emailing/calling prospects about a problem you think they have. (Do some research first instead of just saying, "I know nothing, tell me about your day").

The rule of thumb this book recommends is 50%. If you don't get a 50% response rate from emails or calls, you either picked the wrong or too wide of a demographic, or the problem you think potential customers have isn't the biggest type of problem. Iterate the demographic, or iterate the problem statement.

I've been using a variant of the 50% rule in an online survey/Google ad, and it's led to some very effective output. It's helped me pick headlines and solution ideas, that get a bunch of interest from people. I created a product the other day (just a landing page pitching people pay me X to do a specific type of project for them) and I had sales that same day.

<comment><USER3> I'll check it out.

Part of the trick is I don't even have a demographic or problem statement. I'm trolling for ideas with my lure in the water, sailing in circles. Consequently, 50% response rate would be a miracle. But maybe not for cold calls, we'll see.

Also, the whole buy some adwords and do a landing page thing worked for you? I have had zero luck with this approach. How niche was your idea? It seems like a rare combination where 1) The adwords are affordable, and 2) There is enough search traffic to generate real data.

<comment><USER2> Not having a demo or problem statement is tough probably? And you might find some great stuff using your lure like you are doing.

But I can't help feel you might have more fun and possibly better effectiveness if go the trite "scratch your own itch" route, or at least focus on demographics you are in or closely related to. You like tshirts? Call tshirt companies and focus on their problems. If you're calling on plumbing companies, great if that's what you're into. But you probably have at least a couple hobby areas you are much more interested in than plumbing. If you like puzzles, calling on game making/puzzle companies with something like "I love the games you are developing!" because you actually like their stuff is likely going to raise your response rates too.

Yeah, Adwords/Facebook/LinkedIn can work. Wasn't too niche. I targeted a pretty wide group, and the survey just asked "What's your biggest problem. A/B/C/D/other" and "How much of a hassel is that problem? Big, medium, small". You want a lot of "big" answers to one of those problems.

<comment><USER3> My deal is that I already went down the 'scratch your own itch' path, totally ignorant of the customer development approach and got burnt bad. So now I am going extreme opposite. My guess is there is a happy middle ground I need to drift back towards. I'll keep your advice in mind.

All my hobbies are too nerdy, and therefor over-served btw. Except one: sailing. Maybe I should take a harder look at that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's another word for cold emailing, it's spam.

<comment><USER5> It's spam if it's unsolicited and irrelevant.

It's opportunity if it's unsolicited and relevant.

<comment><USER2> <http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html>

Unsolicited and Bulk is usually the going definition. If's it's a targeted, relevant, personalized email it starts to be not-spam.

And I'm definitely a proponent of cold emails. However I couldn't help also resonate with this from Banksy today:

[https://twitter.com/#!/negativeneil/status/17468993380458496...](https://twitter.com/#!/negativeneil/status/174689933804584961/photo/1)

<comment><USER5> Definitions don't change?

I'm realizing deeper into the tech world I go the more signals tossed in all directions my way. I don't see spam though, I don't see the viagra ads or the russian wives. That's a testament to Google, Mailchimp, and the bevy of email marketers.

But I still have needs, wants, and requirements for work, personal, or consumption. So rather I see relevance and irrelevance of all these things tossed me way. That's spam's inevitability.

That Banksy item is pretty old. I'm getting a slight chuckle that an Instagram shot of a blog post posted on Twitter is getting play. Then I remembered I saw it on Tumblr last night.

The internet is just weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've had summer jobs that involve cold-contacting people in the same university that I worked in. The response rate to my initial email (sent from a university email address internally, directly related to the jobs of these people) was rarely above 10%. Calling them inevitably got "oh yeah, I saw that email". That was the point that our actual relationship started.

I was never a huge fan of calling people, but I was forced to learn. It's definitely helped in subsequent business relationships. Email just _isn't_ a way to communicate with the wider public.

It's easy to forget that just because you spent 11 hours on something means that the person reading it will give it anything close to that. They're going to give you about 20 seconds. Long essays explaining everything never work. A short, to the point email with a couple of numbered questions works, and it means that inevitably when you call them the next day they can quickly get up to speed with what you're contacting them about.

There's a tendency in tech-related areas to assume that everyone treats their email the same as you do, but in my experience the less techy a person is, the less they consider email to be important.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you are getting 1 meeting from 50 emails and you're not even trying to sell something, you are doing something wrong.

 _I have to think that cold calls convert better than emails. That's probably the real answer here. Get on the phone and start calling. It's a scary prospect for an introverted nerd like me. It comes down to this: The hustle must overcome the nerd. And it shall._

Indeed!

<comment><USER8> I dunno, have you had much luck w/ cold calling vs email? I think e-mail is a lot more effective as it's faster and can be automated where cold calling simply can't be automated and no one likes getting called on the phone when they're doing something else. Everyone works off of e-mail these days.

And I've done both, I've had way better results with cold e-mails, 1 meeting out of 50 emails is probably about right for the first time, if he e-mails everyone two more times that number will go up a bit. _Particularly_ if he's not selling anything. If I'm running a business, why would I want to meet with a guy who just wants to talk about my business? I'd rather meet with someone that at least claims to know my business and is working on a vague new product and wants to get my feedback on it.

<comment><USER3> What took the longest for me wasn't the sending of the emails, but the research that went into finding who to email. This would be the same deal if I was cold calling. And I'm not sure how to automate this, you just have to slog through it. You can only call or email as many people as you can find after all. So that's the bottle neck.

So if the time investment is a wash, then it's really a question of what converts better, not based on bulk. I have a feeling calls will...but I don't have the personal data to prove it yet.

It's interesting you had bad experience with calls though. Were you selling something? Maybe that's the difference.

<comment><USER8> You can automate it a good deal with a mix of scraping and mturk, but that will result in both e-mails and phone #s, so your choice on what to do with them.

And experience w/ calls--I wouldn't say it was bad experience, it was just better with e-mail--tends to cut to the chase and replies are a better indication of interest. Everyone's selling something--even if you just want to talk to someone about their problems, you're still selling them on the proposition that it would be a more valuable use of their time talking to you than doing something else. And that doesn't make you a bad person, it just doesn't make a difference whether you're asking for money or someone's time.

But yeah, would be very interested to see your results w/ cold calling vs email, if you do two more rounds of e-mails and leave 3 vm messages on your cold calling before giving up, I'll bet you still do better with e-mail. But again, very interested to see your numbers, so very cool experiment!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, calling or emailing, what do you say? "I'm a smart guy looking for problems to solve in return for money?"

<comment><USER10> That's probably roughly it

"I'm a software developer

I'm looking for ideas to create useful software for (whatever industry target is in)

I would love to buy you coffee and pick you brain about what software could be developed that would solve problems you have"

<comment><USER11> They don't care about you. Make the conversation about them. The sooner you are talking about them, the better.

Figure out a way to offer some value to them. <http://bit.ly/oeZDzC> [whitetailsoftware.com]

When you are speaking with them, ask open questions like "What are your three biggest problems in X business?"

One of the three is usually hiring quality people. Anyone got a solution?

More ideas on refining the calling approach: <http://bit.ly/vPCtuI> [blog.asmartbear.com]

<comment><USER3> Okay, sorry to re-reply but here are the two versions of the email I sent. Mind skimming them and tell me what I did horribly, horribly wrong? I'd honestly love your feedback. I think I would follow something shorter than this but the same in spirit for cold phone calls. So maybe you can save me some pain and anguish.

Polite Version: Dear %fill:FirstName%,

First off, sorry for this out of the blue email. I found your name %fill:FoundYourNameSource%, and was hoping you might be able to help me.

My name is Ian Fitzpatrick, I'm the founder of a small software company in Saint Paul. I'm investigating ideas for my next software product, and I'm interested in creating an application that serves your industry.

I see that you're a %fill:JobRole% at %fill:CompanyName%. Are there any parts of your job that you feel are a hassle, repetitive, or error-prone -- where if you had the right software at work, your life might be a little easier? That's the kind of thing I'm super interested in hearing about.

If you have just 20 minutes available any time this week, I'd love the meet and pick your brain. I'm honestly just trying to learn, and hopefully create a product that makes your life a little easier.

Impolite Version:

Hi %fill:FirstName%,

I'm a software developer investigating some projects ideas in the %fill:IndustryName%. I'd like to understand the problems and successes you've had at %fill:CompanyName% a bit better. I'm not trying to sell you anything, I would just like to hear your thoughts on a few things related to the industry.

Do you have 20 minutes available to meet at some point in the next week? I'd like to conduct an informal interview with you.

<comment><USER3> Oh and if you look closely, you'll see I completely stole my copy from you. Doh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly just get out of the building. You will be surprised how open people are to talking about their industry and the problems they face.

</comment><comment><USER13> In California, that would be $50,000 in fines. It's $1000 per commercial email you send to someone with whom you have no prior relationship.

As it should be.</comment>


How the iPad's New Trackpad Works - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/18/21185188/ipad-trackpad-how-to-support-mouse-cursor <comment><USER2> I'm going to have to try one of these keyboards in an Apple Store, when they can open again. It just doesn't seem possible the folding mechanism and attach/detach system work that well. This and the new Airs just seem too good to be true. I'm not saying I'm a doubter, as such. Clearly apple have dropped some very important balls in the last few years, but wow. This stuff looks good.

<comment><USER3> It seems to me that cooling is the ball that has been dropped on the new MBA. I haven't seen one opened up yet but the heatsink design from last time (2018/2019) didn't use a heat pipe over the CPU, it just kinda forced air to be drawn over it.

From this video: [https://youtu.be/hB1aP2OnUJA](https://youtu.be/hB1aP2OnUJA) we can see it quickly gets to 100c and stays there despite ramping the fan up. So while a quad core that can turbo up to 3.5/3.8ghz sounds awesome, for heavy sustained performance it looks like it's definitely going to be clocking down to 1.5ghz or so.

This isn't a surprise to me but I think some people just see 3.5/3.8 quad core and think this is going to be right on the heels of the MBP 13

<comment><USER4> Apple has always been more content with letting CPUs throttle themselves rather than cooling them properly or using processors that can't be effectively cooler in their physical design.

That said compared to other notebooks, MacBooks in similar tiers tend to benchmark quite well regardless of the thermal throttling.

<comment><USER5> I bought the MBP 16" and when I work with an external monitor it's like having a hair dryer on. I wish I could just go back to a desktop machine again.

<comment><USER6> The concensus seems to be this is a GPU related driver or OS bug.

Trying changing resolutions or scaling or refresh rate. 2K moniter are supposedly worse than others.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265235)

It is a joke that a high end machine has such a glaring issue. Then again, Apple got away from selling terrible terrible keyboards that were not easily replaceable for years.

<comment><USER5> Interesting! Thanks for the link. Not one of my coworkers is getting the 16 after hearing how noisy it is, and they ALL were planning on upgrading. Let's hope a future software update might improve it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I own just about one of every single Apple products, I'm completely invested in the ecosystem. Except for one thing, the iPad. I've never once had the need for one or even the want for one. I use my MacBook Pro or my iPhone, not sure why I need a bigger iPhone, so to speak.

But this... this might convince me to actually get my first iPad.

<comment><USER8> The iPad isn't really for people who read hacker news. Except maybe on the toilet. :)

But for my mother, who has never touched, nor wanted to touch a computer, it has opened whole new worlds for her. She now loves that iPad and uses it for email, facebook, web browsing etc.

There are a whole lot more people out there like my mother than those who read hacker news.

If you've never felt the need for an iPad, you probably don't need one.

<comment><USER9> I'm on hacker news and replying to this on an iPad. My mac and windows desktop both have their place, but the iPad really does slot in as a "third" device between a full fledged desktop OS and my phone.

I use it to take notes during meetings, to keep daily work logs, for replying to emails, checking up on slack, reading PDFs and ebooks, task management, web browsing and watching video as a third monitor to my two display desktop setup.

Yes it is extremely limited in a lot of ways, but having an instant on device that is one tap and less than a MS away from all those tasks really does change the way you work. And being able to pick it up and walk around with it comfortably means you can do those tasks anywhere. And if you are like me and work remote from places like coffee shops - it basically takes up barely any more room in your laptop bag.

<comment><USER8> I must not have been clear. I wasn't saying that the iPad can't be used by hacker news readers. I was saying that we're not the target audience. I have an iPad that I use a lot myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> iPad OS (and iOS) has 1 major flaw and no one seems to be talking about it:

\- The animations/effects etc take way too long. It is fatiguing to work on it because every action takes at least 2+ seconds with a dozen animations, each one lasting 100ms-300ms!

Try the following task yourself: Copy a piece of text from safari and create a new note in the Notes app, and paste it in there. While you're doing this, time it. Seriously, do it. And then do it 10 times. See how tired you get.

We need a completely new operating system with absolutely zero animations. You know what happens when you launch vim from CLI? It starts up. No animations. CLI is a pain to work with at times, but this aspect is _so_ critical to putting a smile on the users face. Everything would instantly become insanely fast.

I understand the value of animations - they're there to provide context, where something slides in and slides out from. This is fine for iPhone. But not for a workstation. I also understand that I can disable motion in accessibility settings but it still doesn't disable all of them. Also, that's not the default so that's a moot point.

This is such a low hanging fruit to speed up things, but alas, we have UX/UI designers that insist on "sleek" and "sexy" UX/UI without delving into the fundamentals of what makes a product or software pleasant to use. While you're at it, you'd also improve the UX - battery life because you're not churning transparency effects and motion blur through the GPU pipes. Yes, battery life is "UX" IMO.

<comment><USER11> There is a "Reduce Motion" setting in iOS that speeds some things up a little bit.

<comment><USER10> I knew this would come up, thus I already addressed it in my comment above. That's not the default. And it still doesn't feel good - because animations are at the core of the UX/UI of Apple software. IMO the software needs to be designed from ground up with strict understanding of productivity and less marketing/design/aesthetics/animation. "Reduce motion" seems like an after thought hidden deep in the accessibility settings.

<comment><USER12> Why should it be the default ?

Animations help less experienced users understand what is going on and the relationships between objects. Plus they just make the experience more interesting and fun. An important aspect if you're newer and have to spend time climbing the learning curve.

And Apple gave expert users, who aren't their core audience, a two click way to switch it all off. So not sure what more you want from them.

<comment><USER13> Agree. I'm annoyed that Apple does not enable us to disable animations entirely (right?), but would not argue for it as a default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty cool! The feeling I keep getting is that Apple is slowly "ruining" a good design. What was familiar, easy to use, and required no explanation, is trying to become something it isn't; a laptop. IPadOS still has a long ways to go to but if Apple decides to keep going down this path - which I feel like they will - cursor support seems like a right step towards achieving that goal.

<comment><USER15> iOS and macOS lost the good design years ago, nowadays you need to find an expert to learn how to do certain actions, there is no manual and a lot of actions are completely unintuitive. My family uses latest iPadOS an no one knows how to split screen, we learned it twice but it's so hard you forget about it

<comment><USER16> I agree that its difficult to discover most features beyond the basics, though Apple does provide a digital user guide and the on-board Tips app to help you acquaint.

Those two resources are themselves not that easy to discover, however.

[https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados](https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados)

(hit table of contents -> basics)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > ...but it can change shape based on what it's pointing at.

I tried this and it feels great! But I am wondering if this will work well with a non-native GUI stack such as Flutter or QML.

<comment><USER18> This is the reason why cross-platform UI toolkits are just never going to be a good idea. They will always provide a worse experience than just using and designing for the native UI toolkit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I anticipate hating this. I don't see how a morphing cursor can ever be learned in a way that is efficient over the long term. Still, we've stagnated for too long in our touchscreen UI design. I'm glad to see Apple trying something new.

</comment><comment><USER20> This kind of reminds me of how controller-based GUIs work in some console games. Basically you move focus around with the directional buttons or the analog stick.

<comment> frosted-flakes Or the BlackBerry, which brought out an actual cursor on webpages but only moved the focus everywhere else. That little thumb track-pad completely changes the experience of using a phone, and I'm super bummed that the only modern smartphone that had it (the 2014 BlackBerry Classic) never caught on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This brings memories for me, as I used to own an Eee Transformer, which was a 2011 Android tablet with Honeycomb, and keyboard and trackpad...

It was surprisingly useful, but... it was still 2011 Android. The best thing was still to put an SSH client on it and actually do all the work somewhere else remotely.

<comment><USER22> Had one of those devices. Kept it alive for several years by maintaining a custom Cyanogenmod fork for it.

It was a great device, save for the severely compromised Nvidia-SOC which made HD-playback only work _sometimes_. Such a let-down!

Had someone made a device like this with the specs of the Nexus 7, I would have bought it and replaced my Transformer in a heartbeat.

But nobody did, so now I'm back on my Thinkpad, and it's actually really nice to run a OS of your choice, which you loaded on a machine you own, which isn't actively fighting you.

<comment><USER21> I looked it up and it seems the Transformer line is still alive, they just put Windows 10 on it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow. This looks really cooler than I imagined. I assumed that it would be a simple mouse cursor but this feels more like a full screen Mac laptop experience.

Craig clearly is the successor to Scott.

</comment><comment><USER24> You can feel the new workflow if you have developer account or enroll to Apple beta. Tried it on my 10.2" 2019 iPad.

The good: This really makes more complex productivity possible on the iPad getting it closer to a desktop machine.

The bad: I've already saw bugs which are new to 13.4 (didn't have them on 13.3.1).

It still requires developers to use newer API to support trackpad. For example, Firefox now has no right click support while Safari includes of course.

</comment><comment><USER25> It seems like this is not actually about the trackpad but about the software of of how it is handled. I thought there was new hardware, but it seems like it is making better use of the multi touch trackpads that have been on their laptops for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Also, no one seems to be focusing on the fact that the iPad is floating with this new case? Are there any links/videos that describes how the mechanism works?? Super curious to see how rigid/flexible/stable the mechanism is.

<comment><USER26> I had that thought too but apart from the Ti Powerbook my laptop hinges have survived for years. In fact around the house there's only one with a hinge that feels noticeably looser and it's about 10 years old. The hinge on the keyboard appears to be about the same size. So maybe it's OK.

Also I assume the iPad itself is coupled magnetically to the case/stand.

<comment><USER14> Yeah the reliability of these hinges is something that is still open for questions... Would hate to see a keyboard case costing about $300 to fail after a year or so :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The cursor isn't always present, just when you need it...

How does this work with a physical mouse? Does the cursor reappear in the same spot on the screen, or what? Would someone using a physical mouse constantly be forced to reposition it?

<comment><USER28> It remembers where you left the cursor. It's still a normal cursor, they just make it invisible when not in active use.

<comment><USER27> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This article is very confusing, the video is clearly an ad by Apple, but it only seems to appear in this article, and the article itself is not marked as an ad. What is actually going on?

</comment><comment><USER30> ... or just do a regular mouse cursor. Also, trackpads aren't great. If you need precision a proper mouse (+keyboard) is hard to beat.

<comment><USER31> It supports both of those via bluetooth

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > It's unlike any mouse cursor you've used before.

Ok sounds cool.

> The pointer will only appear when you need it.

Like a windows pc with a touch screen or any Android device.

> The pointer is a little circular dot.

Why not, it doesn't seem very precise but it's probably because UIs on iOs are not and shouldn't designed to be used with a precise pointer.

> It can change shape based on what it's pointing at.

As they say, nothing new there.

> It supports some navigation gestures.

Like on a 20 years old Mac indeed.

I'm a bit disappointed.

<comment><USER12> > I'm a bit disappointed.

Sure. Because you didn't actually get the point.

The cursor actually transforms into the touch area. No OS today does this and it's definitely novel.

<comment><USER33> I wonder what happens when I move my cursor over a large tappable area. The OS must have to maintain internal state that represents the real x, y position. Otherwise the cursor wouldn't move across the screen in a consistent way. But while moving across the tap target I don't get any visual feedback about where my cursor actually is? I'm curious to see how they solve this.

<comment><USER34> They're using a subtle perspective/highlight effect similar to tvOS. It's kinda interesting, wanted to try it in person to see how effective it is at conveying the underlying position.

<comment><USER9> I'm using it right now - it feels quite natural, and you can turn off the "snapping" effect if you want - the control will still highlight underneath, but you also still see the cursor.

With the effect on the cursor "snaps" to button targets, and when it does the effect has a pulling effect, so if you apply a little motion it will move out of the control, but you see the effect visually.

It serves the purpose of knowing that you can click on something, plus also makes clicking things faster because of the snapping to targets. It's kind of like auto-aim but for your trackpad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Could Apple go back to being forward looking with their tablet/laptop/computer line please? If this keyboard/trackpad is a good idea now, then it would have been a good idea 10 years ago. If it was a good idea 10 years ago then they simply lacked the foresight to push it. It has also been a point of critique for as long, and I'm sure that I am not the only person who had to stop pretending that iPads were usable for (my) work and switched to PC for portable productivity (Surface Pro).

At this rate I wont be surprised to see revolutionary full access to the filesystem, and flexible window management, in 2030.</comment>