New XPS 15 Laptop - <AUTHOR> http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9560-laptop <comment><USER2> I have "old" one 9550 i7, 4K, 32GB - as a device for this money I wouldn't expect that I will have:

\- unaligned Jack socket, so that only one channel plays

\- Flickering backlight, where only one rescue is to downgrade BIOS: [http://en.community.dell.com/support- forums/laptop/f/3519/t/...](http://en.community.dell.com/support- forums/laptop/f/3519/t/19662532)

\- random freezes: Whole computer hangs, there is no error in Windows log, it's not related to nVidia card, it's not related to load.

<comment><USER3> That's why things you buy usually come with warranties.

<comment><USER2> Yes, you're totally right. Unfortunately I have two obstacles: \- This is my device for work, just setting up environment on different PC is problematic, and extra time of waiting for it being repaired. \- I bought it in a different country that currently I'm living. Frankly I don't know if I can use local support, guys from DellSweden didn't reply my question yet.

Problem is that, when you spend pretty decent amount of money for a device, you do have an expectation in terms of quality, partially you're paying for that.

<comment><USER4> This is my experience too, when buying a high-end laptop, I expect it to just work. If my time was worth dealing with shitty QA, I'd buy a low end laptop.

<comment> Const-me That high-end / low-end thing is mostly a marketing BS invented to maximize manufacturer's profits. Works OK in the sense their profit is fine, but if you're a consumer, you better rely on the specs only and ignore the marketing.

<comment><USER4> Specs dont matter much anymore. Any dual core laptop can do what most people need.

What matters is the build quality, QA, battery life, screen, heat dissipation. All things you cant infer solely based on specs.

<comment> Const-me On modern laptops, build quality and QA are more or less OK (or "equally bad" if you're a pessimist). Because warranty returns are expensive, and also because competition.

If you buy a laptop to watch youtube and read e-mails, sure, any dual core will do, but for a professional, performance matters. Speaking of performance, I wouldn't buy this dell because the CPU has no L4 cache. Some tasks, like compiling C++, benefit a lot from that 64-128 MB on-chip DRAM found in some previous-generation CPUs.

Specs still matter. Battery life is measured in hours; screens are measured in pixels, inches and percentage of Adobe RGB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have Xubuntu running on one of these and, for the most part, love this machine. There is one design defect and a couple of nitpicks I have:

\- The webcam is below the screen ... I don't want to join a video conference when the primary view is my nose hair.

\- Why do "modern" slim devices only have two USB ports? There is room on the chassis for more (I don't know about the interior layout).

\- We've tried several of the Dell docks with these ... while I love the fact that the laptop charges through the same cable that's used for everything else (video, audio, HID devices), it's a bit buggy. Two examples are that: 1) you have to plug speakers into the computer's audio jack after the computer is attached to the dock and booted and 2) you have to be careful the magnetic switch doesn't tell the laptop/dock your lid is closed - in my case the keyboard and mouse connected to the dock become disabled even when the laptop wakes back up.

</comment><comment><USER6> i feel like a new trend is emerging with these nice, 15 inch non-apple laptops. i say non-apple because they are attracting the pro crowd that used to buy apple exclusively. my personal fantasy is a laptop that isnt shy about being thick, affording it a huge battery, tons of ports, OLED screen and solid state trackpad like the macbook. with very reliable linux drivers for all the hardware. a very utilitarian machine.

<comment><USER7> I've been planning for my next laptop purchase next year, and for some reason, I can't pull the Alienware 13R3 off the top of my short list. It's big (for a 13"), heavy, ugly and adorned with hideous gamer bling (WHY, WHY, WHY??), but it also has _all_ the ports and features (discrete trackpad buttons!) I want in my work machine. Right now, it's basically between the new XPS 15 and the 13R3 (or R4 if it's out by the time I am ready).

<comment><USER6> the gamer bling thing is so funny. why does nobody in the laptop business understand that people are buying those laptops despite the bling, not because of it? every ad that i see for a gaming laptop emphasizes the competitive advantages that these laptops offer, letting "gamers" "dominate" and so on. how could they be so disconnected that they don't realize that what everyone wants is to enjoy their crispy, high definition graphics on a sleek master race machine? what the world needs is a merging of gaming laptops with xps- like pro machines. utilitarian, powerful, well made and visually inconspicuous.

<comment><USER8> Razer figured it out.

<comment><USER7> Razer makes nice stuff, but I'd be concerned about support for a machine used for work when comparing to Dell, HP and Lenovo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone else getting an access denied error?

      Access Denied
      You don't have permission to access "http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9560-laptop" on this server.

      Reference #18.f4741602.1482244883.2126641

<comment><USER10> It seems like they block access to the US store from outside the US? No VPN here, just a DE IP and it's blocked.

Incredible to see the price differential between the US and DE stores though, on top of the 18% VAT you expect

<comment><USER11> That seems to be the case here. Visiting [http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/](http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/) from my german IP yields the same result. Unbelievable. Frankly, the whole site looks like a mess to me.

<comment><USER12> The Dell site is absolutely terrible. For a while, perhaps still, there was no way to show the tech specs for at least the XPS laptop I was looking at. The marketing speak would say something like "XPS 13 with 6th Generation Intel Core processors" and then just a series of prices. You couldn't tell what CPU it had, how much memory, nothing. There's a Q/A box on the page, and there were dozens of unanswered questions like "how big is the hard drive" with no answers.

I bought my XPS 13 from Costco, which was a nicer experience in pretty much every way.

<comment><USER13> It's really appalling. I'm guessing most of Dell's sales come from other sources (other websites or actual retail stores). Otherwise they'd be out of business with a website that terrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Internet Archive to the Rescue: [http://web.archive.org/web/20161220095136/http://www.dell.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20161220095136/http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9560-laptop)

<comment><USER14> Most important tid-bid for me: 7th Gen Intel® Quad Core™ processors optional 4GB GeForce® GTX 1050

Supports up to 32GB of memory

Killer™ Wireless: The Killer 1535 Wireless-AC

<comment><USER15> Most important flaw for me: Seems to have no ethernet port.

<comment><USER16> Yes, I would be using a dongle all the time, which is unbearable. So long for the XPS.

<comment><USER17> The slimmer dell laptops have been lacking the RJ45 port for a while now. I have a precision m3300 (very happy with that) which doesn't have one. Had to get a cheap adapter for USB but that one feels more like a plug that sits at the end of the network cable than a dongle.

The thing I think with those of us that do have their computers connected to cable network a lot ("all the time") is that it's usually in the same place (our desk) so it's not that big a problem to adapt the end of the network cable there.

In fact I'd prefer to use a usb-c brick with all connections (video, keyboard, mouse, lan) over the current one where I insert the network cable into one usb, then the monitor into the hdmi, and the monitor usb which has the mouse/keyboard in it's hub into a second usb. Of all the "docking flaws" with my current laptop I find the lack of RJ45 to be the _least_ annoying actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Folks considering this should also check out the HP ZBook Studio G3.

It has Quadro M1000M 4GB graphics, 32 GB of ECC RAM, quad core, Linux certified by HP, 4k screen, can handle two external 4k monitors and drive the panel at about 4.5 pounds.

<comment><USER19> This is probably a trivial complaint to some, but after using a Precision 5510 for a while I really wouldn't want to go back to a laptop screen with a wide bezel again. It's up to personal aesthetic choice, mostly, I guess.

edit: It's also unclear whether the SSD in the ZBook is PCIe or not. It isn't stated, so I assume it's not, as PCIe performance is a differentiator.

<comment><USER18> > I really wouldn't want to go back to a laptop screen with a wide bezel > again.

Yeah, those are real sexy. Only downside is the terrible location of the webcam, I suppose you can use an external, though.

> It's also unclear whether the SSD in the ZBook is PCIe or not. It isn't > stated, so I assume it's not, as PCIe performance is a differentiator.

From the quick specs[0], two drives: one PCIe SSD, the second M.2 2280 SATA-3.

[0][http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04832209.pdf?ver=3](http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04832209.pdf?ver=3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Speaking of laptops, what would you recommend to someone running Ubuntu? My 2013 MacBook Air is feeling it, with its non-upgradable 4 GB RAM. A discrete graphics card so I could play DotA2 once in a while would be nice, even if it's at medium graphics quality.

<comment><USER21> I'm kinda in the same boat.

I want a laptop with Iris Pro 580/p580 and NO dedicated GPU. The 580 has a bit over a TFLOP of compute (plenty for games like DoTA) and more importantly, the drivers don't suck on Linux. The issue is that any laptop that ships with that processor also ships with a crappy dedicated GPU.

When I have a 45w processor, I want to pay a few hundred extra for a 55w Nvidia M2000m that has 10% more compute power (granted, more efficient at GPGPU) and horrible drivers.

What I want:

15.6", i7-6770HQ, 32gb DDR4, M.2 SSD, high-res IPS screen, Thinkpad-grade keyboard, good webcam, decent ports (At least 2x thunderbolt, 3x usb3, SD, 3.5mm, and ethernet), a little thicker for a battery that lasts a couple days, durable build quality, large trackpad with builtin wacom, NO dedicated graphics.

I guess that's too much to ask.

<comment><USER22> I think there is a bit of a meme that Linux Intel graphics don't suck. They have broken desktops repeatedly and still have a lot of glitches on newer hardware, whereas everyone calls AMD bad but I haven't had a bad experience on their Mesa stack in over 5 years. Its generally that Intel is buggy / edge case broken and AMD is rock solid if not patching Windows drivers in performance.

Albeit, I am biased, in that I intentionally avoid bleeding edge GPU hardware in general anywhere I can, but its hard to avoid Intel's latest because each year all the NUCs / notebooks / desktop platform switch to their latest CPUs. With AMD, since they have basically no market presence anywhere, I can get away with buying a 290 a year after it comes out for $240 and then having a great out of the box experience with it, whereas my 740SU notebook 4 years ago was only 6 months new when I got one and had massive Haswell GPU bugs on latest Mesa for about 6 months after buying it.

But even then, Intel and AMD are pretty much par for support times and when you should expect good stability in my experiences, but everyone memes AMD as being trash while Intel is the savior of consumer Linux.

<comment><USER23> I bought a NUC with the Iris 540, ran ubuntu 16.04 on it and I'm quite pleased with it. Minecraft, full screen youtube, full screen netflix, random web games like slither.io, random "rich" websites, webGL particle/water demos, etc all "just work".

I've had way less problems with intel than I did with my radeons. Not sure I'd say better than nvidia (who has a pretty good binary blob driver), but similar.

Even weird edge cases like rotating a display into portrait mode while logged in worked fine.

It's not a GTX 1070 killer, but it's quite a nice upgrade from other Intel GPUs. It runs a fair variety of 2d/3d stuff at 1080P quite comfortably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The only reason why I regret buying a Thinkpad is that I see good machines like the XPS, but I'm not willing to buy them because I have been spoiled by Thinkpad's keyboards.

<comment><USER25> Rumours have it that next year's line-up will return to having slim bezels like the current XPS series has (and Thinkpads had a decade ago…).

<comment><USER26> A cautious promise included a Thinkpad Retro hopefully with the old keyboard next year. If it happens, I am buying it and I am not going to look at the price tag.

<comment><USER27> If only they return the ThinkLight -- that would be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Am I missing a price on that page? Can anyone see where it is, or know how much it costs?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's an official page. It is still under construction I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Did they fix the coil whine?

<comment><USER29> They did not fix that either. You might be lucky to receive a device that doesn't exhibit it, or you may not notice it, or you may not even bother about it.

Dell doesn't really care - they still sell loads, and as long as the online reviewers don't complain loudly enough so that their sales are affected it is just not worth the cost.

<comment><USER30> Wow how lame of Dell. That was the reason I went with a Lenovo T460 (which I do not regret btw ;))

<comment><USER28> Lenovo is much worse than Dell though... They deserve to go bankrupt after superfish and all that other crap they did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How does one tell which XPS 15 one is ordering?

Suppose you order one through Amazon, other than doing a feature by feature comparison, can you tell it is the "latest" one?

<comment><USER32> Look at the specific model number. 9560 is the latest XPS 15" (and 9360 is the latest XPS 13", from Oct 2016)

<comment><USER31> Thanks. I was looking for the model number but could not find it on the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does the tiny bezel mean a nostril cam like the XPS13?

<comment><USER33> Honestly I'd be (more than) fine with an XPS 13 without webcam and mic.

Actually I'd be _so_ happy with a laptop like that. An XPS 13 without webcam and mic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd love to hear how this laptop runs Ubuntu or Mint.

<comment><USER35> One of my co-workers has the current gen (9550) and Ubuntu 16.04 runs great on it. I think he's got an intel wifi card, I'd just check Linux compatibility with the Killer wifi card before going that route. It's easy enough to change a WiFi card out aftermarket if there is issues though, an Intel 8260 card will run you $30.

<comment><USER34> Does that include good working power management and a fully functioning touchpad? I went down the XPS13 Sputnik path and had endless disappointment with constant fixes.

<comment><USER35> I think that Skylake Power Management got better in the Kernel after the original XPS13 Sputnik launch, but yes the XPS13 touchpad was a pain in the ass. The XPS15 touchpad on Linux is better than the XPS13.

My biggest complaint about the XPS15 I had a little over a year ago was the spacebar. There was a manufacturing defect in mine where the touchpad ribbon cable pressed up against the spacebar and was causing unregistered keystrokes. I read internet forums where multiple people had this issue. Maybe Dell has fixed the manufacturing issue by now, but it was bad enough that I returned the XPS15.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Where in the world is the price on this page?

</comment><comment><USER37> Looks nice but their customer service will fuck you over if you have a hardware problem serious enough to replace some vital part. There was a huge thread here only recently by some poor guy being harassed by them.

<comment><USER38> Not in my experience. I bought an XPS 15 earlier this year. It was a fairly new model and there were a lot of complaints online about quality control issues, but overwhelmingly they were happy with Dell's response. I got one and blew out the speakers (partly my fault), but Dell send me a replacement quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I had the XPS L502X and it was hands down the best laptop I have ever owned:

JBL Speakers that were genuinely excellent - I work at home and listen to music quite loudly so these were a huge selling point for me

Plenty of Ports

Easy to upgrade / repair - I think by the end of its life I had replaced or upgraded everything except the motherboard

All of the XPS systems since this one have paled in comparison, shitty speakers and an ultra book type.

The L502X was a chunky workhorse but it survived a years backpacking around Asia with me and then 4 years in Australia as my main work computer until it finally died enough that I couldn't be bothered to fix it (Would power on for half a second and die).

It also ran Linux like a dream - no incompatibilities!

On an Alienware 17 R3 now and it is a beast.... but it's speakers are no match for the L502X's :( Also absolutely cant get Linux to run on it so I am using Virtualbox with a dual head setup which has its share of issues

</comment><comment><USER40> Something wrong with this picture? [http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImag...](http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImages/xps-15-9560-laptop/laptop- xps-15-pdp-polaris-05.jpg)

<comment><USER41> photoshop sucks at scaling down "smart-objects". You need to scale destructively to make it look ok.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The webcam is still awkwardly positioned. Have they fixed the coil noise issue yet?

</comment><comment><USER43> It's a decent laptop; however, having the camera at the bottom of the screen is a bit annoying :/ \- ppl will be looking into your nose :)

<comment><USER44> This is the biggest design flaw with this laptop. It is a very unflattering angle and makes the video essentially useless. It's the one reason I can't recommend it to people (or I recommend it with a caveat, if they use the camera often).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I am mildly excited for Kaby Lake _for laptops_.

I _was_ excited to buy a Kaby Lake Mac Book Pro. Especially when the Dell XPS13 is showing off >10 hours of 4k video playback on battery [1]. I can get about 12-14 hours on my 2014/2015 MBP (coding with a dark background, low brightness) I really enjoy the added flexibility longer battery life gives me.

[1] [http://www.pcworld.com/article/3127250/hardware/intel- kaby-l...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3127250/hardware/intel-kaby-lake- review-what-optimization-can-do-for-a-14nm-cpu.html)

<comment><USER46> The colors on your screen will not affect battery life (Unless it is AMOLED)

<comment><USER45> Huh, thanks for pointing out this misconception I was harboring :D

<comment><USER47> If anything, dark background will use more power as the pixels need to be fully powered to block out the backlight. Not sure if this is still the case, but it used to be afaik. CRT's were the opposite in that black meant the beam was off or somesuch and therefore white used more power. But that's not been true for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Did they fix the keyboard debounce issue? I'd like to try typing on the keyboard before purchasing.

<comment><USER29> They did not fix it, but the latest BIOSes (on the XPS13) make it better. Some people still complain though. I don't notice it, maybe I'm not typing fast enough :)

The real annoyance for me about the input devices is that the palm detection doesn't work for the touchpad (on Ubuntu), at least I couldn't get it working. So either typing suffers, or have to disable "tap to click", which is so weird I can't get used to it.

<comment><USER48> Even with the latest BIOS on the XPS13, I can reliably type "asdf" and get "asdasfdf"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Trackpad. How is the trackpad on this one? I keep buying Apple HW for my Windows as every time I try new PC, trackpad experience doesn't yield itself to the change. Period.

<comment><USER50> XPS 15 and 13 have (one of the) best trackpads on windows. I finally understand how people live without mouse. Apparently not the same as mac, but the closest experience available.

<comment><USER51> IBM/Lenovo always had great trackpads for the "Thinkpad" line, and the nipple/clit was always my favorite pointing device, I actually missing it as typing this on an MBP15.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Unfortunately, supported version of Display Port is 1.2 not 1.3. Any idea how to connect 5k display to it? Will "made for Apple" LG UltraFine 5k work?

<comment><USER51> Thunderbolt 3 :)

FYI the LG UF 5K doesn't come with Displayport 1.3 support either, it uses 2 DP 1.2 streams side by side (which sometimes can have screen tearing in the middle) hence it's a tiled display just like early 60hz 4K monitors.

To work with the 5K monitor you either have to connect 2 DP1.2 cables or a single Thunderbolt 3 cable.

In both cases you'll see 2 monitors connected on your machine which can cause some issues in some cases (e.g. full screen exclusive mode).

P.S.

What Apple device actually supports DP1.3? The new Mac's don't for sure, neither is the old Mac Pro unless you can hack some upgraded GPU into it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The large display was precisely what is missing for me in XPS 13. Looks really great - I'll be looking to get one if my budget allows it!

<comment><USER54> The larger display?

A 15" version has been available most of 2016.

<comment><USER53> Did it have 3840 x 2160 resolution (4K)? If so, my bad, I should have looked closer.

<comment><USER14> Yup, we have one here, it's a beast of a machine when fully decked out.

<comment><USER55> How is the battery? I got a 13 because of the supposed bad battery life of the 15.

<comment><USER56> Get the lower resolution 1920x1080 without touchscreen and it's better than the 4k touchscreen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> What's the release date for this machine ?

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder if this will have the coil whine issues the 13 has (had? I've got the last gen).

<comment><USER59> I have a precision 5510 (pro version of the XPS15) Skylake gen and it doesn't have the annoying coil whine of my previous XPS13 (Haswell gen)

<comment><USER58> Very useful to know, thanks. I'm somewhat torn about whether to keep or replace mine, apart from the whine it's a lovely little machine.

<comment><USER60> From what I've read the coil whine is related to having the keyboard backlight on. Is that important enough to trade-off for the noise? I always turn off backlights when using a computer on battery anyway (it's not like I'll be looking at the keyboard much...).

<comment><USER58> I'd happily turn off the backlight, I'll try that. I've turned off the c6 processor states as apparently the switching there causes some of it. I can hear the changes as things visually change on screen, so scrolling and videos are quite bad.

<comment><USER58> Ah no dice. I think it's inherent in all of these laptops but some are worse than others. This is a refurb, so I wonder if it was returned due to this... I'll talk to the support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Where are the buttons to `Buy Now` or `Customize`? Seems like a sales funnel mistake.

<comment><USER62> It's apparently not meant to be live yet; if you go to "XPS Laptops" from the main product page you're still taken to the 9550.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Looks like they upgraded the 13" as well: [http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-13-9360-la...](http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-13-9360-laptop/dncwt5122hv2)

Someone else noted there's no discrete Nvidia GPU: [http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/19/help-me-choose/hmc- nvidia...](http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/19/help-me-choose/hmc-nvidia- graphics-xps-lt)

I did not see the New XPS 12 that second link references.

<comment><USER64> The XPS 13 does not have a dGPU, but the XPS 15 does have one.

<comment><USER23> Sadly the XPS 13 2015 has IRIS 540 graphics available, which is pretty good, doubly so if you get the 1080P screen.

The XPS13 2016 does not have IRIS available, yet. Intel should have them available feb/march or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> GTX 1050 for the laptop? Why aren't there more laptops with this SKU...

<comment><USER35> The current gen (9550) graphics run in NVidia Optimus. There is no way to change to Only Integrated or Only Dedicated graphics in the BIOS. This means that you depend on the NVidia driver to switch to the graphics card based off which application you are running in Windows.

It's a big pain in the ass for linux. You have to fool around with nouveau or Bumblebee to get Optimus working. Even then I was never sure the graphics card was doing anything in Linux.

I wish all manufacturers would put a hardware mux on the graphics so that it could be switched from Optimus to Only Integrated or Only Dedicated. It seems to be going the other way where they don't and only offer Optimus though.

<comment><USER66> The proprietary Nvidia driver supports Optimus with nvidia-prime. No need for Bumblebee. There are still a few bits missing there, though, like external display support in low-power mode. So, basically I agree - it is still PITA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Tangential but I figure the folks who will know the answer will wander into this thread.

I need to buy a decent but lightweight 15" for a family member who is undergoing cancer treatments and has gotten too weak for his current behemoth 17". Light work (browsing, some streaming) but definitely a windows machine. Any recommendations? I've been keeping an eye on this exact machine (previous model now)—anything better?

<comment><USER17> Whenever you look at a XPS you should always peek at the equivalent Precision machine (e.g. Precision 5510), there might be deals available. Also, although perhaps not applicable to your situation, the Precisions are usually more configurable than the XPS.

<comment><USER68> I did this exact thing two weeks ago. I think the Precision adds the Premier Color display too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Now if Lenovo would just build something that remotely competes with this I'd be begging them to take my money. I haven't found anything quad core and 15 inches from Lenovo that doesn't weigh a ton...oh...and that off center keyboard on Lenovo's 15 inch models! WTF?!

Lenovo is completely behind on offering anything remotely pro dev which competes with XPS 15 or MacBook Pro.

I got the XPS 15 9550 for my dad and he loves it.

<comment><USER70> What are you missing in Lenovo laptops? I've been using the Yoga 2 Pro for years and am happy with it. It's a great trade-off between size, weight, performance and comfort, and I'm actually happier with it than with the MBPs i've worked with so far.

Now that it's aged I've been looking for a replacement and skimmed through lots of laptops. Even now, the Yoga 910 seems to be closest to what I want and I'll probably buy this one.

Edit: I just saw you updated your comment - maybe the difference is that I prefer smaller screen sizes in favor of portability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Access Denied

You don't have permission to access "[http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9560-la...](http://www.dell.com/en- us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9560-laptop") on this server. Reference #18.36d61202.1482271177.71b1881

Why (I'm in Germany).

</comment><comment><USER72> ubuntu!?

<comment><USER73> It usually takes them several months after the product is released to come out with developer edition versions.

<comment><USER74> Not this time with the Kaby Lake XPS 13 — they were available immediately.

I think it helped that the hardware is exactly the same, since all versions have a Killer (Qualcomm) wifi card rather than "Dell" (= Broadcom) for Windows and Intel for Ubuntu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I might be missing it, but does it say when these will be available?

</comment><comment><USER76> So can it run triple 4K displays when combined with a dock or not?

That's the only feature for which I still need a desktop computer and I would loooove to do without one.

<comment><USER77> _Thunderbolt™ 3 multi-use port allows you to charge your laptop, connect to multiple devices (including support for up to two 4K displays)_

and

 _Featuring a single-cable connection for power, Ethernet, audio and video. Add the optional Dell Thunderbolt™ Dock for faster data transfers and support for up to three Full HD displays or two 4k displays._

...which is a little confusing. Does that mean two external 4K displays without a dock, and one with the thunderbolt dock? Do the display counts include the laptop display?

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> i bought the older version about 10 days ago (still within window to return), apart from the CPU, what changes have they made?

<comment><USER79> New GPU and killer wireless instead of Intel.

<comment><USER80> Is the killer wireless worth it? I cant find too much info on it speaking to pros & cons?

<comment><USER79> According to notebookcheck it is second to MacBook only [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell- XPS-13-9360-QHD-i5-7200U-N...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell- XPS-13-9360-QHD-i5-7200U-Notebook-Review.178844.0.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Does anyone know if there's still coil whine issue?

I had the same issue on a old ThinkPad and couldn't tolerate it.

</comment><comment><USER82> So compared to the new MacBook Pro, it's the same weight and has 25% less battery capacity.

<comment><USER83> and 500% more ports :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Man, the only thing I can say against this is that it doesn't have a MagSafe power plug.

<comment><USER85> Neither does the new macbooks, outside of the air.

</comment></comment><comment> tom-_- Any opinions on a System76 running Ubuntu? XPS is just too far outside of my price range.

</comment><comment><USER86> It's basically the Precision 5510, which is a nice piece of kit.

</comment><comment><USER87> No USB Type-C, seriously?

<comment><USER88> It has thunderbolt 3, which is compatible with all type-c devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Page is empty for me, tried both Firefox and Chrome on Linux.

</comment><comment><USER90> A 1050???? What a huge disappointment. I was gonna buy this as I was expecting a 1060.

<comment><USER23> Get a stealth. The faster GPUs have a significant power, battery life, and noise compromise. Thus they are popular on gaming laptops.

<comment><USER91> "Get a stealth"? What's "a stealth"?

<comment><USER52> I think GP meant this: [http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer- blade](http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade)

But there's some confusion here, Razer Blade Stealth is actually the model with integrated GPU (Intel HD 620)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Page is empty for me.

</comment><comment><USER92> anyone else here thinking dell designs are kinda boring? I bought macbook to run win10 because it had great design. I am thinking of buying surface book next.

Why can't Dell focus on a creative design?

<comment><USER93> I personally think my coworkers XPS 13 is far, far cooler looking and thoughtfully designed than my MBPr. It has soft spots where you'd carry it. I think they're gorgeous. The only thing tying me to OSX at this point is 1passwords chrome plugin (doesn't work without hackery in Linux) but now that that's going web based I may be able to switch next year.

Also the crazy resolutions aren't really a selling point to me at all. I can barely read the text when those things are cranked up.

<comment><USER94> _> I can barely read the text when those things are cranked up._

They are not supposed to be "cranked up". You're supposed to use hi-dpi to smooth everything, not to get more screen estate. Apple has been doing it correctly for almost 5 years now, one would hope Windows and Linux had caught up by now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> > Available with Windows 10

so sad

> Dell Thunderbolt™ Dock | TB16

I wonder if they fixed all the issues? I doubt they didn't.

</comment><comment><USER96> Why would developers get a Windows laptop that don't have touch-screens?

It seems the entire purpose of Windows laptops would be to test out touch- screen capabilities for your Windows apps.

If you want to get a laptop without a touch screen, a Mac Book Pro would be the way to go. Especially with the great trackpad.

But otherwise it looks great. It just needs that touch-screen for developing touch-enabled apps.

Edit: Found that the touch-screen is an upgrade option.

<comment><USER97> Because very few consumers are using touch screens, let alone touch screen optimized apps.

<comment><USER98> What consumers are even paying for Windows apps to begin with?</comment></comment></comment>


Yet Another Process Library for Java (YAPLJ) - <AUTHOR> http://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/why-we-created-yaplj-yet-another-process-library-for-java/

<comment><USER2> Are the features you listed something that other process libs really have trouble with? Personally when I'm dealing with something as low level as forking processes, I like to worry about implementing the kind of stuff you list as features. Does your project offer the ability to override its default behavior, or is this more in support of the general pattern you tend to use for your own projects?

You mention "writing lots of helpers to get rid of the boiler plate." Can you offer an example? Putting a boilerplate-heavy example next to a beautiful two or three lines of equivalent code that uses your API really helps people to grok your goals.

If I sound critical, I sincerely apologize. As someone who writes a ton of code I'm always so thankful for people who take the time to package up and share their work. It's really quite a nontrivial thing to do.

<comment><USER3> Being able to configure stuff that is listed as features is a natural requirement. And it is supported: process listeners, process destroyers, stream handlers - all are behind interfaces, you can supply your own implementation. Some things maybe aren't that flexible (ProcessBuilder, I'm looking at you), but if you find a need to extend their behavior, create an issue, we will be happy to change that.

Default settings are sensible and fit the use case of: start process, consume and return its output/error streams, check error code. Common use-cases like killing process when parent JVM exits are supported with one-liner calls, etc. It was aimed to be friendly.

Finally, the comparison with other frameworks. You can find a couple of examples in the [readme file]([https://github.com/zeroturnaround/zt- exec/blob/master/README...](https://github.com/zeroturnaround/zt- exec/blob/master/README.md)) on github. Also tests somewhat reveal the feel of the api.

My favorite feature is that it supports futures. When you want to run your process async mode commons-exec tutorial suggests:

        executor.execute(cmdLine, resultHandler);
        // some time later the result handler callback was invoked so we
        // can safely request the exit value
        int exitValue = resultHandler.waitFor();

zt-exec has:

        Future<ProcessResult> future = new ProcessExecutor()
                                        .command("java", "-version")
                                        .start();
        // do some stuff
        future.get(60, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

You get a process library that works well with java's default async framework.

Hope it gives some insight. If you have any more questions, I'll be happy to help to the best of my abilities.

disclaimer: I'm working for ZeroTurnaround, but I haven't been directly involved in creating or making zt-exec publicly available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a good idea to me. Imagine how much less ugly Java would be if it didn't have to support Windows. (a former Unix/C programmer - but I'm not bitter! :-))</comment>


Arianna Huffington's Open Letter to Elon Musk - <AUTHOR> https://www.thriveglobal.com/stories/40343-open-letter-elon-musk <comment><USER2> Another celebrity giving their 2 cents about Elon Musk latest behavior.

Move along citizen...

Ps: this article is a good example of how to deliver a shit sandwich*

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shit%20Sandw...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shit%20Sandwich)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a "real time" Stack Overflow? - <AUTHOR> Is there an IRC channel or Discord server or something similar in that vein where I can ask a quick programming question and expect a quick response? Or is Stack Overflow the best way?<p>Also, do you like the idea of a "Questions" thread on HN? <comment><USER2> The persistence of threads on Stack Overflow is where the value lies, it's like a wiki but more direct Q'n'A. Might you be looking for something along the lines of a programming tutor?</comment>


Quantum Levitation - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA&feature=player_embedded#at=103 <comment><AUTHOR> with a little explanation [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyOtIsnG71U&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyOtIsnG71U&feature=related)

(from [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/lfcea/quantum_le...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/lfcea/quantum_levitation/))</comment>


Google's new logo hints at a live search results announcement in the morning - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/08/googles-new-logo-hints-at-a-live-search-results-announcement-in/ <comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see how they integrate the back button into this. I will often backtrack if my changes to the search string don't lead anywhere and use the back button for that. Will you be able to make snapshots of the current results by pressing the enter or search button, hopefully without causing the whole page to reload? That would probably be the ideal solution. (It would mean that the user would get the benefit of live updates but the behavior would remain unchanged. It might, however, invite me to tinker with my search string without ever pressing the enter button which would in some way break the back button. That might be a worthy tradeoff.)

Can someone who this has already been A/B tested on shed some light on that? Oh, well. Might as well wait.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone Use Affiliate Networks to Acquire Customers? - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
At the very early stages of a commercial webapp in development. I've been very interested in leveraging affiliate networks like CJ to acquire customers easily. Being that the app will be subscription-based, I wouldn't mind paying 1.5-2 months generated revenue based on their leads.
Has anyone used such networks to acquire customers, and if so, what do you think about it? Was it successful? Paying for guaranteed paying clients seems like it could lead to any business being profitable - as long as you have a product that people will pay for.
Thanks.. <comment><USER3> I can comment on this from the perspective of an affiliate promoting products on networks like CJ. Affiliate programs can be a very profitable way to gain customers, but there are lots of issues that come up. In particular:

-Before your product is listed on an affiliate network, you need to put down a significant investment- mid to high $XX,XXX as a prepayment to the network

-Especially for a webapp, there could be issues of rampant fraud-affilites using VCCs to sign up and so on- this is something you will need to be proactive about filtering out

-Products that do well on affiliate networks have a large target market- if your webapp is niche affiliates won't bother to take the time to set up campaigns to promote your product

<comment><AUTHOR> Regards to the prepayment, you sure there aren't networks that just bill when fees are due?

Regards to fraud, that's definitely a real issue.

Regards to niche, from what I've learned from doing some affiliate work and research, niche is extremely important and much desired by affiliates - <USER2> though my product isn't narrowly targeted - just saying..

<comment><USER4> Most networks won't do this because it opens them up to risk or a merchant not paying and still having to pay their affiliates. Also because different affiliates get paid at different times so a big affiliate might be net 10 or even net 5 most will be net 30 or 45.

Make sure you design a good landing page and test test test. No one will run your campaign for more than a few days if it doesn't convert reasonable well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> CJ is a high-end network. There are much cheaper options, like clickbank, which is often used for webapps. Depends on your market to an extent.

One of the potentially false appeals of an affiliate network is easy access to affiliates. You still need to get their attention somehow, prove your sales conversions, and demonstrate that you actually have a good product worth promoting.

I have been very successful in selling my web app by simply setting up a self- hosted affiliate solution (we wrote our own, but idevaffiliate is good) and going to conferences to befriend the people who already have access to my market, well in advance, and then organizing a launch with them getting good commissions.

The "if you put it on cj, they will come" marketing model isn't going to get you near the same kind of loyalty and promotions that you will get from connecting with real live people and getting them excited about what you've done.

John.</comment>


Show HN: I've been learning PHP. My first tool finds your competitors' backlinks - <AUTHOR> https://serps.com/tools/mse

<comment><AUTHOR> I've slowly been learning PHP the last 6 months or so, and finally spent a good few weeks hacking this backlink discover tool together. It's kinda the tool I always wanted for PR, SEO. It's just the first version, lots of improvements needed!

<comment><USER2> source code?

<comment><AUTHOR> No source code, but the tool uses a number of different APIs, some paid, some free. The Moz API, which has a free tier has a good repo for getting started here: [https://github.com/seomoz/SEOmozAPISamples](https://github.com/seomoz/SEOmozAPISamples)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice one! I've been looking for a nice tool like this - looks great!

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you own the SERPs.com domain name?</comment>


Interactive visualization of UbuntuEdge funding over time - <AUTHOR> http://matthiaslee.com/iggTrack/index.html

<comment><USER2> Would be cool to see at the same time straight line showing how much they'd need to receive on average every day.

So $32m/31day = 1.032m every single day

<comment><USER3> [http://ubuntu-edge.info/](http://ubuntu-edge.info/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks</comment></comment></comment>


Assange Says NSA Holds The Power In The Obama Administration - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/08/assange-takes-aim-at-facebook-and-googles-unbridled-power-in-sxsw-livestream/

<comment> line-zero Does anyone have a link to his full talk at SXSW?

I've been scouring the web, but can't find it.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to start? - <AUTHOR> TLDR: My main question is, how do you start learning/working with 'modern' programming languages/practices/tools.
I am in my late 20's and a developer for a few years. The problem is I'm a Coldfusion developer. I have these ideas that I want to create, but I don't want to write them in Coldfusion. I would like to use something like Ruby, Python, Go, or even Scala. I've taken Coursera courses on Ruby and Scala. I do understand them enough to go through the courses, but it's hard to grok the environment.
I've been a Windows guy, and just recently bought a Macbook, hoping it would push me into learning the environment. But in reality it's been a bit of culture shock. I get confused using all of these tools. I tried setting up my machine with Boxen, until I couldn't figure out the error it was throwing and got frustrated and reinstalled. I think this is the third time I've reinstalled OSX.
Homebrew, ZSH (and oh-my-zsh), Puppet/Chef, Vagrant, Rails, Gems, Rake, rvm, rbenv, Node, npm, Angular/Ember/Backbone, virtualenv, pip, etc, etc. Even things like git, setting up ssh/certificates, and just generally command-line things are intimidating.
I get that a lot of people just intuitively know these now, because they 'grew up' with them, so to speak. But to someone just trying to get into it's incredibly overwhelming.
Things like TDD are foreign to me too. I understand it at a high-level, but actually writing tests is hard for me.
I know things well enough to know that I should use it, but not enough to know how to use it.
I want to write software, but I don't want to write bad software. I definitely suffer from analysis-paralysis. If I don't know that I'm doing it right, I find it hard to start. One of my ideas is something related to bitcoin, so I know that it will be attempted to be hacked. That brings a whole new aspect in hardening servers, writing secure code, auditing, etc.
I'm just at my wit's end. Maybe you all could point me in the right direction. <comment><USER3> You might benefit a lot from just _watching_ how Unix-based developers work. Screencasts are a really good way to do that. You can learn a lot from just watching and following a long. Just re-type things verbatim at first - <USER2> you're getting comfortable. Do not copy/paste at all. If you're doing web projects then don't even think about anything other than Ruby or Python. Try them both out, pick whichever one seems more comfortable. Don't sweat it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really good idea. I think it would help a lot. Do you know of any good screencasts?

As an avid collector of links, I know of these paid sites:

[1] <https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts> \- Seems more advanced than an intro course.

[2] <http://www.letscodejavascript.com/> \- Looks good, but for javascript. It does look like it's better geared toward beginners.

[3] <https://peepcode.com/> \- Has play-by-play's, but it's quite expensive.

<comment><USER4> > [2] <http://www.letscodejavascript.com/> \- Looks good, but for javascript. > It does look like it's better geared toward beginners.

Author of letscodejavascript.com here. The series is intended for professional developers, so I don't spend any time on "this is the command line, this is a variable," but we do build an application from scratch. It's very much the immersion approach, and we cover a lot of things OP is wondering about (command line, Node, npm, Git, TDD). It could well be a good fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you should find a resource that will guide you step-by-step along the way and teach you modern software engineering concepts, not just language syntax. A lot of tutorials out there today simply focus on syntax and eschew the bigger picture, which is critical for fully understanding what your doing.

If your at least somewhat familiar with object-oriented programming concepts already, I would highly recommend the following course: [https://courses.edx.org/courses/BerkeleyX/CS169.1x/2013_Spri...](https://courses.edx.org/courses/BerkeleyX/CS169.1x/2013_Spring/info)

It deals with modern programming practices in the ruby/rails environment. I'm working through it myself and it's already answered a lot of questions that I've had about most of the tools you mention and how they work. It has specific sections on BDD and TDD also, among other relevant topics.

If you need some more general background first, take an introductory computer science course. I would recommend CS106A Programming Methodology from Stanford, which is a good pre-requisite course for the one listed above.

All of these courses are free.

</comment><comment><USER6> A few years back, I jumped into what I thought was a design position at a local web company. I was wrong.

I was then forced to learn JavaScript. I watched Douglass Crockford's Good Parts, and also listened to quite a bit of a Python podcast called Python Osmosis. I went from very basic/naive JavaScript on my own to a world where using VMs, SSH, Git, JavaScript, hand-rolled CMS's, and fast turnarounds were an everyday thing.

What did I learn? Forced immersion is the best way to learn. Don't allow yourself an "out", but allow yourself space.

There's a lot of ways to manage this path. I'll outline a few.

\- Find a mentor - while this seems daunting, there are a lot of people who are itching to teach. It works best if there is a formal agreement (and even a pay-based relationship) for an allotted amount of time with some concrete goals.

\- Start a project - Doesn't matter really what it is, because when you are making something, it is allowed to evolve. Decide a problem you want to tackle, and tackle it. Doesn't matter if this is reinventing the wheel, because you are learning how people built wheels; however, it always helps to try to solve things that haven't been solved before, so that you do it "the hard way" - this helps with retention and future problem solving abilities.

\- Get an internship - build a relationship with an agency that is willing to pay you something to hack on stuff, and let you make mistakes. There are a lot of agencies with space on their teams that will be open to this.

 __Overall, __the most important thing is to be diligent and remember that everyone else is learning constantly, too. Just because someone you know writes great tests doesn't mean they _know testing_. They learn every day. Jump into the fast moving river, and you'll quickly learn to swim, or get out of the river.

<comment><USER6> I realize this is a very common set of answers, so here are a few more concrete things you could do.

\- Go through <http://railstutorial.org/>

\- Learn Git (this taught me all of the more important unix commands for my everyday work)

\- Check out Coursera courses, like this one: <https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalmedia> or this one: <https://www.coursera.org/course/posa> (two very different courses, both very informative)

\- If you aren't keen on Coursera, check out Udacity

\- Get a VM running so you don't have to worry about the damage you might cause running sudo stuff. This is very big; if you are intimidated because you don't want to cause damage to your machine, build a sandbox first. (Assuming you can set up a VM. If not, check something like this out: <http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2011010701239RVLFSW>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Start with smaller projects, something simple based on either what you already know, or an existing lesson/blog/book. Then adjust it a little bit, work iteratively, towards the new stuff.

It's really easy to get lost in the big picture of what you want to do versus what you can do. Try not to do that. Just work on smaller bits involving the new stuff, falling back to what you already know at times, and keep at it. If there's a way you can do ColdFusion with Ruby/Python/whatever, go for it.

If you haven't seen it yet, Zed Shaw's Learn Code The Hard Way[1] series does a good job of getting you to use the right tools for the environment. Which is something I see frequently ignored by these sort of online lesson plans... it's not the languages themselves that are difficult to learn, but getting accustomed to the tools to use them, and the best practices.

[1] - <http://learncodethehardway.org>

</comment><comment><USER8> I was in your exact position a few years ago.

The problem here seems to be that you're relatively new to Unix. The trick is to _be humble_. Don't work with Boxen, ZSH, vagrant, or any of those exotic tools. They won't make sense until you roughly understand the *nix model.

Instead, start with the basics. As in start from scratch. Teach yourself to use OSX the same way you might teach your mother to use a PC. You absolutely need to grasp the basics before you can progress.

After that, work on your command-line fu. Force yourself to use the terminal for all the simple stuff. Learn to write simple Bash scripts.

Then, pick a language and try developing scripts with it. Use your new-found command-line skills to set up your development environment. I personally chose Python - it's really newbie-friendly.

After that, it's just a matter of practice. Trust me, you will get there eventually :)

</comment><comment><USER9> If there is one skill you should focus on above all else its refactoring. With that in mind, just start and expect to rewrite as you learn.

As for specific tools, I too only recently picked up a mac and while it was a bit painful at the start there is plenty of instructions out there for getting your environment set up.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd almost recommend staying with Coldfusion. If you're good with it, you can spend all of your time shipping apps instead of spending all of your time learning. Still learn on the side, but don't try to learn a bunch of languages and have nothing to show.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was frustrated at finding a beginning to end tutorial when I was trying to learn rails and ruby. I finally found it with Michael Hartl's book/online guide. <http://ruby.railstutorial.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I forgot about that site. I was looking at it before, but was waiting for a Rails 4 update. It looks like a Rails 4 version of it was just recently put out, so I'll definitely go through it.

Not in reference to railstutorial.org, but I think the hard part about finding resources online is that it's hard to determine if it's still a good resource or outdated. This one looks good though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You sound like you're trying to learn several things at once. How do you e.g. expect to successfully learn a technique like TDD, if you constantly have peculiarities of a new OS getting in the way?

Try to absorb new things one at a time, and then expand onward.

</comment><comment><USER13> For commandline proficiency, i think you will benefit quite a bit from the software carpentry website: <http://software- carpentry.org/4_0/shell/index.html></comment>


Pirate Bay Docks in Peru: New System Will Make Domains "Irrelevant" - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-docks-in-peru-new-system-will-make-domains-irrelevant-131212/ <comment><USER2> Why don't they just buy .pirate and be set? Am I missing something?</comment>


Automatically Unsubscribe from Unwanted Emails with 'Leave Me Alone' - <AUTHOR> https://lifehacker.com/automatically-unsubscribe-from-unwanted-emails-with-lea-1838373894 <comment><USER2> I liked this part but couldnt this be problematic? : You can also look at the senders that most other users unsubscribe from.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not phrased very well in the article, but I think what the author is referring to is that Leave Me Alone assigns a score to each sender and as a feature of that you can see how many other users unsubscribed from it.

For example when looking at a subscription it might say "60% of other users unsubscribed from this mailing list".

You can actually see specifically what other people have unsubscribed from.

<comment><USER2> Would this cause those which get unsubscribed the most to remain the most unsubscribed? pardon me for not knowing the right term. Like social proof, it causes the action to be done more than if left unmentioned?

Probably not such a bad idea if there's some people who would unsubscribe if told everyone else is unsubscribing.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ranking system is calculated as a percentile - so the mailing lists are only ranked in relation to each other, rather than directly from the action taken.

Also % of unsubscribes is only a portion of the algorithm used to calculate the overall score.

The intention is not to say "this is something you should unsubscribe from because everyone else is unsubscribing from it", rather to say "based on our information, this mailing list is lower quality than most others, so you should check if you still want it"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anything that you pay for but are unhappy with? - <AUTHOR> Are there any products or services that you are paying for and are not happy with but either have no other choice or the alternatives don't work for you for some reason? <comment><USER2> Cable service for internet</comment>


Muslims traded with American natives as soon as 889 CE - <AUTHOR> http://lostislamichistory.com/columbus-was-not-the-first-to-cross-the-atlantic/

<comment><USER2> As I wrote in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8450316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8450316) , that account isn't even internally consistent.

In less than 200 years, and even with 2,000 ships (giving what, 100K people?), how did they built cities in Brazil and get up to the US. Did they walk through the Darién and the Aztec Empire, or did they have boats that could make it all the way there - including with elephants! - but not back to Mali?

This web site is mythologizing history to bolster support for Islam. There's no need to fake the history. Real Islamic history is impressive enough that it doesn't need to be tarnished by lies.</comment>


A fatal inconsistency within neoliberalism - <AUTHOR> https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-fatal-inconsistency-within.html <comment><USER2> Interesting form of rhetoric.

1\. Invent a blanket term for your opponent. 2\. Ascribe extremism to their views ("they say free market, but they mean pro-business") - tarring everyone with the same brush. 3\. Arrogate moderate positions to yourself ("some free markets are OK"), thereby marginalising your opponent. 4\. Argue that anyone who disagrees with your position is an <insert-invented-term->; cementing the dichotomy and the marginalisation of your opponent.

<comment><USER3> Yup. I stopped reading the article after I realised that it was simply an eloquent argument against a straw man.

I have yet to encounter anyone who actually calls themselves neoliberal. This term is used _only_ by the political left, who prefer to argue with a political ideology they themselves invented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reagan and Thatcher were _conservatives_. Why is everyone trying to rebrand their ideology as something called "neoliberalism"? They were the arch enemies of what most people seem to call liberal, even in economic terms (social safety net, consumer and environmental protection, universal access to healthcare and education, etc). What is insufficient about the term "conservative"? What about their ideology close enough to liberal ideology to conflate the terms?

<comment><USER5> In politics liberal meaning "left-wing" is a US English thing

<comment><USER6> A lot of what is considered "left-wing" in the US is "liberal" (and somewhere on the political right) in the global sense, though, confusing things more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have yet to hear of a natural, malevolent monopoly that formed without some kind of government protection to keep out competition (a.k.a. rent seeking), in the forms of direct government contracts, complex startup-averse regulations, government LICENSING, etc.

<comment><USER8> Microsoft would seem to be one counterexample.

<comment><USER7> How so? Not a malevolent monopoly in any sense. I still do not understand the antitrust case to be some sort of proof of monopoly -- the court settled for them making public the implementation of certain API's, and allowed them to continue shipping IE with their OS (as they should -- how else would people download a web browser? Force everyone to buy one at the store and install them via CD?)

EDIT: incredible how many downvotes I've received on this thread, as I continue waiting for that example :)...

<comment><USER9> What exactly constitutes "malevolence", in your view? The disadvantages of monopolies are inherent and extend far beyond mere price gouging. Your argument seems to be that if a monopolistic company doesn't innovate (at the same pace they would if they had stiff competition) then some nimble upstart will easily overtake them. But that's not how the world works. If the incumbent has all the patents and all the money, nimble upstarts can be combatted in all sorts of ways beyond "fair" competition - they can buy them (as Facebook does to all upstart social networks that gain a foothold), sue them unfairly and bleed them dry (as Creative did to Audigy), or use their market position to change the rules faster than a competitor can keep up (Microsoft's "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy).

Of course, if you won't accept any example of monopoly that involves unfair government privilege, you neglect the fact of regulatory capture - once a company gets to a certain size, it can often buy its way into an unfair advantage (this is the usual order of things, rather than government arbitrarily picking a company and then it becoming a monopoly).

<comment><USER7> Malevolence as would be described by the CONSUMER (low quality and/or high prices). Something like Comcast, a successful business whose customers typically hate it, and which is deeply entrenched as a 'utility' due to its foothold in local municipalities.

> If the incumbent has all the patents

Is that not a form of government licensing?

> sue them unfairly and bleed them dry (as Creative did to Audigy)

Is that not exploiting flaws in the governing system? Wouldn't the best solution be to fix the flaws, rather than create a workaround to attempt to fix abuses of more fundamental problems?

> you neglect the fact of regulatory capture - once a company gets to a > certain size, it can often buy its way into an unfair advantage

I don't neglect that at all -- that is _the_ problem to solve. Obviously, humans are not perfect so no government will ever be, but we should strive to solve more fundamental problems than to layer our legal system in thousands of pages of bandaids, which have done nothing to solve the Comcasts of the world.

Do you disagree?

<comment><USER10> > Malevolence as would be described by the CONSUMER (low quality and/or high > prices)

So how does this not heavily make MS malevolent? MS has done very malevolent things specifically against the consumer. They set back browser technology many years. They write majorily closed source software. They autoinstalled windows 10 onto client hardware without permission and using dark patterns. Windows 8/10 may have some internal technical improvements over xp/7, but they forced in tons of anti-consumer changes like ads, telemetry, removed settings, removed features, undoing user preferences, etc. Just this week my device plays audio out the speakers and headphones when I plug in headphones. Ten years ago you would have said "lol android or Linux will be stable one day". No, it was windows 10. I can forgive early versions of software I didn't pay for when it's a little unstable. But late versions of software I pay for maybe once every four years?

In fact, I challenge you to name one monopoly that isn't malevolent. Bonus points if it's government ran (oh no!) and not intentionally underfunded by Republicans.

<comment><USER7> > They set back browser technology many years. > They write majorily closed > source software. > using dark patterns

Sounds like you have some personal bones to pick with companies YOU dislike, and yet the average consumer/company does not say "I hate Microsoft Windows" when they buy a Windows desktop (or 1000) (like they might when the purchase Comcast, which is closer to a real monopoly). Even if it seems to you like there is a predominantly negative sentiment around Microsoft, realize that HN and techie circles are little bubbles that do not well describe the market as a whole.

Every malevolent monopoly needs to be sustained by government force, especially the worst monopolies of all -- governments. The funny part about the Microsoft example is that their biggest clients are governments, especially the US government.

> In fact, I challenge you to name one monopoly that isn't malevolent.

Read this entire thread -- there are plenty of examples. Google and Amazon are modern examples with great products. I actually like Windows 10 a lot as well, even though I had to make some tweaks and Microsoft isn't really a monopoly anymore.

> Bonus points if it's government ran (oh no!) and not intentionally > underfunded by Republicans.

Careful not to let your personal ideology prevent you from learning new things (applies to everyone). But I'll give you some examples: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac :)

<comment><USER10> > Sounds like you have some personal bones to pick with companies YOU dislike

No evidence of this, I only used facts.

> Even if it seems to you like there is a predominantly negative sentiment > around Microsoft, realize that HN and techie circles are little bubbles that > do not well describe the market as a whole.

Not important, economic damage isn't measured in non-techies feelings.

> Careful not to let your personal ideology prevent you from learning new > things

You first. :) :) :) :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is there no up-vote count shown next to comments - <AUTHOR> I will like to know why their are no upvotes count displayed next to comments even though it is obvious that they are counted, I do not know about you but i feel that this feature will enable one quickly filter highly relevant, enlightening and worthwhile comments from general and normal comments particularly on very long threads that tend to test a readers patience.
I also do understand the mantra that all comment's have a certain sense in them, but come on not all comments are equal in this case due to a lot of variables like perhaps the experience and qualification of a writer in relation to the subject matter being discussed. <comment><USER2> That was a feature years ago and has been removed, from my understanding because people focused on the points to much. Using HN search you should be able to find old discussions of it.

<comment><USER3> I have to agree with that decision. This web is not about which are the most popular opinions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think showing comment scores would add anything to the quality of discussion on HN.

As it is currently, I've noticed an uptick in lower-quality commenting (jokes, puns, baiting, poorly thought out responses, etc).

I like HN because there are a variety of perspectives, but a good majority of them come from people who want to have quality discussions. Showing comment score would entice people to comment what will be popular, not informative or discussion worthy.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it's good that HN avoids this "feature". It would very possibly enforce an uniform group think, which will be exacerbated by the lack of subreddits which limits sub-communities from dominating the general mental landscape.</comment>


Ask HN: I am going to write a Django tutorial about ... - <AUTHOR>

Hello. Django community is amazing and I really want to give back, because of all the help I received both online and offline, when I was younger. I would like to write a beginners tutorial on Django, but I can't think of any app idea, that won't be too complex for beginners. I don't want to write a tutorial about blog, todo list or poll applications as those are covered. I would be really happy if anyone can give me something to write about and of course you will get credit in the tutorial :).
Thanks in advance! <comment><AUTHOR> Two ideas for now : Questions and Answers site and simple CRM for contacts + notes on each contact . Anything else? :)</comment>


Airbnb and the so-called sharing economy is hollowing out our cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/31/airbnb-sharing-economy-cities-barcelona-inequality-locals <comment><USER2> Right, let's blame consumers of housing instead of just allowing more housing to be built.</comment>


In Mobile, Fragmentation is Forever. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/mobile-fragmentation-forever/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> That's a very surprising message (dare say refreshing? I dare not) from an investor in the largest cross-platform app vendor, GetJar. I think his best advice, which applies as well to mobile as it does elsewhere, is bound the problem: Get off the Adobe-vs.-Apple bandwagon and figure out what your market is and how you can best achieve it. Solid piece.

<comment><USER3> I agree that is a solid piece. I would even call it the most sane article about mobile fragmentation I've read for a while.

I believe in HTML5 and that it will be a big success, even in the mobile space. But at the same time, top device manufacturers are fighting hard that their hardware doesn't became commodity and because of that we will see a lot of great innovation and HTML standardization just can't keep up with it. And HTML rendering engine is not necessarily the best technology base for all different usage modalities that mobile devices inherently have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The chart of all the revolutions frustrates me because all the dates are 10 years earlier than they occured.

<comment><USER5> Yeah that's pretty bizarre. Desktop Internet Computing with google in the 80's?

<comment><USER3> I think the chart is from Morgan Stanley mobile report and decades refer to decades when that "revolution" started, not when winners of the revolution were solved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of acronyms to essentially say that you can't write-once-run-anywhere in mobile.

From the article's glossary: "XHTML – multi modality markup language". _What?_</comment>


Interview with Miguel de Icaza - <AUTHOR> http://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2011/05/interview-with-miguel-de-icaza.aspx

<comment><USER2> Anyone know if Nat Friedman will be involved with the new company? Always been convinced that guy is a genius.

</comment><comment><USER3> Such a weird fixation: bringing .Net to non-Windows platforms? I don't get it.

<comment><USER4> Have you ever written any non-trivial code for .NET?</comment></comment>


Dart vs Java – the DeltaBlue Benchmark - <AUTHOR> http://bonovox.be/blog/?p=128

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure of DeltaBlue or the Computer Language Benchmarks Game is more representative of "average programs", but they appear to give very different results in their comparisons. On the Benchmarks Game dart is crushed: [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=java&lang2=dart&data=u64q)

I guess people will have to decide which results are more likely to reflect the performance of their applications. But the extreme nature of the difference is interesting in and of itself.

P.S. I have not looked at the Java code to see if it is idiomatic Java either- And this really make be want to port DeltaBlue to Go...

<comment><USER2> Also this shows DeltaBlue as faster on Java when warmed up: <https://github.com/xxgreg/deltablue>

<comment><USER3> I opened <https://github.com/xxgreg/deltablue/issues/1> to request updated numbers.

<comment><USER4> I had a quick look at this. It appears the DartVM is now beating the JVM even at 100,000 iterations (Previously Java edged out Dart at higher iterations).

100,000 iterations takes ~45 seconds to run on my computer.

At a lower number of iterations the DartVM beats the JVM by a significant margin.

The benchmark is easy to run (On linux, maybe macos too). Just check it out, make sure dart, java and gcc are in your path, and execute run.sh.

Note, this code doesn't use the benchmark harness because I wanted to include the warm up time in the measurements. At a high number of iterations this doesn't make much difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know that benchmarks are damned lies, but I'm honestly surprised it's this close. Dart isn't even at 1.0 yet, and the JVM is almost 20 years old with millions (billions?) of dollars into optimizing it. And to top it all off, the dart vm throws away static types when it hits the vm - all of this is done through its tracing jit (just like v8).

<comment><USER5> Neither V8 nor Dart are tracing JITs. They're method-at-a-time JITs just like the JVM. They just have to do more extensive type-feedback optimizations than the JVM because the language are dynamically typed.</comment></comment>


Product People: A podcast for people who make their living building products - <AUTHOR> http://productpeople.tv/ <comment><USER2> Great stuff guys, keep it up! There's nothing out there for product people. Actually starting a 180 day blog series on every day in th life of building my team's latest product. We should chat sometime!

<comment><USER3> I didn't post this to HN, but I'm one of the hosts. Thanks for the encouragement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow. I was wondering why there was a big spike in traffic today. ;) Thanks for the post!</comment>


When a float does not change when incrementing - <AUTHOR> http://meaningofstuff.blogspot.com/2014/09/when-float-does-not-change-when.html

<comment><USER2> Note also the reason 16777221 is rounded down, but 16777223 is rounded up: IEEE floating point, in "round to nearest" mode (likely the default here), rounds values exactly in-between two representable values to the nearest number whose least-significant mantissa bit is 0. This is done in order to avoid the statistical bias of, for example, always rounding such values up (as we are taught in elementary school).

Since at this magnitude, the least-significant mantissa bit falls in the 2s place, odd numbers fall exactly between two valid representations, and are therefore rounded to multiples of 4.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Using the "float" or "double" data types could lead to unexpected results if done without enough precautions. For example incrementing a "float" variable could leave the value unchanged, for relatively small values — like 20 millions. Do you think that these dangers are well understood by the average software developer?</comment>


Ask HN: Online tutor services for development - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,<p>I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck as a beginner utilizing tutors online to help with writing code. A quick google search has yielded codementor.io but I wanted to know if anyone here had any suggestions. Obviously I could attempt this through trial and error but it'd really help if I could get some proper direction. <comment><USER2> Edx some of their courses have TAs, like this software development track [https://www.edx.org/micromasters/software- development](https://www.edx.org/micromasters/software-development)

Otherwise contributing to some open source project as a jr dev you'll get feedback from Sr project members, it's how I went from semi-competent at building academic exercises to competent at building software people actually use.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trial error is actually a great method to learn. I have learned programming like that as a kid. You don't really need a tutor imho.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you looking for someone to teach you? Or someone to help you when you get stuck?

</comment><comment><USER5> If you need starting basics, I suggest [https://www.codeacademy.com](https://www.codeacademy.com) or [https://www.teamtreehouse.com](https://www.teamtreehouse.com) just to help you get a feel for the syntax and understanding.

I definitely am not discouraging you from hiring someone to train or teach you, but if you go in knowing nothing, chances are, you'll be paying someone to learn the basics, of which you can do for free and in your own time.

Once you get more advanced, you'll want to check out places like Lynda.com or Udemy.com -- a place that often has some great sales -- dropping their prices as low as $10 - $20 per course ($100+ value) throughout the year.

The other way, of course, is to teach yourself and learn by trial and error. For the most part, you should learn about code libraries. I certainly am not telling you not to write your own code, but there are plenty of frameworks and libraries that help make it easier, such as Laravel (PHP) or Ruby on Rails/Sinatra (Ruby) or Django (Python), so you are still writing code, but just using common code that programmers might use often.

I took a free online course that offered insight into databases, a course offered by Stanford. I felt so proud of myself for taking the time to try and get it. Unfortunately, not to knock the course, but it was so technical, even after reading thoroughly through the chapters, I was so lost. I spent time searching the Internet for tutorials on MySQL and using it with PHP. I was able to learn and understand it in 3 hours. [https://mypost.io](https://mypost.io) was my first project where I used a database and built a web app that had absolutely nothing to do with WordPress.

After some trial and error, I was able to learn what I needed to know in order to use it in everyday practical applications. Could I have learned more theory? Sure. I'm not the best at math (I have a psych degree, not a computer science degree, but work full-time as a developer/designer/programmer), nor am I that great at computer or math theory. I am good at doing stuff, making mistakes, even sometimes wasting hours, only to realize the answer was right there all along and I could've probably solved it in 5 minutes.

To start, and this goes for any programming language, learn the basics:

1\. "Hello World" application (learn how to output)

2\. Random Number generator application (for fun but learning how to randomize a number and output)

3\. Input data and return data application (If I input "123", you output "abc" .. if i enter in something else, you output "wrong")

4\. Learn how loops work and how to work inside of them (For ... Each) (Count to 100.. but once you hit 50, output something in addition)

5\. If .. then.. conditions using variables

Once you can do this, you have already learned a great amount of information.

After, you'll want to switch to more advanced things that you will likely be using:

6\. Learn how to use _POST and _GET and _REQUEST

7\. Set, read, and delete a cookie (use the information too! "Hi [Joe!]"

8\. Learn how to write, read, and delete information to/from a file on the server

9\. Learn how to write, read, and delete information to/from a database

10\. Create a login / password form which actually logs the user in to a certain area and keeps them logged in (I utilize cookies + database for this) -- but also offer a way to log out, along with a way for the user to retrieve their password if they forgot (send email and offer a form for reset)

I'd say these 10 items will definitely help you get started on becoming a developer.

Another thing that I learned outside of school, at my very first job: My boss would ALWAYS make me write the function on paper first.

1\. What is the name of this function? 2\. What does it do? 3\. What is its overall purpose in the application?

As much of a tyrant as that boss was... I did learn how to code the proper way because of him. In other words, the biggest mistake programmers make: They begin writing code immediately. How can you write code if you only have the idea of it? Write your plan out first for what that code should do, how it functions, and what purpose it serves in the overall functionality of the application. Then you can begin to code. You stay more focused and get lost a lot less that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Matt,

Thanks for your thoughtful post I really appreciate this.

I'd say I'm quite proficient up to step 5 when it comes to object oriented programming like Java / C#. I'm actually trying to get advice on developing an android application, or well, any type of tutor for when I 'just get stuck' in a certain situation.

I've looked at some of the JS stacks and it's all very interesting and I can see a lot of creative potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> find your own direction by not seeking any direction.</comment>


VerHIDEzon - <AUTHOR> https://www.verhidezon.com/ <comment><USER2> Literally the first Google result for "verhidezon": [https://www.t-mobile.com/news/verhidezon](https://www.t-mobile.com/news/verhidezon)

<comment><USER3> excellent detective work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      Domain Name: VERHIDEZON.COM
      Registry Domain ID: 2432400849_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
      Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.corporatedomains.com
      Registrar URL: http://www.cscglobal.com/global/web/csc/digital-brand-services.html
      Updated Date: 2019-09-11T20:03:02Z
      Creation Date: 2019-09-11T20:03:02Z
      Registry Expiry Date: 2020-09-11T20:03:02Z
      Registrar: CSC Corporate Domains, Inc.
      Registrar IANA ID: 299
      Registrar Abuse Contact Email: email@example.com
      Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: 8887802723
      Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
      Name Server: DNS1.CSCDNS.NET
      Name Server: DNS2.CSCDNS.NET
      DNSSEC: unsigned
      URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/
      >>> Last update of whois database: 2019-11-20T21:17:09Z <<<

What a strange piece of corporate PR.

<comment><USER3> What part of this whois lookup actually says "corporate PR"?

<comment><USER5> The part where the registrar is a corporate PR firm that includes DNS in its menu of the services it provides its clients.

<comment><USER6> So is the implication that it's likely that another major provider like T-Mobile or Sprint is behind this but isn't disclosing it?

<comment><USER5> I don't know, but that seems more likely than Verizon lowkey talking shit about its own brand.

<comment><USER7> How and/or why would that be more likely?

Why would Verizon talk shit about it's own brand? What sense does that make?

<comment><USER5> That's my point. It doesn't make sense, so someone else doing that seems more likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Curiously, I saw another story today pointing to Verizon 5G maps which are now available: [https://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/coverage- map/](https://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/coverage-map/)

Here in Minneapolis (one of the first two cities that got it), there are 6 (count them, 6) locations downtown near the Vikings stadium, and that's it. Yeah, I won't be ponying up for that any time soon.</comment>


Scoble: Facebook identities on VR are the biggest strategy tax of all time - <AUTHOR> https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2020/08/scoble-oculus-facebook-vr-business-strategy-tax.html <comment><USER2> I didn't realize Scoble was still alive - was almost going to submit "(2008)" :)</comment>