An iOS Developer Takes on Android - <AUTHOR> http://nfarina.com/post/8239634061/ios-to-android <comment><USER2> What a wonderful approach to development.

Skip the ideological critiquing and start shipping some awesome products..

I guess that is really what separates the great developer from the good developer.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, the attitude is refreshing. Nice quote:

 _Java is a high level programming language. It's unproductive to have an opinion about it._

<comment><USER4> Depends -- with that attitude we would still have assembler.

<comment><USER5> That's a fair point, but if your goal is to create something that people will pay for, targeting a popular platform with an infrastructure based around Java, what will having an opinion about Java buy you? Very little. You can like it, or you can not like it, but you'll have to use it anyway, so your time would be better spent thinking about something other than how much you like it or (as is probably more likely...) not.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's true.

\- Python \- Ruby \- Ruby on Rails \- Django \- Coffeescript \- Node.js

Were all results of people challenging the status quo of language/platform capability. Developing new languages/frameworks/platforms is NOT unproductive, and has proved very successful in the past.

While java may not be a good excuse to avoid android, it's certainly a good excuse to improve upon the stack (as another commenter suggested, strapping Scala to it would probably be a huge productivity win).

Alas the OP took a pragmatic approach and just built the product. That's fine, but it isn't "better" than someone who (rightly) thinks java is junk and attempts to improve it.

<comment><USER2> I think you and several others are missing the point here.

Most people who complain about a language don't do anything about it.

It was those I addressed, not those who do.

<comment><USER6> While a fair point, I think expressing your dissatisfaction will let others know there is a market for a better solution. And potentially drive more innovation

... but that could be me post-hoc rationalising my whinging :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an iOS developer, this is probably the best comparison between iOS and Android development that I've read. I'm pretty scared of Eclipse and the slow- as-hell emulator doesn't sound fun, but coding layouts that don't involve lots of "how tall is this text for this given width?" calculations is a welcome addition.

<comment><USER8> I jumped into Android development about a month ago, and after a slow start its really been fun. I hated Eclipse at first, but it gets a lot better with time.

The emulator though - don't bother. The author is not exaggerating about several minutes to load. Just buy an Android phone and debug on that, or you'll spend more time cursing at the emulator than coding.

<comment><USER9> I've found that booting the emulator does take a minute or two (I don't know about "several", but that's besides the point), but you don't have to restart every time you make a change or anything. It's just a once-per-session thing unless you accidentally close it.

<comment><USER10> Still, you will have to wait for around 30s for each refresh; While the new binary gets uploaded

<comment><USER9> My experience has been that it takes much less time than that, probably somewhere in the area of 5-15 seconds. I've only worked on tiny personal projects though; maybe this varies with project size a lot.

<comment><USER11> To me it still doesn't matter. It could take one second to load a binary, the emulator is completely unusable they way it currently is built. Android is already into it's 3rd revision and they somehow have managed to completely ignore this pink elephant.

If the best advice you can tell people is not to use it, use a real device then why bother include it at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article was damn near perfect. I much prefer this style to "the problem with X" or "Why X will never succeed". This person isn't interested in platform evangelism, he/she wants to ship. A very inspiring attitude to have.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems like a very balanced article to me. The comments about Eclipse made me laugh (I just had to start using Eclipse for a different reason and hate it with the heat of a thousand suns).

<comment><USER14> Using Eclipse gets better as you get more comfortable with its peculiarities. I think the author did a good job of summing up the Eclipse experience-- there's a lot to hate, and a lot to like. After using Eclipse for several years, it still has that "designed by committee" feel, but I do find myself missing some of its features when I'm using other environments.

<comment><USER15> I've actually been using the PHP... perspective?... for Eclipse and have found it to be pretty decent. (The author is right, some of the terminology is amusingly abstract.) Configuring the program just-so and learning to accept the slow boot-up are spot-on assessments.

That said, I should take some time to look for another IDE that captures the basic advantages of Eclipse. I'm mainly interested in having a panel with the project's directory structure, intelligent navigation (e.g. Ctrl-click on a function call to be taken to its definition in another class), and decent code completion and syntax checking. I might even be willing to pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A couple of points...

> Android has a system of layout containers (similar to HTML)

It would be more correct (I think) to say it's inspired by other Java layout managers, Swing and SWT aren't a million worlds removed from Android (but I can't really expect someone new to Java to know that!)

And the emulator. The Android emulator is not slow. I have a netbook, which is an absolutely fantastic way of finding out which applications do far too much but you never notice because your computer is very fast. Team Fortress 2 is slow. Eclipse is slow. I tried booting the Android emulator and gave up waiting _after an hour and a half_.

Overall, awesome article. Refreshing to see someone providing a useful comparison between the two rather than arguing over one or the other, and as a Java developer who knows a little about Android, I feel I just learnt a lot about iOS. I'm actually amazed at how much they have in common, you wouldn't think so from the arguments!

</comment><comment><USER17> Eclipse is to IntelliJ as Android is to iPhone.

Anyone who's used both IntelliJ and Eclipse as IDEs for Java development knows what I'm talking about. Eclipse, like Android, emphasizes "openness" and customizability while IntelliJ, like the iPhone, emphasizes "It Just Works" coherence and integrity.

If you like IntelliJ's approach, you might want to try AppCode, a development environment for Objective C made by the makers of IntelliJ, JetBrains. <http://www.jetbrains.com/objc/>

<comment><USER18> I've used IntelliJ for previous projects, but I am definitely going to give Eclipse a spin for the next one.

The Visual Layout Editor seems like too much goodness to miss out on. Jump to 7:17 in this video for a demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq05KqjXTvs>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Totally agree with the other comments. This is the first honest and realistic writeup about "Android vs iOS development" I've read.

I started with Android myself and started porting an Android app (which I wrote) to iPhone and I had exactly the same problems iOS developers have when starting with Android. So it's just a matter of what you're used, too. From my experience some things can be done quicker on iOS, others on Android. However, that doesn't necessarily mean better, because providing a framework for a special case usually comes with the cost of restricted flexibility.

I also agree that Eclipse is a behemoth and quite overwhelming in the beginning, but there is a great tool for any code base that is larger than your typical pet project. Especially when having to read, understand and trace down other people's code.

</comment><comment><USER20> iOS developer here. Releasing first android version of my app this week. Even though I didn't do the coding, I've taken a look at the code and done quite a bit of testing. The part about animations is totally true. Animations are much faster and smoother on my iPod 3rd Gen than the equivalent animation on a Droid Incredible, which has much better hardware! We've tried to optimize as much as possible, but we are realizing that there is just no way to match the iOS version's speed and responsiveness.

</comment><comment><USER21> Good overview and I recommend this detailed dive into the deep end by a HNer:

[http://clayallsopp.posterous.com/building-an-android-app- fro...](http://clayallsopp.posterous.com/building-an-android-app-from-scratch- or-this)

</comment><comment><USER22> The biggest complaint seems to be that Android is software rendered. As of 3.1 (i think, maybe 3.0) this is no longer an issue as a single line in the manifest will cause Android to automatically accelerate your drawing if possible.

I've yet to actually try it though :)

<comment><USER23> It works pretty well in all the cases i've used it. Its the only way that i have been able to get the new animation class to work smoothly.

<comment><USER24> It works pretty well... except for software input method (the other name for the touch keyboard).

A simple example: make a webview that scrolls down and ends with a textfield a couple screens below. Activate Hardware acceleration, scroll, touch the textfield, boom, the textfield remains below the keyboard so you don't see what you type. Deactivate hardware acceleration. Do the same test. Boom, the screen pans up and the textfield is visible.

Once you've done this on a xoom, try it on an iconia or whatever other tablet you have.

Enjoy the fun of Honeycomb hardware acceleration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What a great comparison. Admittedly I haven't researched this but I was surprised to read that the UI components in iOS were based on OpenGL. That's pretty cool! Hats off to Android for their layout manager. I like when I use an app on Honeycomb that scales well as opposed to blowing up the pixels to fill the screen.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is really good stuff. As an iOS developer, this is exactly what I hoped to read someday soon. I'm impressed, great writeup and quite thorough.

</comment><comment><USER27> Question to Android devs with iOS experience: are there any tools available which would be counterpart for Instruments? Instruments do not get mentioned in these comparisons for some reason, I think these are great tools to debug and improve performance.

<comment><USER21> Traceview but you run out of stack frame capture space in about 30 seconds (even if you write to SD)

Instruments has no competition from traceview.

[http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/10/traceview- war...](http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/10/traceview-war- story.html?m=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interestingly (but inevitably) as a java developer who first learned Android and then moved to iOS, the sticking points he mentions are exactly the same ones I found, but the other way around.

I think Eclipse makes sense if you think like a java coder, Xcode not so much, and Objective-C will fry your mind...

That said, Eclipse and the Android SDK is a pain to install even if you are a java wizard.

<comment><USER27> Why would ObjC fry anybodie's mind? I am that weird to like it (coming from web dev background: PHP, Ruby, JavaSript)?

<comment><USER29> ObjC's main "frying" factor is that it uses a different (and to my mind, superior) set of object-oriented patterns as primary abstractions. For example, subclassing is _much_ less common in ObjC than in Java, preferring to use the less complex delegation pattern as opposed to subclass-and-implement patterns for behavior extensions.

Another problem some people have is that ObjC brings to the table all the pain of C. You've got memory management and bounds checking and unsafe casts all dumped into your lap. It can be pretty painful if you're not experienced in C, C++, or ASM programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice overview. I have to disagree with the assessment of Eclipse though. Under one app you can build and debug Java, Python, Ruby, HTML, Javascript, and Air apps. Once you get used to the workflow, it's incredibly productive.

As for the emulator, unless you want to invest in a large set of devices, it's the only way to test against different screen sizes and device profiles. Even though it's nice to have a device for debugging, you'll need to make peace with the emulator to make sure your app doesn't go all wonky on devices other than your exact model.

</comment><comment><USER31> Thanks for this article it just made me feel happy. I so tired of flame wars regarding IOS x Android that I barely read Engadget anymore. Many people dont understand why I have a Macbook, an Android phone and an iPod, looks like you MUST took a side and be an evangelist.

</comment><comment><USER32> Fastdev makes the Android Emulator usable: [http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2011/05/titanium- mobi...](http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2011/05/titanium-mobile-intro- series-fastdev-for-android.html)

After you suffer the initial emulator load, changes appear in the app by simply bouncing the app. It's one big win for Titanium.

</comment><comment><USER33> "It takes the Android Emulator ~2 minutes to boot up on my perfectly-modern machine. But what really hurts is the edit/debug cycle. Every time I change a bit of Java and need to rerun the app, it takes about 30 seconds to redeploy and start up in the Emulator. Compare that to 5 seconds on the iOS Simulator. It may not sound like much but remember you'll be doing this hundreds of times throughout your day."

I do not have any experience with iOS development but I can vouch for how hard it is to use the Android Emulator. I just recently submitted an Android application for a programming course and if it were not for having an Android mobile device to replace the emulator I would not have completed the project in time. The Emulator is slow and buggy and made it hard to test new code.

If you are interested in developing an Android application deffinately check it out but take this guys advice and get a device to test it on. It will save you a lot of time.

<comment><USER34> _Every time I change a bit of Java and need to rerun the app, it takes about 30 seconds to redeploy and start up in the Emulator. Compare that to 5 seconds on the iOS Simulator. It may not sound like much but remember you'll be doing this hundreds of times throughout your day."_

Is there no practical way to reduce this by using unit tests? I understand if you're doing UI tweaks but otherwise it seems far more efficient to do targeted testing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice well-written article. I just did the same sort of article myself telling about my experiences going from IOS to Android:

[http://www.smallcloudbuilder.com/apps/articles/410-crossing-...](http://www.smallcloudbuilder.com/apps/articles/410-crossing- the-chasm-converting-an-iphone-app-to-android)

</comment><comment><USER36> > Apple has made it pretty easy to start writing iOS apps. Of course, Step One > is "Buy a Mac." Easy! Then just download the free Xcode Installer from the > Mac App Store, and start writing code when it's done.

> Android is a bit more involved. You can download the SDK easily, but to > actually start writing code, you'll want to setup Eclipse and install > Google's ADT Plugin.

Buying and setting up a new computer is "Easy!" but installing Eclipse is "more involved"? Having to sign up for a $99 developer program is omitted. The size difference, of a couple hundred mb for Eclipse vs 4gb for Xcode is omitted.

<comment><AUTHOR> My sarcasm may have been too subtle there; I definitely think it's a bummer that you have to own a Mac to develop for iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Best explanation of why rendering on the iPhone uses the GPU and Android can't. A great article to read.

</comment><comment><USER38> Didn't Apple just release Auto Layouts for Cocoa? Will Auto Layouts come to iPhone?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2788608>

</comment><comment><USER39> I hate to be picky about this but in all the time I've been doing iOS development and throughout everything I've ever read I have never seen anything to suggest that iOS using OpenGL for all of it's drawing (simulating a 2D interface in a 3D environment like the article suggests). Drawing is done using the Quartz system and animation is handled by Core Animation (which creates "an illusion of motion").

<comment><AUTHOR> The OpenGL-nature of iOS was explained to me at WWDC by the head of graphics at Apple. But you can never be sure of anything!

<comment><USER39> Interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why do you "have to kiss that silky smooth scrolling goodbye" if you setup your UITableViewCells in Interface Builder?

I've used it for all of my apps and the scrolling is just as fast as any of Apple's native apps. Interface Builder just packages up all that initial layout code and then it is executed when the nib when it is unpackaged. After that there is no difference.

<comment><USER41> Actually there is a difference. If you create a table with a considerable number of cells (say, over 20) that contain a couple of labels and maybe an image when you swipe really fast the scrolling will hang, even if you are using the dequeue mechanism.

The alternative is to paint the contents of the cell manually (that is without using UILabels and the such) using CoreGraphics.

Check out the drawContentView: method here: [https://github.com/ferostar/fast- scrolling/blob/master/Class...](https://github.com/ferostar/fast- scrolling/blob/master/Classes/FirstLastExampleTableViewCell.m)

<comment><USER40> If you had twenty different UITableViewCells in a nib that had twenty different pictures then I admit the loading of these cells will cause the scrolling to stutter if you do it in cellForRowAtIndexPath:.

However I just finished an application with a UITableViewCell, defined in a nib, that had 3 labels and a image. The labels depend on the data that the row was displaying and the image was the same in every row (it was a custom disclosure image).

One of the table views that that used this cell had 100 rows and it loaded and scrolled without a hitch.

Most of the slowdowns people experience with scrolling is if they have transparent cells and/or they don't load lazy load images on a background thread.

I agree that if you've tried all sorts of optimizations and you are still experiencing slow scrolling then painting the contents manually will probably be faster but it is IMO more work then 99% of people need to do and, like naz said below, there can be accessibility issues.

When Loren Brichter wrote that 3 years ago it was a much bigger deal. The iPhone 3G was extremely underpowered compared to most of the devices people run iOS on today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you're starting Android development, just save yourself the pain and just use the IntelliJ IDEA community edition.

The Android plugin included doesn't have fancy UI stuff, like for designing interfaces or visually editing the XML configuration files, but it does have code-completion of XML tags and properties and it works better as a code editor, being less painful.

<comment><USER43> I've tried doing that, but whenever I'm actually doing work on Android app a really large percentage of my time spent is done working on the UI. Not having the ADT tools for the UI just doesn't make sense to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wow. I never expected that much negativity for the Android side. I've dabbled in both but haven't done Android since over a year ago. I was (and still am) really looking forward to using Eclipse and reading Java. I just get very tired of XCode.

</comment><comment><USER45> Clicking their site <http://www.meridianapps.com/> leads to "App Engine Error: Over Quota. This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later"

Ouch!

<comment><AUTHOR> Just increased the quota. Humbling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This was great.

Im curious, where you experienced in Java before jumping into Android?

<comment><AUTHOR> I "learned" Java in college, but didn't use it after graduating in '02. I was quite pleasantly surprised by all the (new to me) stuff like "anonymous inner classes," and ultimately I've come to respect the staunch minimalism of the language overall.

<comment><USER47> If you were finishing college in 02, the anonymous inner classes should have been there; I'm pretty sure they showed up in Java 1.1 at the latest. AWT used to be heavily dependent on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Great write-up. I read the whole thing and bookmarked it as well for future reference. Thanks for sharing.

Which resources (online or otherwise) did you find most helpful?

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the Android docs were quite good for the most part, but I usually just Google my questions and end up on StackOverflow. I'd love to give StackOverflow a great big hug someday.

<comment><USER49> Have you tried the forum at <http://www.anddev.org> ? They have a lot of code snippets there for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I installed the Android SDK easily. I do not understand all the fuss regarding the SDK installation. The emulator is slow though, no question there.

</comment><comment><USER51> Slow Clap for you sir...

</comment><comment><USER52> This is a great and honest article and has changed the way I think about Apple users/developers.

Before that, I considered Apple users to be a group of gay douchebags, but today I have learned that there is at least a sane person on the other riverside.

(I have neither developed for any smartphone nor do I possess one, so no need for "Stupid FANDROID!1!")

<comment><USER53> Us gays also use Android, y'know ;)

<comment><USER52> Yes, sure. There is much less discrimination against "other" people on non- Apple platforms and that's great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Few Comments.

1\. The most important thing to think about and say is the market share, fragmentation, monetization issues. Article doesn't pay enough attention to this it, but it still drives why we do what we do. (save, the author was egged on to make the app by their users).

A paragraph would be useful. Perhaps something like.

Fundamentally, Android is the platform you have to be on to defend the turf. It generally wont make a lot of money, but you have to be there to protect & project mind share. Additionally, it is the dominant mobile platform.

2\. Development Tools. You can use IntelliJ Idea. Its a Mature Development Platform, and gives you many options. The article doesn't make any strong arguments against eclipse. The installation/getting started was more involved, but personally, it took me an hour or so, so I don't think it is a big deal. It is useful to separate opinions from facts. Personally, I use emacs bindings in all my editors, and Eclipse is pretty nice to me in general.

3\. UI Design Tools This section is written in a way that projects inaccurate information. It implies that you have to use XML as opposed to using a Interface Builder interface. This is not true - there is indeed a drag and drop interface akin to IB in android. The author mentions it as a preview tool. Indeed it is also a design tool.

<comment><USER55> It wasn't an advocacy piece, it was a developer's experience in changing environments, and giving some pointers on what to do differently in Android than what one is used to in iOS. The point is not to convince you to develop for Android. The point is to help someone make the switch quickly (such as using Eclipse rather than some other method that hardly anyone uses which will cause you to spend hours getting things set up and a lot of pain following a how-to that is written with the assumption that you're using Eclipse because, you know, almost everyone who developers for Android does).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Arraymancer v0.4, Nim tensor library now with OpenCL and Keras-like API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a link to the documentation as well: [https://mratsim.github.io/Arraymancer/](https://mratsim.github.io/Arraymancer/) And the examples: [https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer/tree/master/examples](https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer/tree/master/examples), including the mandatory XOR, MNIST convnets and the notorious FizzBuzz with neural networks ;).

Also while deep learning is a focus, I've added general linear algebra and ML features like a least squares solver and PCA.

</comment><comment><USER2> Speed in benchmarks [0] looks impressive. But they seem to be run on the old version of Arraymancer (Arraymancer 0.2.90). Were there any speed improvements/regressions in the newer version(s)?

Is there any "production code" written in Arraymancer?

[0] [https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer#speed](https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer#speed)

<comment><AUTHOR> The code didn't change so there shouldn't be any difference on Nim stable. Unfortunately I catched a regression in Nim #devel branch itself which is very impacting if tensors are created in a tight loop.

All in all I take performance very seriously and regularly check the assembly generated and the memory overhead of the library. It should at least be as fast as any C, C++ library even if they are optimized by a compiler (Tensorflow, Tensor Comprehension/Halide or MxNet/TVM), my intermediate language is C, and my optimizing compiler is GCC/LLVM. Critical parts should even reach Fortran speed thanks to heavy usage of __restrict__ and assume_aligned compiler builtins.

I also take great care about how to implement any algorithm for numerical stability and speed for example using a numerically stable 1-pass parallel softmax_cross_entropy through a frobenius inner product that I didn't see in any library I checked (Caffe, Tensorflow, Torch).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What software/hardware do you use to display metrics around the office? - <AUTHOR>

I've visited many shops that show critical metrics and other dashboardy stuff on a TV.  I need to build one and I can think of many different ways, both for the hardware and the actual "thing" it's rendering. I'm sure someone has done a sexier job than me..<p>What did you end up building? Bonus points for something shared on GitHub. <comment><USER2> I'd probably just search around for information dashboards; there are a ton of solutions, including canned ones. There are some commercial ones if you like spending money.

Lately I'm mostly using D3, but that's a steep curve if you just want a bargraph or something.</comment>


China uses facial recognition to monitor ethnic minorities - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/18/china-facial-recognition-uyghurs-xinjiang/ <comment><USER2> "Nice" to see someone is properly thinking all this CCTV stuff through. That way, our politicians in the West don't have to strain their imagination...</comment>


Whaling in the Soviet Union - <AUTHOR> https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-senseless-environment-crime-of-the-20th-century-russia-whaling-67774 <comment><USER2> The Truth About Soviet Whaling: A Memoir / Alfred Berzin

[https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdeptcommercepub/12/](https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdeptcommercepub/12/)

<comment><USER3> The following page links to the actual memoir (57 page PDF): [https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/spo/SPO/mfr702/mfr702.html](https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/spo/SPO/mfr702/mfr702.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excerpts and light commentary by Marginal Revolution:

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/on...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/one- of-the-greatest-environmental-crimes-of-the-20th-century.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not hardly the worst. Here's just a sampling:

[https://www.robedwards.com/2010/12/the-soviet- environmental-...](https://www.robedwards.com/2010/12/the-soviet- environmental-disasters-that-could-come-to-haunt-us.html)

<comment><USER6> Ownership of land by those without Skin in the Game can easily lead to this sort of thing. Times 1000 when by a politically hellbent bureaucracy.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. See also: nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, the Salton Sea disaster, United States Navy training in Puerto Rico, and the Hanford nuclear site.

But even when landowners have "skin in the game", man-made environmental disaster can still strike, like when bad farming practice led to the Dust Bowl.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atoll)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_Vieques,...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_Vieques,_Puerto_Rico)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> anti-submarines I wonder if some of this had to do with anti-submarine warfare?

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

That the soviets were falsifying documents, killing whales indiscriminately, not even using the carcasses very efficiently, and operating in ways that seemed to clear the sea of cetaceans, seems to point to some other deeper motivation to continue apace.

So much so, that Russian marine biologists and whaling scientists themselves took note of the attitude, and secretly retained records of the activity.

The article chalks this up to a simple antiquated quota established as a simple matter of the Soviet version of pre-environmentalist dust bowl ambition, and that the stubborn, bureaucratic single-mindedness of Soviet communists saw a number printed on a piece of paper and capriciously, if not robotically declared it must be so, and the machinations of a fear of failure to deliver unto Stalinist masters perpetuated an artificial demand to perform, in the face of GULAG style negative reinforcement, even though there was no such authentic demand that the supply was feeding into.

So, boss sees number, insists number must go up, stooges deliver number for fear of punishment. All of this willfully flouts international oversight of conservation efforts in secret, at the behest of the Soviet ministry of fisheries to save face before the high court of the communist party.

But is that really it? Or was it a paranoia of mobilized nuclear tipped missiles slipping past defenses onboard underwater launch platforms?

Did they think that maybe all the environmentalism was really a cover to hamstring anti-submarine warfare, at a time when this represented a key means of delivering nuclear deterence? That saving the whales was an effort to provide cover for submarines that might threaten Soviet cities with submarine launched ballistic missiles?

Maybe all the noisy whales were getting in the way of other cold war related human activity?

I guess if that were true, the whaling ships might have followed a different pattern, but maybe submarine warfare followed a pattern of using the animals as cover, and where a pod of animals could be found, so too a sneaking submarine?

<comment><USER4> From the article:

 _Soviet ships' officers would have been familiar with the story of Aleksandr Dudnik, the captain of the Aleut, the only factory ship the Soviets owned before World War II. Dudnik was a celebrated pioneer in the Soviet whaling industry, and had received the Order of Lenin—the Communist Party's highest honor—in 1936. The following year, however, his fleet failed to meet its production targets. When the Aleut fleet docked in Vladivostok in 1938, Dudnik was arrested by the secret police and thrown in jail, where he was interrogated on charges of being a Japanese agent. If his downfall was of a piece with the unique paranoia of the Stalin years, it was also an indelible reminder to captains in the decades that followed._

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Erhm... nuclear bombs?

<comment><USER9> What about them? Serious question. Has the sum total of nuclear testing had any measurable environmental impact at all?

<comment><USER10> Locally? Definitely. The testing grounds are heavily contaminated with all sorts of radioactive (and possibly otherwise hazardous) material

Globally? More difficult to estimate. But one example where the environmental impact of nuclear testing can be seen is the contamination of worlds steel supply: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low- background_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A collection of useful items for building SteamVR titles in Unity 5 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thestonefox/SteamVR_Unity_Toolkit <comment><USER2> Great stuff. I'm hopefully setting my HTC Vive up tonight, so I'll be giving this a shot very soon.

There seems to be a significant lack of simple starting points for common scenarios in VR (and yes, I know it's very early). I'm just trying to work on something for a field that is very outside of gaming (so there's no help for me locally), and ramping up on all of this on your own is pretty dang time consuming.

I've been working on prototyping some stuff for the Rift in Unity and, while it's fairly easy to do, there's also a ton of outdated info out there already. And I can't tell if I should just be spending more money on some basic assets and prefabs or if there's a better route. Especially since I'm not looking to make games.

<comment><USER3> The ecosystem is still evolving very rapidly. Additionally, the vocal majority of the existing Unity community aren't the most technically inclined. The result is something akin to the front-end web development community before Stack Overflow; essentially, lots of copypasta, not much published innovation.

I'm not sure how much of this linked library is even original; much of it seems to be just copied from Valve. The concept of dependencies is not present in much of what I have seen, so this isn't surprising.

Having not read any formal writing and coming from what I consider to be more traditional systems (web dev), game dev has a lot of peculiarities. Adjusting to the concept of the execution frame (a literal video frame) as a point of reference for state, for example. The 10ms frame recommended by Alex Vlachos helped me quantify this and comprehend what the frequency were programming for, which makes something like the way keypresses are handled more sensible.

I've built two small projects in Unity, but am looking for another engine for my next project. Today, it still probably stands as the best choice, but Lumberyard, though riddled with bugs, is moving quickly in the right direction. Using an alternate stack for simulation (though not necessarily client-server) to get outside of the game loop has a lot of appeal. However, latency and the corrective prediction techniques do not look like fun to me.

My next project involves heavier simulation, which, after programming very simple AI in C#, has me looking to keep that codebase simple, specific and flexible; outside of the game loop. It's likely that I'll start with the simulation code only and add a graphical "front end" later. I can see this being justifiable on simpler experiences, too: loading any content from the internet will likely be less painful and faster if you pre-process it externally.

It's still the wild west out there. The real smart people are employed by AAA studios building proprietary engines writing really dense C++. Indie devs are not primarily software people and Open Source gaming is a pretty sad effort. But, since we're see more people like you and I getting interested due to the general appeal of VR, I'm sure the shared knowledge will grow at an increasing rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also don't miss the Valve OpenVR SDK, here's their "hello world" sample: [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr/tree/master/samples/...](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr/tree/master/samples/hellovr_opengl)

if you want something a bit more low-level than Unity. There was one tiny change I had to make, change "LoadTexture" to "LoadTexture_Async", there's a couple of pull requests with the details.

I can't wait to start making vr stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish to see other alternatives, Unity is not my editor of choice but it seems like the new standard :(

<comment><USER6> What engine do you prefer?</comment></comment>


iPhone 5 review - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/18/apple-iphone-5-review/ <comment><USER2> > But, [Maps] isn't nearly as comprehensive as Google's offerings on Android. > The biggest drawback is the unfortunate lack of public transportation > directions. If you haven't quite mastered New York City's subway system, you > won't get any help from your iPhone 5. Curiously, the app offers to give you > public transportation directions, but should you choose that option it pops > you straight into the App Store with a search for "Routing Apps." Right now, > there are zero results.

By itself, no public transportation directions in Maps should be a deal- breaker for anyone living in a big city. How Apple could have allowed such a huge feature regression from the 4S/iOS 5 to get into the final version of the iPhone 5 is beyond me.

<comment><USER3> Going with Maps over Google Maps is one of the worst regressions I've seen in an OS/Software in a long time. Google Map's is simply brilliant, the de-facto standard, always being improved, flawless in a sense and these guys go with their own mapping software. It really blows my mind. I'm thinking it's simple arrogance on the iOS teams part (perhaps management as well). I've read many stories of how big of an asshole Scott Forstall is and I believe them.

Apple is a great company and their really driving themselves into the ground (well, maybe not yet) with all these frivolous patent troll lawsuits (claiming shape patents, suing a grocery store in Eastern Europe), Sandboxing app, rigorous Nazi-like App store tactics (they claim quality here, yeah my ass, there are probably 300,000 of the 500,00 apps which are pure garbage). It's got to end somewhere.

Anyway, back to Maps. It's a bad move, I've been playing with Maps on iOS6 since the first Beta, I don't know what they're thinking (or even if they're thinking) and it shows the character of that company.

The lightning adaptor is also bullshit - since now everyone will have to spend $100s on adaptors and new chargers. The 24-pin, while dated, worked and was just fine. I haven't played with the new connector yet - but it looks to me like it's easy to disconnect. I remember the older 24-pin connectors had clamps so to speak on the side to lock them in place and the current ones do a good job of staying put. This connector seems very fragile and flimsy and I see it disconnecting all over the place. Again, can't make this call until I play with the device.

It's the same logic with the "new" MagSafe 2 connector. Get outta here. The Mag Safe was just fine. There was nothing wrong with (aside from maybe, the ridiculous price tag). $30 for an adapter is obscene. These things cost $1.99 to produce in China (probably less) and Apple is simply milking the fanboys and corporate "we don't care we'll buy anything Apple because it looks cool" clients. I would know, I'm the one buying $100k of Apple products every year for the company I used to work for. It's really something.

BTW, the iPhone 5 is the iPhone 4Stretched. Bigger screen and a A6 process. Come on. The 4S has an A5X, I bet the performance benchmarks are negligible between the two. Software and the placebo-effect will do a hell of a job convincing the normal user that it "feels faster."

They could have done a lot more with this phone, they didn't because they didn't have to. I don't blame them.

<comment><USER4> > Again, can't make this call until I play with the device.

Stated right after you appear to have made the call. Ballsy.

> The 4S has an A5X, I bet the performance benchmarks are negligible between > the two.

I'll take that bet. "The iPhone 5's A6 processor appears to be roughly twice as fast as any chip in an existing iOS product, if results posted by Geekbench prove to be accurate." [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57513867-37/iphone-5-bench...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57513867-37/iphone-5-benchmarks- surface-performance-doubles/)

<comment><USER5> Just a minor nitpick out of his huge troll rant but the 4S does not have an A5X. The A5X is only in the new iPad; the 4S has the A5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's sad that every time the authors chose to compare the phone they compared it with iPhone 4S instead of comparing it with any of the newer phones out there in the market such as Lumia 920 or GSIII. That is like taking a page from Apple's marketing book. Of course it is going to be better than the older version released last year. How does it compare to the phones of this generation?

That question is left unanswered. May be that is because the audience won't like the answer...

<comment><USER7> Sure, comparisons with the 920 or GSIII are interesting to those who are watching the market, but frankly only comparisons to previous iPhones are useful.

Nowadays iPhones and flagship Androids have gotten good enough that the pain of switching ecosystems far outweighs any benefit to be gained by switching ecosystems.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. After using and enjoying my iPhone 4 for quite a while my next phone is going to be android, to see how the other half lives. $10 in the play store and a few hours making sure all my settings are synched should be sufficient (and the synching I would have had to do anyway to go from iPhone 4 -> iPhone 5).

<comment><USER9> I've been in the ecosystem since the original iPhone. Switching would involve a significant time and money outlay as I figure out what apps I should replace my current apps with and outlay the money to do so. It would easily wind up costing me as much as the phone.

<comment><USER6> It depends on how many applications you use very regularly. Games pretty much get old as you complete them. When it comes to the rest of the apps, I doubt an average person buys more than a few bucks worth of non-game apps.

smartphone costs a few thousand dollars to own over a couple of years. Cost of apps is bust a small portion of that cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have zero desire to upgrade to iPhone 5. At this point, I can't see anything that would compel me to plunk down any money for the device over what I have now (iPhone 4).

That being said, if I had a free upgrade, I'd take it, but I wouldn't pay any money for it.

I'd actually be more interested in a new iPad (please call it the iPad 4...'The New iPad' is a ridiciously stupid name) with a better processor for playing Madden NFL type games.

BTW..the most curious thing I saw out of the Apple news the day the iPhone 5 was announced was the new Nano. [http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_...](http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_nano)

I can't believe they are using those round icons. Does that strike anyone else as odd? It doesn't fit with anything else they are releasing and, IMO, looks pretty terrible.

<comment><USER11> Developing with 4/4S everyday I just can't help but notice the difference in performance between them. Now, 5 is 2+ times as fast as 4S it seems, so I would argue that for 4 owners it's a pretty good upgrade. For 4S, well, maybe it's not that exciting

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The more I see that Lightning port, I can't help but wonder why they didn't just do the obvious and go for micro USB. I'm wholly confident Apple could design the highest of quality micro USB connector to satisfy even the biggest of haters that claim its too flimsy while silencing the constant gripe of obsolescence.

<comment><USER13> Another reason might be that they pipe analog audio out of it?

I don't know much about hardware, would it have been possible to use the standard micro USB connector and still provide those features?

From the article:

> the adapter will provide the power and analog audio that the vast majority > of docks and accessories (and cars) in the world need

<comment><USER14> They don't. They no longer pipe audio out through the dock connector, you have to plug in a headphone cable, or the external device has to have its own DAC (ala the giant adapter they have now).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why the back isn't all glass or all aluminum. The two seams on the back don't appear to be functional or visually appealing.

Can anyone explain what the deal is?

<comment><USER2> Just a guess, but could it be to alleviate previous reception issues?

<comment><USER3> Interesting point.

I fully agree with the OP here, the back looks bad. I don't get it. The all- glass back on the 4S was really nice. Had a certain allure and design sense to it.

Apple this time around:

Tim Cook: "Hey Jony, let's make the back uglier by anodizing the steel and let's see how many we can sell before we release the 5S next year."

Jony Ive: "Alright Tim, I bet we'll sell more than the 4S with an uglier case, you're on"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Roundup of links to early reviews:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57515524-37/initial- iphone...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57515524-37/initial- iphone-5-reviews-arrive-critics-praise-new-screen/)

I found David Pogue's early review hilarious if only because, reading between the lines, it boils down to: _David Pogue has spent thousands of dollars on third party Apple dock gadgets and does not appreciate compatibility being broken._

</comment><comment><USER16> I find it interesting that everyone is talking about the screen size instead of the screen technology. The CNET review[1] and I'm sure others often show them side by side with the iPhone 5 _brighter!_ , when of course it's like the before/after pictures on TV and could very well just be the slider setting.

I'm also waiting to hear better estimates for battery life -- why is talktime the best standard when no one I know talks for 8 hours on a bill, let alone a charge? I love the data/cpu usage shackles Apple has put on apps, but iOS 6 better let me turn off LTE with less than 6 taps!!

[1] <http://www.cnet.com/iphone-5/>

<comment><USER9> _iOS 6 better let me turn off LTE with less than 6 taps_

I wouldn't count on that. It wouldn't even surprise me if they didn't provide a setting to do that at all, after all, there is no way to turn of 3G in the settings.

You might have to jailbreak to get that capability.

<comment><USER17> > after all, there is no way to turn of 3G in the settings

There is on my 4S running iOS6 (and I'm sure it was there on my old 3GS...) :-

Settings > General > Mobile > Enable 3G (toggle switch)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you specifically don't like engadget's review. Here's gdgt's aggregated reviews list:

<http://gdgt.com/apple/iphone/5/>

They'll add more to the list as they become available.

</comment><comment><USER19> Interestingly, lightning was the previous name of Hyper Transport (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTransport>), which was used in Powermac G5 machines.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm pretty surprised the lightning connector isn't thunderbolt. Didn't the original iPod come with a firewire cable?

</comment><comment><USER3> Pre-release iPhone 5 name: "iPhone 4Stretched."

Tim Cook: "Couldn't go with that one, they're stupid, but not that stupid."</comment>


Warner Bros Suspends Sales of Batman: Arkham Knight PC Version - <AUTHOR> https://community.wbgames.com/t5/Support-for-PC/June-24-Update-on-PC-Version-of-Arkham-Knight/m-p/575332#U575332 <comment><AUTHOR> The suspension is likely happening due to many, many technical issues with the port: [http://kotaku.com/batman-arkham-knights-pc-version-is-a- mess...](http://kotaku.com/batman-arkham-knights-pc-version-is-a- mess-1713351974)

The average rating for the game on Steam was 31%. Since this was the first AAA game to be released on Steam after the release of Steam Refunds, it's also suspected that a high number of returns could force drastic action.

<comment><USER2> Steam could be a major force in turning around the recent slew of absolutely craptastic, completely broken, game releases recently.

QA/QC should not happen at the customer level.

<comment><USER3> "We don't need unit tests because we have integration tests. We don't need integration tests because we have QA acceptance tests. We don't need QA acceptance tests because end users will report any bugs to us. We don't listen to user feedback because declining sales will tip us off to the problems. We don't pay attention to sales numbers because creditors seizing our assets will alert us of the shortcoming."

<comment><USER4> I know you're joking, but it's pretty much infeasible to test the kind of bugs typical in games using automatic testing. So much is content driven, and the state space is far too large.

Even for stuff that's fairly testable, like navigation, collision, etc, you have the issue of there being a million edge/degenerate cases, and it's very hard to know this never hits one in the game code or content.

So the best you can usually do is test library code.

Not that this has anything to do with AK, which sounds like plain old sloppiness.

<comment><USER5> Ok, but in this case they chose to put in a 30FPS cap. Ignoring that performance is well below even that, they should have known it was unacceptable.

<comment><USER6> Why is that unacceptable? From the reports I've read re enabling the 30fps cap removes many of the performance problems. Some of the game logic can be hard coded to accept 33ms frame times, especially if the console versions are capped at 30 and the PC version is a port of them. They made a technical decision to cap it at 30, there's nothing wrong with that. If you don't agree with it, then don't buy it.

<comment><USER7> I'm a developer, but not a game developer. Making the decision to hardcode game logic to only accept 33ms frame time sounds like a pretty dumb choice. I would wager that if your fix is to artificially cap performance of your software, then something in your code base sucks majorly. Call me crazy.

<comment><USER8> _I 'm a developer, but not a game developer. Making the decision to hardcode game logic to only accept 33ms frame time sounds like a pretty dumb choice._

I'm not a game developer, but I am a realtime system developer. We could hem and haw about all the different hypothetical ways all the implementation details can suck, but locking and/or hardcoding for certain framerates is a perfectly fine decision. Doubly fine when those frames aren't graphical.

Easy but contrived example: If I hard code a purpose-specific audio pathway to only operate at 44100hz, that can be a perfectly acceptable design decision given the purpose. How deeply the code assumes that rate can be indicative of code quality, but if the assumption is hard to excise from the code in performance-critical areas, well that happens.

Here is the part where I have to qualify I'm not saying more than I've said. I'm not defending the use of 30fps cap here, or saying that this game's code is any good overall. The gaming customer has higher realtime expectations than 30fps, especially on PC. And although I haven't played this game, the market is showing it is a bad product beyond that.

 _I would wager that if your fix is to artificially cap performance of your software, then something in your code base sucks majorly. Call me crazy._

In a realtime system, consistent performance is a more important goal that maximum performance. For games that want high-end graphics, the goals are to have maximum performance on data of highly variable complexity, push the limits of what can be done, but rarely (if ever) whiff on the real time deadline. I won't disagree that most game codebases have pockets of major suck or that a locked rate can be a bandaid for sucking, but it is not indicative of such.

<comment><USER7> Very interesting, you are correct. Thanks for this reply. My experience has always been in the world of 'performance is king', it's easy for me to lose sight of the idea that systems do exist in which such a limit is beneficial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And issues like these are why you should never preorder PC games. They have an unlimited amount of copies, so it's not like you will be waiting weeks for something. Is a tiny preorder bonus really worth the risk of gambling your money?

Now Steam has introduced refunds, you can refund a game if you haven't played more than 2 hours, and a few weeks haven't passed.

<comment><USER10> If it's a small company, you might want to give them money up front to help them keep afloat. Steam has early-acces games for that reason.

(It's better than pre-order, since you get to play the unfinished game earlier, if you want to. If you choose early-access but wait for the official release before you run it, it's exactly the same as pre-order.)

<comment><USER11> Right, but you should only give them money if the product that they have on Early Access is already fun, right?

Take Rust (the game, not the language) for instance. They cobbled together what is now known as "Rust Legacy" as a sort of demo of what they wanted the game to be. Thousands of people bought it. Now Facepunch is using the funds from all those sales to completely rework the game from the ground-up. Now it's better than Rust Legacy, and only going to get better and more interesting.

But if Rust Legacy wasn't fun, nobody would've bought it. TL;DR: don't preorder (including early access!) games purely on promise alone.

<comment><USER12> What if what they have so far isn't fun, but you think it might become very fun if they were given enough money to finish it? Isn't that (sometimes) worth taking the risk on?

<comment><USER13> To steal an idea from Bungie, when it comes to games you want "thirty seconds of fun" \-- a base gameplay loop (in the case of Halo, where it originally applied, it's the loop of taking out baddies from a distance, then the stronger baddies from mid-range, then mopping up the scattered weak baddies). An early demo (like the aforementioned Rust Legacy) is a proof-of-concept of that base gameplay loop, and if players like it, they can fund it.

Once it's funded, they can build out from that base loop, and eventually you'll get a finished product.

<comment><USER10> Interesting concept! I wonder how it would apply to other genres, eg old school point-n-click adventures?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not surprised they suspended it but I wonder why they even released it. A vast majority of games that are released for consoles end up having a delayed PC version so why didn't they just delay it even for a short time?

For what it's worth the game is really fun to play on a console.

Slightly off topic: am I the only one who had to open developer tools to hide the huge spoiler modal because no key combination / refresh / mouse clicking would get rid of it? That was frustrating.

<comment><USER15> I bet it was an executive decision. The game was already delayed. Twice. They probably decided to push out what they had for PC just so they wouldn't have to announce another delay. For the PC version only, of course. While simultaneously releasing the console versions.

My guess is, they thought even though it is buggy, they can fix it with patches and will only get minor flack for this from the PC users. And that this would be the better choice than to anger every PC gamer by announcing the third delay.

Well, now it is clear that this was the wrong decision. They both, underestimated just how broken the game was and how incomplete compared to the console version and they forgot about Valve's newly introduced refund system.

WBGames can claim that they suspended this game for PC but if I were to venture a guess, I'd say it was Valve that suspended this game because they were tired of processing so many refunds. They would have said "A game that gets this many negative reviews and all are claiming horrible performance and missing effects must clearly be broken and therefore we shouldn't continue to sell it as it will only lead to even more refund claims."

A couple of interesting things to note: 1\. They removed the PC logo from all Arkham Knight pages. 2\. The company itself tells people about how to request refunds 3\. The company also asks for patience while this is being worked out

The last two are somewhat contradictory to me. When a company tells customers on their own free will how to get refunds sounds like an admittance to failure and that they do not believe this can be fixed in a timely manner. And then they still ask for patience which sounds like they are working on a solution. Paired with them removing all PC logos from their promo pages for this game really seems weird.

While this announcement was leagues better than the marketing speak of the first announcement they did, I think customers still need more, clearer information what is going to happen. People who deal in software already know this but the average customer has no idea how long such things can take. Therefore they should explicitly announce what they are going to do. To me, it doesn't sound like patches will do the trick. From all accounts, this pc version sounds broken by design and the root causes are stuck deeeeeep in there. So, if they plan to fix this, then they should announce that an entire rewrite is needed and that this takes time. While at it, they should also tell us _who_ will do this rewrite. I am sure no one wants Iron Galaxy at this again. We want Rocksteady to do it. Because we know they actually can make a Batman game. As evidenced by the ps4 version of this one and the first two games in general. Both ran fine on pc. I already heard speculation that they might try and release this in the fall when they scheduled the SteamOS and Mac version of the game. One can only hope for the sake of the windows version that Rocksteady will not be busy writing these versions and continue to outsource the windows version to the same cracksquad that arsed up this time.

<comment><USER16> The Mac and Linux/SteamOS versions are being outsourced to Feral. They've done a good job with XCOM on Mac/Linux and the previous Batman games on Mac so I have confidence in them doing a decent job there. It'd be interesting if their OpenGL implementation actually ends up being better than the Windows DirectX version, but I suspect the issues are at a higher level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With my low-end computer (previously mid-range), I've found that even with driver updates and patches, launch performance in games never improves by more than a few FPS. Now, to my knowledge, the problem with Knight is that it runs poorly and is capped to 30. If the pattern continues and Rocksteady can't reliably get it up to 60 (a 2x gain!!), then what happens? The game remains suspended forever?

(In other news, I was really hoping to maybe eke by playing Knight at low/30fps on my Macbook w/discrete Nvidia graphics, but I guess that's not going to happen.)

<comment><USER18> Here's the thing: you're not the person who's raging out over this. Yes, you're part of the demographic who might be upset, but it's people like me, who have stuff like 2x(or more) 980/295x (or better), 3000+MHz DDR4, x99 Processors/Motherboards, all overclocked, with custom cooling solutions and hooked up to G-Sync/FreeSync displays, that are upset. While graphics are not everything, and I play plenty of non-AAA games, a good chunk of the rationale behind even _buying_ AAA games is beautiful graphics and high framerates. With the shit drivers from NVidia, and the absolute tripe so many studios are pumping out these days, I'm questioning the ongoing viability of high-level desktop gaming solutions.

Then, to have the absolute audacity to call a game AAA when it's hard capped at 30fps on PC is just an absolute act of spitting in our faces.

<comment><USER19> Interesting that you're spending orders of magnitude more on the hardware than on the games.

<comment><USER20> Why is that interesting?

<comment><USER19> Because the effect achieved is a function of game+hardware. For a total budget of X dollars to achieve the best possible result, the hardware is a much larger component of the budget. Would people spending thousands on hardware also be willing to spend more and wait longer in order to get higher-quality video in games? Is that what the PC version is "supposed" to be about, compared to the standardised console product?

Audio climbed this curve and has topped out. Video games haven't really explored it.

(evidently it's uninteresting enough that someone's downvoted it ..)

<comment><USER20> I didn't downvote, but the whole point of the PC as a game platform is to get the best possible experience. That usually comes with a higher price tag that many are willing to pay.

Very high-end systems are more niche obviously and the price onvolved their shouldn't be indicative of anything other than enthusiasm by hobbysists. Enthusiasts in any field or hobby are usually willing to spend lots of money to get a 'superior' experience.

As for waiting for higher quality I think yes, many would be willing to wait. GTA V came out nearly two years after the console releases and I was one of those who waited for it.

It's not like I was aching with anticipation for it, I had more than enough games in my backlog to play and when it did eventually release it was much better than the console versions.

It's not like GTA V is indicative of multiplatform releases though. Most will release on PC at the exact same time and not suffer the kind of issues we have seen with Arkham Knight.

Arkham Knight's absymal PC release was due only to a shitty port by a small third party studio that was obviously incapable or unequipped to handle it. I don't think I'd even really blame Iron Galaxy for this either, I blame Warner Bros and possibly even Rocksteady for thinking outsourcing the port was a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a nice side benefit here for the fact that I'm always at least 6 months behind games.

I don't have enough time to play games as much as I'd like (i.e. as much as I did as a teenager), so I only play a few selected highlights, and given that, it makes no difference to me if I'm playing the cutting edge or what came out 6 months ago - it normally takes me 6 months to finish something.

This has lots of benefits: You get the community consensus on what is worth playing, not the marketing hype. The game is usually cheaper. The major bugs have been filtered out.

<comment><USER22> Totally agreed. Why pre-order to get the exclusive content when you can have it 6 months down the line in the "Game Of The Year Edition" \- and usually much cheaper _and_ with all of the bugs ironed out. What's not to like? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Steam refunds, in conjunction with the recent political mobilization of gamers, will change the gaming landscape for the better, allowing developers and consumers to stand in a relationship that begins to approach good faith. This seems to be the first AAA reaction to the new situation, but we have already witnessed the complaints of Steam crapware/shovelware producers, as well as the exit from games of some bad actors (such as Tale of Tales).

</comment><comment><USER24> That forum must be really heavily moderated/censored. Based on eg the Battle.net forums I'd have expected to see much angrier posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> The corresponding announcement on Steam has what you're looking for: [http://steamcommunity.com/games/208650/announcements/detail/...](http://steamcommunity.com/games/208650/announcements/detail/145587678167685991)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Technical question - I've seen reports that, "...people who have installed the game to SSD's are apparently getting better performance" [1].

Which implies, to me (both intuitively and having worked on a lot of high performance I/O limited use cases) that part of the issue is read/write speed from the disk? But if that's the case, what kind of software architecture makes sense for a game to have (apparently) real time data processing pulling resources from the disk?

Obviously you need to load maps/games/cutscene etc etc, but this makes it sound like there is constant polling every n-th frame?

[1] - [http://www.pcgamer.com/batman-arkham-knights-launch- appears-...](http://www.pcgamer.com/batman-arkham-knights-launch-appears-to- be-a-disaster/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I think this is an honest and fair decision towards the consumer base. Perhaps they can offer one of the two previous Batman games to make up for the time lost before the update arrives. Let's hope the patch resolves the issues.

</comment><comment><USER27> They must've just run this one through a shell script to port it. Seems like they put the least amount of effort they could into the PC version.

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems there are quiet a few issues with this port. I wonder if this is a result of rushing QA?

<comment><USER29> Stuff this dramatic would have been noticed by QA, and almost certainly known to the programmers. The publisher decided to ship it in this state.

<comment><AUTHOR> It should be noted that Warner Bros also recently published MKX on PC, which had similar issues. [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/mortal-kombat-x-pc- patch-pu...](http://www.gamespot.com/articles/mortal-kombat-x-pc-patch-pulled- after-erasing-save/1100-6427111/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone know whether the Xbox version is ok?

</comment><comment> anti-shill was there a confederate flag on it?!</comment>


Csv files with game-by-game outcomes for the college basketball season - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/gcalhoun/5199478

<comment><AUTHOR> In case anyone else wants to estimate regression models to fill out their bracket. Enjoy.</comment>


Paperphone: Scholarly Voice Playground - <AUTHOR> http://www.beingwendyhsu.info/paperphone/

<comment><AUTHOR> The website doesn't give a good overview of this software on the landing page, so here is a description from the About page:

> A scholarly voice playground, Paperphone is an interactive audio application > that processes voice and sound materials live and in-context. Designed to > challenge the privileging of text over act in humanities scholarship, > Paperphone is a performative platform for scholars to unravel the expressive > potential of voice and audio in sharing academic works.

A more in-depth overview of the rationale and philosophy behind Paperphone can be found here: [http://www.hastac.org/blogs/wendyfhsu/2014/03/05/paperphone-...](http://www.hastac.org/blogs/wendyfhsu/2014/03/05/paperphone- beta-releasing-scholarly-audio-application)</comment>


Microsoft Acquires MetricsHub - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2013/03/04/microsoft-acquires-metricshub.aspx

<comment><USER2> plus: <http://blog.metricshub.com/2013/03/04/future-of-metricshub/>

>>As for the future – we'll have more to share on that – in the future!

:-)</comment>


TOML – Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/toml-lang/toml <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who simply doesn't see the point of using TOML?

Even though it's easy to find things in JSON and YAML that you could pick on, it is always pretty obvious what is being declared. It's easy to see the hierarchy of it all: it's one big tree of dicts, lists and scalars (disregarding some of YAML's rarely used features, like tags and references). With TOML, that hierarchy simply becomes lost. It all feels like stuff is/can be declared in random order. Why would anyone want to back to using INI files? I remember using them on DOS and Windows and I can't remember liking them that much.

Even if TOML has certain advantages over YAML/JSON, those advantages are so incredibly small if you look at the bigger picture. For JSON and YAML I can easily find parsers/generators for any language out there, even fairly exotic ones. For TOML there is a lot less choice.

<comment><USER3> > Why would anyone want to back to using INI files? I remember using them on > DOS and Windows and I can't remember liking them that much.

If all you need to do is set some constants and maybe an array, then INI is perfectly fine. Using YAML where you don't need its complexity is overkill, and that complexity would encourage feature creep in order to justify using that format.

I'd agree that a lack of available parsers for TOML might be an issue, except the implementations page of the wiki seems to list implementations for most languages people are likely to use[0].

Also, I don't know what you mean about the hierarchy being "lost" in TOML - obviously things aren't being declared in random order, it seems straightforward to me what's going on when I look at it. I really can't say the same about a lot of YAML code I've seen.

Use what you like but it seems like your issues here amount to aesthetics and personal taste. Personally, I think YAML is too clever for its own good. Just read the recent HN thread about YAML templating - when your config format is so complex you need an entire separate workflow (likely with its own configuration setup) to generate it, and at the end of the day you still can't abbreviate Norway properly[2], maybe it's not the best option for every case. Or even most cases.

[0][https://github.com/toml-lang/toml](https://github.com/toml-lang/toml)

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19108787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19108787)

[2][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17359376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17359376)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, YAML templating is just silly. I nowadays use Jsonnet ([https://jsonnet.org](https://jsonnet.org)) whenever I need to generate a configuration that needs some parameterization/computation in it. +1. Would advise to others.</comment></comment></comment>


On Incorporation - Hold Off Until You Have The Cash To Spare - <AUTHOR> http://blog.meatinthesky.com/on-incorporation-i-still-say-hold-off-until-y

<comment><USER2> As a lawyer, I try above all to work with clients in flexible ways. _Every_ lawyer should do this and many do. A client should never feel that coming to a lawyer is something at all costs to be avoided unless and until he is prepared to pay in blood.

Now this is a thoughtful piece and I am not saying that this is the tenor of the argument.

But all or nothing is not the way to approach your company formation legal issues.

First, _as early on as possible_ , you should meet with a good lawyer in the startup field to get a _strategic perspective_ on the legal issues. What are the legal goals you need to accomplish? How do you best go about them? What are the likely costs of different ways of going about the process? Is there a fixed-fee package that make sense for your goals? This type of initial meeting might be introductory and general (and free) or might get into all the specifics of your case (in which it would likely cost you something, but not much).

If you are a sole founder, do the quickie incorporation and be done with it, as soon as possible. In that situation, it is not an issue of "doing it right" because you can pretty much stumble along blind and still get it basically right for the simple legal issues involved.

If you are part of a founding team, and need to impose vesting on founder stock, file 83(b) elections, capture IP via assignment agreements, set up equity incentives for key people, etc., then do not wait to shop this around to knowledgeable law firms. If what you hear is rigid and expensive, then perhaps you should wait but doing so carries its own risks. I think what you will find, though, is that you can get a knowledgeable lawyer to do this sort of more sophisticated package on reasonable terms, sometimes as low as $2K or $3K for legal fees if the founding team is reasonably sophisticated and does not need a lot of hand-holding.

If you shop it around and don't get the right quotes, then you can make a conscious decision to say, "I know I might need this but I will take the risks and wait in order to stretch my dollars." If you have gotten a strategic perspective from an initial meeting, and done the shopping, then you will make such a decision based on a careful analysis of the issues involved, giving each of the trade-offs their due weight.

Perhaps this is all another way of saying just what the author does ("hold off until you have the cash to spare") but perhaps you really do have the cash earlier rather than later if, by following these simple steps, you discover it really is not such an expensive process to "do it right" for your circumstances right up front.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the author, this is sufficiently similar to my argument that I'd say we agree, mostly. At the very least, _please_ shop your incorporation business and get bids. However, I still don't think the corporate veil you get as a sole founder in a quickie incorporation is worth the cash.

Doing a quickie LLC then fixing the quickie incorporation later (doing the merger transaction and dissolution of the quickie LLC) can often be more expensive than just waiting to do a C corporation the right way.

<comment><USER3> _Doing a quickie LLC then fixing the quickie incorporation later (doing the merger transaction and dissolution of the quickie LLC) can often be more expensive than just waiting to do a C corporation the right way._

It would be interesting to learn these actual costs from a lawyer, or someone who has gone through this process. I've worked at 4 different startups that changed from an LLC to a C corp. I wasn't privy to those costs, but I don't remember anyone being too worried about them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know what the situation is in the US, but here in the UK incorporation is so utterly trivial to do and offers such benefit that it is something of a no-brainer for any venture which has even the smallest risk of unexpected liabilities. Although you can spend hundreds of pounds on incorporation, you can just as easily do it for 25 quid.

The side benefits of incorporation can be significant. Many component manufacturers provide more resources to registered companies. Access to distributors and lines of credit is far better. Many potential customers won't even talk to you if you're not a registered company.

Maybe the OP needs a better lawyer, maybe the US needs better law, I don't know.

<comment> graham-miln To provide an idea of just how easy it is to incorporate a limited liability company (Limited / co.uk) under English and Welsh law, visit Companies House:

[http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/infoAndGuide/companyRegistr...](http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/infoAndGuide/companyRegistration.shtml)

<http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/>

Impressively, they even offer same day incorporation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The authors arguments simply don't hold water IMO. He notes how incorporating became expensive due to an unexpected need to offer a stock purchase plan. Is he saying that incorporating forced him to offer an options plan? Its my understanding that such programs are entirely optional.

His point about finding an expensive lawyer to "build a relationship" for making introductions is equally puzzling. He might have found that such lawyer wasn't worth the investment, but that's not a reason for a startup to not incorporate.

For me, liability protection is extremely valuable. If you have no assets, perhaps the liability protection isn't worth it.

<comment><USER6> IMHO, his main point was incorporate after you are dealing with someone else's money. I would wait till the moment I have someone willing to pay me for my product/service. Until that point, it just gets in the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't agree with this. It is vital to have legal separation between your company and yourself--whether that be in the form of an S/C Corp or a Limited Liability Company. I just incorporated in Illinois and it cost me about $400 through LegalZoom. They took care of everything and all the rest was handled through my accountant for another $200. That amount is trivial given the structure and protection I now have with an S Corp.

As far as the stock option package--they messed up and shouldn't have formed an S Corp. S (Small Business) Corps are pass-though just like LLC's--the shareholders pay personal taxes on the profits of the company. They also only allow you to distribute one class of stock, making employee stock options hard to do.

The author's lawyer/accountant should have told them that, but I still can't see how all that came out to a $40K mistake. Word of advice: do your research. As a business owner/CEO, ignorance is not an excuse--do you're homework and ask the right questions.

<comment><USER2> You _can_ have a sophisticated stock option plan with an S corp.

My classic case was when I had a founder come back to me after exiting his prior company $3B richer than he started and then used tens of millions of his own money to found and fund one of the most elaborate S corps I have ever dealt with. He wanted the S status to be able to pass the early-stage losses through as set-offs against other income.

There were about 100 employees, many of whom were not U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens and virtually all of them got stock options.

However, since the options do not technically constitute a "second class of stock" (an S corp killer if they do) and since the plan and the stock option agreements conditioned the exercise of the options on the company's first having abandoned its S status (another S corp killer is to have a foreign national as a shareholder), the plan and the whole incentive scheme worked.

This was a more complex setup than usual but _not_ $6K worth of complexity. What it primarily required was a good working knowledge of S corps and of equity incentive plans and how to properly mix the two to achieve the client's aims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sachin, I don't get it. It costs almost nothing to create an LLC. Do it, and now you can't lose your house over hosting fees. Later on, when you want to form a relationship with a lawyer, spend money on an S-Corp or a C-Corp.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure I'd consider it "almost nothing"; if your startup budget is $10k and ramen, it's a noticeable chunk of that. In California, it's $800 _per year_ to keep an LLC incorporated, plus an extra $200 or so the first year in fees. In NYC, it's $1500 or so to set up an LLC. Some states are cheaper, though (Texas is a one-time $300).

<comment><USER7> This is the cost of starting up a business. It's not a Wordpress Blog--it's a business and it's gonna cost money. If you can't stomach $1000/year in filing fees you either need to find a business that will earn some revenue in the first year or move on to greener pastures.

<comment><USER9> Or, you could just not pay those fees, and operate as a sole proprietor initially. If you don't have large savings, there's not really much risk; if you lose your $10k, declare bankruptcy and start over.

<comment><USER8> Start over with a new company with a personal bankruptcy in your credit history?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To be clear Sachin is not talking about setting up an LLC or an S Corp. He's talking about setting up a C Corp, probably in Delaware, for a start-up where your immediate intention is to go out and raise funding.

Service businesses don't apply and neither do bootstrapped web apps. If you're doing one of those go ahead and form your legalzoom llc or s-corp and get the worry out of your mind.

There's a reason YC and others want you to wait and its because untangling the mess that self-incorporation can create is a needless and sometimes expensive time sink when preparing you for investors who are used to dealing with this specific case.

I'm not sure Sachin's part about needing a good lawyer for introductions is important but the part about doing incorporation for a C Corp raising money correctly is a proper point.

<comment><USER7> But a $40,000 mistake? I can't wrap my head around that number. With a little forethought and a few days research you could have been ready with those kinds of questions before meeting with a lawyer or an accountant. Especially when your intention was to seek funding.

<comment><USER10> No I doubt its normally a 40k mistake but he didn't elaborate... he said it cost the business 40k, he didn't say they paid out 40k.

Both Sachin and his detractors are speaking in overly broad terms here. Sachin's getting hammered though because he's taking one case and extrapolating general advice from it. Some of the points against his argument are fair and some arent.

The confusion here might also have something to do with the blurred semantic differences that are occurring these days between traditional business and start-up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems more like you hit _one_ extreme of shelling out too much money up front and now are advocating the other extreme.

My philosophy: hold off till you get your first customer contract OR take on some genuine liability(ie. DMCA).

How I'm handling it... 1\. I incorporated my startup after getting the contract. It cost me $180 bucks. 2\. I told my good lawyer friend who was after me to go through him that it would make more sense to consider him after we raked in more contract over the next few months. 3\. I have not gotten a bank account yet. I'll do so soon as I get the first check(off the contract). 4\. I do have a potential cofounder I'm thinking of bringing on board. I am unsure how to go about his paperwork. In initial stages, we'll probably just make a simple specific written agreement along with a set milestone by when we'll officially redo the paperwork.

In general, I like to let revenue/liability/funding dictate any lawyer work.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow: _he was unfamiliar with how an option plan should be structured for an S-Corp and ended up having to do substantial research_ sounds like a lawyer unfamiliar with some stuff that I would expect to be basic. As ever, read what grellas says, and his $2k o $3k is what I as a consumer of such services have come to expect.

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree with this. I incorporated a business that I really didn't need to and it just ended up costing me a ton of cash I could have used, and added on countless little complications to my life which I'm still trying to untie from after having dissolved it.

If you're not dealing with other people's money (investors), and you aren't running a business that is raking in solid revenue yet or not in a really vulnerable position legally, its just not worth it...

<comment><USER5> While I see your point, if your business gets sued, you personally could be far worse off than the cost of incorporating.

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't a personal umbrella policy cover this, for a sole proprietorship?

<comment><USER7> It might cover you financially--to an extent. But they'd still be suing you, personally and not your company. As an owner/partner in a corp or LLC you have full legal separation from your company (so long as you are running it legally) and can't personally be held liable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> deleware c-corp through incorporate.com = $250. includes an EIN and a bunch of other stuff that i probably don't even need.

i've built dozens of projects, but have only incorporated 3 times. the only criteria i personally use: if i'm serious enough to where i may want some extra help in exchange for 'common' (or 'preferred' to invest) or feel there's a risk of getting sued.</comment>


Coronavirus is most contagious before symptoms occur - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0869-5 <comment><AUTHOR> Retired physician here, age 71. I consider everyone a carrier and proceed accordingly. I will continue to do so indefinitely, regardless of changes in governmental directives.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hmm, this seems like a pretty big deal, and should give us caution to not have confidence we are not spreading covid-19 just because we feel fine. Makes masks seem more key.

"We estimated that 44% (95% confidence interval, 25–69%) of secondary cases were infected during the index cases' presymptomatic stage" "Disease control measures should be adjusted to account for probable substantial presymptomatic transmission."

</comment><comment><USER3> "For a reproductive number of 2.5 (ref. 2), _contact tracing and isolation alone are less likely to be successful if more than 30% of transmission occurred before symptom onset, unless >90% of the contacts can be traced_. This is more likely achievable if the definition of contacts covers 2 to 3 days prior to symptom onset of the index case, as has been done in Hong Kong and mainland China since late February. Even when the control strategy is shifting away from containment to mitigation, contact tracing would still be an important measure, such as when there are super-spreading events that may occur in high-risk settings including nursing homes or hospitals. _With a substantial proportion of presymptomatic transmission, measures such as enhanced personal hygiene and social distancing for all would likely be the key instruments for community disease control._ "

As I see it, it confirms the importance of enhanced hygiene and social distancing.

<comment><USER4> We will be quarantining whole supermarkets

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article abstract states "We observed the highest viral load in throat swabs at the time of symptom onset, and inferred that infectiousness peaked on or before symptom onset." This finding is extremely significant, but I think it may be "very contagious" not "most contagious" before symptoms occur</comment>


Apple job offer lists Lisp knowledge as additional requirement - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/1cqlzr/apple_job_offer_lists_lisp_knowledge_as/

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't put too much weight on that.</comment>


Ask HN: Whats your pen and paper setup? - <AUTHOR> Following up on this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21581229), What's your pen and paper setup? I love hearing about it and getting ideas.
Right now I'm on LEUCHTTURM1917 dotted grid hard back, TWISBI ECO fountain pen, with Noodler's Baystate Blue.
I've tried a couple different "systems", but I just keep coming back to keeping everything in one book, one topic per page, and having a to-do list that I re-write when it gets a couple pages in.
Professionally I've tried using pen and paper, but the main obstacle is that at any given point in time I have maybe 10-12 different projects, and the projects take months to complete. If I have it in a notebook, the projects get buried and it's hard to pull up the info. But for my personal stuff, I love kicking back at the end of the day with a fountain pen, notebook, glass of wine, and get organized.
What's your setup? <comment><USER2> I've been waiting, hoping that others would be using more notebooks than me...

Right now I'm using 2 paper notebooks an A4 LEUCHTTURM 1917 Master Slim dot grid in Red, I've also done the orange for a while. This is basically my going through making notes in meetings, projects, etc. I've gone as far as cutting old pages out and making mini folios with Washi tape within the notebook for projects that continue over. This is my 4th or 5th of these and while I really like them, I might change to a more desk type longer notebook when I'm through this book. I'm ready to make a change in this.

I also and currently using a Stalogy 365 day planner in grid. I ran out of my A5 notebook, wanted to try a soft cover and planner. This was the best solution on August. So far I like the soft cover, like the paper, don't like the grid, don't like the way the date is set up. Still up in the air if I buy a new planner for 2020.

Then I have an assortment of "pocket notebooks" the Write notebooks version of Field Notes. I want to love these, but I can't make them work for me.

For the pens/pencils,I really enjoy fountain pens. Currently inked: TWSBI Diamond Mini AL (Gold) 1.1 Stub nib with Iroshizuku Ku Jaku TWSBI 580 AL (Rose) 1.1 Stub nib with Pilot Metropolitan Medium nib with Iroshizuku Ina Ho Nemosine Singularity Purple Demonstrator.8 Stub nib with Nemosine Moon Crater Black Karas Kustoma Ink in Purple and Brass with a 2-tone M nib with Iroshizuku Yu Yake

Then a Rotring 600 .5mm and a Pentel P207 in .7mm

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Adding to the above:

I used to be on Moleskine, but sadly their quality declined and they added a bewildering array of products that makes me question their focus on just making a quality notebook.

I have tried Japanese notebooks, and the paper quality is really excellent. However, I haven't found a hard-back Japanese notebook. Getting the soft cover notebook all dinged up isn't atheistically acceptable for me.

I have tried out blank pages, lined, graph, and dotted grids. Dotted grids work the best for me - less constraining than lines, but I'm not neat enough to use blank pages, and graph paper is a little too much visually.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried the Maruman 'Mnemosyne' notebooks? They have (thin) hard plastic covers, but I'm not sure if you'd count that as a hardcover.

I really like my TWSBI Diamond 580 with Noodler's Walnut, but it looks best on yellow paper. I tried a jade green ink but it mostly seemed to clog up my pens.

One day I'll start digitizing my handwritten notes, but I usually write stuff down to make sure I'll remember and almost never refer to precious notes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Never tried them, will look into them. Thanks for the tip!

A while back I figured that I like writing in the books, but rarely use them for reference. So I just get rid of them after a while. I think it is OK for things to be ephemeral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The cheapest notebook I can find and an InkJoy pen. I also keep a smaller notebook just for a to do list.

</comment><comment><USER5> Printer paper, pen.</comment>


YouTube - Crayon Physics Deluxe - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsTqspnvAaI&eurl=http://infosthetics.com/archives/2008/02/crayon_physics_deluxe.html <comment><USER2> Oh man, this kinda reminds me of "The Incredible Machine", but much cooler. I used to love that game. I actually helped make a 3D version in school with some friends as part of ACM.</comment>