China Is Forcing Tech Companies to Choose Between Profits and Free Speech - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/china-is-forcing-tech-companies-to-choose-between-profits-and-free-speech-aed1f4db3a4 <comment><USER2> Here is my github repository tracking who chose what path

[https://github.com/caffeine- overload/bandinchina](https://github.com/caffeine-overload/bandinchina)

The list of corporations who stood up to China is very short unfortunately

</comment><comment><USER3> The article states that "We've grown used to Americans getting fired for social media posts that offend other Americans. Now it's clear they can also be punished for posts that offend China.".

Seems like companies were forced to make and have made that choice long before the China issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think what's going on inside US politics is the same in China? I mean, have you ever heard about Americans getting fired because of supporting protest? Or is there anything similar to the situation in Hong Kong?

<comment><USER4> >>I mean, have you ever heard about Americans getting fired because of supporting protest?

Yes... If you support Libertarian or Conservative things

<comment><USER5> It's been >2 hours and we're still waiting for your examples and/or sources.

<comment><USER4> Sorry i have a job and can not sit on HN news all day...

As to examples, it is clear by your comments you do not want actual examples but rather just want to move the goal posts

Cancel Culture is very real, people are terminated from jobs all the time based on their personal posts on twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc, or other comments online that "offend" a certain segment of the population that is perpetually offended at everything and then pressure employers to fire those people.

Happens every day, across this nation

<comment><USER5> You really couldn't be bothered to come up with one single example?

Yikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The obvious answer is: companies' profit motive should not be allowed to impact people's rights. They're just not even remotely comparable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, and the choice is embarrassingly simple, especially for multi-million - or billion - companies.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Short Term Profits and Long Term Death" vs Free Speech

<comment><USER9> How do you figure? Is it your impression that being ethical is generally good for corporations financially? You're much more optimistic about both the way the economy works and other people than i am. (I should note that I'm not a believer in the "corporations automatically behave soulless and corrupt" camp that's so popular; I just think that your comment's implication goes too far in the other direction)

<comment><USER8> You don't understand how things work in China. It has nothing to do with ethics. You give up free speech so you can make a few bucks in China. But in the long run they will only let their own companies thrive. Those the communist party can control. You will be eaten alive.

<comment><USER10> How do you know how things work in China? It's not about free speech. It's about boycotting the support of splitting a country. If a company says that American Civil War and Lincoln is evil and illegal. It's free speech. How American think about it?

<comment><USER11> right! It's not about free speech. It's about boycotting the support of splitting a country!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> So what do you think of Gulag? A rehabilitation camp keeping the union united against the enemies of the state.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


RebornDB: The Next Generation Distributed Key-Value Store - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/7/8/reborndb-the-next-generation-distributed-key-value-store.html

<comment><USER2> So, in this "next level" database you have to do the resharding yourself? That is, manually specify which keys go where?

Way to go, my friends :)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with the stress of startup life? - <AUTHOR> What are some of your hacks to deal with the pressure of running or working for a startup? <comment><USER2> People are looking for hacks for startup life, I think it is only a short term approach (and is a wrong one for long term).

Think like it is something you are gonna do for the next 10 years and design your lifestyle around it. For example, keep a healthy mind, don't try to rush tasks (but don't sleep on it either). And keep going!

</comment><comment><USER3> Running working out, and getting enough sleep do wonders!</comment>


South Korean police impose curfew on late-night studying (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2094427,00.html <comment><USER2> As the article notes, this is treating the symptom rather than the problem. When you have a system which dramatically favors graduates from top schools, entrance criteria solely based on single exams, and punishment for single exam failures for life (ie if you don't do well on exam 1 you are effectively booted from the prestigious track forever), of course everyone is going to cram relentlessly for exams. If you send people home from cram schools, students will simply be forced to study at home. I'm not sure what the solution is for this (other than to create more slots at good schools or more good schools) but curfews certainly will not work.

<comment><USER3> It's not like the system is fundamentally better in other countries. In Britain there's a colossal effect from landing a place at a few good schools / universities.

We mainly handle that by setting low expectations for most of the populace (e.g. the class system) and gate it by cost.

<comment><USER4> People always criticize America for having expensive universities but I always thought it was horribly depressing when my German friends told me that their entire future was staked on a single exam. Do poorly and not only can you not get into college but you'll be a sanitation worker for the rest of your life (or similar).

<comment><USER5> How are American SATs different?

<comment><USER6> You can retake the SAT (and GRE, and MCAT, and ...) as many times as you'd like (and can afford, I suppose).

Also, the amount of weight such exams are given varies greatly by the institution here.

Edit: For the SAT in particular, most publish tables showing their historical admission rate as it correlates to the combination of high school GPA and SAT score.

<comment><USER7> You can even go to many colleges without the sat (nothing prestigious ofc)

<comment><USER8> Many top schools are no longer requiring test scores in fact. There is an argument that the test itself is somehow biased against under-represented groups. Also, less nobly, if a school makes test scores optional, their average test scores increase (which is a factor in rankings) since students will only submit them if they have good scores.

<comment><USER9> > Many top schools are no longer requiring test scores in fact.

When I applied to college, there were a number of schools that has something that was "optional" but word on the street was that you'd have no hope of getting in without it. How "optional" are these, really?

<comment><USER10> It's probably like a lot of companies that offer remote work: if you have demonstrated already you are world class, they'll make exceptions.

<comment><USER9> FWIW, all the people I know who went to "world class" universities did all the "optional" things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah, as a Korean who experienced all of this bullshit (in middle/high school), I have a few additional points I want to make:

\- Standardized test scores aren't either the culprit or the panacea for the privatization of education. No matter what the process of selecting students is, there will always be cram schools willing to exploit that process to the maximum degree. Korea in fact has another way to enter college without that single exam (called _susi_, it's basically your GPA + portfolio + cover letter), which is less well known than the default route (called _jungsi_). And guess what, there are a shit-ton of crams schools for that too. There are cram schools solely for entering International Math/Physics Olympiads, because they are one of the several ways to enter Medical School, which are the hardest type of colleges you can try in Korea. There are cram schools for art college examimations, cram schools for your high school GPA, cram schools for entering science/writing contests (so you can lengthen your portfolio), cram schools for just anything you can imagine related to college admissions.

\- It's becoming more and more of a lie in Korea that simply entering a good university will automatically land you a good job, especially in the non-STEM sectors. Humanities students in top universities are now scrambling to get good GPAs, TOEFL scores, and any activities that would lengthen their portfolio, simply because jobs are very scarce even for them. A lot of them are preparing for government administration jobs which would give them good job security. And guess what, those jobs are _also_ determined by a single test, how tragic! Same goes for law schools, medical universities, etc... As a Korean, you'll almost never leave the perpetual requirement of nonsensical tests and competitions for quite some time even after high school, it's pretty harrowing.

<comment><USER12> Firstly - I'm sorry to hear about this experience and don't want to undermine the pain here.

I'll note that some of the schools I graduated from in the US (NYC) are moving from exams to a "holistic" system of entrance, and my feeling is that is even worse in many cases.

In the holistic system: \- you don't know what the criteria is \- friendships and contacts matter \- you can't study to fully strengthen your chances \- you don't get feedback on what you are doing wrong \- in the extreme cases is very open to bias and corruption (eg many "holistic" systems actively filter out Asian candidates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We desperately need to move away from these education systems. They worked well when resources were limited and identifying gifted students took priority. The world is a much different place now and we should focus on individualized curriculum and mastery.

<comment><USER14> Resources are still limited.

<comment><USER15> Give free birth control everywhere and stipend to poor couples including a free state sponsored education program for stopping them from becoming poor parents. Will save the state and possible parents much more in resources to spend.

What a simple solution but of course, that won't happen because you need low tier workers in the society that the state and others can leech off from.

Rich need their prostitutes, drivers, maids, low cost labor and employees. Society need numbers, labor which they can abuse for cleaning the filth and boosting themselves in a sacrificial ceremony.

For example, UP state in india has a population density of 828 persons per km²

What good reason do you think there is not in spending money to stop poor people from having kids?

I don't get the ethical issue about it other than it being made up by people for patting their backs. Government can ban smoking, drugs, porn, video games, internet sites, alcohol, and many other things to keep you safe from "harming" yourself. Doctors can veto your opinion or voice if they think you are a danger to yourself.

All research shows kids living in extreme poverty has a dire future, lot of bad health issues and will most likely remain in poverty. Why can't we ban or at least try to spend money to that cause?

3.6k kids die due to hunger/deficiency every day in india. What if they weren't born?

Why have so many people that you need to resort to filtering for everything in life?

<comment><USER16> >What good reason do you think there is not in spending money to stop poor people from having kids?

Dystopian world where people aren't allowed to have kids, just because they are poor?

Much better is to make sure poors have enough money to raise their kids. Offer them government assistance.

<comment><USER15> That only solves one of the problems and the GP was talking about limited resources which doesn't change even if you make the income/wealth distribution equal.

One person would still need 8 litres of water, a piece of land, food and other essential limited resources.

How do you plan to let all the people have kids with an existing population density of 828 persons per km² without ruining it for everyone?

What other filter do you propose is realistic? Do you think there should be a test, higher age requirement, education background or something?

Clearly, the current population is too much here. Sure it is declining (predicted to be normal replacement fertility rate by the end of 2020) but that will take long time to materialize and then you have government doing something to stop it because failing economy. Why even set your whole structure in a way that requires numbers? This is a perverted incentive and should be stopped.

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-015-9711-5](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-015-9711-5)

Optimum world population is something around 2 billion. Not 8 billion and growing.

<comment><USER17> As a counterargument, we're taking only a tiny amount of land that's feasible to develop, and even less of total area of Earth. Scarcity is caused by concentration of jobs in cities. Where there are jobs and education, there become cities. There's more than enough water to go around, but not energy to desalinate in drier places like China and India. There is a surplus of food in many areas, and most of lacking ones are limited by water.

You cannot speak of an optimum without having decided a target. It's optimum everyone having their own private jet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This reads like satire. Surely there are better ways to deal with the problem than using the police. The police probably also have better things to do. In fact, this reads like it's a parody of the US war on drugs. It's so misguided.

The article is from 2011. Has the situation improved in South Korea? Because I can see that their results in PISA 2019 were still very good.

<comment><USER8> I was thinking it reads almost like propaganda. Darn kids are just so smart and hardworking, cops are forced to ride around in their stylish Kia Sorento's and make the little geniuses enjoy life and get some sleep. Was surprised to see nothing about the success of Samsung and K-pop.

What's really going on here is child abuse. The cops are trying to protect children from their parents. Sleeping in class then going to cram school all evening is silly. Obviously the parent is the one who is demanding more than the kid can handle.

<comment><USER19> I'm not going to disagree regarding the parental responsibility. However, I would point out that this is similar to college courses where the final test is 100% of the course grade. Of course the priority goes to prepping for the test. There is no benefit from paying attention in class, when performance on this test can exclude someone with a perfect GPA. The system is as responsible as the parents are in this case.

But on the bright side, it seems more fair than Jim-Bob's dad paying Harvard a few million to get his slacker kid into school despite having worse qualifications than many applicants.

<comment><USER8> I don't think nationwide testing is a horrible way to handle higher education at all. Especially for developing countries. It's basically a big IQ test, so no matter how bad your school is, the cream rises to the top.

However I think cramming is a by-product of "bad" education in general. By which I mean the Asian style of teaching based on rote practice and memorization. Obviously more hours means more skill at cranking out those answers and more retention of "regurgitatible" facts.

US education is concerned (to at least a higher degree) with higher cognitive skills and the ability to solve more challenging problems generally. I think this is due to having a more industry-demands-driven system. As opposed to a top-down govt-imposed system trying to drive development (i.e. Asia). And if you don't pay attention in class you can't cram your way past a bunch of hard questions. Also I think it is very hard to make standardized tests which have challenging problems. Written language is just too vague. Even the smartest students will often not understand what is asked of them unless they were taught in exactly that same wording and writing style. It's far easier to differentiate smarter students by giving easy canned problems. The usual suspects will still be at the top. But of course easy canned questions create a opportunity in that weaker students can "hack" the system by just cramming enough to keep up with the smarter students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This was bad when I was in Seoul from 2003-2005 and I couldn't believe how much school was thrown on to kids, like little 5 year old even. The suicide rate was rather high for those who failed their big college entrance exams because they didn't even want to think of life as a failure and cramming even more for another year to try again. I really hope they are able to change things around.

</comment><comment><USER21> This kind of pressure is literal torture but what I find the most tragic is how it still doesn't prepare the kids to be better workers. For me, no exam has in any way reflected the kind of freelancing work environment I am in right now. If I compare exams to work:

\- Clients who assign me a writing task don't expect me to know everything. I'm actually required to do research and reference other sources. If I tried writing a text without using the internet, I'd be very limited in what I can write and how.

\- I'm given plenty of time. If there's a rush task, the client will ask beforehand if that's OK with me and pay extra. I can write a text in 45 minutes but then the client pays extra. The clients acknowledge that I'm existing in the real world where I might want to have time off, go on a vacation or just have a family or health crisis.

\- I'll be given detailed instructions on how to succeed in my task because that's the most desirable outcome. Exams ignore the ultimate outcome or do the exact opposite and I've seen plenty of them intentionally provide vague instructions and questions to fail as many students as possible.

I feel more free when doing a single 2,000-word SEO text and cramming in 10-15 instances of "how to fix damaged hard drive" or "best baby diapers" than these kids have felt in their entire school life. This is just tragic and will have enormous repercussions on South Korea's future. I wish I could somehow reach out and tell them that it's going to be OK and they should not stress out that much about bad grades.

I had bad grades in high school because my family fell apart during that time and I was overwhelmed with emotions. No teacher asked me if I'm all right or how I'm feeling, they just blindly pushed on with the curriculum that ignores the fact kids are humans too. We'd never put a dog through this kind of stress and would hound the person who did, but for kids it's apparently perfectly fine.

To all of you stressing out about grades, find someone capable of speaking with you like an adult. I did it and I feel those mature conversations and emotional support literally saved my life.

This is what work is like for me and I wish everyone stressing out about their grades would know they can have it as well.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is quite dated. Is there any evidence that this curfew is still in effect?

</comment><comment><USER23> That this is so arbitrarily possible in a legal sense speaks very poorly of the South Korean government's notions about individual rights in the home.

<comment><USER24> Regulating the opening time of _businesses_ and inspecting _business locations_ is infringing on individual rights in the home?</comment></comment>


Codehaus, birthplace of many Java OSS projects coming to an end - <AUTHOR> http://www.codehaus.org

<comment><AUTHOR> Codehaus was the birthplace of many Java open-source projects last decade.

Enterprise Java was becoming mainstream, but the open-source community saw that it had much more potential than the tools provided by Sun.

Codehaus provides project hosting (source control, issue tracking, websites, continuous builds, downloads, mailing lists, IRC, etc). This was back before GitHub existed and the only other option was SourceForge (which was terrible).

But above all, Codehaus provided community. The developers across projects all hung out together, on mailing lists, IRC and the occasional global meetup. Respect and friendship. It was there that many gripes and problems were discussed and new projects were born.

If you've ever benefitted from Groovy, Jetty, Grails, Gradle, XDoclet, XStream, jMock, EasyMock, QDox, Drools, Esper, Mule, PicoContainer, Jackson, Janino, JBehave, Stomp (and hundreds others), this was thanks to the Codehaus community.

Many of the projects and people have gone on to do great things. Companies have been formed. New communities created. Many projects died, some thrived. Codehaus is no longer the hotness it once was, but it provided the foundation that many of us have benefitted greatly form, and it's no doubt one of the giants that the Java open-source community is standing on the shoulders of.

Codehaus is now shutting down: [http://codehaus.org](http://codehaus.org) Please join me in raising your glasses to the people and projects. Codehaus, we salute you. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

<comment><USER2> Just to add to that list of projects, Maven Central shows more than 2000 artifacts for codehaus:

[http://search.maven.org/#search%7Cga%7C1%7Ccodehaus](http://search.maven.org/#search%7Cga%7C1%7Ccodehaus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll miss you codehaus. The community was awesome and the overhead in starting a project was low. It was a great place to try ideas.</comment>


Buy.com renamed Rakuten Shopping: brilliant branding or massive mistake? - <AUTHOR> http://www.rakuten.com/ct/aboutus.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> I find myself thinking twice to remember the name even just a few minutes after being surprised by it. When I tell people about it, they can't tell how it's spelled from pronunciation alone, and they can't remember it two minutes after the conversation.

I spoke with a US based employee who seemed none too thrilled about the decision, but says this is an effort by Japan's largest e-commerce company (and one of largest worldwide) to build global brand recognition.

More on Rakuten Ichiba here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten>

<comment><AUTHOR> The rename did get me to give buy.com a new try. I found something I couldn't find on Amazon there, and spent $300 on it. And two weeks later, I do remember the name. So, going with "brilliant".

HN is discussing this change in this 17 Feb submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5234987>

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Brilliant branding: I had no idea that buy.com still existed, or that anyone still cared. I'm sure I'll have forgotten again within another day, but in the meantime this is more attention than I've paid them in a decade.</comment>


In Search of a Flat Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44 <comment><USER2> Nicely articulated. I'd never spent time poking in this rabbit hole, glad he's spent time in the gutters that I'd consider a waste of my own.

I hate the littering of orbital space with satellites, but there's a nice irony in satellites making the internet connections to spread flat earth crap.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting documentary. The section about migration from flat earth to QAnon is unsettling.</comment>


Study claiming certain languages lead to more buggy code than others debunked - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/30/programming_bugs/ <comment><USER2> The authors of the "debunking" study suggest that the use of specific (complex?) programming language features might account for a greater number of bugs.

Too many uncontrolled factors (programmer's experience level with a given language, etc).</comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle misc tasks with due dates in Agile? - <AUTHOR> Let's say you're in a four person team. Everyone's got their stories planned and groomed. Everything's going great. But there are a few things which don't quite fit in:
- Bob needs to make a trip on Friday to HQ to demo the software to some execs.
- Sandra needs to file 3 TPS reports on Wednesday.
- Jim needs to print 350 name tags for an event next quarter.
How do we keep these tasks visible and show the progress of them?
Do we create stories for them, point them, then put them in our task board? Or, do we not create stories and just post them alongside our task board to keep them visible?
Do we create a new column in our task board for misc tasks and put them there? <comment><USER2> First off, each person shouldn't have "their" stories. The stories in the sprint backlog should be owned by and worked by the entire team. Second, not everything needs to be a story or a task in the backlog; agile isn't about tracking every activity. Everybody will have things outside of planned stories (meetings, time off, whatever). If you feel the need to get detailed about it and plan at the hours level, assume a baseline "development hours per day" (6 is a common one) and adjust for planned time off. If your team is not able to get in the development hours you're expecting, there's something else wrong; such as a "manager" asking you to do TPS reports, outside the scope of the project your team is actually working on. Anyway, velocity at the point level is a better measure of a team's ability to take on a certain amount of work in an upcoming sprint, because it inherently accounts for distractions. However you do it, don't get too caught up on detailed accounting and planning of hours; that's not how agile works. And definitely don't create "stories" for things that aren't actual user stories.</comment>


The proof is in the sewage: hundreds of Yosemite visitors may have had Covid - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/22/yosemite-coronavirus-covid-19-sewage-tests <comment><USER2> duh. yosemite is a 3 hour drive from the major populated region known as the SF bay area. of course a bunch of visitors have the virus.</comment>


Three Skype Interview Disasters and How to Recover from Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.careermetis.com/three-skype-interview-disasters-recover/ <comment><USER2> I suggest keeping your cursor on the mute button in case of extraneous sounds. Their advice of doing the interview on a laptop is wise: you can secrete yourself in a quiet place.

No particular advice about the zit situation, however. Perhaps practice smiling in a mirror to make sure you won't have an embarrassing "eruption" (not sure I've ever had the experience myself :)</comment>


Ask HN: Good Resources for learning Animations ? - <AUTHOR> I want to learn animations theory in general and then maybe android. <comment><USER2> For animation, Pixar in a Box:

[https://www.khanacademy.org/partner- content/pixar](https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks</comment></comment>


DOSBox x86 system emulator - <AUTHOR> https://www.dosbox.com/ <comment><USER2> If you're a fan of DOSBox, you might like this: [http://www.doshaven.eu/](http://www.doshaven.eu/)

I love the fact that people are still making games for DOS. I've been playing a bit of this: [http://www.doshaven.eu/game/ptakovina/](http://www.doshaven.eu/game/ptakovina/) (from 2017!)

<comment><USER3> I was going to ask what languages/frameworks they use, but found this easily enough:

[http://www.doshaven.eu/programming- tools/](http://www.doshaven.eu/programming-tools/)

<comment><USER4> I have to say, the stylesheet for that page is amazing and gives me such nostalgia.

<comment><USER5> I think that's just BOOTSTRA.386[1] but it's probably the best usage I've seen of it.

[1] [https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386](https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can run DOSBox in your browser, the Internet Archive has a bunch of games emulated that way,

[https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games](https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games)

<comment><USER7> Oh my god. It's astounding what becomes possible as we move further into this era when most digital activity gets archived for future mashups and other archaeology.

Here, I released this in 1996:

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Aspetra_1996](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Aspetra_1996)

I knew people still played it, but I had no idea it had a freaking URL now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My favorite (mis)use of Dosbox was using it to drive Symate for PLC programming. That let me switch to using a Linux netbook instead of dragging a laptop booted in DOS around a factory.

My notes from the time: [https://sites.google.com/site/waspvm/runningsymate374underdo...](https://sites.google.com/site/waspvm/runningsymate374underdosboxonlinux)

<comment><USER9> Same here, we had some buggy PLC controller software that would only run properly on increasingly hard-to-find old PCs, or more expensive embedded kits, due to timing issues. This was in an electroplating plant so they corroded to the point of needing replacement every year or so. Instead, with DOSBox set to an appropriate clock speed, we could use any commodity PC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know why they haven't released a new version going on 8 years now even though it looks like it's been continually worked on according to [http://source.dosbox.com/dosboxsvn.txt](http://source.dosbox.com/dosboxsvn.txt)?

<comment><USER11> Yes, they are stuck with technical debt which, let's say, they cannot repay.

Therefore further development on it is really difficult. This was stated by the developer in an interview some 5 years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is "technical debt?"

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt)

basically it's when a bunch of bad but seemingly-innocuous coding design decisions accumulate and compound each other multiplicatively over time, to the point that any change of the code is far more likely to break something than the new feature is worth

Or as I stated at a previous job where I complained about the 40-minute-long test-suite run time that was bogging everyone down, "the road to a 40 minute long test suite is paved with a couple extra seconds here and there with every new code commit"

<comment><USER13> Why not just make a conscious decision to stop developing new features and dedicate all the effort to refactoring then?

<comment><USER14> A few reasons. If you're an employee building a product for a company, management's always going to push for features, features, features, to keep the customers happy, and to keep up with the competition. Time spent refactoring is an investment in the future, but management tends to be more shortsighted than that. By the time that you really _can 't_ add more to the program, it's years down the line, and they've probably been considering pulling the plug anyhow.

In my own projects, it's often fun to keep adding things until I hit a roadblock, then spend a couple weeks reworking stuff. It's satisfying to add new features, but architectural maintenance feels like treading water.

So, I'd guess that the answer is somewhere between "outside factors dictate that there isn't time" and "we haven't decided to make the time, even though we could".

There's an interview with the two main developers here, from 5 years ago: [https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/](https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/)

It sounds like they ran out of energy to really rearchitect the whole thing, or build a new one from scratch.

<comment><USER13> > If you're an employee building a product for a company, management's always > going to push for features

What company? What management? What customers? _What features?_ Are we still talking about DOSBox?

<comment><USER14> No; I was speaking more generally about some potential reasons that software wouldn't be kept in a low-debt state. The same concepts could apply to Dosbox with some remapping.

What company? The Dosbox project itself.

What management? The devs making overall decisions for the direction of the project.

What customers? Anyone requesting new features and fixes in the software.

What features? Built-in support for Munt, new networking support, support for more varieties of peripheral hardware...

It made sense to me to give a more general explanation, since this thread started off with a question about what technical debt _is_ in the first place. I also did my best to address Dosbox's specific reasons by posting the interview with their devs and providing my own interpretation of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just this month I had to update some (very old) production code for a client, and when we pulled the project out of cold storage we discovered that the compiler wouldn't run on the Windows 64-bit command line.

DOSBox saved my bacon, and it wasn't the first time.

<comment><USER16> I had the same thing with concrete structural integrity calculations software written in BASICA. Still useful.

<comment><USER17> Maybe you could compile these with QB64.

(Quick Basic was the descendant of BasicA and largely compatible).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any reason why this is up on HN? Is there a new release or something?

<comment><USER19> There's a certain mean time between new HN users rediscovering things.

<comment><USER11> *Which is fine, because after all, Hacker News is all about the comments. I don't mind re-discussing fine pieces of software or topics like these every once and a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite use (I mean, aside from the more obvious uses, like to run my GOG and Steam games, along with disks from my childhood) is to compile it with heavy debug enabled, and using it in conjunction with IDA to debug game issues.

It's actually got a fairly nice debug environment.

</comment><comment><USER20> Before dosbox there were dosemu (which let you use hardware but was pain to configure) and things like qemu (emulate any hardware but even more pain to configure). You still had to install OS into VM. Dosbox just changed the rules of this emulation game. It was unbelieveably good even when it didn't do 32 bit yet.

<comment><USER11> Regarding DosEmu. How about the main developer presenting on it in 2018 from FosDem! [https://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fosdem/2018/AW1.121/dosemu_and_fr...](https://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fosdem/2018/AW1.121/dosemu_and_freedos_past_present_future.webm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Also worth mentioning, [http://js-dos.com/](http://js-dos.com/) offers an API to load an emscripten build of dosbox and a DOS program of your choice.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just wanted to mention 86box, which is a "spin-off" of PCem, actively maintained:

[https://github.com/86Box/86Box](https://github.com/86Box/86Box)

with "nightly builds" available, besides the Source Code.

<comment><USER10> It's a fork of PCem, but PCem is also actively maintained.

<comment><USER22> >It's a fork of PCem, but PCem is also actively maintained.

Yes, of course.

As I see it PCem is more "stable", whilst 86box is a little more "dynamic".

Since it offers (experimental but) "optimized" builds for certain processors:

[http://ci.86box.net/job/86Box-Optimized/](http://ci.86box.net/job/86Box- Optimized/)

in some cases it is conveneient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://blog.yesterplay80.net/dosbox-ece- en/](http://blog.yesterplay80.net/dosbox-ece-en/)

Community Edition. Seems to be some popular tweaks built in. Probably a good place to actually start.

</comment><comment><USER24> DOSBox is also a great little debugger for x86 applications! It comes built with some excellent debugging features.

</comment><comment><USER25> Qemu is a great platform to emulate x86 including numa machines

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure how Qemu would emulate a NUMA arch on a non-NUMA machine.

It doesn't even attempt to emulate different memory models WRT where you need barriers AFAIK.

<comment><USER25> You can Use -smp 8 -numa node,nodeid=0 -numa node,nodeid=1

<comment><USER26> All that does is lie to the guest over firmware (device tree, ACPI, etc.). All of the memory accesses are still uniform as far as CPU emulation is concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> why is this trending?

</comment><comment><USER28> Is it still being developed? They should move the repo from Sourceforge to some better platform.

<comment><USER29> Last commits are from February 2018, so I guess it is.

If you can't stand SourceForge or Subversion, there's a very unofficial and irregularly updated mirror of their VCS on GitHub:

[https://github.com/jwilk-mirrors/dosbox](https://github.com/jwilk- mirrors/dosbox)

<comment><USER28> Good, so why didn't it have any releases in years? Distros package last release version, not current master.

<comment><USER30> That is not actually true. Distributions are not consistent in such things even across a single distribution, and there is certainly no universal rule about only packaging the latest release versions of everything.

<comment><USER28> That doesn't answer the question. Did the project switch to realease-less method? If so, then all distros should simply package periodic snapshots.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open sourcing the "quilt" view for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.1000memories.com/168-opensourcing-quilt <comment><USER2> I prefer the horizontal "quilt" style to the vertical; I prefer rows with differing widths [1] to columns with differing heights [2].

[1]: [https://plus.google.com/photos/116367707637773884266/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/116367707637773884266/albums/5629024228917844321)

[2]: <http://pinterest.com/>

<comment><USER3> Here's my MIT licensed implementation of a horizontal 'quilt' view: <http://github.com/joshavant/JAGridView>

In fact, the inspiration behind this layout was Google+/Picasa albums!

<comment><USER4> The horizontal one looks pretty cool too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice! I'd love to see you guys submit this to <http://www.cocoacontrols.com>

<comment><USER6> Done! [http://www.cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/tmquiltv...](http://www.cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/tmquiltview)

<comment><USER7> You also may want to investigate adding a podspec for CocoaPods. <http://cocoapods.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is the conversion to ARC something you guys are doing or is it an open-source effort?

This looks really great, by the way :)

<comment><USER6> It's in our plans but we don't have any urgency in doing it. If you feel like doing it, it shouldn't be too hard and we would be happy to integrate your changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone done anything like this for Android?

<comment><USER10> We have ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thousandme...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thousandmemories.shoebox&hl=en)). We're considering open sourcing this as well in the coming weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how UICollectionView might help in designing these kinds of components.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's nice.</comment>


Firefox 75.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/75.0/releasenotes/ <comment><USER2> Related from a couple days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22804149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22804149)

</comment><comment><USER3> The new style of the address bar is extremely jarring, and (imo) ugly. It breaks all kinds of UI conventions, drawing itself over other UI elements like the tab bar and the toolbar to the left and right of it.

For this reason alone, at least I've found that setting `browser.urlbar.update1` to false in about:config reverts to the old code-- mostly. Firefox 75 still seems to have changed the click behavior of the bar to be totally unlike any other program too; it highlights the entire text by default, without putting it in the selection buffer, and in general makes handling it with the mouse a lot more tedious than it used to be.

I'm ragging on this a lot, but seriously, it's a major regression in UX.

<comment><USER4> Fully agree that this change is needless, gratuitous and downright ugly. But it gets worse...

The pref that disables the ugly behaviour is going away. Indeed, in some sense it's already gone: ["Remove the megabar pref"]([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1627969](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1627969)) is already marked as `closed`.

I think the UI change is not merely ugly, but actively harmful. When the user's attention is elsewhere, but the focus of the urlbar changes there's a nasty UI animation that occurs _in the user 's peripheral vision_. As any real UI designer _should know_ , human peripheral vision is primarily for motion detection, directly tied to fight-or-flight stress reactions and triggers an adrenal stress reaction which in this case is not merely "undesirable" but downright harmfully misleading. The last thing the world needs is more stress just because some delusional UI designers thought an animation upon receiving/losing focus was a good thing to implement.

This abomination has to die, and today would not be soon enough.

<comment><USER5> > This abomination has to die, and today would not be soon enough.

Please don't use this kind of language. It's software, and a lot of people work hard on it. Sometimes they make decisions you disagree with. There's no need to be rude.

<comment><USER6> It's just a figure of speech. It's not meant to be taken literally. It's a valid description of a lot of people's feelings for this user-hostile feature.

<comment><USER7> It may be a figure of speech but it is a ridiculous overreaction to call it an abomination. You may not like it but it's nowhere near enough to describe that way. What term will you use when something truly bad comes up?

<comment><USER8> > What term will you use when something truly bad comes up?

So you are saying it would be OK to call some feature of a piece of software "an abomination" if it were "something truly bad", then?

Well, then why should mikro2nd be prevented from calling this feature "an abomination" if that is an accurate description of how he feels about it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The select-all Chrome-like behaviour is so horrible. It makes the two most useful interactions with the address bar much more difficult - putting the address into the primary buffer (on X11) so you can paste it somewhere else (this now requires a triple click), and putting the caret inside the address to edit the URL (which now requires clicking twice, but not double clicking because that is different, so you have to click with exactly the right pause inbetween, which is a horrible interaction).

What's extra annoying is that a single click will select the whole address but not put it in the primary buffer! Another UI convention broken.

All of this is to optimise for the most useless address bar interaction - clicking into it with the mouse and then changing to the keyboard to type a new URL, instead of just using ctrl+L. This is a feature made to optimise for people using the software (IMO) incorrectly.

<comment><USER10> This behavior long predates Chrome and has been this way on other platforms IIRC since the browser was still called Phoenix, and probably inherited from Netscape at that; the change here brings Firefox's behavior on Linux in line with its behavior elsewhere.

I can understand how the people who develop Firefox think that's a good idea, but not how they imagine anyone wanting it other than themselves...

<comment> em-bee indeed, why do i care if firefox on my linux desktop behaves the same as firefox on someone elses windows desktop?

sure, consistent behavior is good in many cases. (it drives me crazy that VLC on mac is different from elsewhere) but more important that crossplatform consistency is to follow the common UI behavior of your desktop environment. text selection on X11 (and wayland) is inherently different than text selection on windows. this breaks common expectations

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using nightlies for a while, and the address bar seems fine to me. I haven't even noticed when it changed.

It's a central piece of user interface, so it makes sense to make it more prominent than what a '90s design of a bog-standard dropdown menu allows.

It even logically makes sense to make it like a little popover window, because when you edit the address, you're navigating to a new page, not editing a property of the existing page.

Anyway, overall it's a small issue.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I like the change.

I think it's a rather small change too (I've had it on nightly for a while and barely noticed it), so I don't understand why the top voted comments are complaints about this :S

<comment><USER13> One of the complains is that the select-all on single-click is anti-idiomatic for Linux and *BSD users, and when text is selected in X11 it is automatically copied. The standard way to select the whole content in a text box is to triple-click it.

<comment><USER12> I see. I'm also on Linux, but i guess i've mostly been doing ctrl+L to go to the address bar, and that's been selecting the whole text since before the change? Because i didn't notice that change...

But i understand it's frustrating to have the behavior of clicking on it change all of a sudden. I see the point of the change too (if i click on the address bar, i'd assume it's because i want to go to another site, or copy the URL, so selecting all text is convenient), but UI changes will always bother people who are used to the existing behavior.

I just don't think it's so black and white bad as some people paint it to be. And at some point i feel that harsh criticism is not constructive at all.

<comment><USER13> I also use ^L, but many times I just want to modify part of the URL (sometimes even with text from the clipboard buffer). As a web developer this change is going to be pretty irritating.

<comment><USER14> Web dev here. Simply doubleclick the part you want to change.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately that doesn't work as it selects the doubleclicked word (after selecting the whole URL) which modifies X11 clipboard.

<comment> dan-robertson Don't worry. The single click behaviour is secondarily broken in that it doesn't save the url to your primary clipboard so you can click again (but slowly enough for it to not be a double click) to edit the url

<comment><USER13> Uhm so if I do two slow clicks I can actually edit without changing my clipboard (even when the first click renders it selected)... and if I want to copy the URL I have to do two slow clicks and then a quick triple-click. It's awful but I least I still have copy paste functionality. Thanks!

By the way, is there any workaround for the Esc issue? (i.e. a way to unfocus the new address bar)

<comment> dan-robertson In fact you can go straight for a confusing fast triple click to select everything and copy to clipboard. The first selects everything, second click selects and saves the word, and the third selects and saves the whole address.

No idea about escaping from anything

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > We've enlarged the address bar anytime you want to do a search and > simplified it in a single view with larger font, shorter URLs, adjusts to > multiple sizes and a shortcut to the most popular sites to search.

Almost every single point in that sentence is a negative change. Which is +1 for my personal pet theory: all software gets worse over time

<comment><USER16> Almost every single point in that sentence is a positive for the vast majority of users. We're power users, not the majority.

<comment><USER17> But Chrome already has a stranglehold on the majority market.

In my opinion, Mozilla should put the vast majority of their energy and resources towards targeting power users and developers - they've already lost the other battle.

<comment><USER18> Look how hostile just one HNer is about a tiny feature change as if they are the spokesperson of all power users. I can't think of a worse niche to target than a bunch of hostile, opinionated power users who play Chicken Little in comment sections around the internet because of any minor UI change they personally dislike.

Btw, you aren't a browser power user just because you use ctrl-L to focus the url bar. HNers like to think they're power users because they think their opinion matters the most, but it doesn't make much sense when it comes to web browsers imo.

(I like the new url bar, and I'm a power user if there's such a thing)

<comment><USER19> Power users press Alt-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For me possibly the most interesting feature of this release is the possibility Of good GPU support on Gnu/Linux/Wayland.

[https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx- ac...](https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-acceleration- on-wayland/)

<comment><USER21> I'm really struggling for reasons to care about what happens on Wayland... because I have yet to find any decent desktop environments or window managers for Wayland. Sway is a close contender, but the one major problem I have with it is the fact that on high-DPI displays XWayland applications appear blurry.

Do you have any recommendations for Wayland desktop environments or window managers?

<comment><USER22> [https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/2064](https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/2064)

<comment><USER21> Slightly confused, is that PR ready for use right now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interestingly (maybe not), a lot of people seem to be upset about the new address bar. To me, this is the biggest improvement. I don't have a lot of custom config in Firefox, mainly use it and DuckDuckGo to no be using Google, and find it refreshingly easy to see my search engines and have more information available in a spot that I use all the time rather than having to know where to look or have it hidden in the first place

<comment><USER24> I love the new address bar. I'm on the developer builds, so I've been seeing it for a while. I use both Safari and Firefox, and the new Firefox address bar makes me want to use it more. I haven't analyzed what I like about it--I just really like it.

<comment><USER25> No wonder, i was trying to look for changes but i was already on them too, i haven't felt any cons to using the new address bar

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been using FFX 75.0 for a few hours and I very much like the new address bar. When I ctrl-L my eyes fix on the address bar, where they should, because of the blue outline and the chunky left/right margins. I like this and I wish others here would stop calling this an objective UX fail. To the contrary, I think the FFX devs have done a splendid job once again.

</comment><comment><USER27> The biggest change in this release that I'm _so_ happy about is that they finally fixed session restore to preserve which macOS Spaces your windows were originally on! I believe the Linux equivalent with virtual desktops was also fixed. It was an outstanding issue for years that made me loath restarting. I typically have 50 or more windows spread across several spaces, each with a different context, and it was a huge pain to have to move them back to their original place.

<comment><USER28> I wish they would do the same for Windows 10 multiple desktops

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find it interesting that the fact so many comments mention config flags mean not many here are actually using the same Firefox, and not even close to the default one used by the 99% of its users.

<comment><USER30> Firefox comes pretty much broken out of the box if you don't use config flags.

<comment><USER5> Hmm? The only pref I change is "image.animation_mode=none" to disable animated GIFs and videos, and I can understand why they don't set that to the default. What do you find is broken about Firefox's default state? Do you really think most users feel the same way you do?

<comment><USER30> > _What do you find is broken about Firefox 's default state?_

Firefox uses a self-made fullscreen implementation by default on macOS, which is buggy and causes menubar issues. Firefox has code to use the macOS native fullscreen feature, but it's actually hidden behind "full-screen-api.macos- native-full-screen" about:config flag. So if you're on macOS and want to fullscreen something on another monitor (and actually have it work proper), you need to figure out that the fix is hidden there.

<comment><USER5> Surely you can understand that an issue in a platform-specific implementation of a fairly obscure feature doesn't really support your assertion that it is "broken out of the box". It's likely that config option is not set by default because it's known to be buggy in some other way. You can read some discussion of this setting here, which has seen some activity in the past year, so it is being worked on: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403085](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403085)

<comment><USER30> A fairly obscure feature, what? Fullscreen is a fairly obscure feature?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I read this discussion before updating, and I was prepared for the worst.

And... It's fine, it's perfectly usable, it's not some gigantic world-ending change, it works.

As someone who uses multiple browsers on multiple platforms both at work and privately, unifying the address bar behavior across all platforms is logical, especially considering it lets the developers clean up some crufty old legacy code in the process.

I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.1 and not once have I felt the user interface and experience was made _worse_. Some people may use an obscure feature or a combination of plugins that doesn't quite work anymore, for which the UI changes would be negative. These people have to realize that they are a tiny niche of a niche of people, who wildly modify their software far beyond the general user experience. They just have to realize that sometimes this means breakage.

Sometimes you just aren't the target audience, and that's fine. The world of general use software doesn't revolve around power user needs, and sometimes power users have to work a bit harder to get things exactly how they want them. Mozilla would rather the vast majority have a significantly improved experience, and let the power user minority have to adapt a bit.

</comment><comment><USER32> This relese installs a system telemetry service that constantly sends to Mozilla your default browser.

<comment><USER33> Not only have they added a new telemetry system, it is added as an active scheduled task, without warning, _even if you 've explicitly configured Firefox not to send data to Mozilla_.

(I have just verified that this is in fact the case on my own system shortly after applying the update, before nuking the unauthorised scheduled task from orbit just to be sure.)

<comment><USER34> Sounds like there's a contradiction between this and Mozilla's quote:

> We'll respect user configured telemetry opt-out settings by looking at the > most recently used Firefox profile.

<comment><USER33> I can't confirm whether the scheduled task did or did not actually upload any data from my system, only that it shouldn't have needed to be there at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I am excited by the address bar changes. It makes common tasks much faster, makes my top sites easy to visit and overall makes the experience of using Firefox more enjoyable to me.

I realize this is not everyone.

<comment><USER36> This thread reminds me of a CTO that forced us to restructure our frontend to allow user friendly navigation from the address bar. The UX guy protested this but the CTO got his way.

We ran user test after user test and no matter how he tried to structure the test, no user touched the address bar. It was a total waste of time. The only good that came from this was doing user tests earlier in the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I let Firefox upgrade itself when .75 was and after a restart, I didn't notice a single ux change. What on earth are you people talking about?

<comment><USER38> Look at the address bar. now click inside of it and notice how it gets bigger. I kinda hate it, but at the same time I barely notice it so whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can't relate to much of the criticism but can say that the inspector has gotten awesome. I switched all of my development to it. There are a couple of things that _require_ chrome, like Slack calls, otherwise I'm Firefox only and would recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm a bit peeved that they removed browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll and browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll.

I thought it was a bug, but in the bug tracker they told me it was intentional.

When I suggested they notify users when they have set a setting set to something other than the default and then this setting is removed, I was told it's documented in the Release Notes.

Well, no, it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER41> The address bar is awful but, most importantly, it breaks my keyboard workflow. When I press Cmd+L, I'd expect the focus to go to the address bar and the whole url to be selected (like it is with any other software). Now, Firefox doesn't do this any more. The focus goes to the address bar, but the text is not selected. I have to select it myself. It's really badly designed, ugly and not useful.

Unfortunately, as a longtime Firefox user, I have to admit that Chrome is the best browser. Cleanly designed and fast, it's just a better experience. Too bad it's run by an advertisement company. This is really the only reason I'll stick to Firefox: because I believe in the importance of a free web and I dislike Google. But really, it's not because of any merit of Firefox.

<comment><USER42> This works just still fine here..

<comment><USER6> Here too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I would like Firefox to be my main browser again but a couple of times I've run into the situation where an uncaught JavaScript error logged in Firefox's console doesn't give me any useful information as compared to Chromium. I wish I had a reproduction instead of just ragequitting but I'm sure it's a known issue that exists in their bug tracker somewhere.

<comment><USER44> Funnily enough, I find it to go both ways and while working on bugs sometimes changing browsers gives me a more useful error given the context. It would be nice if that aspect of browser functionality could be carved out and made into a plugin so that we could pick and choose.

A more modular browser experience a la foobar2000 sounds just amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Firefox succumbs to needless change for the sake of it, ruining the address bar with this horrible giant thing.

Not really sure what alternatives there are though. I hate that Firefox seems to be falling victim to the "hah we haven't updated that in a while" intern mentality yet nothing else stands out to replace it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I switched to Firefox for tab containers but they are seriously broken. Ctrl shift t just opens a random tab. With this most recent update, opening something in the current container rather than the preferred container still opens it in the preferred container.

</comment><comment><USER47> Good that its available in flatpack. But the new address bar is so unnecessarily space consuming. If I move it to a smaller window in my desktop its taking up so much space!

<comment><USER48> You can customize its density to "compact" in the toolbar customization. Does that help?

<comment><USER15> How? Searching for this in google results in this comment

<comment><USER49> Right-click in empty space next to the URL bar

Then "Customise..."

Then at the bottom of the screen will be a "Density" drop down, with an option for "Compact"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Side note of Firefox 74 or 75, not sure when it started: close a tab where you had clicked on at least a link so you have some tab history and reopen it with cmd + shift + t: the last page you visited is lost!

Is it only me or others too? It's so annoying.

</comment><comment><USER51> I fail to understand why Firefox takes as its lead Chrome's behavior. Let it be different, let it distinguish itself. We constantly hear how less configurability is easier to maintain. Unfortunately, that was Firefox's main distinction from Chrome. This path where it simply copies Chrome's UX and removes more and more features in the interests of something easier to maintain ... taking that to its logical conclusion, Firefox might as well become a Chromium fork now.

</comment><comment><USER52> Does anyone know what is the keyboard shortcut in dEbugger to "Go to line" , I am unable to find the action in the UI or by a google. I think all actions should be put there in the context menu.

</comment><comment><USER53> I use an older version of Firefox with many customizations (including the relative location bar, removal of all toolbar icons, and others), and still I don't like what they are doing with any version of any browser. I also tried to get rid of arrow scrollbars and implement the Xaw like scrollbars instead, although it doesn't work as well as real Xaw scrollbars do. I just hate a lot of the design principles of web browsers in general. So, rather, the better way to design a web browser would be using principles such as:

\- The user is assumed to understand the computer and to know what they are doing, and if not, to read the documentation in order to understand it.

\- Stuff coming from the server is assumed to be possibly hostile and not necessarily a code that the user wants to execute, or having the styles that the user wants to be displayed; this is independent of whether or not the connection is secure, which should not control access to any features (except those which are part of the protocol, such as certificates). The user must be able to have complete control over it.

\- You have enough ropes to hang yourself, and also a few more just in case. That is the better way to design anything.

\- Disable CSS transitions, and otherwise the user can customize how the CSS is interpreted (in addition to defining their own, of any priority level, low or high or anything in between).

\- Use keyboard controls for many things, and do not override the browser's commands of keyboard or mouse or otherwise except if the user specifically activates the command to do that ("application mode").

\- Support use of ARIA even for ordinary screen view and not only for speech.

\- Allow stuff to be controlled directly by the user rather than APIs used by scripts in web pages.

\- Add a command for the user to save and recall form data using local files.

\- Allow individual scripts and other files to be overridden with the user's own version.

\- etc.

Those who set up the services should also be encouraged to use other protocols, such as IRC, NNTP, SMTP, Telnet, etc. Such thing can be more suitable than web browser, less complicated and less stupid than a web browser, and can even be usable (to some degree) without specialized software (although having software to use specifically with these protocols certainly improves it, it isn't entirely necessary; I think IRC was actually designed for that purpose anyways).

And I really would like them to stop using such huge fonts (they should respect the user's font setting).

</comment><comment><USER54> I've been using the new Flatpak in beta for a month or so. I really like it on Fedora since it means I don't have to enable any 3rd party repos to get DRM working.

<comment><USER55> > I really like it on Fedora since it means I don't have to enable any 3rd > party repos to get DRM working.

I run Linux and Firefox because I like to be in control of my machine. And one of the things I will never allow to run on it is DRM.

I'm still annoyed Firefox has no way to permanently disable all DRM functionality and stop nagging me when sites request it.

<comment><USER54> Each to their own. I don't have a problem with it since it's all sandboxed and can't touch any other part of the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> biggest thing for me, this release was hardware acceleration support on Linux. and with that I won't need to use mpv and smplayer to play youtube videos anymore

</comment><comment><USER57> The new features page says that the address bar has been enhanced to support better search. However, after installing the new version, I still see the search bar on the right hand side of the address bar. Why is that? I am expecting to see just the address bar.

<comment><USER5> The search box on the right is a separate widget. You can remove it if you like. Right-click on the panel, click "Customize," and drag the search box out of the panel to remove it.

<comment><USER57> Thank you so much. That worked! I have been having this question for many years now and kept wondering why the search bar showed for me but not for others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I saw this change in nightly a while back. The change honestly shocked me; "woh," I said aloud. I wish Mozilla would STOP forcing changes like these. They could have a deprecation period allowing for an easier transition. I'm still a loyal fan, though it does seem to get harder day by day.

</comment><comment><USER59> Am I the only one bothered by the steadily declining performance? I bought a cheapish laptop this summer and FF worked just fine then, but every five versions or so it seems the performance drops just a little bit. Even old reddit feels like glue now, especially compared to Chromium.

</comment><comment><USER60> That's it. I'm forking it.

<comment><USER61> Keep us updated on how that goes. Serious

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Mozilla, the only reason I'm using Firefox is because it is highly cutomizable... Not as YOU want, but as _I_ want.

</comment><comment><USER63> Anyone else got logged out of every single website after updating to this version? Annoying as hell.

</comment><comment><USER64> What is this?

</comment><comment><USER65> They actually managed to make context menus even _less_ native with this release. All of a sudden context menus have straight corners and higher contrast. In a few months it will actually be legal for this bug to buy booze and do jelly shots: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572)

<comment><USER66> Wow, that bug is almost as old as I am! I'm surprised it's still an issue; I wonder if they'd take patches for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Mozilla, every release: hey how do you like the new cosmetics/bells and whistles

Me: hey how's that html5 compatibility coming

Mozilla: ...

Mozilla: hey how do you like the new cosmetics/bells and whistles

Me, after years: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

</comment><comment><USER68> And still no movement on finally getting Bug 1178764 out the door, despite every other major browser supporting it. Nope, instead they'd rather faff about with the address bar to resounding universal disgust.

[Bug 1178764]: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1178765](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1178765)

<comment><USER69> Well, evidently they implemented backdrop-filter about 8 months ago, but only for the new WebRender stack. And apparently they don't intend to implement it in legacy stacks.

So I guess your feature is tied to the support for WebRender. And that is pretty much limited to some Windows environments, if this article[1] is up-to- date. Both of the Firefox installs I checked don't seem to use it, Linux/X11/Ubuntu and Android (where it's apparently tied to e10s aka Electrolysis, which I could not tell if they even intend to implement for Android any time soon).

Kind of a mess...

[1] [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where)

<comment><USER68> If nothing else, I really appreciate the summary, with all the comments and various threads on this it's a bit hard to follow exactly what the hold up is.

<comment><USER70> It looks like you currently need to go to about:config and enable layout.css.backdrop-filter.enabled. It worked for me without enabling web render. Not that this does much good until it's on by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Besides the address bar, another issue for me is now all image is lazy-loaded even in websites that don't use Javascript.

While I realize there are advantages to lazy-loading image, I've never liked it because often it makes the content moved a bit, which a bit annoying. However, in pages that uses JS to lazy-load image at least they usually put placeholder image so I know that there will be image there.

Unfortunately, since Firefox do it even for ordinary websites, now I often scrolling away without realizing there are images, only to find out later the paragraph that I read suddenly jumped to bottom.

I'm worried it will be permanent, especially since right now it's a bit hard to revert this feature.

<comment><USER72> It still defaults to eager loading. You have to explicitly add the loading="lazy" attribute for it to load lazily.

<comment><USER73> Is there a flag to force it on most images, even the ones without the loading attribute?</comment></comment></comment>


Jessica Livingston (Y Combinator) at Startup Grind 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMZZPiJrBo0 <comment><USER2> I took the liberty of taking notes. They're my impressions of what Jessica is saying rather than a transcription. All errors in interpretation are mine:

Jessica really likes Adora Cheung of Homejoy for having a very inspiring narrative. (No specifics in this interview.)

First YC class: 8 companies, 400+ applications.

"We have to do this in Silicon Valley [rather than Cambridge] because we didn't want someone else to become the YC of Silicon Valley." (Echoes the "Uber will be the cheap Uber" line.)

@8:25 "No no no, I _know_ you can make templated legal documents and just fill them in." Mass-customized processes let them accomplish e.g. incorporation for less than $15k per company.

Ron Conway brushed me off 3 times. We couldn't describe ourselves as an accelerator because that concept didn't exist yet. Despite the brushoffs he was eventually convinced by multiple people in his network convincing him, so he came to Demo Day and the concept of YC then made a lot of sense to him.

"What's changed w/r/t YC applications over the years?" The Social Network / Facebook IPO caused a large spike in startups generally, but it's been on an uptrend steadily for the duration. Quality is harder to measure. We get companies which are much later stage (existing product, signs of traction, evident ability to raise professional money) than the no-prototype folks who usually applied earlier.

"Could YC 2x/3x in size?" We're interested in scaling but don't know the specifics of how to do so at the moment. Number of startups will only increase; it is a fundamental shift in the economy. YC's early stage makes it incredibly difficult to accurately predict winners -- who would have called AirBNB and Dropbox [as turning into billion dollar businesses]?

"You knew Drew was going to be successful with a 1600 SAT." Many smart people apply to YC, but that doesn't guarantee you get in. Mere intelligence doesn't make startups succeed. Not that went to MIT is a bad predictor of success but it is certainly no guarantee.

"Where are the international entrepreneurs coming from?" International increasing mainstream-ness of startups. Not just from UK/Canada, but from (non-Anglosphere) countries as well. I don't have an explanation other than more people are doing startups.

"Are international companies solving different problems?" Not really. Most foreign firms are solving problems which US companies could equally address; global problems.

"How do visas work?" It is a 'bad situation.' Unlike US founders they don't have the option of remaining in SV after YC ends. The visa application process is 'broken and horrible.' We as entrepreneurs/folks in the community should actively attempt to make this situation easier; in addition to it being the right thing to do, it makes it easier to recruit people from abroad.

"You're known for having a good people radar. What are the red flags you see prior to a cofounder problem?" JL is not technical so she looks for other things in their 10 minute interview. Do founders get along? Don't fight in front of us. Do they have a good vibe between them? Don't interrupt your co- founder aggressively. Do they understand their domain well? If they're a B2C company, I ask to see if they've thought deeply about consumer needs. Defensiveness is not a good trait. We want to work with people who will have enjoyable conversations with us, not people who get angry.

Trivia: YC decisions are made immediately after the 10 minute interview, in the room. We do 20 interviews a day and would otherwise forget.

Red flag: 90/10 equity split between founders. Even with 1+ years extra in the company, as time goes to infinity you will have equal mental investment, and 90/10 will cause terrible resentment.

JL: "I am an expert in founder breakups." Warning signs: joining as co-founder purely for the purpose of a YC application. It has been known to work but that is often a bad sign. You might not know each other or have good working relationship, and that will crack in the YC stress crucible. I like seeing college roommates or 5-year coworkers apply. They're going to have better working relationship and ability to overcome issues.

Regarding the new policy about YC partners investing in startups: This is a pro-startup move. In past Paul or Paul would invest in the occasional startup, which was OK for a few years, but these days Gary Tan et al have funds, and the pre-Demo Day investment from partners was causing signaling issues. Companies w/o partner investment were being seen as losers. We nixed this to protect interest of the startups.

YC applauds partners who have funds orthogonal to YC: more funding opportunities for startups, yay.

YC funding non-profits after success with the Watsi experiment.

Current YC batch is more diverse than typical. 56 year old founder (oldest ever), father-son team, more international founders, more female founders, etc. (Moderator seems to think the 56 year old is quite the outlier.)

Q&A with the audience @ 32:00:

Q1: To JL/PG: How did you build the community of alumni even though some compete with their individual companies?

Fundamental to roots of YC and the community culture. If you help someone, someone will help you. People who do not behave within community norms are shunned very quickly. Moderator adds that the community is tight-knit and doesn't leak very often. JL says they try to have batches intermingle. Secrecy/etc is not an Applesque strategy -- the founders are probably just too busy running companies to run mouths.

Example of YC alumni network helping: Bump got substantial promotion from Apple. Servers melted. Founder of Cloudkick jumps in within 15 minutes, goes to house to fix servers. "That's the power of the YC community. _sustained spontaneous applause_ "

Q2: How can red-blooded capitalists and non-profit companies learn from each other?

Non-profits can apply tactics like moving-fast-and-breaking things, launching early, and listening to users. Historically nonprofits tend to be bureaucratic and antiquated. We hope that if they become more startup-y they'll be more successful at advancing missions to the benefit of the wider world.

For-profit companies support Watsi in many ways; very special.

Q3 (moderator): Founders at Work most impactful real book on what it is like to be an entrepreneur. JL wants to write a sequel. Founder of Mosy (sp?) recommended FaW when discouraging the moderator from pursuing his startup idea, which that founder described as doomed, in favor of founding a successful next company, which FaW would help with.

</comment><comment><USER3> When a founder group from a foreign country come to YC, do they incorporate in the US? If yes, once returned in their country, do they incorporate another company/subsidiary? How do they work?

<comment><USER4> Founder of Glio here (YC S13). In our case, yes. That's what we did.

We incorporated in the US, then came back to Brazil and created a new company owned by the American one.

<comment><USER3> Awesome. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw Jessica speak at Startup School in 2012 alongside some of the biggest names in tech, and her talk was by far the most useful/practical for me as a 23 year old entrepreneur.

She is really really good. I suggest watching it.

<comment><USER6> Here's a link to the written StartupSchool talk. It's really good.

[http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes- wrong...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My biggest takeaway: at 32:15 she puts her head closer to better listen a strong accent guy making a question. I bet she was thinking "I better understand what this guy is asking or another flame war will erupt on HN as soons as this get there!" lol

<comment><USER8> Ehehe nice one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was a lot more informative than I thought it'd be.

I expected everything in YC to be hush-hush.

</comment><comment><USER8> Watching it now. What's the most important takeway, pg?

<comment><USER10> You know you spend too much time on HN when pg is not PostgreSQL for you.

<comment><USER11> Biggest takeaway is that she's open to a second version of her book. Still one of the most inspiring tomes for founders.

<comment> daniel-cussen I think it'd be awesome if Jessica wrote another one, but it'd be even better if she did the anti-Founders at Work. It'd be about all the different kinds of flameouts, from spectacular to silent, from bad luck to bad calls, from goodie two-shoes to unethical (but Zynga-sleazy, not mob-boss unethical). The title: "Founders at Fail."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Want to create the ultimate software project checklist? - <AUTHOR> I feel that there are so many times when a project starts and people don't know what where to start, and then closer to go-live more and more issues crop up that could have been avoided. I'm hoping to put together a list of tasks that can be applied to almost any software project and can be used as a 'heads up' or checklist document
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1htY5oS1tyMQUBbJ2eaEONbgoqch-fMUPeyFOUkBb8Nk/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks for contributing! <comment><USER2> Waterfall 2.0?</comment>


Show HN: Visualize your remote office inside Slack - <AUTHOR> https://www.visualoffice.app/ <comment><USER2> The screenshots look great. Given that Slack began as a game development company, I'm surprised that they haven't already integrated such a visual experience in Slack.</comment>


1:1 criticism ratio - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3475-11-criticism-ratio

<comment><USER2> I couldn't agree with this guy more. It's so easy to criticize. Expressing criticism is something I've strived to work to do over the years. Before handing out criticism, I try to acknowledge and express appreciation of a positive attitude that this person has done. Expressing discontent first simply puts the person in a defensive position and I get myself nowhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've heard that there is also a 3:1 ratio in terms of feedback. People will hear the one piece of critical negative feedback and internalize it if you have also told them 3 positive things</comment>


Keras: Fast Deep Learning Prototyping for Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fchollet/keras/ <comment><USER2> 44 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9283105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9283105)

@fchollet: in case you didn't notice the post back then, you might gain something from those comments, too. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone still nowhere near an expert in deep learning, a little more description of the examples would be great for helping me dive into this. What do the input/outputs look like and which configurations apply best to what situations?

As it is right now I just see acronyms and uncommented code so it doesn't describe much.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find a simpler intro here: [http://keras.io/#getting- started-30-seconds-to-keras](http://keras.io/#getting-started-30-seconds-to- keras)

Still, following it would require some familiarity with Numpy and scikit-learn (or other libs in the same spirit). As well as some experience with neural networks.

<comment><USER3> Yeah that's what I was referring to - still a lot of missing pieces. What type is X_train or Y_train? a list of dicts? Same question for prediction output?

I know enough about deep learning to grok the overall concepts and structure, but your docs aren't telling me anything about how to ACTUALLY get started with your lib.

<comment><USER4> Yep, as he mentioned you need some familiarity with scikit learn or similar APIs, take a look at [1] for example. In essence X_train and Y_train are 2d arrays with shape (n_samples, n_features), Y_train is usually of shape (n_samples, 1) the same as the output. Normally both list of lists or numpy arrays are accepted, even a generator of samples as long as it is a 2D like structure. I would say that if this is not obvious to you maybe you should start with something more basic like linear models in scikit-learn before jumping to deep learning.

[1] [http://scikit- learn.org/stable/tutorial/basic/tutorial.html#...](http://scikit- learn.org/stable/tutorial/basic/tutorial.html#loading-an-example-dataset)

<comment><USER3> No need to be dismissive. The getting started guide linked to makes no mention of scikit - so yes, I don't even know what I don't know. scikit is not a prerequisite for machine learning, it's simply one way to approach it.

<comment><USER4> Sorry if it sounded like that. What I meant is that the 2d matrix representation with shape (n_samples, n_features) actually goes beyond scikit- learn and python(ex: dataframes in R or Julia), it is the standard representation of data in Machine Learning so it is assumed that someone who wants to do Deep Learning should already be familiar with it. That is why I thought you should start with something simpler than Deep Learning to get used to these concepts. Scikit-learn is a good option because it has more tutorials/examples/videos and more beginner friendly documentation in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Saw that on a Kaggle forum and been wanting to play with it for a while. Code looks amazingly clean and simple. Keep up a good work!

Just curious if you compared Keras with caffe or torch in terms of performance?

<comment><AUTHOR> In terms of speed, I don't have any benchmarks available. But it's using Theano under the hood, which is well optimized and should be very competitive with Torch and Caffe.

When it comes to convolution, it will actually use cuDNN if available, and performance will be slightly better than Torch and Caffe: [https://github.com/soumith/convnet-benchmarks#layer-wise- ben...](https://github.com/soumith/convnet-benchmarks#layer-wise-benchmarking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love this package. I was using PyBrain for a recent project, but I had an awful time getting it to work and found the performance equally awful. After stumbling upon Keras, I was up in running in minutes, and the huge performance boost of Theano allowed me to actually finish on time. Thanks for putting this together!

<comment><USER7> I think we found the guy who writes all the testimonials on the internet! :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a guide for using any of these algorithms with a trivial online (i.e. real time) dataset?

<comment><AUTHOR> Online learning, if that's what you are trying to do, can definitely be done with Keras. You would basically just feed samples to the model individually or in small batches using the method 'model.train(X_batch, y_batch)'.

If you raise this issue on the mailing list or in the Github discussion, you'll get more help and advice.

<comment><USER9> I've been trying to follow the Keras development, and didn't even realize there is a mailing list. Could you post a link to it.

<comment><USER10> [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/keras- users](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/keras-users)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also see [https://github.com/bashrc/libdeep- python](https://github.com/bashrc/libdeep-python)

<comment><USER12> Never heard about libdeep before. What's special about it? It doesn't even seem to use the GPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any support for hyperparameter selection? That's otherwise a bit of a black art. I skimmed the documentation but didn't see it mentioned.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not currently. We are looking to introduce easy interfacing with Spearmint, a library which does bayesian hyperparameter search. This should be part of the v1 release.

<comment><USER14> Have you taken a look at this ? [https://github.com/HIPS/autograd](https://github.com/HIPS/autograd) and paper [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.03492.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.03492.pdf)

They reverse the computation of the gradient to calculate the derivative wrt the hyper parameters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone get this running in Ubuntu 14 desktop? I have a ton of dependency issues.

<comment><USER16> Yup, got it working on 14.04 here. My guess is you're having issues setting up the scientific python stack. You might want to try the anaconda distribution ([https://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/](https://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/)) if you continue having problems, or follow the instructions from the scipy website on installing via apt-get ([http://www.scipy.org/install.html](http://www.scipy.org/install.html)). The apt-get install should pull in some binaries and header files that you won't get from pip. After installing from apt-get you can then run the setup.py file and things should go much more smoothly.

The only other apt-get package I remember pulling down was the hd5f headers: "sudo apt-get install libhdf5-dev"

<comment><USER15> Thank you. I think I found most of the set-up complete through apt-get before I noticed this post, but have installed anaconda anyway's to see how that goes. Seems to have everything firing as it should and was a much smoother install.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Python is the PHP of Starbucks customers.</comment>


Graham Crackers Were Invented to Curb Sexual Appetite - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKMM8mt15w4 <comment><USER2> It isn't working!

Should I add chocolate and a melted marshmallow for reinforcement?</comment>


Ask HN: what is your salary? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm curious, what is the wage of a typical employee?<p>I will start. I work in finance as a developer and I'm taking home 200k base + a variable bonus <comment><USER2> If you're curious, look on Glassdoor. If you just want to brag, post to HN. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know what most my colleagues make. So when I look on those sites it always seems low. If I wanted to brag I wouldn't use a throwaway. My father did finance his whole life, I've been brought up on it. I'm curious what people make outside my box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > "typical employee"

of whom? Where? Doing what?

At least put some semblance of effort in when writing your next bragpost.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didnt mean to sound like I was bragging, sorry if it came across like that. I am considering changing industries and want to know what to expect. I was asking very broadly intentionally

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 80k in NYC. It sucks since I see so little of that (<2k per month) after tax and rent.

Are you hiring, boredeasy?

<comment><USER5> If it makes you feel any better, for the last three years, my wife and I saw <2k per month before tax and rent. I'm moving in a few months to get a better job. Still won't be making 80k, though.

<comment><USER4> Crikey :/

Living in NYC as well? Its hard to find a place under about 1700 in remotely decent commuting distance, in a vaguely safe area that isn't full of roaches.

<comment><USER5> Thankfully, no. Cost of living in Indiana is quite a bit lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It depends on the country. I work for 700 usd per month and that's a high salary where I live.

</comment><comment><USER7> You will get better data off glassdoor.com, I imagine.

</comment><comment><USER8> Junior Developer $41k</comment>